0077 After noting the character of the genealogies, Gordon Wenham examines Gen 1-11, starting with the Creation Story, Gen 1:1-2:3.

Wenham sees the Creation Story as an overture to the symphony of Gen 1-11, as well as the entire Pentateuch.

On the one hand, the Creation Story departs from other written origin stories of the ancient Near East.

On the other hand, the Creation Story coheres to the literary styles of these extra-Biblical narratives.

0078 To me, the Creation Story is the only written origin story of the ancient Near East that places humans in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  To the ancients, the Creation Story describes God building a tent (or temple) of creation. To moderns, the Creation Story tells a progressive tale, reminiscent of evolution.  Some associate a day to an evolutionary era.  To postmoderns, the articulated structure of the Creation Story aesthetically matches the bony structure of the evolution of our world, especially when the correspondence is viewed through the three types of natural sign: icon, index and symbol.

0079 The hypothesis of the first singularity takes the implications one step further.  Humans, created in the image of God,appear in this dramatic unfolding of a narrative that artistically corresponds, in the way of signs, to the evolutionary record.  These humans correspond to Adam, before the Fall, living in paradise. The tree of life resides in Eden.

On top of that, if, as Thomists postulate, original justice defines the state of Adam before the Fall, then original justiceshould also apply as a noumenal description of the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  This is discussed in Comments on Daniel Houck’s Book (2020) “Aquinas, Original Sin and the Challenge of Evolution”, available at smashwords.