Hi Syd,

Last week we discussed Genesis 1, chapter 2 and different creation stories. I ended with what I hoped was an enticement to keep going, that chapter 3 would introduce conflict, the earmark of all good stories. In the Bible that conflict continues all the way to the end. Jesus’ death on the cross assures the winner, but the battlefield has desperate enemy holdouts that need mopping up until Revelation, chapter 21. That's when all conflict is finished. There is a new heaven and earth; there is no more death, suffering and pain. The narrative that began in the garden has come full circle and all is new again.
The cause of the conflict, the villain, is introduced in Genesis, chapter 3, verse 1. The text says, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made...” There are two things important to understand right from the start. First, the serpent is a created being. He was made by God. Therefore the serpent cannot be on the same level as God. God is God. And no one is like Him!

Second, the Hebrew word for serpent is nachash. It means literally “the shiny one.” I know you have a fear of snakes, but the serpent that appeared to Eve didn’t look like the most beautiful and glistening reptile that ever was. If he did, Eve probably would have run away. Step into the scene. She was the "crown jewel" of God’s creation, so the serpent must have appeared superior to her in order for her to be in awe of him. The serpent was the most handsome, considerate, and charming thing she had ever seen!

As we’ll see later in Revelation 20:2, the serpent is Satin, or the Devil, the one St. John identifies as coming down from Heaven after the final apocalyptic battle. Eve doesn't have that revelation back in Genesis. Even so, you are probably wondering how Satin gets to the garden in the first place? Why would God allow it?

“Patience grasshopper,” as Caine’s master used to tell him in the 1970’s TV series Kung Fu. We’ll meet Satin again and again as we go through the Bible. He’s the nemesis of Christ and casts a shadow over all Scripture. He’ll sometimes step on stage and off again, but he’s always there until the end when he is defeated.

Once the Angel of Light, Satan can take whatever form he chooses. He often uses this trick to deceive humanity. He’s not the guy we see on Halloween dressed in a red suit with a pitchfork. He never appears as a slithering reptile, rather as something exceptionally beautiful and charming.

Verses 1b to 5 form the three-pronged anatomy of temptation. The tactics Satin used in the garden are the same ones he uses today against us! First, the Serpent questions God's Word: "Did God actually say...?" He does this to create doubt about what was really said.

Second, he is subtle. Look at verse 1a: “The Lord God” in Hebrew is Yehovah 'elohiym. Yehovah (also written as Jehovah) is the proper name for the one true God. God with a capital “G.” Now note how the Serpent questions Eve in verse 1b: “Did God actually say...?” Satan drops the Yehovah and uses just the word 'elohiym. Elohiym is god with a small “g,” a distinction that is not made in the English translations, but properly would be translated as “god-like.” The Serpent subtly downgrades God’s status. Eve, perhaps unconsciously, picks up on this and drops Yehovah too.

Third, the Serpent contradicts God's Word when he says, "You will not surely die." Then he gives his own word, here as everywhere else, an outright lie. He tells them that they will be like God, but neither he nor they can be like God.

We don’t know what the fruit was, but we’re pretty certain it wasn’t an apple as often depicted in paintings and folklore. Whatever it was, Eve takes some of it and eats. Then, according to folklore, she runs to find her husband Adam and tempts him, right? Not! In the Bible Adam has been there the whole time. Adam could have stopped her, but he didn’t. He eats the fruit of his own free will!

And while their bodies don’t die right away, something inside of them shrivels up at that moment. The peace and joy they once experienced is immediately gone. In verse 7 Adam and Eve suddenly know that they are naked. Breaking from God means He is no longer their covering. They are now in a state of rebellion or sin. Because they are the parents of humanity, their fall from grace affects us all. Sin is our inheritance.

As babies, our parentage and its defects are not our fault. But there does come a time for each of us when we’re pretty sure what’s the right thing to do. Then we go ahead and don't do it. If we have a conscious that hasn’t been hardened, we feel exposed and vulnerable.

Adam and Eve try to cover their sense of exposure and shame, to find a substitute for God’s protective love. But they do a lousy job of it! They put leaves over their private parts when it is what is inside of them that needs to be cleaned and covered. Before this chapter is over, God shows them that by the shedding of innocent blood, He is able to cover their naked rebellion. This is a foreshadowing of what Christ does for humanity on the cross.

