The Ethos of the Cosmos: The Genesis of Moral Imagination in the Bible

In this carefully written book William Brown offers several biblical models for ecology of community in order to contribute to contemporary studies on biblical creation and ethics. The distinction of Brown's study lies in its focus on the moral ethos of creation, rather than on the mythological roots of biblical creation traditions or their relation to salvation history or to modern science. In the context of creation, Brown employs the word "ethos" as "a way of perceiving the world and acting in it in an appropriate way" (10), or "a distinctly moral Weltanschauung" (3). Acknowledging the role of imagination in constructing the moral world, Brown points out that as we study ancient cosmologies we find that moral imagination served as "a generative nexus between mythos and ethos" (23). Ancient cosmologists, then, sought to convey not only an account of origins but also of the moral character of human culture. From this perspective, the world is at its core a community, and how the world is constituted as a moral order is entailed in the depiction of the world as a physical order. Brown sets out to explore the influence of the physical environment upon ancient Israel's cultural identity-especially on its moral character-as indicated by certain "codified traditions," namely the Priestly narrative, the Yahwist's narrative, the poetry of Second Isaiah, of Proverbs, and of the book of Job. Gen 1-2:4a presents God as a collaborative agent who calls forth, differentiates, and delineates various domains (heavens, seas, dry land), and who evokes from the elements such that the domains may be filled; for P the final product of creation is a "form-filledness," the supreme good. The distinction of the various domains is intended to preserve and support creation's abundance of life in all its plurality. [Full Review]