1Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. 2And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. 3So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.
I've heard people complain about the first three verses of Genesis 2 because they imply that God gets tired. The problem is that an omnipotent God wouldn't be tired. This interpretation makes a lot of sense -- even people who aren't critical bible readers seem to think that the reason God rested was because he was tired (they don't seem to have a problem with imagining a tired God). But there is another sense to the word 'rested', that is 'a pause from doing something', not necessarily taking a nap. Thus, I will assume that God rested not because he was tired but because he just wanted to take some time off to check things out. If he really wanted to he could have kept going, of course.
5-7 have always confused me because they directly contradict Genesis 1. In G1 we get plants created (then animals) then man. Here, we get man coming before plants of the field were yet in the earth. I know there's lots of ways to interpret this, such as "God had created a bunch of plants but no corn or soybeans or other 'field plants' as in 'tilled field plants'." I guess that's ok, but why be so obtuse about it?4 These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.
Another Account of the Creation
In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, 5when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; 6but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground— 7then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.
8And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
I very strongly DISLIKE the name of that tree. It typically gets truncated as "the tree of knowledge" and then labeled as the tree that caused the fall of man. The illogical but unfortunately common interpretation is that knowledge (or the persuit of knowledge) is tangentially responsible for the fall of man. This interpretation may not be much of an issue in the 21st century, but I'm convinced it was at least partially responsible for the 'dark' ages. More on that later.
10 A river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides and becomes four branches. 11The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; 12and the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. 13The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Cush. 14The name of the third river is Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.
I wonder how many people in the United States realize that the Iraqi people live near the location of the garden of Eden.
15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. 16And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; 17but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.’
If you eat of the tree you shall die. This can mean a couple of things:
A) if you eat from the tree you will immediately fall dead.
B) if you eat from the tree you will no longer be immortal and will become able to die
C) if you eat from the tree you will be metaphorically dead (or you'll wish you were dead)
If God meant A then, given what we know happens later in the story, he was lying or wrong, neither of which is a quality we like to ascribe to God. So he meant either B or C. I'm going to assume C, however, if he really told Adam this how was Adam to know what God literally meant?
18 Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.’ 19So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.
Here we have another continuity problem. God makes the birds after he already made man here but in Genesis 1 it was reversed.
20The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. 21So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
While it may be true that most people don't take the old testament as literal truth, here we have evidence that events from the old testament are used as a tool to corroborate falsities in our everyday lives. I personally know people (more than 2) who believe/believed that men have one fewer rib than women do. When asked why they believe this they say that it was something they learned in church was the result of Eve's creation. Even after being shown evidence that men and women really do have the same number of ribs they refuse to believe it. It took me much cajoling to get them to finally accept that men MIGHT ACTUALLY have the same number of ribs as women. They refused to let go of this fundamental belief that man's missing rib is evidence of the creation account. To set the record straight: Men and women have the same number of ribs. Do look it up.
23Then the man said,
‘This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
this one shall be called Woman,
for out of Man his one was taken.’
24Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. 25And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.
Here we have one of my favorite lines in Genesis. I take it to mean that, in our most natural state, we are naked and unashamed. Genesis 2:25 is about as clear as the bible can get regarding how we might get closer to paradise: Get naked! I, myself, am a big fan of Genesis 2:25 :)
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4 comments:
Glad to see you switched over if you didn't find it online here it is: http://www.devotions.net/bible/00bible.htm
Good observations - I like how you are doing this.
I can offer background if you want - but I know that I can just vomit info at this level that no one really wants to know - so if you don't want to know for instance that three streams of thought/writers are apparent in Genesis (known as J, E, P). Scholars believe that the two creation stories in Genesis are from the two writers - they contradict each other, hence making it almost impossible to follow the Bible literally or at least believe it literally.
please do offer background. I need all the help I can get.
I remember hearing about the three authors, but in my student bible they don't offer this as evidence for taking the creation story less literally.
But, let me ask this: If it is standard knowledge that the creation story should not be taken too literally then why are there so many preachers preaching for literal interpretation. From what I can tell, it isn't just evangelical baptists. Some of my Roman Catholic family members even question the simple ideas of evolution on the grounds that they don't reverberate well with Genesis.
On a side note, where did Jim go? Why is he at an airport? I have a hard time seeing him as a traveler!
I think many preachers favor literal interpretations in their teaching because they think it is easier for their uneducated audience to understand. If you look at any list of respected theologians (like the one here http://discurs.us/2006/07/creationism-in-the-usa-2/ -- it's one I assembled, but I think it's accurate) they overwhelmingly favor non-literalist readings of the creation stories, but from the pulpit you get far more literalism. I know of a few individuals where simply fear of damaging the authority of scripture is a major influence. "If we say that passage has to be interpreted figuratively, where does it stop?"
I would actually put myself in the category of "slippery slope figurativism". Allowing for multiple interpretations is really damaging to the doctrine of most organized christian religions from what I can tell.
If, for example, we were to assume that God inspired the bible and, in his infinite wisdom, made his passages interpretable by each reader in exactly the way that it would do each of them them most good (God wrote one book that everyone reads differently and to their benefit) then it doesn't matter whether we assume it is literal or not.
However, if it's possible to have an incorrect interpretation and we have no outside evidence which helps us decide which is the appropriate interpretation, then isn't the bible just a rorchach test?
My conclusion has always been that it is. That, many of the passages are obscure enough and lack enough detail that we can all easily come up with an interpretation that reflects our own, individual life gained wisdom (or idiocy). And while we can find several large nuggets of clearly expressed (if not simplistic) wisdom within its pages there's also a lot of century old ignorance.
I believe that the authors of the bible were always meant to be interpreted literally, but the authors didn't concern themselves with a day, far into the future, where we would have pretty good explanations for the formation of the stars and planets and creatures within.
Now we have this ancient book that can't easily be updated for every new century. And people who know nothing about history or language or human psychology listen to the literal interpretation coming from the pulpit and see no problem furthering the claims that women are subservient to men and slavery is a fact of holy wars (we'll soon get to the chapter where God tells humans that making POWs into slaves is totally ok as long as the POWs are not believers).
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