Genesis 1 & 2 Paraphrased, with Commentary

Clearly, and profoundly, this first scripture says there was a beginning. Without it was nothing. Time did not exist. Space did not exist. There were no dimensions or boundaries, nor even the lack of such. Existence, or nonexistence, was not an issue or a question, until the Creator chose to have a beginning, to make it so. We cannot even correctly say “until then”, unless we believe what this scripture requires: a pre-existent, or self-existent, God. For before the beginning, there was none of the stuff that gives definition and purpose to our universe. No matter, no energy, no electrical charge, no magnetic force, no gravity, no atomic forces or photons, nor any rules or laws to govern all these things. Few scientists can disagree with this.

Yet, in the beginning, all those things that now exist, ourselves and our universe, had to be created. This requires, I believe and this scripture tells us, even pure potentiality (which scientists generally now call a “singularity”) must have a cause for becoming actuality.

In the beginning God created, “created from out of nothing”, says the Hebrew verb. This was written down thousands of years before anyone knew there was such a thing as a beginning, before anyone could prove that it started from nothing but promise (singularity), before anyone could calculate that it happened in an instant, before anyone conceived there was an event which some now call the Big Bang.

Ten billion years, perhaps, passed before this second chapter of our creation story began. The Scripture doesn't say, but a lot of modern science does so attest. The universe expanded and cooled and formed into a trillion galaxies, each with billions of suns and uncountable planets. The earth had formed, and the elements from which life would be assembled were ready, forged in the cauldrons of countless stars and galaxies before it. While other stars and other suns, and perhaps even ours, burned brightly throughout the vast reaches, as yet none of the light which life here would require had reached its surface.

In the ancient Hebrew world a name revealed purpose and meaning, history and future. Naming something reflects “knowing” it in the deepest sense, and identifying its reason for being. Naming the lighted side of earth, “day”, and the dark side “night”, God is declaring them as something with purposes in and of themselves.

The Creator who was the source of both the potentiality and design within the singularity, and Who caused it to burst forth, in the beginning, designed His first stage of our creation, and He was satisfied with it, seeing it manifesting perfectly. It may not have been done, but He sees the end from the beginning, and knew it was fully going exactly what He purposed.

A sky was formed, with clouds above the seas. Earth's atmosphere, its water blue color, and its canopy of clouds, is unique as far as we can see. Every other planetary body and moon we can see, today, now lack that firmament, and that cloud cover, and those liquid waters on the surface.

This “firmament, with waters above and waters below (and circulating between) are far more than mere cosmetics. Earth's atmosphere has long sheltered and shaped our planet, helping make it among the most habitable places we can imagine. The engines of our climate are formed and driven by those elements, the sun, the sky, the water above, and the water below, which have now been accounted for. Those elements, especially “the waters above” which form the cloud cover and rainfall cycles, distribute essential energy and chemistry around the globe, creating the substance of which living things are made, and the environmental niches in which they live while they also protect the planet surface from too much radiation and heat and debris from outside.

There is something, here, which we all might pause to consider. We started with a Big Bang and the creation of a great universe, something few people, if anyone, could have suspected existed or happened, at the time this account was written down. We next see the arrival of light, not as something that existed all the time, but that came eventually. This is not something any other “creation myth” or religion or science got right. Then we are told, not of the arrival of gods or men, but of the creation of the next prerequisite a planet that would harbor life, the basic elements of our climate, the meteorological and hydrologic cycles. Each of these things reflect a knowledge or wisdom that we, ourselves, have only recently acquired. Read the science texts of a century or two ago.

As the verse concludes, as quoted below, God looks closely at these things. He inspects as an engineer or builder inspects the ongoing construction of a building he's designed, to see if it is indeed following His design and going in the direction He has planned, and will serve the intentions He has for it. And He is pleased: “it is all that He has planned, it is going exactly as required.”

The language of the Hebrew is very interesting, here. It stresses that we (or someone) must patiently watch for something to happen that is not going to just happen “all of a sudden”. And it tells us very clearly what it is that is going to happen. The shallow sea that now covers the globe is going to begin to retreat, it is going to be displaced by the rising of a landmass. A continent is going to rise up from the seabed.

