Dr Susan Gillingham’s research while affiliated with University of Worcester and other places

This paper has been the result of teaching and comparing two very different Old Testament texts, both of which are concerned with the relationship between God and the created order. One is Genesis 1, with its priestly concerns for harmony within the created order; the other is the book of Amos, where one encounters a profoundly pessimistic view of the coming disorder throughout the natural world. In making associations between these two texts, one cannot help but ask why the earlier reflections in Amos offer such aradical and developed understandingof God's relationship with creation — quite distinct from the view of God evidenced in the first chapter of Genesis.