In the beginning ... : Genesis I-III PDF
Preview In the beginning ... : Genesis I-III
In the Beginning Genesis l-lll School of Theology at Claremont 1 1001 1388922 Jean Danielou, S.J. A \ BS Preface by Gerard S. Sloyan 1235.2 D313 CHALLENGE BOOK SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY AT CLAREMONT California ' -t - + « i i I Ί Li 3 I i.111 In the Beginning . Genesis I— III OTHER BOOKS BY JEAN DANIELOU The Dead Sea Scrolls and Primitive Christianity Holy Pagans of the Old Testament Primitive Christian Symbols The Scandal of Truth In the Beginning • · Genesis I— III by JEAN DANIELOU with a Foreword by GERARD S. SLOYAN Bs )Z 3S. X J )S I3 A CHALLENGE BOOK HELICON—BALTIMORE—DUBLIN Helicon Press, Inc. 1X20 N. Calvert Street Baltimore, Maryland 21202 Helicon Limited 53 Capel Street Dublin 1, Ireland Originally published in French under the title Au Commencement by Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1962 Translated from the French by Julien L. Randolf Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 64:16130 Nihil Obstat: Carroll E. Satterfield Censor Librorum Imprimatur: »{4 Lawrence Cardinal Shehan Archbishop of Baltimore March 15, 1965 The Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur are official declarations that a book or pamphlet is free of doctrinal or moral error. No implication is contained therein that those who have granted the Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur agree with the opinions expressed. Copyright © English translation 1965 by Helicon Press, Inc. PRINTED IN THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND BY CAHILL & COMPANY LIMITED DUBLIN A CAT CAN look at a king, but one does not “introduce” Pere Danielou. One expresses gratitude that this monograph of his on the early chapters of Genesis has been made available to English language readers. Two decades ago the Catholic community in this country was almost without a popular literature on the biblical revelation, done in a critical spirit. The lack has since been remedied. This is not to say that a certain fundamentalism inimical to Christian faith does not still prevail in many quarters. It is to be found among the badly catechized of all ages, including—paradoxically—a few remaining students of theological seminaries, and other dwellings of various sizes. What every Chanaanite schoolboy knows is, however, more and more being identified with a touching liberality as a “new finding in Scripture.” Pere Danielou confines himself to a small number of old findings. He does his reader the important service of seeing both testaments of Scripture whole. Instead of considering the authors of Genesis i-iii In the Beginning . . . as culturally imprisoned protagonists of a cosmogony akin to that of their Mesopotamian neighbors he sees them as “new men,” scientific demythologizers who can call a star a star and a moon a celestial orb. Their view is, at the same time, prophetic. They look forward more than they look back. They find the story of how it was in the beginning worth telling only because of their postexilic conviction of how it will be at the end. Their great concern is with the age to come. The mockery of superstition and animism by the biblical authors is total, so much so that the vanity of these men could not be wounded more than by the modem charge that they spun unsophisticated yams. You do not, after all, make sport of the saving power of snakes and trees and fiery suns, nor pene trate the human condition to its psychological depths, and then expect to hear that the fables you have concocted are a stumbling block to rational man. It is a kind of service, one might have supposed, to point out that all rivalry with the Almighty is folly, that topless towers built at “the gate of the gods” are ultimately a stake in confusion. To examine human weakness and sinfulness in depth, to look death in the face, constitute a great theological enterprise. One might have thought so, at least. Because it was such an enterprise, and because the psalmists and Isaia and Ezechiel and the Wisdom writers were equally engaged in it, Pere Danielou examines it on the only terms that suit it, namely
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