Now you may not realize it, but this brief scenario has some very surprising details, especially for something written some 3500 years ago! Even then, they were aware of more than one land mass. And only recently have scientists come to believe that there was originally but a single continent arisen out of the waters. And its barely forty years since science has accepted the theory of plate tectonics, which not only gives support to the theory of the single ancient continent, but explains how and why it would eventually break up into parts that would drift apart into the land masses that we have today.

It tells us that whole process will be very slow, not fast, not in a day, not as one might expect if this were just a “creation myth” invented to impress the crowds with the power and might of a god. This is a detail that both reflects both scientific theories and evidence.

We are also told that the water shall continue to remain a single contiguous sea, while that continent, that one landmass, appears. The shallow sea that first covered all the earth will slowly gather into one place, forming an ocean - as it does today. Except for the lakes and rivers formed more recently by the hydrologic cycle of our climate, all our oceans are still only one sea. That, too, flew in the face of all sensible knowledge and science, even beyond the days that Columbus sailed toward America!

Genesis 1:11 And God said, “Let the earth now turn green with plant life; first the simple plants, algae and mosses, lichen and ferns; then the more complex plants, herbs and grasses and other plants that produce and scatter seed; then the trees and vines and plants that each produce fruits, fruits that each carry within themselves the seed of its own kind. And it came to be, just that way.

Life began on the land with simple plants. Simple, single-cell plants, but ever so complex. They were all that life had to be! Algae first, then mosses, then ferns, each in their time spread across the land as the plan of creation unfolded. The dry land was turning green.

Next came the higher plants, plants that began the extraordinarily powerful reproductive mechanism of seed. These were grasses and herbs, and in time came conifers, and finally flowers. Last to come were the fruit-producing plants which nurtured their seed, fruiting trees and bushes and vines, each appearing according to the plans and purposes of the Creator.

Genesis 1:12 And the earth developed its plant life in just that order: first the simpler algae and mosses and ferns; then the higher kinds that reproduced and maintained their own kinds by seeds; then the woody plants, trees and shrubs and vines, that bore fruit whose seed was carried within it, which seed also perpetuated and maintained their kinds. God watched this closely and was satisfied it was going exactly as it should.

The plants appearing first were single cells. These are not simple, but gloriously complex living systems, and they were soon turning the marshes and soils green. Pond scums were immense colonies of algae, building an organic base for all kinds of life in the future. In time, there were mosses and ferns and many others filling the earth, needing less water and reaching further and further across the land. Eons of time passed, perhaps, before the more complex forms of seed-bearing plants were created. Hardy, capable of great adaptation and needing even less water, they moved into new niches, and themselves providing even more new niches, especially suited for the animal life concurrently being created. Last in time, and in the order of the plants appearances on earth, came the fruit-bearing plants. Even more perfectly designed and adapted to pioneering more of the landscape, they also provided marvelous food sources for the coming animal life, even ourselves.

Within seeds lay the greater creative, yet conserving, power of sexual reproduction and genetic programming. Recombinant DNA gave the ultimate in flexibility and adaptability to each kind of seed-bearing plant. Were the kinds, which the scriptures describe, species? Not likely. Perhaps they are genera, but more likely they are families (in modern taxonomy, these are similar or related collections of genera, which are themselves collectivities of species), for the conservative proscription “after their kind” is only spoken of at higher taxa of the creation.

Genesis 1:14 And God ordained, “Let the lights of the universe appear in the earth's sky, to distinguish and make special the nighttime, as opposed to the daytime. Let them come to be used as signs and beacons, telling of miracles and coming holidays, and be seen for omens of solemn or significant events, and as markers for the passage of time and the ages.”

Throughout the vast reaches of the universe are the pinpricks of light coming from our neighboring planets and suns, and from other galaxies near and far. Some still obscured, some still just coming into clear view, we are told that they are not randomly scattered lights in our sky. Even scattered without pattern they could be a delight and a wonder, but the Creator intended them to make patterns and appear at special moments so that they might capture our attention, when once we dwell here, to evoke our imaginations and memories and speculations. Every day has enough work and blessings and things of interest for our appreciation. Now the night shall have its own special attractions, and contribute significantly to our lives. All the universe has been so designed (Not all that much unlike what we do for our own children in their nurseries!).

Genesis 1:20 And God said, “Let the shallow and marshy waters, swarm with life. Let them be filled with creatures, tiny and small but large with vitality and activity. Let the waters become a joyful community, a multitude of living willful creatures. And let there be creatures with wings, that might fly away through the open sky and across the land.