In verse 14 God tells the Serpent, “Cursed are you and you’ll slither on your belly from now on.” It is interesting to note that Satan wasn’t slithering prior to verse 14.

We also see two bloodlines developing here. The seed of the women is a Messianic title for the one to come who will right the wrong. This is Jesus Christ, about whom we’ll study later. The seed of the serpent is the leader yet to surface in world history. He is called the antichrist, and we'll also study more about him.

In verses 3:14 and 15, the fall of humanity introduces the law of entropy into the world. All that was perfect in the created universe begins to disintegrate, lose energy, and become chaotic. To reflect back on our creation discussion from last week, everything we know about the universe is post "Fall." We really can’t comprehend what the world was like before this time period.

Sydney, I want you to now underline verse 15 in your hardcopy Bible. Yes, I know Mrs. Kanipplemeyer wouldn’t approve, but that doesn’t mean she’s right. Her job is to protect books. She sometimes doesn't see that a book can be like an everyday object that nurtures us like food. Besides, why upset her by letting her know? It is your book, not the library's. What you are underlining is the first foreshadowing of the resolution of the conflict. It comes as a killing blow to Satan when Christ volunteers to be the blood sacrifice to die upon on the cross. Now make a note in the margin of your Bible why you underlined this passage. Really, it is ok to write in your Bible!

In verse 16 God says that He will increase women's pains in childbearing. The word “increase” tells us there must have been birthing pains before the Fall. What is meant here is that tiny helpless children will come into the world. On the one hand, they will impart great joy and be a blessing from God. On the other they will also enter a great big disintegrating world. This is not the garden that Adam and Eve knew but a world of grief and sorrow. And they will surely die in this world!

Additionally, God says that a women's desire for her husband to cherish her will be perverted. He will manipulate and control her. Some people use this passage to say, "God is a jerk! It's not right that He cursed Eve because she disobeyed Him. He's just some misogynistic control freak and really not a loving God at all." I even heard a sermon one time in which a liberal female pastor described God as the perp in a domestic violence complaint.

But that’s all wrong! God is not prescribing what will happen, but describing what will happen because of sin entering in the world. It's like your doctor telling you what is going to happen to your body if you smoke, drink, don’t exercise and eat a bad diet. Doing so significantly increases the risks of heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and cancer, any one of which may cause a slow, painful and expensive death. Like God talking to Eve, your doctor is not cursing you, just describing what will happen to because of your actions.

In verses 17 to 19 God tells Adam that because he listened to his wife, he will be cursed. His existence will include the hard labor of wresting food from the earth and eventual death. Again, God is not cursing Adam, just describing to him the consequences of his actions.

Adam and Eve take the gift of the knowledge of good and evil prematurely. On the surface knowledge doesn’t seem as if it should be bad, but in the garden the knowledge is perfect; it is awesome knowledge; it is knowledge from God alone Who knows everything. With limited intellects and little time in training Adam and Eve aren’t ready for the tremendous responsibility of knowing good and evil. It is forbidden to them as driving a car is forbidden to a kid on a tricycle. Perhaps they were never intended to have such god-like comprehension. What we, their children, do with the knowledge of good and evil is filter it through our prejudices and changing emotions, condemn other people for what we decide is bad, view ourselves as generally good, and if we do something shady, let ourselves off the hook because we have a just-this-once, special circumstance understanding of what God really means by bad. In that kind of thinking lies all the brutality in the world. Vicious dictators and predatory child molesters believe what they need and feel are the parameters of good and evil.

If chapter 3 had not happened, Adam and Eve would live forever. God created humanity to be immortal. But God has to cut off eternal life because sin has entered the world. If He did not, life itself would become a literal Hell.

In verse 21 God is once again described by His covenant name of Yehovah 'elohiym. If you step into the scene once more, you can see God as a saddened father thinking to Himself, “My kids, Adam and Eve, are leaving the garden, and it is going to be cold out there.” In response God makes garments of animal skins for them to wear. But you can’t have garments of skin without death. And cold is just one problem. The bigger one is sin. It leads to death, and innocent death is the only thing that can cover or make up for sin. We’ll discuss this point in more detail again in Leviticus and in the second half of Exodus.

Finally in verse 24, Adam and Eve hang their heads in shame as they leave the garden. If we step into the scene one last time, we can see behind them the two carcasses of the animals that God killed to make Adam’s and Eve's covering. Just ahead of them there are Cherubim with swords drawn guarding the entrance to the garden, that perfectly inviting Eden that humanity will not enter again until the end of history.

