The story of creation in the first chapters of the Book of Genesis would be misunderstood if it read simply as a report about a moment in the remote past when the world was created.
If to create means to bring into being something that had not existed before, “creation” in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis refers not to the end of a process, but to the unending creative process.
As we learn every day, the universe is not a permanent structure, but a constant flux of bringing into being what wasn’t there. The world is constantly been created. In the words of the first of the benedictions of the Morning Services, the “Yotzer” prayer:
“’in goodness, daily renews the work of creation”
(an idea taken from the Talmud, based on the prophet Isaiah)
What the “Creation Story” in the book of Genesis is telling is that creativity is part and parcel of what makes the universe to be what it is. Creativity is one of the universe’s essential characteristics.
The first two chapters of Bereshit, the Book of Genesis, are not so much an answer to the question: “How did the world come to be?” as to the question, ?”What is the world?”
Bereshit’s answer:
The world is “creativity.”
At the risk of being prosaic, it is good to remember that unless there is an uninterrupted flow of the “new,” no world is possible. Without constant creativity, without bringing constantly the new, no life is possible.
Clearly, however, creativity must be directed toward bringing good into the world, not evil. Thus, the first chapter of the TaNaKh, the Hebrew Scriptures, correlates “creativity” with “good.” Not all that is created, that is brought upon, is good. The fallacy, however, is to think that because some creations are bad, the new is bad.
The first two chapters of Bereshit say that if there is going to be a world there must be creativity. The rest of the 305,500 words that comprise the Hebrew text of the 24 books of the TaNaKh, Judaism’s foundation, are mostly dedicated on how to direct creativity so that it is “good.”