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By tduvally, February 24, 2010 1:01 pm

Gen 2 seems a bit of a mish-mash, discussing all sorts of various things and jumping from subject to subject without regard for explanation.

So, God rests and blessing the 7th day.  How is this useful or important?  Is it simply a rule (sabbath) or does it have concrete meaning, like, less bad things happen on the Sabbath?  Either way, God apparently needs to get to the next subject, so don’t spend too much time thinking about it…

Why didn’t it rain? Gen 2:6. I find it interesting, but I suppose not very important.  Being God he can make it come from anywhere, but why UP form the ground, rather than DOWN from the sky?

One question popped into my head at Gen 2:8.  The garden of Eden was planted east of where?  God formed earth, and there is just water and land without label or reference.  What exactly is Eden east of that is of great importance?  Either way, he plops man into it, and then needs to discuss trees…

Specifically 2 special trees: the tree of Life, the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Middle if the garden.  Next subject!

I don’t want to catalog all the little things going on here, so I hope you get my point.  It’s a jumpy and disconcerting narrative.  It skips ahead, then goes back and fills in, then skips ahead again.  It’s a really crappy way to communicate a series of events.  Unless you’re Quentin Tarantino and happen to know what the hell you’re doing.

Last jump here: So God makes animals for Adam (oh, is that his name, thanks for the introductions) to give him a helper and stave off loneliness.  Why didn’t God make Adam without loneliness, or know in advance what he needed?  Hmmm, must be one of those ineffable things.  Either way, “woman” is made of “man”, from “man”, a gift for “man”, but clearly not whole or important in her own right.  Otherwise she wouldn’t have been an afterthought and an “fix” for something else that was wrong.

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By tduvally, February 16, 2010 2:10 pm

“In the beginning…”

As an opening line, it’s not that great of a hook, but I don’t think it’s meant to be.

What can I say about Genesis other than it’s a creation story?  Many cultures have them, and they really all sound the same.  I can remember watching PBS as a kid when I was home sick from school and seeing a show that had cartoons of mythical stories of Native Americans.  They included creation stories about Mother Earth turning a stalk of corn into a man and women, or some animal impregnating a hill.  Quite honestly, they all sound seem like primitive fantasy.  Those shows may even have contributed in some way to my eventual loss of faith.  Thank you PBS!

One thing I noticed in Gen1 was the phrasing and timeline.  It was very odd to try and understand what is meant by “earth”.  Gen1:1 states God created both heaven and earth, but the next verses discuss the various separations of water.  Did God create the water?  Was that the earth, and if so, that doesn’t seem to meet many definitions of “earth”.  ”Water” and “Formless” (not watery, just water).  Then he goes on to separate the “waters” into sky and “the rest”, I suppose.  It really doesn’t seem to have a whole lot of internal consistency.

It really just appears to be a cataloging of all the things that “must” have happened for the world to be just the way we see it.  Point in case, Gen 1:14-18.  The sky is bright AND there is a Sun in it, but there is no bright sky when there is a Moon, so it stands to reason that the light in the sky is NOT connected to the Sun, but occurs at the same time as the Sun.  God created night and day, THEN create the “greater and lesser” lights to govern them.

Gen 1:24-25 talks about the distinction between “wild” and “livestock”, but we know that God didn’t create that distinction, Man did when he domesticated some wild animals and not others.  We even can date when certain animals were domesticated based on either records or genetic information.  So, if your oral tradition never kept an account of the domestication process, you might explain the difference as “Poof!, God did it!”

And there you have it: “Poof, God did it?”.  It’s the ultimate explanation for anything you can’t explain.  The Biblical God is, and has always been, a God of the Gaps.  See you in chapter 2!