God said, “Let the ponds and marshes and lakes, across the land and along the coasts, be filled, teeming with life - lively, vital creatures, animate and filled with appetites and willful behaviors.” The language, as is usually the case, encompasses a large class of animate life. It could be single-cell, small multi-cellular, and even more complex creatures. The brief description encompassed in the language of but one verse is not altogether clear. But it does spell out several limitations on are included. First, they are small. These are the lower taxonomic orders, the bacteria, amoebae, protozoa, and such, on up to the insects. But they all share in the attributes of animal life which plants do not: they have free wills and appetites, and they have the ability to chase after life and inhabit every corner of this earth. Motion, purpose, that idea of swarming, teeming, a horde of busy beasties, brings to the mind's eye what we always see looking at a fertile pond in the summertime, or even a microscope view of any drop of fresh pond or ocean water.

The second part of the verse, that traditional interpretations have missed, “let there be insects that can leave the waters, and having wings, take to the air and fly, spreading out and across the land” is one of the most important of the creation account's scientific particulars. Even without our modern scientific perspective and beliefs about the time and place that insects began (and, most certainly, birds too) the language here, and the language that follows in the next verse, makes it very clear we are dealing with insects, not birds. This correction, and placement of insects here in the scheme and order of creation, reveals a whole passel of details an ancient could not have known, and that science has only recently learned.

The Hebrew language says “Let, or have, the waters be filled with, teem with, or swarm with little creatures”, but it does not say that the water itself should create or produce that life. The difference is crucial. It is almost the difference between what the Bible claims, and most Evolutionists, not to mention a few modern minimalist theologians.

And something else needs be noted, here. None of this life, these “lower” taxa of animals, are attributed with the quality of surviving, existing, or reproducing themselves as “a kind” or “after their kind”. That, which I have discussed elsewhere, appears to say they are not designed with a particularly conservative or constraining genetic code. These are creatures that can multiply their species and genera and so forth, freely. They can, it seems, climb, descend, or create whole new taxa; they might even be free to “evolve”, whatever that means. Albert Einstein once said “God does not play dice with the universe”, but it might be that He does allow a certain freedom or chance to play in His universe. If that is so, then He is telling where, here.

Genesis 1:21 God himself created the great and fearsome dinosaurs, every one of their many kinds; living, breathing families of animals that crept, or glided, or walked about on four limbs, coming forth in great abundance in the marshy watery landscape; even the many kinds that flew with feathered wings. He studied them each, and was fully satisfied with them.

To begin with, the Hebrew text uses a rare verb for “create”. Its only used three times in all the creation account: in verse 1, where the entire universe is created “ex nihilo”, from nothing, from that un-existing singularity, from that non-dimensional potential that in an instant became everything; here, with the creation of the first animal kinds that would have a long-time dominion over all the land; and again in a future verse, where mankind is created. That is certainly something worth taking note of. In order that you can, I've used “God himself created” each time that bara is used in the Hebrew.

That these creatures are the dinosaurs is barely questionable. The creatures, themselves, are designated by a word that variously stands for dragons, land monsters, and sea monsters. They are further described by a word that encompasses such ideas as fearsome, insolent, loud, intense, mighty, noble, haughty, and proud.

I, myself, had a hard time arriving at the right translation for the remainder of the verse because of my own preconceptions. Finally, however, I recognized that the verse goes on to say that there were many kinds (species and/or genera and/or families), which are largely characterized by the many types of movement and locomotion which they possessed. I was OK with that, but unprepared to accept the next: the “even the many kinds (dinosaurs?) that flew with feathered wings”. It is plain that we are talking about birds, here, and that they are expressly declared to be a kind of His own personal creation. That, as I noted about the previous verse, is an important apposition to the (much) earlier insects. But more importantly, in this verse we have an acknowledgement of one of the more scientifically significant issues - namely, that indeed birds are contemporaneous with, or shortly following after, the dinosaurs. And more important yet, it could well be that this verse indicates that birds are genetically (as within the kind) related to dinosaurs!

Science has long struggled with the “transition” from dinosaur to bird. Evolutionists have insisted that dinosaurs “evolved” into birds, however improbable that would seem, and paleontologists have continually searched for fossils to document it. This issue has become so important to Evolutionists' theology that several paleontologists have tried (usually with at least temporary success) to forge fossils appropriate for a “missing link”.

