The Creation Story of Genesis

Note: The following is not an argument for or against evolution. It does not in any sense imply the universe came into being by accident or that there was no designer. It simply means that God did not snap his fingers to make things appear instantly out of nothing. The idea that the universe came out of nothing is an invention of theoretical physicists because they have no valid explanation. God chose to use natural processes. For example: God made man out of the dust of the ground. The earth, not God, brought forth grass and trees. God used the wind to dry the sea bed for the exodus. God used Joshua to drive out the Canaanites. The principle the Bible teaches is that God used natural processes where it suited him to do things. 

 

It is often claimed that the traditional creationist interpretation of the Genesis creation stories (which essentially means God created the universe in six days) is a literal interpretation. In fact it is a philosophical interpretation and is not consistent with the literal wording of the Bible. Let us take a truly literal interpretation of the creation stories of Genesis. This is a look at what the Bible actually teaches.

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In the beginning God created the universe including the earth. We are not told the time period for this part of creation. It could have been billions of years if we take the Bible literally. That part of creation was complete when God’s spirit moved upon the face of the waters of earth otherwise there would have been no waters to move upon. The early earth was a water world and it was dark at sea level because something (possibly volcanic ash) in the atmosphere was blocking out the sunlight, but God planned to make something special out of the planet. God caused a light to appear at sea level.  We are not told the source of the light or its duration. But God called its presence “Day”. Look carefully. There is our definition of what God called “Day”. It was a period of light. God distinguished Day from darkness which he called Night. In God’s mind the light was special and he judged it Good, but eventually it was overtaken by darkness. God did not call that Good. So the first day was characterized by the light of the world being overtaken by darkness. The second day was to be a day of separation of things above from things below. God did not call that separation Good. The third Day was a momentous, glorious day, a day of life appearing in the lifeless earth and God called that Good. It was also a day of rising as land rose above the waves and God called that Good too.

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God's work during the six Days was issuing eleven commands. The commands were directed at setting in motion the development of the earth according to his plan. That was his work. Then on the seventh Day he rested. The light of these Days may not have been routine sunlight or moonlight because the plan for sunlight to be routinely seen at sea level was not even realized until the fourth Day command had been fulfilled and that may have not happened until long after the seventh day. We have no information on how long the Days were. They may have been microseconds or millennia. They could have even been 24 hour days. The duration doesn’t have any significance to the timing of creation. The commands of these six Days were for setting in motion God’s plans for the planet. We are not told how long the unfolding of those plans took but the Bible tells us they were implemented by natural processes by the earth itself using the materials of the earth. We know the unfolding process took years at a minimum because we are told for example that an outcome of the work of the third Day was that God saw the earth bring forth fruiting trees after their kind with ripened fruit and seed repeating the process. This is not referring to some magical process where God caused fully grown trees with fruit on them to spring into existence. It is referring to a natural process where the “earth”, not God, brought forth and grew the trees. These trees were growing after their kind so at least a two cycles from seed planting to maturity to fruit ripening are implied. For an apple tree two cycles would be fifteen to twenty years, not one day. This interpretation is further specified in Chapter 2 Verses 4 and 5 which tell us there was a particular Day (specifically the third day) that God commanded the earth to appear (rise up) and plants to come forth. That day was "before it grew". Let’s be clear. There were six days of setting things in motion. Then natural processes took over and took years, perhaps billions of years to achieve the fulfillment of the processes.

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To get a fix on timing, the following suggestion is consistent with a literal interpretation: A creation event of perhaps a fraction of a microsecond, followed by potentially billions of years for the universe to develop to the stage of the formation of our planet all of which is contained in “in the beginning”, followed by the appearance of God’s spirit on the face of the waters of the created earth, followed by let’s say six conventional days of setting in motion plans for the development of the planet, followed by billions more years for the development to occur to the stage of Adam, which the Jews reckon to be around 5700 years ago. However working through the Bible it is only possible to put a minimum figure to the time from Adam to now. The maximum figure could be much greater.

