Conflicted Creation

Continuing on with the wonkiness of Creation, let's skip ahead to Day 6.

"And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.  And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind; and God saw that it was good.  And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over the all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." - Genesis 1:24-26

Okay, so again fairly straightforward.  God creates man in his image and plunks him at the top of the food chain.  This must be Adam of Eden fame, the one whose rib/wife took the advice of a talking snake and got us all cursed.

But wait ...

"And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him: male and female created he them." - Genesis 1:27

Wait.  What?  God makes man and woman at the same time?  So women aren't the spawn of man's bony bits?  This is kind of a big detail here, Bible.  This is explicitly stating that men and women were created equal!  No wife-subjugation for you!

Oh wait, this is promptly forgotten in Chapter 2.  Thanks, Bible.

Genesis 2 is the Adam and Eve story.  God makes Adam out of dust and sticks a soul into his nostrils, then plunks him in Eden with two trees he's not allowed to touch in the middle.  This the Biblical equivalent to making a Sim and then giving him a swimming pool with no ladder.  Adam complains that he's lonely, and God makes one of his ribs into a woman to keep him company.

But what happened to the man and woman who were created as equals in Genesis 1?  In fact, God says he'll let "them" have dominion over all the other animals, implying multiple people.  This makes sense when you consider that there are suddenly a bunch more people later on in Genesis 4.  But no, Genesis 2 makes it quite clear Adam was the first:

"And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew; for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.  But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.  And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." - Genesis 2:5-7.

That's Adam being created there.  After those other people have already been created.

I'm not really surprised by this, honestly.  Pretty much every ancient culture has a multitude of contradicting creation myths.  Stories change as they pass through generations with nobody to write down a hard copy, and with no mass communication, different groups living in different places, though technically members of the same religion, develop different myths.  Depending where you were in ancient Egypt, for example, you might believe that the earth was called into being by the craftsman god Ptah, or you might believe that it was pretty much ejaculated into being by Atum.  Considering what contemporary cultures were coming up with, the inconsistency in this ancient Jewish story isn't that bad.

Except that there are NO CONTRADICTIONS IN THE WORD OF GOD, right Bible?  Right.




As a side note, there's a medieval folktale that kind of bridges the two stories.  Though not Biblical by any means, a popular Jewish legend says that Eve was Adam's second wife, and that she was created to compensate his poor, bruised ego after the first ran away with an archangel.

Adam's first wife, created to be his equal, was Lilith.  Lilith, history's first feminist, refused to lie under Adam while they had sex.  Adam's pride just couldn't take the idea of having a woman on top, and so Lilith packed her bags and ran off to have a fling with Samael, God's naughtiest angel.  Samael is the angel of death in Jewish tradition; he basically exists to cause trouble and draw people to the Dark Side of the Force.  So yeah, this is pretty much the folkloric equivalent of dumping the jock to run away with the motorcycle-riding, chain-smoking bad boy.  Lilith refused to return to Eden, choosing to appear in approximately umpteen billion 20th century vampire stories instead.

Let There Be Light ... Again?

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.

Even if you've lived under a rock for the past few centuries, you're probably familiar with that first line of the Bible.  You probably also know that the first chapter of Genesis is about God creating the entire universe in under a week, which is impressive when you consider that most creation stories involve multiple gods and unfathomable stretches of time.  Maybe its the fact that God was working alone that causes things to get a little, well ... wonky.

"And God said, Let there be light; and there was light.  And God saw the light, that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness, and God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.  And the evening and the morning were the first day." - Genesis 1:3-5

Pretty straightforward.  On the first day, God makes light and darkness, night and day.  After all, if he wants to get everything done in seven days, creating the concept of a day is a good place to start.  But wait, on Day 4 ...

"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.  And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made stars also.  And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.  And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good." - Genesis 1:14-18.

... he makes the day and night again?  Well, he makes the sun and moon, which I suppose might not have been there before (though exactly what was making the light before the sun and stars?  A giant, holy light bulb?  God's divine patio lanterns?) but then it specifically says he made the lights to divide the day from the night, the light from the darkness.

But this is Day 4. Days and nights have already existed for, well, four days.  Specifically, four "evenings" and "mornings" have passed, with light and darkness already created and separated on Day 1.  To be fair, most people would probably make a few doubles if they had to create the entire universe out of nothing (why else would there be 8000 different species of ants?), but day and night?  You'd think that one would be fairly obvious.

More Genesis shenanigans to come.