This dinosaur-to-birds thesis has been quite a leap even for many evolutionists. But as the fossil record has burgeoned with new species, and we've learned that all dinosaurs were not great and huge specimens (they more and more flourished in the later part of their era), more fossils have turned up that look to support the evolutionary hypothesis. But what hasn't worked for them has been the dating. Whatever fossils have fit into the transitional morphological scheme required have not fit very well into the timeline required. The birdlike creatures have consistently been too early, or too contemporaneous, to ever quite work as good “transitions”, or “missing links”.

At any rate, whatever the paleontologists eventually come up with, I doubt it will overturn or contradict this verse. It is not in apposition to a “dino to bird” theory. It does not conform to Evolutionist theology, as it expressly says that God himself created birds, but it actually does tell us we should expect to find that birds appeared within the dinosaur era, or closely following it, and it actually does strongly infer that birds are a type of dinosaur. That is one dynamite piece of information! What many scientists, themselves, once thought absurd has now become the more accepted theory. But what those scientists now tend to think wholly contradicts Creationist theory, actually is supported by a better translation of the scriptures. The Bible is not disproved, but instead shown to be 3500 years ahead of science.

Genesis 1:22 God was blessed by them and deemed that they should be very fruitful, multiplying greatly in numbers and types, and consecrated to them that era when the earth was covered in marshy lands and shallow seas; and deemed that birds should multiply and become very numerous, and continue in the earth.

This is another remarkable verse. Now that we understand we are dealing with dinosaurs and birds, we can better appreciate the nuances of the particular language used in the Hebrew, and realize that this verse is no mere throwaway. I find it very interesting that we are told that God loved these creatures and wanted them to proliferate and prosper, even for a long season. That would be remarkable enough, by itself, but even more so, I think, is its declaration that the birds would also proliferate and prosper, and that they “would continue” in the earth. With the advantage of our modern paleontological hindsight, it seems verse 22 clearly says that the dinosaur era would eventually end, but the birds would not, they would continue on into our times.

This is a piece of earth's prehistory that should have been unknowable, even unimaginable, to the scribe who originally wrote this down some 3500 years ago. But look. Look at all the details it includes. It doesn't just mention the dinosaurs, but gives indications about such things as their incredible number of kinds and species, that they were so prolific that they dominated the fauna (so much so that we call it the “age of dinosaurs”), that the age of the dinosaurs was a very wet period, and that there were also winged, feathered creatures in that era that may well have actually been dinosaurs!

That information, alone, should cause any open-minded reader to take notice, and consider the scriptures with some respect. What it says about the birds - that they were contemporaries of the dinosaur era, that they might even be versions of dinosaurs - is even more remarkable, I think. That addresses two of the most recent scientific theories. And whichever the birds are, merely contemporaries or actually versions of dinosaurs, the fact that the Bible starts with that, and essentially foretells the end of the dinosaur era, but the continuance of the birds - well, if you're not impressed you're just too close-minded.

As the land became drier, and the dinosaurs' time ended, this verse tells us that the next set of creation had a real future-looking purpose to it. While not necessarily limited to, I believe these are the mammals which are now being established. They are mostly dry land creatures, mostly four-footed grazers that eat plants, and the usually swifter, more vital, predators.

There is an emphasis, here, that each and every one of these higher kinds of animals were fashioned and designed by the Creator, and constrained (yet endowed with the great adaptability of sexual/recombinant reproduction) genetically. There is also, in the Hebrew here, a very real connotation of some greater purpose. It suggests, at least, that both the “beasts of the field”, the grazers and browsers, and the swifter predators, were integrated parts of the plan, fashioned and designed by His own hand. It is important scientifically, and it is important theologically, that the whole ecology - including the predators - was His creation.

Some would deny that death of any sort existed before the fall of Adam and Eve. That cannot be, for many reasons explored elsewhere, in any kind of living system. Anything that is “animal” - by design - cannot produce its own food as do the plants, and must eat either plants or animals. Anything eaten must necessarily die. So it is significant that both verses 24 and 25 appear to make the point that there are two types of beasts created here, and one I believe is predators. Part of the distinction amongst the types is made by reference, in the Hebrew, to the style or swiftness of the animals' locomotion, which distinction is even stressed more in the next verse.