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Before Adam but towards the end of the development of earth, human like creatures came into existence but they were entirely natural creatures having body and soul but no supernatural component (spirit). Then God intervened to turn man into his own image. Essentially that image was defined by a supernatural component or spirit. Genesis 2:6 says God breathed a breath of life into Adam. By deduction from Genesis 7:22 we can see this breath was a breath of spirit (ruach). God had developed in Adam a receptor (possibly brain capacity) for a supernatural component which permitted God to spiritually “breathe” a spirit into Adam. It gave Adam self-consciousness, God consciousness and in particular sin consciousness. It also gave him power over death in the sense that through the enjoining of his spirit with God’s eternal spirit he could have everlasting life provided he didn’t alienate himself from the source of that spiritual life.

Here is one scenario. God wanted a wife for Adam to also be in God’s image. To do this he chose to perform an operation on Adam to extract the essence of this receptor, presumably a gene seemingly drawn from the marrow of one of his ribs although there is some doubt in translation about what bone or organ the so called rib was. We are not told how this receptor was included in the formation of Eve but seemingly by genetic manipulation of a human egg cell from which Eve was born.

Just to clarify the process a possible sequence goes like this:

• Prior to Adam, human creatures did not have a characterizing spirit and therefore were not in the image of God.

• Adam evolved a human spirit receptor

• God breathed a spirit into him

• God surgically extracted one or more genes from Adam

• God used the gene tissue to modify an egg cell which was implanted in Eve’s mother

• When Eve was born she became the second person with a spirit receptor

• God breathed a spirit into her as he does to all of her descendants because all of us who descended from Adam and Eve are born with the required receptor.

 

It is of significance that Adam was the only living being with sin consciousness who was absolutely sinless when the wound in his side was inflicted. Nevertheless God saw fit to wound him in the side for the purpose of bringing forth a spotless bride for him.

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In one scenario God placed Adam and Eve in a real garden with real plants, animals, fish (in the rivers) and birds and required the pair to tend the garden and take responsibility for the creatures there, namely to provide an environment where the creatures prospered and multiplied and were kept in order. Among the plants were two trees of significance. One of the trees was named the Tree Of The Knowledge Of Good and Evil. Based on what we see of pagan cults today it is reasonable to suppose the tree was so named by a heathen cult of humanoids inspired by Satan (who the Bible represents as a serpent).  Presumably it was a real tree and had a role in a pagan religious practice that involved eating the fruit of it. It would seem the high priest or wizard of the cult represented himself either directly as the Serpent or as an oracle for the Serpent (Satan). His apparent objective in tempting Eve was to cause her to engage in a forbidden rite which involved eating the fruit of the tree and ultimately to lure her into the cult. The promise to acquire elite knowledge and become as gods has been the primary lure of various pagan movements in the world to this day. Serpent worship has continued through the ages in various forms.

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The second tree in the garden was the tree of life.  It also was a real tree. Although both trees were in the midst of the garden they were not the same tree. (Gen 3:23 says “also”.) In order to restore access to everlasting life the second tree had to restore innocence. God’s spirit cannot enjoin an unclean spirit without becoming unclean. This tree was a manifestation of the Spirit of God. It was the very source of eternal life, the very thing a person’s spirit must enjoin to be carried through eternal existence. However Adam and Eve no longer qualified for it due to their sin. When Adam and Eve perceived their sin was visible to God which caused them to feel naked, they tried to hide their sin by covering themselves with fig leaves.

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Adam and Eve started out untarnished by any form of unfaithfulness to God. But the moment they acted in disobedience and unfaithfulness to God they irretrievably lost their innocence, disconnected themselves from the Holy Spirit and placed themselves and their offspring under the Serpent’s curse. Then Adam and Eve were forced out of the garden and a Cherub was set to guard the way of the tree of life.  Notice that it is the “Way” of the tree of life that was guarded. It tells us God was establishing a Way back – a Way of restoring innocence that would balance the scales of justice.

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Both Old and New Testaments, are about God’s mechanism of providing the Way of the tree of life.  A point of revelation is reached in the New Testament when Jesus claims to be the Way.

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This particular story ends with two so called curses.

