In the spring of 2022, I interviewed the venerable professor of Hebrew exegesis, Jacques Doukhan, for the second time. Ten years before, in our first interview, we discussed his life: his beginnings in a Jewish family in Constantine, Algeria, his studies in France, Switzerland and the United States, his work as a teacher and author. This time we talked about the study that has fascinated him all his life: the first book of the Bible, Genesis, and especially its first chapters on creation.
After a lifetime of in-depth study of Genesis, Professor Jacques Doukhan continues to find new ideas and beauty; reading slowly, with “new eyes”, from a spiritual perspective, can also transform our reading experience.
Welcome back, Professor Doukhan! Ten years ago you came to Romania and gave me your first interview.
I remember. That was a long time ago.
Indeed, but you have remained the same.
Let’s hope so. Actually, I’m changing little by little.
Can you explain your lifelong connection with the book of Genesis?
Ever since I was a child, the stories of Genesis have impressed and inspired me. In fact, the first book I ever read in Hebrew was Genesis. That was my first contact with the Hebrew Bible when I was about five years old. So my passion is old.
And then when I started my first PhD, in Hebrew, I focused on Hebrew language and literature. I wrote a thesis on the philosophy of language, how language relates to the spirit of the text, to culture. The story of Creation was one of the key texts that I studied from a linguistic point of view.
And then, when I wrote my other dissertation, I focused on Genesis 1 and 2. You know, there’s a lot of talk about there being two versions of Creation. I challenged the documentary hypothesis, I showed that it’s not two sources, it’s one source, one author who wrote about Creation from two different perspectives. So they are complementary versions, with close links between them. This helps us to understand some of the key ideas in Genesis.
Since then, since the 1970s, I’ve been very interested in the book of Genesis, which I taught at the Institute of Collonges, France, and then at the Graduate School of Theology at Andrews University, USA. That was the key text that I taught.
I grew up with it. I used to say to my students: “Every time I read Genesis, I discover something new.” Even today I still discover something new. In spite of my age, I feel like a child because I still find new things. It is always interesting to read the texts, especially in Hebrew, because the author of Genesis was very meticulous about the language he used.
So for me, the book is still “alive” and not a book of the past, but of the present. And I think it is also a book of the future, because it opens many horizons towards it: it is not only an account of events of long ago, but it also has prophetic elements.
Can you give us some examples?
When I studied the structure of Genesis, I found that it begins with Creation and ends with a reference to re-creation, to resurrection. There is an echo between the first and the last word of Genesis. I’m referring to Hebrew words that are related, indicating that the same author wrote the whole book. It is also interesting that the last image, the last idea, is represented by a coffin and the bones of Joseph. It’s an image that is repeated at the end of the Pentateuch, in Deuteronomy, where we know there was a resurrection, although it’s a coffin, a burial. There are some connections there, and in the Bible we have to look at the connection between the bones and the hope that we will be resurrected at the end of time.
Like the famous vision of the valley of the bones in Ezekiel 37.
Exactly. What we see is a book that begins with creation and ends with re-creation, with the expectation of the Promised Land. We have a coffin, bones, and the hope of Canaan in this book, written of course by Moses, who was waiting for the Promised Land.
It is also, as you might expect, a book that inspired many other books in the Bible. Its importance is also due to the fact that it is the first book of the Bible, and for that reason it is natural that all the prophets, all the later ones who professed God in their lives, referred to this book. I think it has been said, and it is true, that we could not understand the Bible if we did not know Genesis. And Genesis has also inspired many writers, musicians, and visual artists over the centuries, right up to the present day.
Professor Doukhan, Genesis has been the subject of your lifelong research and spiritual reading. A few years ago you wrote a very impressive work on Genesis, the first volume of the new International Adventist Bible Commentary. It’s a huge work in scope and importance.
Yes. It took several years, I can’t remember exactly how many. We started about seven years ago, in 2015 I think. I am now working on a revised edition, because this commentary is not a book of the past, but a “living” one.
You have also recently written a small study guide to the book of Genesis for lay people. Of course, Genesis is a very large book, so you couldn’t cover everything in just 13 short lessons. What were your criteria for choosing what to include and what to leave out?
First, I considered the direction of the text. I didn’t write from a thematic perspective, but of course I discovered new things, new windows. These are really existential lessons. In that sense I would say that the study guide is a reading of Genesis with a greater connection to life; it brings Genesis to life. Genesis is not just a book that informs, it moves us and affects our lives.
You have included many Hebrew words. Why did you do this for people who don’t really speak or understand Hebrew?
In my first doctoral thesis I pointed out a characteristic of the biblical writer, namely his acute awareness of the connection between message and form. I’m not just talking about language, but also structure, poetic beauty, and wordplay. Not all of these things come through in a translation. Although we have the essence of the biblical message which comes through in translation, many more subtle messages cannot be conveyed in translation.