Genesis 1:26 And God said, “Let us fashion mankind in our image and semblance, and to be like us in manner. And cause them to have dominion over the fish of the sea, over all the creatures that fly in the air, over every one of the grazing beasts throughout the earth, and over all the predators and their prey, fast and slow, everywhere in the earth.

This verse is about the purpose, the plan, the design and intent, for a new kind, this mankind of creatures which God wants to make. The mankind are not created here, but designed and fashioned, and their role and position in the earth's ecology, and their inner nature and behavior and purpose, are proposed. And the Creator, Himself, is the reference. This mankind is but one step below the Creator Himself, and is to have an innate drive to “be like Him” as part of the design.

Well, the subject is mankind. In scientific terminology, it is the hominids that are being created. They were not created, but only “designed” in verse 26. There, the Hebrew word which has usually been translated as “make” or “create”, is better translated as “fashion” or “design”, or even as “commission”. We can see, therefore, that verse 26 only informs us about what will be the most significant features of this new kind. It says, “Let us fashion (or design) this human kind in our own image, in semblance to our own form and appearance, and with a desire to be like us.” (Compare how the Apostle Paul says men and women “who are back on track” - my phraseology - and once again living as the Creator desires and purposed, who have been “born again”, are to be “imitators of Christ”, desiring to be like the Creator.)

Verse 26 also tells us that God intends to firmly and precisely position this new kind into the existing order of life, into the ecosystem that He has already assembled. He intends they be at the top of the system. They are to be the alpha kind, the lords of all they survey. They are to have dominion over all other creatures - or at least over all the greater kinds, all the higher taxa. That much is spelled out and explicit. Regarding the lower taxa of animals and plants, such as the first-created algae, and bacteria, and insects, etc., this verse is not clear or explicit.

It is in verse 27 that the actual creation of this new human kind is recorded. But note how detailed, how insistent it is. Three times it says bara-created. Is it merely being repetitive? Definitely not. It is spelling out some details we should assume the Author really wants us to know.

First, it says God himself created the whole mankind. That kind is, as I've already noted, probably equal to what scientists call “hominids”, the taxon that includes all the known races, and the many recognized fossil and archeological species such as Neanderthals, Cro-Magnons, etc.

Third, it says that God himself created the females of that kind. Now, this is the only time the creation account mentions both sexes, let alone bara-creates them. Although all the higher taxa of plants and animals have males and females, and utilize sexual reproduction, and are often socially organized along sexual lines, they are never mentioned or singled out. It would seem obvious that a significant point is being made. My take is that we are being pointedly told that both sexes were created at the same time, as part and parcel of a complete and biologically viable population, the hominid kind. God did not just create males, or a male, as many interpreters seem to think. He created, here, the whole kind, males and females concurrently and equally.

If this be true - and I think it is difficult to see it any other way, given the original language - it dramatically contradicts a number traditional ideas and interpretations. It certainly went against the grain of most contemporary (ca 2500 B.C.) societal norms and beliefs. It also goes against the traditional interpretation we still generally use today, of Genesis 2:21 and 22, where Eve makes her appearance. As we will see, it also leads to some very reasonable answers to a number of other questions - mysteries if you will - about early mankind in the Bible. Finally, it also reveals and sustains much greater consistency between the biblical creation account and modern scientific knowledge.

As we all know, biology, genetics, ecology, archeology, and paleontology have all raised serious challenges to the Biblical creation record, especially with regard to human history and origins. With the interpretations offered here, those contradictions disappear. The creation account of Genesis looks much like today's textbooks, though it was written a long time ago.

Genesis 1:28 And God was blessed by them. And thus God declared that they should be fruitful, multiplying greatly in numbers and types and fill all the earth, bringing into their service, and having dominion over, the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and every living animal that moves upon the face of the earth.

The language is clear, and overall intent is clear, but there is an intriguing detail worth further research. The fruit of a tree that carries the seed of that same tree is food. But are there trees (or bushes or vines) which bear “fruit” or fruit-like things that are not truly seed-bearing or seed-nourishing fruit, should they not be eaten? Are they not healthy food? Is there a warning, or detail, that would remove some, say, “false” fruits or berries from our diet?

