The Creation Story (Genesis 1-3)

[Gen. 1:]

Day one: God creates the heavens and earth. At this point the earth is covered entirely by water, and God is moving over that water. Then he turns on the lights.

So far so good.

Day two: Oops - I already don't get this at all. God creates a firmament in the middle of the waters, dividing them. We're told this firmament is heaven - but God already created "the heavens" yesterday...? And since we're also told this firmament divides the waters, are we to understand that there is water on earth, and also water floating around in a void up above heaven?

(Note: Yes, we are, I have learned. That's where rain comes from. IE, through little holes in the firmament above us. Now tell me again, Mr. Ham, how it is that Genesis is to be interpreted literally as a scientific account of the development of the world?)

Day three: The waters (the ones below the firmament) are bunched up, causing solid earth to appear. Plants grow.

Day four: God sets up the sun, moon, and stars, and arranges the system of changing seasons. Question: if we've only now got the sun, where was the light coming from that God created back on day one?

Day five: God creates fish, birds, and sea monsters. No kidding, folks. Sea monsters.

Day six: Now he works up all the land animals - cattle and "everything that creeps upon the ground." Plus men and women - plural, mind you - men and women are created in God's image on day six to rule over the plants, fish, birds, cattle, and creeping things (although not, apparently, the sea monsters).

The men and women (plural) are told to be fruitful and multiply. And, one can only imagine, to watch out for sea monsters.

[Gen. 2:]

Day seven: God rests.

[A point of curiosity here. What's god up to on day eight? Compared to days one through six, day eight sounds like a vacation day to me as well. I mean, did he set off framing some other universe at that point? To me, it sounds like all earthly history after day six has been more or less a sabbath from god's point of view.]


...And now, the creation of humans, take two.

Looks like God actually creates just one man, and he does so "[i]n the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth..." Which could either mean day one or day two. If it was day one, the poor guy had to spend a day in the sea. If it was day two, he still has to go a full day without food, since he was created the day before plants....

God forms this man from dust, breathing life into his nostrils, and sets him up in a garden called Eden. The reader may have heard of this part before.

Some geography is provided: there are two trees in the garden - the Tree of Life, and the incredibly-weirdly-named Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. A river flows out of Eden and forks into four branches: Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates. I don't know about those first two rivers, but if the Tigris and Euphrates are anywhere near Eden, that sure would put a damper on the Mormon contention that Eden was located in Missouri.

God tells the man - as yet unnamed - not to eat from the tree with the crazy name, or "in the day that you eat of it you shall die." God also says the man's going to need a helper (for help with what?), and thus brings around all the animals and lets the man name them. None of the animals really seems like it's going to work out as a helper. So, God puts the man to sleep, extracts a rib, and makes a woman out of the rib.

[Gen. 3:]

A serpent comes round to the woman - as yet unnamed - and has an interesting conversation with her. She tells the serpent what God had told the man: that if he eats from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, he will die that very day. The serpent says, nah, you won't die if you eat from it. What will actually happen - in view of the tree's name and all - is that you will receive knowledge of good and evil.

Note careully: it's the snake who is telling the truth; it's God who is lying. Because the man and woman do go on to eat from the tree, of course - and they don't die that very day, and they do receive the knowledge the serpent said they would.

Now, "knowledge of good and evil" apparently consists principally in an urgent desire for clothing, because after eating the fruit, the man and woman become embarrassed over their nakedness, sew some fig leaves into a pair of aprons, and hide from God, who comes wandering through the garden that day in the cool of the evening.

This not-omnipresent and not-omniscient God gets the man and woman to confess to eating the fruit (their new pair of fig-leaf aprons tips him off that something's amiss) and wreaks his vengeance by: eliminating the serpent's legs, causing childbirth forever after to be painful, and making agriculture henceforward difficult.

Adam - as he's suddenly being called now - takes this opportunity to name the woman Eve.

Then God lets us in on some of his thinking. It isn't very reassuring. "Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil," God says. (You fans of monotheism out there, note the creepy use of "us".) "And now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever -" God trails off. But consistently with a gnostic interpretation, his chief interest appears to be in holding man down: he expels Adam and Eve from Eden just to make sure they can't get at that fruit of the Tree of Life.

Cherubim are stationed east of Eden to guard against Adam and Eve's reentry. As a further precaution - drawn seemingly from an Asian martial-arts movie - a flaming sword is set in place flying loops around the Tree of Life to keep anybody from getting close.

Where all this stuff went in the 6000 years that have passed since, one can only wonder. After all, if there were a tree guarded by a flaming sword and a gang of baby-angels somewhere in Missouri, it seems almost certain that there would be a story about it in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

But when I search their website for "flaming sword", all I get is a two-year-old movie review.