On Genesis One... Part 2

To understand Genesis 1 you have to understand that this is a polemic against all the stories in the ancient world, about how the world came to be the way it is, which are all stories about multiplicities of gods, huge cast lists of deities, all of whom are fighting, squabbling, plotting each other’s downfall or hacking each other to pieces, and they come in endless shapes or forms. And of course Judaism gets rid of the entire cast list. All of a sudden you get this extraordinary radical idea, that there is just one God, and he has no company up there. The only company he has is this creature that he has created in love in his own image. Which is why Genesis 1 is so serene. God says ‘Let there be’ and there is.

Jonathan Sacks
Chief Rabbi, London