Second, it indicates that category of land based (usually quadruped) animals I earlier interpreted as the “grazing beasts that walk”, or prey animals, as opposed to predators. The language I interpreted as referring to predators is not included here. That certainly supports my earlier interpretation.

Interestingly, it is obvious that Verses 1, 2, and 3 actually complete the account of the creation, irregardless of the fact that the original (ca. 1552 AD, remember) division of the text into chapter and verse elected to put them in to the next chapter, Genesis 2. They sum it up, and tell us how satisfied and blessed God was by what He'd done. Six periods of initial design and creation, launching the course of the earth's natural history which is to run for all the millennia ahead, and then He stopped. It was done. All was planned, all was seeded, all was designed for His own immense satisfaction. Certain, as only God can be, that it was finished and would hence proceed as intended, He then consecrated (set apart) a seventh period in time strictly for the sheer pleasure of watching it go.

While verses 2:1 through 2:3 seem clearly a part of the account given in Chapter One, exactly where the next three verses, 2:4 through 2:6, should go is a little less certain. And it might be important, for it can both reflect and influence how we read and understand both chapters. They have actually been at the heart of much debate. Some, who would like to debunk the Bible, suggest they contradict Genesis 1, and show that there are actually two creation accounts which are not consistent with each other. Others see them as proving that Genesis 1 should not be taken as a strictly chronological and ordered record, but somewhat reordered to stress topics over chronology, and that this adds to the argument that yowm are not 24 hour days. I'm sympathetic to that argument, but not wholly in agreement, for (as usual) I think some misinterpretation underlies the arguments on all sides.

I believe the best argument is that 2:4 through 2:6 might also be placed in chapter 1, as a final commentary. Remember that the Scriptures were most often taught orally, using the text as a mnemonic prompt. The change in voice (from the “God” to the “Our Lord God”) takes place here, as the Scripture of verse 2:3 says Elohym (“God”) finished the creation, and verse 2:4 begins the use of Yaweh Elohiym (The Lord God) as it sums up what has just been told, using language that says, “That God who is our Lord” did these things!

But there is much more of interest, here. First, those three verses recap the physical creation of our world, while the rest of Genesis 2 deals more with the relational and spiritual creation of Adam and Eve and us. Second, and perhaps more importantly, those three verses add some very interesting clues as to the history of the creation and how and why we can believe it in fact and in detail. I'll point out the differences as the paraphrase proceeds.

It seems clear that these verses are saying, “This is what I've just told you about”. The recap of that history, just narrated, is sparse and very selective as it points out things that children especially, but really all listeners would be most interested in: beginning with the bara creation of all existence in Genesis 1, it reminds them that this history includes a time before there was any kind of life at all, especially those things they all so much depended upon for their lives, the plants, the stuff of their gardens, and the stuff that made up the Eden in which they began their own history with their God. It emphasizes the fact that the plants weren't just a given, they didn't just come with the landscape, but were later created by the Lord God with the purpose of provision in mind.

But there's one more thing here we really must not overlook. It's about the rain. The fifth verse makes a point, with language in the Hebrew emphasizing causal linkage, that there was a time before there was even water (not just rain) for the plants. The earth was at one time dry, for the Lord had not yet caused water to rain upon the earth. The Scripture does not say the “fields” or “soils” or “dry land” as it did in the first portions of the verse (and it makes this same distinction again in the sixth). It uses the simple designation, the earth. Does that matter? Well, while we must not let science or scientific theory dictate our read of Scripture, we can use it to increase our understanding and appreciation, as well as look to science with an apologetic eye, to wit: “Does science, as it approaches truth, line up with and help make even better sense of those questions we have of Scripture?”

Here it does. For a long time scientists thought the earth came equipped with it's enormous blessing of water. But in the past decade or two a new theory emerged that seemed a better fit with the evidence. At first it was unpopular, but now it has been very widely accepted. This theory says that the earth was first dry, then it was filled with water by eons of a cosmic rain: a continuing rain of comets and comet-like debris that is mostly ice, mostly water (which rain continues today). Our earth was blessed with a great rain of water at a time when its temperature and atmosphere and relationship with the sun was favorable to keeping the water, not just freezing it or boiling it away again, as other planets have done. And our world is what it is today because of that history.