What do we understand from the different terms used for God in Genesis 1 and 2?
The different words used give us a very deep understanding of God. As we know, in the first creation account the word for God is Elohim and in the second it is Elohim Yahweh. Many scholars have argued that these two names for God indicate two different sources that have been incorporated into the current text.
But this is not the case. This is the author presenting two aspects of God, two perspectives on God. First there is Elohim, the great, transcendent, distant God, and then we have a God who is close, personal, who speaks to you, who is in touch with you. This helps us to understand that the two perspectives are complementary, that it’s the same God, which helps us to understand what our worship should be like. He is very far away, but also very close. It also shows us how, from the very beginning, the distant and great God became the personal God. We discover the idea of the Incarnation, the God who comes down to earth, the God Yahweh, who is very personal, who loves us, who speaks to us, who is close to us, but who is also Elohim.
There are so many truths that come through language, through poetry. There are many poetic elements in Genesis, and the author uses poetry because when it comes to deep matters, sometimes a poem better communicates things that are beyond words.
A number of Egyptian terms and even Egyptian wordplay appear in Genesis, showing that the author was well versed in the language. There is a wordplay using the name of the Egyptian god Ra and the Hebrew word ra, which means “evil”. The author makes this funny connection. There is humour in Genesis, and wordplay is one of the means of humour.
You were also concerned with the structure of Genesis. What were some of the criteria that helped you to understand the structure of the book?
The Creation account is presented by the author as a “genealogy” (toledot). Genealogy is a key element in the structure of Genesis, which is based on genealogies. There are the genealogies of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Joseph and so on. The stories of Abraham, Isaac and the patriarchs—which we consider historical because they describe their lives in their particular historical and geographical setting, and whose historical character is accepted by most scholars—are related to the story of Creation. The author wanted us to be aware that the Creation narrative has the same historical quality as all the others, and if you dispute the historical character of the Creation event, then you should also dispute the historical character of all the other narratives. From this point of view, it shows the unity of Genesis—that the stories have the same structure and belong to the same literary genre.
Nowadays the Creation story is a very controversial subject. As you said, as a biblical scholar, you believe that the Creation account is history, not myth. What other reasons do you have for believing this?
It is clear that whoever wrote about Creation wanted the reader to understand that his account was a historical event. Not only did he believe this, but the way he wrote about Creation suggests that he also wanted the reader to think that this account was about a historical event. There are many strong arguments which clearly suggest that the author intended for us, the readers, to see this account as a historical event.
We have many other references to Creation in the Bible, and their purpose is not to report a historical event, as the author of the first two chapters of Genesis intended, but to present ethical, spiritual, religious, and theological teachings. It is widely known that there are other accounts of Creation in ancient literature, and they never claim to describe the historical Creation, but merely refer to it in order to extract some lessons. This is the only text in ancient literature that presents itself as an account of the Creation event.
As I said, it is important that the author has identified Creation as “genealogy”, but it is also about style, the style of genealogy. This is pure history. Because, from a Hebrew point of view, the historical character is given by the presence of genealogy. If it’s not genealogy, it’s not history. That is why the Gospel of Matthew, which speaks of Jesus, begins with genealogy, which shows the historical character of the accounts of Him.
There are some allusions to myths, but these are polemical. From the very beginning, when we read the first verse, we see allusions to the other accounts of the beginning, showing that this one is different.
Then, when the author talks about the sun and the moon, there are Hebrew terms for them, but the author does not use them. He uses them elsewhere in Genesis, but when it comes to Creation he writes “the great light” and “the lesser light”. The Hebrew word for “sun”, shemesh, and the Hebrew word for “moon”, yareakh, refer to mythology, to the gods, but the author doesn’t want to use them, to make sure there’s no confusion, so he writes “the great light” and “the lesser light”.
The same goes for fish. In the ancient Near East it was believed that there was a great fish that played a role in the beginning of the earth’s existence. When it comes to the creation of fish, he uses the word bara, “to create”, “to make”, a word that was also used for the creation of heaven, earth, and man. He doesn’t use bara for the creation of land animals, and many other things, but for the creation of fish. Then the word used refers to small fish, as opposed to the primordial fish of mythology. People who read the passage will notice that this is intentional. As an exegete, you’re interested in the author’s intention, what he means. And what he’s trying to say is: this writing is historical.
Some theologians would say, let’s leave aside the debate about the historicity of the early chapters of Genesis; let’s concentrate on the message!