We’re ending on a sad note because sin entered the world. According to the NEW OXFORD AMERICAN DICTIONARY, sin is: “An immoral act considered to be a transgression against divine law.” Your parents probably taught you that doing things like not being nice to Mrs. Kanipplemeyer, lying, or stealing are sins. Well, they are wrong! Sin isn’t an act that you commit, but rather a condition of alienation and separation from God that manifests itself in outward actions. Too often we put the emphasis on the wrong place, the action, when in fact the action results from not having the right relationship with God to begin with. If we were in a right relationship with God, like Adam and Eve used to be before the Fall, we wouldn’t commit the outward actions in the first place!

We see sin manifesting itself in three ways. First, sin is subtle and distorts. Remember, the serpent was the most subtle of all the creatures that God made. Sin creeps into our lives and is a slippery slope that undermines our relationship with God and distorts our judgment. Adam and Eve should have gone to God and told Him what they did. But they didn’t because they rationalized their way out of it. They told themselves it was no big deal. Then they hid from God because it was such a little deal!

Second, sin gets bigger. It doesn’t stop; it snowballs. Mrs. Kanipplemeyer used to say: "Once you've told somebody a lie, you're going to have to tell another one pretty soon to cover up that one. And then you'll have to tell yet another one to cover up that one, and so on and so forth. It will never stop!"

Third, sin cascades down through generations. Sin doesn’t stop with you. The consequences of sin manifest its action on your children, grandchildren, neighbors, community, and sometimes the world.

Syd, this week we've looked at the beginning of the story and saw the conflict that developed that will drive the rest of the Bible narrative. We've covered lots of material these last three weeks, but if you understand the first three chapters of Genesis, then you'll find the rest of the Bible much easier to comprehend! Without those chapters reading the Bible is like starting a movie 15 minutes into it. Without knowing the beginning, you'll never quite get the rest of the story.

Next week we'll look at Cain murdering his brother and start in on Noah and the flood. It should be exciting! Say "hi" to your folks and remind me to tell you the story sometime of how your father and I locked Mrs. Kanipplemeyer in the bathroom of the Book Mobile.

Have a great week...

All the best,
TA

Tags: Adam | antichrist | Apocalypse | conflict | creation stories | Eve | Mrs. Kanipplemeyer | physics | Satin | The Fall

Waz up Syd?

Last week we discussed Genesis 1, chapter 1 and a six-day creation story. Earlier you emailed that you wanted to know whether the Bible conflicted with evolutionary theory and when creation actually happened. The short answers are “No” and “We don’t know.”

We talked last week about every culture having its own creation story. Evolution as taught by Darwin is just another story that is popular nowadays. If you passionately advocate it, it is its own religion in and of itself. I think it's obvious to all that evolution within a species occurs. Short-horned cattle started with longhorns; my earliest ancestors were just over five-feet tall and cold most of the time; Yellow Labs and Bulldogs mate and produce some strange looking puppies. What you never see, either in all of the fossil record or in all of life now crawling around the planet, is one species becoming another species.

The idea that humanity evolved from monkeys defies what we observe daily. Further, it is bad science to state, as many high school biology texts do, that there is evidence suggesting intermediate stages of evolution, the so-called "missing link.” When Darwin wrote the 10th chapter of THE ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES, he lamented that trilobites, a huge class of complex bug-like animals that lived in ancient seas, seem to have no predecessors. Before them there was only blue-green algae. Even Darwin didn't believe that animals could spring from bits of plant life, but he was enthusiastic that scientists someday would find the missing links. That was more than 150 years ago. I don't think we should hold our breath waiting for that dim religious hope to be fulfilled.

From what I've read about humanity evolving from apes, all "evidence" has been deliberately fraudulent. That doesn't mean that well-known pictorial line-up of primates...you know, the one starting with Australopithecus barely erect to Homo Sapiens tall and strong...is made up, but the implications are bogus. Not one true scientist will tell you that a primate from one part in "The Stages of Man" could cross breed with whatever is in the next stage.

Chickens, Syd, produce chickens. A Silver Spangled Hamburg can mate with a Rhode Island Red and produce cute little hybrid offspring. But no matter how much that Hamburg and a chicken hawk fancied each other, there would be no little chicks. Maybe the hawk would get fed up and decide all she really wanted was a meal!

