Here's a link to Bible Gateway, the site I tend to use for Bible stuff.
Young’s Literal Translation of the Bible
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/...r=3&version=15
Genesis 1: the Bible’s Creation Myth
“In the beginning of God's preparing the heavens and the earth -- the earth hath existed waste and void, and darkness is on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God fluttering on the face of the waters, and God saith, `Let light be;' and light is.”
So, God creates light, then he establishes that light makes day, and darkness night. At this point, there was the first day/night cycle over the empty waters. On the second day, he creates an expanse in the midst of the waters. He decides that the expanse is called “Heavens” (ie: the sky). Then, the waters under the Heavens were collected in one place so there was also dry land which he called Earth.
God saw it, and it was good. He did this several times in the passage, which makes me wonder if God had self-esteem issues about creating the universe.
After that, he spread around grass, herbs, and fruit. On the third day, he created the sun and the moon. Which begs the question of how there was day and night without them, and why all the plants didn’t die without a sun. Also, without a source of heat why wasn’t the water actually ice? Genesis is mum on these points.
Then, on the fourth day to make things a little more interesting, God creates critters. He starts out with fish and birds. Then he created “great monsters” and “every living thing that is creeping”. Hey, he did. I didn’t make this up. Then he blesses his great monsters, but not fish or birds or creeping things because he liked them less.
On the fifth day, God created cattle (specifically), and every thing that lives on the land. After that, God said “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness, and let them rule over fish of the sea, and over fowl of the heavens, and over cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that is creeping on the earth.” Yes, God talks to himself and addresses himself as a capitalized plural noun(1). Anyway, then he goes ahead and creates man and woman.
Genesis 1 ends with the dawn of the sixth day.
(1) -- Why is that? I've heard a number of different opinions on this subject, but I have no idea which might be correct. I've heard that God was addressing himself as a plural entity because he's speaking to himself as the Holy Trinity. I've also heard that this passage could be a remnant from an earlier time in Jewish history whey might have still been fuzzy on the whole monotheism concept they're such fans of today. This linguistic tidbit appears in Genesis 1:26, 3:22 and 11:7
Genesis 2: Creation Myth Part Deux
So, on the sixth day God finishes up. He takes a break on the seventh day, and blesses it.
In Genesis 2:5-6 there’s kind of a weird passage that lets us know that while God had created everything, stuff wasn’t necessarily in action during creation. He put everything on pause until the first rainfall. After chilling out for a bit, God made it rain. At this point, it was like he hit “play” on the streaming video of our universe.
And … at this point, apparently God hadn’t read Genesis 1, so he created man again. This time he didn’t create man and woman at the same time. Instead he created the first dude. The next bit is basically just a second creation myth about how God goes around building rivers and shit. He already did all this in Genesis 1, but Genesis 2 seems sketchy on the details of Genesis 1.
He creates trees again, including the Tree of Life which is in the middle of Eden. There are some talks about him naming different things, a separate process than creating them.
First man gets appointed gardener of Eden. He’s told to eat from all the trees but the Tree of Life because that would give him knowledge of good and evil, which apparently God wouldn’t be groovy with. He wants this poor bastard to be an amoral sociopath alone in a garden.
Next God starts auditioning animals to be the sociopath gardener’s helper/companion. The gardener starts out by auditioning cattle and a bunch of birds. Despite being totally amoral, he doesn’t develop a taste for bestiality or whatever so God waits until he’s asleep, helps himself to one of the first man’s ribs, and turns it into a woman. Note that this guy was able to sleep through a rib removal surgery.
At the end of Genesis 2, God presents the first woman to the first man, totally naked, and we learn that he likes the woman better than a cow or a bird. Thank you, Bible writers. Anything else would have been awkward. He says “This is the right step! Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh! It will be called “woman” for from a man has this been taken.” The first man wasn’t much of a romantic.
Note about stuff that’s NOT in this passage – the first man and woman are not given names in this part of the text. Also, if I’d been writing this dogs would have at least been in the running for man’s best friend. They’d definitely have been ahead of cattle or birds, but they’re not even mentioned. It would have been cool if Adam tried out having a hurdy-gurdy playing helper monkey. It would have been a good buddy picture like Ronald Reagan in that one old movie.
Originally Posted by Hermione
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