How does that line up with Scripture? Does it not contradict Genesis 1:2? Atheistic critics thought it did, they said it exposed just another glaring fallacy. But does it? Not at all! First, as I've said before, eons passed between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, eons that encompass a dry planet that was then rained upon until it was covered in water. Then the narration in Genesis 1:2 takes over. Here, in Genesis 2:5, is some strong confirmation of that. Genesis 2:5 says there was a time when there was no water to even sustain plants, for the Lord had not yet had a rain fall upon the earth. But obviously He did, in time, as the next verse explains.

Genesis 2:19 Now the Lord God had, with intent and purpose, fashioned out of the substance of the earth every animal that lived in the land and every creature that flew in the air. Now He brought each of them to the man (Adam) to study and discern the purpose for which they were intended, and what he would say about them. And whatever the man (Adam) could proclaim about the nature of the creature, that became the animal's name thereafter.

It begins by reminding us that God had created every animal that walked or flew across the land, in like fashion, out of the minerals of the earth, and to a greater purpose and plan which only He knew. This is not another creation account, as some would have us think, but a parenthetical reminder that He had already created every bit of it, and all for a far-reaching purpose.

Now He brings each species to Adam's attention, for his study and enlightenment. Naming a thing, anything, in the Hebrew culture was a profound and discerning process. A name was to reflect history, purpose, significance, and even its future. If a zoologist or paleontologist, nowadays names a new species or fossil of a species, the name is generally designed to indicate exactly theses sorts of things. The name may indicate geographical origins, genealogy, lifestyle, the situation it was found in, the person who discovered it. This is not too different from the way scientists name fossils and species, today. Though sometimes a name may be somewhat more whimsical, the scientific community would prefer a species or fossil's name be a serious and informative label. The Hebrew people took this to the extreme. I would think that if God were your overseer or mentor, this naming thing would have been a far more serious affair than it would be even for a professor or one's professional peers. I make this point for the purpose of dispelling the notion that the Man (Adam) was doing something simple, or even rather nonsensical in this verse. This was an exercise in education, one that would make a university doctoral program, or the education of a young man in a hunter-gatherer tribe, pale by comparison. It had natural, and spiritual, dimensions!

Here, before Adam was to be blessed with a wife, and a family man's responsibility, he was called (if not even tested) to know and understand all the creatures over which he was being given dominion. As to the specific problem of finding a mate (a “proper partner”) Adam would also, in the process, see each of the hominid species, including his own, and have to know in the profoundest sense what they were for, and what they were not for. Adam apparently needed to discern the difference between himself and even the females of his own race. That he did well, in this regard, is revealed in the next verse when we are told that there wasn't an appropriate “bride” to be found in any of them.

The commentary for the previous verse should suffice as a commentary for this as well. But notice this, all creatures of the sea are rather obviously excluded, and all the lowest taxa of things such as bacteria, etc., and possibly the insects, are excluded. And its not really clear whether plants (they could be the intent of “to every living thing on the land”) are included in this “study and determine a proper name” exercise.

The lexical and linguistic choices the Hebrew scribe made, in these two verse, seem very consistent and purposeful. Our interpretation is much more consistent with the Hebrew, and much more consistent with both the context and the logic of the creation record, but it upsets a long tradition in Christian culture. It eliminates a traditional “story” - a story about Adam and Eve, and Eve's rather magical formation. I say “magical” rather than “miraculous”, very deliberately. The entire creation is “miraculous” in the sense of “supernatural” and outside of our observations and understanding of natural laws, but Eve being derived from a rib of Adam is a totally different genre of fabrication or creation. This different genre is completely inconsistent with the rest of the Biblical account. In spite of that, the traditional story has held enough sway, for many centuries, to make bad linguists, and bad scientists and anatomists and biologists, out of many Bible translators and scholars. It has even persuaded many Christians to believe that men have one more rib than women. They are shocked to learn they are wrong.

This new translation reinforces, if not proves, our earlier assertion that Genesis 1 does indeed say that God created the hominid kind as a collection of viable species, in the same time frame, and not just a single male of the species at a later date. It substantiates the assertion, made above, that Genesis 2 is not a second version or repeat of the creation account, but a record of God developing His relationship with mankind. It reinforces our understanding that “Adam” was a certain man chosen, in much the same way Abram was, and much the same way as the Jews were, and that this chosen Man, this Adam, was made holy and set apart to begin God's people, who are today's Homo sapiens. And this translation continues that same understanding by showing that “Eve” was also so chosen and made holy and set apart to begin God's people as Adam's wife (and not merely “mate”). Later, she will be referred to as “the mother of all (spiritually) living”.

