In order to understand the text it is important to have some knowledge about the background of the readers as the author should compose his work under their background so that they may understand easily. Hence brief introduction of the background of Ancient Israelites and Genesis as well as its authorship would be given before we go into discussing its theology. The discussion will be within four topics ---(a) Yahweh has supreme authority and power, (b) Man---as image of God, (c) Mankind's failure and God's reaction a

"God saw all he had made, and indeed it was very good. Evening came and morning came: the sixth day. Thus heaven and earth were completed with all their array. On the seventh day God had completed the work he had been doing. He rested on the seventh day after all the work he had been doing. God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on that day he rested after all his work of creating." In God's creation plan, every creature was perfect and that the seventh day would come after his perfect creation. As we have seen due to man's failure to act as am image of God, relationships between God and mankind has been broken. In other words, the perfection of the creation has been broken. This leads to a question that whether the creation has been finished? Whether the seventh day has come? From the Bible, it seems to tell us that the creation of God has been finished. However, the purpose of which, i.e. the perfection of the creation, seemed has not been attained. Furthermore, we could see that God continued to participate in the history of man from Old Testament to New Testament and even until now. God has never took a rest!

We have seen in Section B that in Canaanites religion, there was struggle between Baal and Yam in the creation story. It seemed to tell us that Yam had power comparable to the creator Baal. The implication was that although Baal was the creator, he did not seize supreme power. However, in Genesis 1: 2, we found "a divine wind sweeping over the waters". When one read through chapter one, one could find that God did divided the waters under the vault and above the vault, made the water under heaven to become a single mass and created different kinds of animals and plants living in waters, we could hardly find an evidence to show that waters was directly created by God. However, the main different from Baal's creation story was that God did have power over the water. Instead of a struggle with the waters, God's wind sweeping over the waters which revealed His supreme power. The text seemed to tell us that the waters were actually co-exist with God before the world was created. One may doubt that should the waters created by God. However, in the concept of the readers at that time, the sea represent evil which existed before creation and hence the story presented in such a way could be easily accepted and understood by the Israelites at that time. The writer believes that the author was trying to stress the supreme power over the waters as against Baal's story. The waters were actually under God's rule and control.

One point must be noted was that being image of God does not mean being identical to God. In the creation plan of God, man had his own limitations. We must accept and recognize ourselves being image and that God had power and authority over us. Moreover, we should live in God's purposes of creating man (Gen. 1: 28) Mankind was forbidden to eat the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as well as the tree of life that were also limitations to mankind. The writer believed that it did not mean man should not have the ability to judge right and wrong but that man did not have the power to fix the rule of which things were good which were bad. For example, we all know that murder is something wrong according to the rules that originally set in our heart. However, we have no authority to set rules to say that murder is something good. Moreover, in God's plan man did not have eternal life in his physical body (but not the spirit). These two were what God preserved for himself. However, mankind was not willing to accept his limitation imposed by God. In other words, they wanted to become God themselves thus sinned again God. We will go into detail on man's failure in the next section.

As we read through Pentateuch, the books seem to telling its readers that there are one and only one God ruling over the Earth. In other word, they are presenting a religion that is monotheistic

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Near East, God Yahweh, Baal Yam, El Elyon, Genesis God, Genesis Yahwists, Genesis Bible, Process God, Testament God, Abel God's, ancient near, ancient near east, creation story, near east, image god, seventh day, creation god, post-exilic period, ancient israelites, man's failure, god's creation, due man's failure, israelites post-exilic period, religions ancient near, canaanites babylonia religions,
Approximate Word count = 5302
Approximate Pages = 21 (250 words per page double spaced)