VIII.I.1 The Bible begins with the account of the Priestly Code of the creation of the world.  In the beginning is chaos; darkness, water, brooding spirit, which engenders life, and fertilises the dead mass.  The primal stuff contains in itself all beings, as yet undistinguished:  from it proceeds step by step the ordered world; by a process of unmixing, first of all by separating out the great elements.  The chaotic primal gloom yields to the contrast of light and darkness; the primal water is separated by the vault of heaven into the heavenly water, out of which there grows the world above the firmament which is withdrawn from our gaze, and the water of the earth:  the latter, a slimy mixture, is divided into land and sea, whereupon the land at once puts on its green attire.  The elements thus brought into existence, light, heaven, water, land, are then enlivened, pretty much in the order in which they were created, with individual beings; to the light correspond the lamps of the stars, fishes to the water, to the heaven the birds of heaven, and the other creatures to the land.  The last act of creation is markedly emphasised.  “And God said:  Let us make man after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the living creatures of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.  So God created man after His own image, in the image of God created He him, and He created them male and female.  And God blessed them, and said:  Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it:  and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the face of the earth.  And God said, Behold, I have given unto you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed-fruits:  to you it shall be for food:  and to every beast of the earth and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given the green herb for meat.  Thus the heavens and the earth were made and all the host of them, and on the seventh day God ended His work, and blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it.” (Genesis i. 1-ii. 4a).

It is commonly said that the aim of this narrative is a purely religious one.  The Israelite certainly does not deny himself in it:  the religious spirit with which it is penetrated even comes at some points into conflict with the nature of its materials.  The notion of chaos is that of uncreated matter; here we find the remarkable idea that it is created in the beginning by God.  Brooded over by the Spirit, it is further of a nature for development to take place out of it, and the trait that the creation is represented throughout as a separation of elements which in chaos were mixed together, betrays even now the original design:  but in the Hebrew narrative the immanent Spirit has yielded to the transcendent