ABSTRACT
The story of the making of "the heavens and the earth", with its canonical position at the opening of the scriptures, has of course been of enormous influence and underpins the Christian doctrine of creation. Moreover, the view of human dominion in this period was set firmly within a theocentric perspective: humanity's vertical position of dominance over nature was sharply qualified by a sense of its horizontal relationship with all creatures who relate to the Creator. For obvious reasons, these creation stories are of great relevance to any ecological engagement with the Bible: they describe God's making of the earth, and give some sense of the relationships and relative value among the various creatures. Within these stories undoubtedly the most influential and crucial text is the description of the creation of humanity in the priestly account of Genesis 1. The opening chapters of Genesis, then, offer an ambivalent legacy to an environmental reading of the Bible.
