Exegesis

EXEGESIS PAPER

The topic of creation has been one of much discussion since the beginning of time and may be the most debated topic in all of religion. Every religion has its own beliefs on how life on this earth came to be. This explanation of how humans originated on this earth is always a fundamental part of religion. In some cases, one of the only things that separate one religion from another are its principal beliefs regarding human creation. Even within an individual religion there can be more than one explanation for creation. The Hebrew Bible has two different accounts of creation, which vary a great deal. Although popular accounts of creation have been established by major religions, individuals have produced their own takes on creation. Often, individual’s thoughts of creation take key elements from already established ideas. This is the case with James Weldon Johnson’s poem, The Creation. An analysis of this poem to both accounts of creation in the Hebrew Bible will show similarities between accounts of creation as well as major differences.

The first creation story in the bible, Genesis 1-2:4a, is the account of creation in which God creates the earth and all of its inhabitants in six days and rests on the seventh. A comparison of The Creation to this first account of creation reveals that Johnson was more heavily influenced by this account of creation when writing his poem. An example of this influence is in the structure in which God, in this poem, creates the earth and all of its inhabitants. Although the structure is the same in these two accounts, the order in which

each step of creation occurs is not the same. In both the poem and the first creation story, God first creates light to brighten the, then current, darkness that covered everything. This action is gone about in two different ways. Johnson writes of God, “God smiled, And the light broke” (Johnson 1:2). The first creation story displays this action as God saying “Let there be...