Date

4-29-2026

Department

Rawlings School of Divinity

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy in Bible Exposition (PhD)

Chair

Dawn Lewis Sutherland

Keywords

Genesis 1:1, hermeneutics, Bible Exposition, Divine Interaction, Masoretic Text, intertextuality, canonical theology, Artificial Intelligence, ethics, creation theology, philology, Genesis 1, Old Testament, biblical theology, Exegesis, Biblical Artificial Intelligence Ethics, Biblical hermeneutics, Biblical Grammar, canonical coherence, biblical philosophy, Masoretic Accentuation, Tiberias

Disciplines

Ethics in Religion | Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion

Abstract

Genesis 1:1 has generated sustained discussion of cosmology, syntax, and theology, yet it is rarely treated as the canon’s incipit — an independent, programmatic statement whose grammar of divine agency can be traced across Scripture and tested in contemporary ethical reflection. This dissertation argues that Genesis 1:1, read as an independent clause in the Masoretic Text and as Scripture’s opening statement, functions as the archetypal and programmatic instance of Divine Interaction (DI), a textual act of divine agency whose basic grammar is divine subject → performative Word → ordered totality. In compressed form, the verse establishes divine initiative and ordered totality, while Genesis 1:3ff narratively specifies the performative-Word dimension of that same agency. The claim, therefore, is not that every later instance of DI reproduces Genesis 1:1 in identical grammatical form, but that Genesis 1:1 supplies the canon’s initiating grammar, which later texts closely track and reenact in creation, commission, covenant, and redemption. The argument proceeds in four stages. First, the study offers historical-grammatical exegesis and textual comparison of Genesis 1:1 in the Masoretic Text, in conversation with the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Septuagint, and other witnesses, treating Masoretic accentuation and discourse cues as corroborative evidence rather than self-sufficient proof. Second, it traces DI across representative texts and genres by means of explicit intertextual criteria, including lexical markedness, structural correspondence, thematic coherence, density, and negative evidence. Third, it formulates the Divine Interaction Hermeneutical Criterion (DIHC) as a corrigible and testable rule for identifying and interpreting DI across Scripture. Fourth, it applies the DI paradigm as a bounded theological-ethical test case to human creativity and Artificial Intelligence. The dissertation concludes that Genesis 1:1 functions as the canon’s initiating grammar of divine agency, that this grammar clarifies the moral accountability of creaturely making within the Creator’s ordered reality, and for Christian canonical reading, this grammar culminates in Jesus Christ.

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Available for download on Saturday, April 28, 2029

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