The curse on the serpent was a curse on Satan and his seed, his seed being those corrupted to his vices. He had sought to usurp God’s authority by causing mankind to seek to become “as God”. His punishment for this crime was to be assigned a role that would lead to his destruction. His role was to test people as explained in Job Chapter 1. He would seek to poison people’s minds, drag people down and morally bathe them in dirt and claim them to himself, but he could only do so by temptation. He had no magical powers. So he was to conform to his metaphorical image of a slithering serpent with power metaphorically to bite and live on dirt. His seed would find themselves continually pulling mankind down to a similar level. His seed had the power of human evil.

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Then comes this amazing statement:

“I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” Gen 3:15.

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Who is this seed? We are only told it is male and singular. What descendant of Eve had this important role of interacting with the serpent?

Read carefully and you will see the serpent is not given power to bruise the woman. It was given power to bruise a specific male of her seed. Also the woman wasn’t given power to bruise the serpent, only the seed was. What we learn here is that some time down the generations a male descendant would come into vital conflict with Satan. Satan would bruise his heel by something symbolized by a fang - potentially a crucifixion nail to the foot. He would bruise Satan on the head, implying that Satan would be conquered by him.

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Now why call Adam by name but call Eve “the woman”, and why specifically the woman’s seed and not Adam’s seed when generally the male line is recognised? There is no suggestion Eve had another partner. The simple answer is that it was not referring to Eve at all.

More detail is given in plain language in four places - Isaiah 7, 1 Chronicles 17, 2 Samuel 7, Psalm 89. Somewhere down the line of descendants a seed of particular importance would be born of woman but God would be the father.

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The second curse was upon the ground. it was encountered when Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden. This suggests the curse was pre-existing in the outside world whereas the garden was immune to the curse.

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That is all we get out of the creation stories per se.

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The usual English translations of Exodus 20:11 and 31:17 create the impression that God created the whole universe and everything in it in six days. A more consistent translation is this: “For six days God prepared the sky, the land and the sea and everything in them”. In other words He set in motion a precisely balanced sequence of natural processes that resulted in the formation of humankind. The Hebrew word asah (made) is equally translated “prepared”. (See Genesis 27:9.)

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Likewise Isaiah 45:18 can create the impression the earth and everything in is was created instantly. However that is a mis-translation. No such claim is made in the verse. It relates only to the purpose of the creation, not the method.

Why did God work for six days and rest on the seventh? The sabbath rest was the hallmark of God. Israelites and Jews were to practice it so there could be no mistake. One day the hallmark would be displayed when God in human form would be laid to rest over a sabbath and rise again at the end of the sabbath.

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There is a blatant overlay on this whole story. To be fair I have given it prominence in passing so that readers may have already noticed a resonance with recurring themes and their climax in the rest of scripture.

The overlay goes like this:

Lesson 1: On a first day the light of the world would be overtaken by darkness. The first day of the first feast of the Jewish calendar was the Passover  – the very day the ‘light of the world” was extinguished according to the New Testament.

Lesson 2: On a second day following the first day there would be separation of the things on earth from the things in heaven.

Lesson 3: On a third day following the second day there would be a rising up and new life established. Evolutionary Biologists claim the Biblical sequence doesn’t agree with their derived sequence of evolution. First of all they are wrong to assume the Bible is claiming  a creation sequence according to the day sequence. It isn’t. Second they don’t realize the Bible is telling two stories at once.

Lesson 4: Points to a sinless man being wounded in the side in order to bring forth his spotless bride.

Lesson 5: God had planned and safeguarded a “Way” of reuniting mankind with the eternal life-giving spirit of God and that Way involved restoring in some way the innocence of mankind.

Lesson 6: The seventh day was named the day of God’s rest. Why was this significant? The Israelites were required to equate their Sabbath with the DAY OF GOD’S REST. After keeping this equation tens of thousands of times along came one of their own who claimed to be an incarnation of their God. Well, after allowing him to roam Jerusalem area for six days, they arranged his execution and laid him to rest, thinking that would invalidate his claim. Were they out of their minds to give him the fundamental hallmark of God by placing him at rest on the Sabbath? Were they for hundreds of years of faithful Sabbath keeping unwittingly pre-enacting that very event? The Bible gives no other option. Every kosher Jew still to this day unwittingly commemorates the day they put Jesus to rest as the day of God’s rest.

Lesson 7: A significant male descendant of Eve would be born of a woman. God would be the father. Satan would cause the son to suffer a foot injury. The son would be the one to defeat Satan.