I'd like to ask a question you didn't ask. If evolution as preached can be shown at times to be fraudulent, at times to be bad science and at times dumb as a rock, why would anyone hold onto it?

Some don’t know any better. Others just don't want to know. Like, I was going to spend my time in school telling teachers they were full of it, then doing the hard work of proving it, when I cared mostly about playing football. It was more like, "Yes, Sir, could you please repeat that again so that I know exactly what you want on your nonsense quiz?"

Others embrace evolution because they want to reject God and think Darwinism gives them the intellectual excuse to do so. King David wrote in Psalm 53:1 that “The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God.'”

Finally, there are some Christians who embrace evolution between species. I don't know why they do, but I don't doubt their sincerity.

Wired Magazine did an article last month about a former evangelical minster Michael Dowd who has written a book called THANK GOD FOR EVOLUTION. In the book Dowd asserts that: “Evolutionary versions of each religion—Evolutionary Christianity, Evolutionary Buddhism, Evolutionary Islam, Evolutionary Judaism, Evolutionary Hinduism, and more—are emerging. Why is this happening? Because adherents of each tradition have discovered the same thing: Religious insights and perspectives freed from the narrowness of their time and place of origin are more comprehensive and grounded in measurable reality than anyone could have possibly dreamed before. Evolution does not diminish religion; it expands its meaning and value globally.”

A more traditional approach to creation and evolution, one that that Mr. Dowd probably wouldn’t like, can be found at the Answers in Genesis website.

Now on to your second question. Many struggle with the Bible's six-day creation story. Astronomers say Earth is 16 billion years old and was created as a result of the “Big Bang.” Like evolution the Big Bang theory is a creation story that some people choose to believe. One of the great scientific discoveries of 20th century was that we live in a finite universe with a beginning (and, therefore an end). The Big Bang theory holds that before the beginning there was nothing, and then from the nothing a huge explosion formed all the material that has become the universe we live in.

From last week you may remember the Latin phrase ex nihilo, "out of nothing." In the Biblical context it is God who invented time and matter ex nihilo. God was before the beginning. Applying the phrase to the Big Bang theory, I have to wonder how nothing becomes something without someone behind it, but the theory won't let me have anything behind it. As my mind tries to compute that, I feel like I'm watching a Three Stooges skit and have to explain it to someone who has no sense of humor.

I can't stress something strongly enough. I am not a scientist. I am a just an interested outsider who can sometimes understand a scientific concept and less often explain it so that other people understand. What I have general assurance of is knowing that science and scientists change.

The “Scientific Method” is an offshoot of Christianity. A reasonable God, early Christians believed, wants His people to understand Him, appreciate His ways, and, therefore the faithful must use logical means to discover the "hows” and "whats” of the universe He made. From that Christian supposition that the magical art of alchemy was erroneous gave rise to the serious science of chemistry. A great book on this subject is THE VICTORY OF REASON: HOW CHRISTIANITY LED TO FREEDOM, CAPITALISM, AND THE SUCCESS OF THE WEST by Rodney Stark. Today, most chemists don't know or won't acknowledge the roots of their field of endeavor. Nor should they or other scientists have to. The processes and laws of God work for all no matter what anyone believes.

Belief and prejudices do affect how scientists look at data and interpret results; however, even the most holy of scientists catch only glimpses of the workings of the universe. New technology and knowledge keep giving us new ways to look and demand that prior conclusions be tweaked or changed radically. Yesterday's bedrock theory always risks being today's voodoo.

Syd, I'm preparing you for something that will put you at odds with most of your peers and teachers. A happy prospect, right? Not. As you contemplate being an oddball, let me continue. The scientist's job is not to prove the Bible. Equally, Christians will find themselves on shaky footing if they say, "Ah, ha! You see that new discovery? That proves...."

....very little except that our way of looking at the material world is constantly changing. Science studies the natural world. The Bible reveals in parts both the natural and supernatural, and focuses on God's historical dealings with people and His teachings for living our lives today. He made the animals, let Adam name them, and gave Jonah the job of saving them. He allowed Aristotle to classify them so that several thousand years later biology students would have to remember the difference between Phylum and Family on an exam.

The Lord of the material world is not waiting around for science to catch up with Him. Someday He will reconcile what scientists have struggled to learn with what truly is. In the meantime it may be as difficult to accept the Big Bang theory as it is to accept the Biblical teaching that God created everything in six literal days.

