Genesis was composed in the Mosaic tradition for a generation of Israelites who had just walked out of Egypt. They had spent four hundred years among gods who were rivers, sun-disks, fertility, and pharaoh. The first sentence of the Torah is a polemic. The God of Israel is not in the heavens or the earth; he made them. Everything else in Israel's worldview hangs from that one verb.

From the writers we read together

John Polkinghorne

physicist and Anglican priest

Polkinghorne spent his career as a Cambridge mathematical physicist before he was ordained. He used to say that the deep intelligibility of the universe — the fact that mathematics, written by minds, fits the world — is the best evidence we have that mind precedes matter. Genesis 1:1 says the same thing in eight Hebrew words.

The verse does not argue. It announces. The proper response to it is not first analysis; it is awe. Before this God spoke, there was no word and no listener. Before he created, there was no place for creation to be. Whatever your day asks of you, it asks under that fact.