The Creation of Language and Language without Time: Metaphysics and Metapragmatics in Genesis 1:3

Jonathan Yovel, Yale Law School

Abstract

Language expresses action by the use of inflections, i.e. conjugated verbs. Because action requires time in order to occur, verbs maintain and typically express complex relations to temporal categories. This linguistic structure conforms to the metaphysical notion that existence in general, and thus action, is in time and requires time. Denying that presupposition, this essay makes two related claims concerning the language of Genesis 1. The first is that the language describing Biblical creation must convey atemporality, because Fiat lux occurred when time was not yet created (hence such language as the KJV’s “God said” is mistaken, conveying action in time and denying the radical nature of the Biblical creation narrative). This was captured by Hebrew’s usage of the aorist (or perfective) grammatical aspect, which aims to render an atemporal description of “pure action” and has no natural equivalent in Germanic languages such as English.

The second claim gives a linguistic answer to the riddle, why was language the instrument of creation in Genesis 1, since omnipotence should not require linguistic performance (articulation) in order to create the objects that language would be “about.” That is required, however, by the nature of language itself: metalinguistic performance is the only possible way to create language and “fiat lux” is therefore the true instance of the creation of language.

While offering primarily a linguistic argument, this essay also adds to the discussion about the relations between descriptive and performative language and metaphysical commitments in this unique portion of the Biblical text.