Many Christians feel compelled to believe either the astronomers or the Bible. In doing so, they usually feel foolish when, calculating the days since creation, they have to argue that the world is 6,000 years old, a belief that stands in direct opposition to modern geological and anthropological discoveries. Even so, there are very intelligent people who support a literal six-day creation story. John F. Ashton wrote a book, IN SIX DAYS: WHY FIFTY SCIENTISTS CHOOSE TO BELIEVE IN CREATION, in which doctorate-holding scientists from around the globe give sound reasoning and evidence for being oddballs.

Other smart people take a hybrid approach. This is often called “The Gap Theory.” It teaches that in Genesis 1, verse 1, God created the heavens and the earth a long long time ago (billions or zillions or even trillions of years ago). Then there is a gap after verse 1, and verse 2 picks up, “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.” From verse 2 we can start counting up to the present time, roughly 6000 years.

The 17th-century English poet John Milton wrote Paradise Lost, an epic poem in which Milton imagines the gap by vividly interpreting Ezekiel 28. The Earth is a desolated battlefield. Here is where 1/3 of all the angels fell when Satin rebelled against God and wreaked havoc on this planet. God in his mercy to all creation rebuilds the Earth and creates man.

Another possibility is that the astronomers and six-day creationists are both right. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity as applied to cosmology could bridge the divide. It comes down to an issue of, “Whose clock are you talking about?” Before and after the Spirit of the Lord hovered over the surface of the deep, the only clock around was God. He is eternal, beyond time, and Adam wasn’t around yet to need a watch, to know seasons, or whether Eve is late or early for a stroll around the garden. Some scholars interpret the ancient Hebrew for days to be a relative term for periods of time. It is very possible, then, that 16 billion years could be represented by six days.

That is a lot to think about, but you did ask the questions! Now can move on to this week's topic: Genesis 1, chapter 2.

Those hostile to the accuracy of the Bible often refer to this as the second creation story and assert that it differs from the one told in Genesis 1, chapter 1. They would have us believe that Moses made a mistake by forgetting to cut out one of these two stories when he was proofreading Genesis.

In chapter 1, we saw creation from God’s perspective, from His eyes. Starting in verse 4, we’re doubling back, dropping down and seeing the story from humanity’s perspective. This is a literary technique known as “recapitulation.” Chapter 1 looks at creation with the perspective of a telescope. Chapter 2 recapitulates this and looks at creation with a microscope, focusing on what humanity is most interested in, Day 6, where you and I, before we were ever born, can see our first grandparents.

We’ll see recapitulation elsewhere in the Bible, as well. For example, the New Testament starts with The Gospel of Matthew, then recapitulates three times. Mark, Luke, and John revisit the same story from different points of view.

You indicated that you understood verses 5 to 9, so I won’t elaborate except to say that it is important to note that in verse 9, Adam had access to the tree of life but not the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

You wanted to know more about where Eden was in verses 10 to 12. Based upon the story told, it could have been somewhere in modern day Iraq. Others have suggested it lays somewhere deep in the ancient Caucasus. Some have even suggested that it exists in another dimension (scientists think there are at least 10 of them). The bottom line is no one knows for sure where it was.

What is certain, however, is that in verse 15, God told Adam to work and care for the garden, not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Why did God say this? Is He trying to keep knowledge away from Adam? Some suggest that He wanted Adam and Eve to remain pure and undefiled, looking only at the good that is God. I think it had more to do with Adam only appearing like an adult, but in fact, he was a new creation (like a new child). He wasn’t mature enough to differentiate between good and evil. God had the intention of sharing the knowledge, but only when Adam was ready. Sooner would be like giving a machete to a five-year-old. No good thing could come out of it! But when the five-year old became fifteen, that would be a different story.

In verse 18, God is standing in the corner of garden watching Adam, like a human father watching his child play. And God thought to Himself that it is not good for Adam to be alone, so he decided to make a “helper” for Adam. Many people have the notion that God is a sexist and assume that the word helper is used pejoratively, meaning a slave or a servant. This is the farthest thing from what God wanted! The Hebrew word for helper is `ezer, and it literally means “help mate,” an equal partner.