One thing is clear: in the Jewish understanding, if there is no history, there is no message. This is the difference between Jewish and Greek thought, because in Greek thought you start with the message, with the philosophy, and then you look for a myth to illustrate the truth that those people believed. It begins with thought, as Descartes, the French philosopher, said: “I think, therefore I am”. Existence comes after thinking. From the Hebrew perspective, if you don’t exist, you don’t think. If you don’t exist, there is no history and no theology.
Unfortunately, this is the starting point of a great misunderstanding in the critical approach to the Bible, which has influenced many readers, because they looked at it from a Greek perspective—they thought it was a philosophy conceived in the time of exile, when people thought about redemption, salvation, and for that they invented a Creator to illustrate this concept. And many Christians believe that what is important in the Creation story is the message, that the role of the book is to teach you how to be a spiritual person, and that the event is not important. But from a biblical perspective, if the event is not real, then the message is meaningless.
The same applies to the resurrection. Some people have doubts about the resurrection of Jesus, but they still consider themselves Christians. You can’t be a Christian if you doubt the historical event of the resurrection, because if you don’t believe in Christ’s resurrection, you can’t believe in your own resurrection. Nor in your re-creation, when you must become a new being, a spiritual person. So spiritual truth is rooted in history; if you remove the root, there is no plant, no life, no flower, no meaning.
Moving on, very soon after Creation we have the story of the Fall, but also the first promise of salvation. When we read Genesis 3:15, it’s easy for us to understand it because we know the rest of the story, we have the Gospels, the life of Jesus, and the applications of the New Testament. But could the first parents, Adam and Eve, understand this language?
I think they could. There are a few pointers in the text. First, we need to understand that these stories about the serpent, the forbidden fruit, and the first people were well known outside the biblical sphere. They are attested in the ancient Near East and other cultures. This shows that it is not something invented by those brought up in biblical culture.
Genesis 4 begins with a verse that speaks of the birth of Cain, the firstborn. It relates the words of Eve, where it says: “…she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, ‘With the help of the Lord I have brought forth a man.'” Unfortunately, this is one of those texts where the translation does not match the original. In fact, what Eve says in this passage is: “I have brought forth a man, the Lord!” and she thinks for a moment that this important prophecy has just been fulfilled, that the divine Saviour who would save her has already arrived.
So I think they understood very well. Certainly that understanding was passed on from Adam to Moses in time, and we have evidence that those things were understood by Moses and others before him who received the message through those who passed it on to them.
It seems so natural to you, a Hebrew speaker, to delve into meanings and nuances, but most people who read Genesis, like me, don’t know Hebrew. It’s quite daunting, there are so many linguistic, cultural, and educational barriers. What hope is there for the average reader of Genesis?
If you take the Bible seriously, in any translation, which means reading it, there is hope. I’m not talking about the Hebrew text, just taking the text seriously in the translation you have, that would be enough. Many Hebrew specialists read the text but do not take it seriously. They study certain details, but they don’t understand and believe the text; they don’t understand it from a spiritual point of view.
The important thing is to read the text from a spiritual perspective and carefully, to take it seriously, just like you would read a document, a love letter or a medical prescription. It’s life and death, so you read it very seriously because you want to make sure you don’t get it wrong. I think when you do that, even in your own language, if you’re serious, you go one step further and ask yourself: “What does the Bible say in this language?”
So to answer your question, the most important tool for reading the Bible is not the Hebrew language, nor all the commentaries, but taking the time to read the text. Time is a tool that is available to everyone. There is no elite, there are no differences, we all have the same time. Unfortunately, nowadays we want to do everything very quickly. But you have to take time seriously because it comes from God. If you don’t have a relationship with Him, you don’t understand what you’re reading. That’s the central idea. Reading the Bible should be a slow, leisurely process, and in that experience don’t forget your connection with the One who inspired it.
Reading slowly and seeking to connect with God will lead to an ever-growing understanding of the text, with meanings and spiritual values you have not seen before. The Bible is full of new insights. If we read the Bible as old religious people and don’t discover new things, we are not reading the Bible, we are reading ourselves. The person who is familiar with the Bible and reads Genesis thinking he knows the text becomes more and more alienated from the Bible because he thinks he knows. This is a great trap for those who think they know, because they lose the freshness, the newness of the text, and there are so many truths and messages that make the Bible always new.
Unfortunately, many people turn the Bible into a museum, not noticing its freshness, so it loses its purpose to inspire. I think it’s important that when they read it, they try to do so as if for the first time, with “new eyes”, and they will discover beauties and meanings that will change their lives.
Jacques Doukhan is a distinguished professor of Hebrew exegesis, and in this interview he presents his lifelong study of the Creation account in the Book of Genesis.
Note: This is a television interview by Adrian Bocaneanu, broadcast on the Romanian HopeTV channel. The transcript of the interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.