Lehi and the Creation of Opposites

In a recent post I discussed the need to be careful about imposing our own culture and questions upon the scriptures. Specifically, I was discussing the Creation as depicted in Genesis 1 and how it may not have been formulated with our sense of science and history in mind.

While reading Conrad Hyers's The Meaning of Creation I came across the following passage (p. 89; an almost identical paragraph is here):

Since cosmologies are concerned with the establishment and maintenance of order in the cosmos, central to the achievement of order is the act of separating things from one another. Without acts of separation, one would have chaos. Thus ancient cosmologies commonly begin with a depiction of a chaotic state, where there are no clear lines of demarcation, and then proceed to indicate ways in which the present world-order (cosmos) with its lines of demarcation, has been organized. In other cultures this was achieved by divine births, wars, etc. Here cosmos is accomplished by separating things out from one another, and by creating other things (e.g., light or firmament) that aid in the separation. Everything is thus assigned its proper region and allowed to have its own identity, place and function in the overall scheme of created things. The key concept, therefore, which is applied to the inanimate as well as the animate, is the cosmological concept of separation to achieve order.

I have often thought that this universe and life on Earth can be described in terms of separation, gradients, and compartmentalization (and for you physics folks, broken symmetries?). And until I read the above passage, I've always thought of these separations in the context of Lehi's opposites in 2 Nephi 2.

11 For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my first-born in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility....

15 And to bring about his eternal purposes in the end of man, after he had created our first parents, and the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and in fine, all things which are created, it must needs be that there was an opposition; even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life; the one being sweet and the other bitter.

It is clear from the context that Lehi had been reading about the creation and subsequent events in the Garden of Eden. Scholars believe that Genesis 1 and 2 contain separate creation accounts that were merged together, probably after the Babylonian exile--and therefore after Lehi. But let's put that aside for now.

Although Lehi's discussion of opposites is focused on the fruit of the two trees, it is interesting to me that in our text (if, perhaps, not Lehi's) the opposites of Eden are preceded by the creation of opposites through separation.

I guess my point is that the suggestion that the creation narratives can be understood in ways other than literal science/history is not mere ivory tower sophistry, nor is it meaningful only in an ancient context. In addition to other symbolic meanings of Genesis 1, Lehi provides us one more: Genesis 1 represents the creation of a universe of opposites and both foreshadows and complements the opposites of Eden.

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