God in verse 19 parades all the animals He created past Adam to see what name Adam wants to give them. This isn’t a task that an aloof or distant God gives one of his subjects to do. It is an act of a loving and intimate father wanting to share the experience with the child he loves. You can almost visualize God pleasure when Adam decides on a name to give each animal. The imagery is analogous to an earthly father taking his child to Sea World for the first time and seeing the excitement and amazement on the boy's face.

In verse 21, God puts Adam in a deep sleep and takes a rib (or more accurately takes Adam’s side) and creates Eve. God then brings her to Adam. Adam didn't build her, but God needed a major part of Adam (perhaps DNA) with which God would make her. In verse 23 we have the first instance of poetry in the Bible. Adam says that Eve shall be called “women.” He’s making a joke since the Hebrew words for woman (ishshah) and man (ish) sound alike, Ishshah from ish.

Each act of God leads to completion and perfection with the jewel in the crown of creation being humanity. The final act of creation, however, is not man but women. Eve was the Crown Jewel of God’s creation.

Syd, in the last verse in Genesis 2, we see that God created man and women fundamentally equal, in love with each other and with Him, living innocently in paradise. That will change! Every good story has a conflict, and next week in chapter 3 conflict enters the Bible. And that's just the start of conflict that dogs every generation since.

Have a great week! Please give my warm regards to your folks. Tell them my tripping and twisting my ankle didn't hurt my foot so much as my dignity.

All the best,
TA

Tags: Adam | Big Bang | creation stories | Darwin | Einstein | Eve | evolution | helper | John Milton | literary technique | Old Testament | physics | recapitulation | Sea World | Three Stooges

Dear Sydney,

You said that we should start the Bible like any good book, at the beginning. All right then, Genesis 1, chapter 1, verse 1, here we come!

Genesis in Hebrew means "beginnings.” It is the beginning of a great invention—time. The eternal gives us finite time. Then God adds the physical universe, the beginning of life forms within the universe, and the beginning of humanity. It is also the beginning of sin and death, and the beginning of God’s plan to give us a second chance.

God inspired Moses to write Genesis about 3,400 years ago, who also wrote the next four books of the Bible. Together these five are called the Pentateuch, or the Torah. In Genesis Moses recalls days earlier than his own lifetime, from the beginning of creation to Joseph dying in Egypt.

In verse 1, God says “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” This was written originally in Hebrew, as was the rest of the Old Testament, and the word used for God is elohiym. Elohiym is a plural noun (like "cars") but is being used here as a singular one (like "car"). It is technically a grammatical error. It could be that God doesn’t know the proper rules for grammar, but I think it’s safe to assume that is unlikely. Instead I believe that in this first verse of the Bible, God is already eluding to His triune state – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

As a sidebar, it is interesting how all languages seem to flow toward Jerusalem. The languages originating east of Jerusalem, like Greek, English, Spanish, etc., are written left to right. While the languages originating west of Jerusalem, such as Hebrew, Sanskrit, Aramaic, etc., flow right to left. We’ll talk more about this later in our conversations about the deliberateness of God, but for now just file it away as a fact that you can pop out at parties.

Every culture, civilization, and religion, no matter what the era, has its own creation story, but what verses 1 and 2 say is radically different from all of them. The other stories tell of creation being the result of intergalactic dramas, cosmic chaos and gods running amuck. Humanity is always the pawn in a prize of planetary battles. You can read more about other creation stories in James Pritchard’s ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN TEXTS RELATING TO THE OLD TESTAMENT. What is described in Genesis, however, is unique. Something is created from nothing (ex nihilo in the Latin), many other things too, and each creation is a deliberate act by God.

If you read the Bible all the way through, a question you might have at the very beginning will never be answered. God is a given. It is further assumed that we intuitively know that. There are no elaborate arguments trying to prove that He exists. God is too sane and self-confidant to need to prove Himself to anyone. He has always existed and always will!

You indicated that you understood verses 3 through 25 because they are self-explanatory, so I’m going to add only one comment. See what God did. He created the universe, and then He filled it—first adding vegetation, then putting lights in the sky, then animals under the sea and in the sky, and finally humanity. When I think of this, I am reminded of renaissance painter like Michelangelo. He starts with a blank canvas, paints the background, adds figures to the foreground and keeps adding details, sometimes painting over sections he’s not happy with, all the while being deliberate, highly skilled and confident as to what the painting will look like when it is finished.

