Genesis 1-5 - Creation and the First Family

The first thing that strikes me when reading Genesis is that there is no definitive creation story - chapters 1 and 2 actually give two slightly different accounts, with chapter 2 offering an alternative order of events and putting a greater emphasis on the creation of man. To my mind, the fact that there are two versions doesn't prove that the Bible is unreliable. It just shows that the opening chapters of Genesis were never intended to be history or science and so should never be read as such. They are stories and metaphors which tell deep and important truths, not hard cold facts. For the purposes of this blog, I will work on the understanding that they are God-inspired stories and I will take them and study them at face value in order to try and understand what God is saying through them.

It seems to me that the Genesis creation stories aren't really about how the universe was created. They're about why it was created. The author doesn't seem to be all that interested in the means by which God separates the waters and hung the stars and created the animals. There are no long-winded high-minded scientific-sounding explanations. God just goes ahead and does it. It's the one thing the two creation stories agree on. And that's what really matters - the fact that whatever went on in the beginning, God was behind it. The universe came into being because God willed it. Science and religion are often presented as being mutually exclusive, but I don't believe that's the case. Genesis leaves plenty of room for science to explain the how - all it wants is for us to accept the why.

Something I've often wondered about when reading Genesis 1, is the use of the word "good". At the end of each day, God looks at his work and says that it is good. He was obviously pleased with how things were going, but good is pretty low down on the scale of positive terms. Why didn't He say it was "excellent" or "awesome" or "absolutely ripping"? Is the writer just being temperate, or is good meant to carry its other connotation of morally correct or pure or right? Of course this is really a question of translation. What exactly does the original Hebrew word mean? Answers on a postcard. [EDIT It seems the original Hebrew word doesn't carry the same moral connotations as the English "good" - it roughly translates as beautiful or pleasant. Thanks to Daniel for his help on that one, although I don't know why I didn't just look it up in my dictionary in the first place. Call it a premature senior moment.]

While we're asking questions, Genesis 1:27 says that God made man and woman in his image, but what does that really mean? The obvious answer is that we're all created to be like God, but that only raises all sorts of new questions about who God is and how we can be like him.  Such questions cannot be answered in a few simple answers but must instead be lived.  I believe that the more I experience God, the closer I get to understanding what it means to be like him, and the more closely I resemble what an old minister used to call my "original and intended shape".  There is however one question I would like to give a little thought to, and that's why we are not all the same if we were all made in God's image.  I think mankind is perhaps a little like a hall of mirrors, each of us relecting a different image of the same original, and so being made in the image of God is about being like him not being like each other. 

Chapters 2 and 3 tell the story of the temptation and fall of man. God tells his new creations that they may eat anything except the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but of course they give in to temptation and eat the fruit anyway. I never really understood why the that knowledge was forbidden - surely we should know the difference so that we can avoid evil and choose good, I thought. But then I thought that maybe it is because we know about good and evil that we think we can differentiate between them and make our own judgements, and unfortunately we often get things wrong. Knowledge has led to pride and independence and confusion. Before Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they were in a state of innocence where they relied on God for moral guidance, and that's where we need to get back to.

But why put temptation there in the first place? Maybe it was because God wanted Adam and Eve to choose to obey Him, and they could only choose obedience if there was a possibility of disobedience. God gave us free will, and that meant giving us choice - to follow Him or not. And He still gives us that choice.

It's maybe worth thinking a little about why Adam and Eve made the choice that they did. They ate the fruit of their own free will - it's not good trying to shift the blame - but it is clear that there was another influence involved. The serpent came to them and tempted them. He told them that God had lied and that if they ate the fruit they would not die, but instead they would become like Him. And they chose to believe him over God. Isn't that the reason for so many of our sins? God says one thing and the Devil says another, and we choose to believe the Devil because his seems the more attractive option. But as Adam and Eve soon find out, that's not the case. God speaks out of love and will only tell the truth, whereas the Devil speaks out of malice and with him there are always lies and hidden traps. Maybe we need to be aware of these opposing influences and take care as to who we choose to listen to.

As I'm sure will become evident, I care passionately about women's rights and am very interested in the what the Bible has to say about women, and there are a number of passages in Genesis that are particularly important in that respect. First, there is the creation of woman. In Genesis 1, woman appears to have been created alongside man and there is no distinction made between them apart from their gender. In Genesis 2, Adam is created first, but then because he is lonely and finds no companion among the animals, God makes Eve from one of Adam's ribs. God says He will make a "helper suitable for Adam", which makes Eve sound a bit like a skivvy, but I have looked into this one and if I'm reading my Hebrew dictionary right, the word used in the original Hebrew is to do with completion. Eve was made to complete Adam, and that in itself does not necessarily imply a difference in status. [EDIT It seems I looked up the cross-reference in the Greek section of my dictionary instead of the Hebrew section. Oops! The Hebrew actually translates as counterpoint or opposite. So Eve was made to complement Adam, not complete him, but that still doesn't imply a difference in status.]

In fact, there is no implied difference in status until chapter 3, where one of the consequences of the fall is that God appears to make women subservient to men - in verse 16, God tells Eve "your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you". However, it is interesting to note that God will, not shall. The difference may be slight but it is important. God is simply saying that it is going to happen, not commanding it. It was not His will. Also, the fact that male dominance was a consequence of the fall implies that it was not the case beforehand, i.e. male and female were created equal. That was how God designed us and so that is how we should be.

Just a few quick points now, related to specific verses. First, Genesis 3:21 is perhaps one of my favourite verses in the whole Bible. Adam and Eve have just done the one thing God told them not to do, and He has had to punish them for it, and yet we are told "The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them." He didn't leave them to it. He didn't even tell them how to make clothes for themselves. He actually made the clothes Himself and then dressed His children in them. Isn't that awesome? And we see the same thing a little later in the way that God protects Cain in his exile. Right at the beginning of human history we see that God is just, but He is also merciful.

Second, in Genesis 3:22, God says "they have become like us". Does that mean God is not unique? Are there other gods like him? [EDIT I should have pointed out in my original post that I do not believe this to be the case. However appealing a Norse or Greek-style pantheon may be, I believe in one God. At any rate, Judaism has always been defiantly monotheistic. So is God rather speaking of other spiritual beings such as angels?] Is it a reference to what we would call the Trinity? How like God are the other beings that form the "us"? Just a few things to ponder.

Chapter 4 finds Adam and Eve living outside of Eden and starting a family of their own. And it's not long before that goes wrong too, when Cain kills his brother Abel because He is angry that God favoured Abel's sacrifice and not his. But why did God praise one sacrifice above the other? Maybe because Cain gave some of his crops, whereas Abel gave the best of his livestock. God wants our best, and He knows when we don't give it.

Genesis 4:10 is one of those verses that really jumped out at me - "Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground". How the earth must scream.  I found Genesis 4:26 interesting too. "At that time men began to call on the name of the Lord." Does that point to a time before religion? Is this the point at which formal religious practice began? Why did men not call on God before if Adam and Eve and their children had know Him so intimately? Were the stories before this point later inventions to explain the origins of man and his position in the world? Is this the point at which fable becomes history?

Genesis 5 is mostly genealogy, charting the father-son succession from Adam to Noah. However there is one point of interest - verse 3 says that Seth was born in the image of his father. So Adam was created in the image of God and then Seth was born in the image of Adam. That should mean that Seth was also the image of God, but by the time he was born, Adam had already sinned. He was no longer the perfect image of God, and so neither was Seth. I don't believe in original sin - we're not sinners until we've sinned - but I do think that we are influenced by our human ancestry. We are born in the image of man but we can be made again in the image of God.