In verse 26, God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” This single verse has so many important things to talk about. Why did God use the word “us” instead of “my.” There are three explanations. The first is that God is speaking with the Angels and saying, “Let’s make humanity like us.” But there is nothing in the story about Angels assisting in creation, and Angels have not even been introduced as characters in the Bible yet, so it would seem unlikely that is what God means.

Second, there is the “Royal We,” as in the way kings and queens talk about themselves, or a certain high school teacher we both know: “Todd, we are not amused by your talking out of turn.” God could be talking like Mrs. Kanipplemeyer did, but He doesn’t do so anywhere else, so it would seem unlikely that He would start here and just drop it. The third and most likely explanation is that God was precise in His words and referring to “us” because He is a triune being – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In my estimation this would appear to be the second hint of the plurality of the Godhead in the Bible. We’ll talk about what the means later in our conversations.

In the passage above the word “man” does not mean male: rather it means the generic term of mankind or humanity. Male and female are shown by God to be fundamentally equal in the very structure of the verse that follows. A man does not represent the image of God nor does a woman. Together they do. This also applies to Whites or Blacks or Asians or any other race. God is too big to be defined by one group. Thus all the races together give us a clearer sense of the image of God. This same concept applies to churches, cultures, styles of worship, personalities, and the like.

Additionally, the concept of “in our image” is called the Imago Dei in Latin. It is from the Hebrew word tselem and means shadow. The “us” that God makes in His image is a reflection or a shadow of the “We” who is God. You and I and the whole world combined cannot be God; we can only be like Him. The Imago Dei is an important concept in the Christian faith. It is one idea that separates Christianity from other religions. Because God created humanity in His image, every human has inherent value, independent of his or her utility or function.

Mrs. Kanipplemeyer would scream if she could hear what I’m going to say next. Syd, I’m going to ask you to write in a book. With a pen if you like. Get out your hardcopy Bible and in verse 27 circle “created” and mark it with an A. Then circle “in his own image” and mark it with a B. On the next line circle “he created him” and mark it A’. Circle and mark “in the image of God” as B’. Draw lines between the As then between the Bs. You should end up with an X. The two As say the same thing. So do the Bs. This is called chiasmus and is a literary technique of stating and restating in order to make a larger point (and the shape of an X). It was a common practice in Hebrew poetry. It is a deliberate literary structure and implies balance, harmony, and equality in the text.

In verse 28, God tells humanity to not conquer, pillage or destroy the earth, rather to manage and creatively tend it. This is often times called the Dominion Clause and has been used wrongly over the years as the justification for all forms of exploitation of the planet and peoples.

Genesis 2:1-3 is really part of Genesis 1. They are the same literary unit, and it ends the creation story that began earlier. In Genesis 1:1, the literal position of the words in Hebrew read, “In the beginning created God, the heavens and earth.” Circle the word “created” and mark an A above it. Circle “God” and put a B above it. Then circle “the heavens and earth” and mark it with a C.

Now go to Genesis 2:1 and circle “the heavens and the earth” and mark it with a C. Go to 2:2 and circle “God,” marking it with a B. Then go all the way to the end of 2: 3 and circle “creation” and mark it A.

The first verse of chapter 1 says that “Created God the heavens and earth.” Genesis 2:1-3 reads “the heavens and earth God created.” The backend verse is the mirror image of the frontend verse. Once again, this is not an accident – rather a deliberate literary technique. It takes a story and frames it in a balanced way. It is called inclusio and is very common in Hebrew narrative, as well as in other languages. We will see this technique again elsewhere in the Old Testament.

We have a six-day story of creation in which every day or act of creation progresses towards the completion. Additionally, in every day of creation God says it was good, and at the end of six days He said it was very good! We have been introduced to a God, not of vengeance or chaos, but a God of creativity, order, and love.

Don’t worry Sydney I know we introduced a lot of material this week and only covered one chapter. Nevertheless, a lot of this stuff will serve as a foundation for future weeks, and we do not want to rush this portion of the text. For now just stay in the story that God is telling about His creating everything in six days. Our job as readers is to step into the world of the story and engage it on its terms, not our own. Next week we will get to some of the questions you raised in your earlier email, including when creation actually happened and whether the Bible conflicts with evolutionary theory.

In the meantime, have a great week!

All the best,
TA

Tags: Adam | chiasmus | creation stories | Elohiym | Eve | ex nihilo | Imago Dei | inclusio | literary technique | Michelangelo | Moses | Mrs. Kanipplemeyer | Old Testament | physics | Satin | Trinity