A few examples: who was Cain afraid of when exiled from his family; where did the wives of Adam and Eve's sons come from; who built the cities and formed the peoples of those early expansionist days following Cain's exile; who were the “daughters of Men” (not just “men”, but Adam's descendants) whom the sons (not Sons) of God took for wives while begetting the Nephilim; why were Adam and Eve “embarrassed” or “ashamed” when they merely “saw” their nakedness; why and how did they know to design and sew (a complex skill) “aprons” to cover and correct their nakedness?

Finally, this new interpretation ends long-standing (even embarrassing) contradictions between a presumed biblical prehistory and the prehistory increasingly documented by archeological and paleontological findings, and between a presumed biblical account of the origins of human beings and the burgeoning data of genetic and biological and anatomical and other life sciences that say otherwise.

“Bone of my bone” is a Jewish idiom that expresses kinship, appropriate common Jewish-ness, and clan or tribal affinity. Rather than saying he realized this woman was part of his own meat and bone, Adam is acknowledging she is human, probably from his own descent group, and appropriately just like himself in that she too had been indwelt by God's spirit and sanctified and separated into that holy place, the Garden in Eden.

Here, the institution of marriage is being defined and established. The pronouncement that henceforth a man should be separated away from his parents (and presumably siblings) and united in an exclusive sexual relationship implies (1) that prior to this moment sexual relationships were not exclusive, and (2) that coupling and mating was more communal, and (3) that men did not usually leave the household of their parents to establish new nuclear families. Which, of course, only makes sense if a man (Adam included) had parents.

They sleep in wide hammocks made of a soft cord knotted into a fabric much like the netting of a basketball net. Usually a couple and their latest nursing child sleep in one hammock at one end of the shelter. The rest of their children sleep two or three to a hammock, and the woman's parents share another - sometimes with another of the smaller children - all at the other end of the shelter.

Other material possessions commonly consist of a few conical baskets, which all females use in gathering roots and fruits and berries from the surrounding jungle, and short spears and blowguns for darts which are used by the men to hunt monkeys, birds, and small mammals. They have a small toolkit of obsidian lanceolate blades serving as knives and axes, and obsidian slivers used as awls, drills, and needles. They have no pottery. They cook food wrapped in large leaves. They use a small bow drill to start fire, though they go to great pains to never let their hearth extinguish.

They wear some simple jewelry: necklaces and bracelets and occasionally a waistband strung with teeth and carved bone and seedpods. They tattoo their faces and upper arms with small geometric designs, using ashes to set blue ink prepared from flowers of an acacia-like tree. Their only clothing consists of small aprons, about twelve by eighteen inches, made of several shredded leaves, which are worn by the women, and a short loincloth of similar materials tied up about the groin of the men. Children are naked until they are initiated into adulthood, at about the age of twelve for the girls and fourteen for the boys.

Children are raised by everyone, though the biological mother and her present adult male partner are considered more responsible for education and discipline than others. The children play at everything but are still required to participate in all the labors involved in food gathering and preparation, the making of their few possessions, etc. They learn these skills eagerly as mastery of such things brings social recognition and the greatest license to sexual favors from each other.

Sexuality is openly talked about and the subject of frivolity and boasting, but the sexual acts themselves are expected to take place privately in the bush or discretely at night in the hammocks. In fact, the small modesty afforded by their simple garments is most zealously protected. Even accidental exposure of one's privates is cause for great embarrassment.

What we would call marriage is barely recognized. Affection or preference between two adults is all that is required for a couple to take up residence together and share domestic life, with no formal ceremony. They simply agree to agree, you might say. At any time they choose they can end the cohabitation, though there is some pressure brought to bear by the affected parents and children to get them to stay together - at least so long as the bickering does not get too unpleasant. Social opinion is important, but not worth a serious argument, in the villagers' estimation.

This passage, a brief fictional ethnography, is something many anthropologists and missionaries might recognize as describing the place where they went to work and study. It could serve to describe peoples in South America, Polynesia, and many tropical lands. It is also describes what I imagine as I try to envision the life and times of Eden, and the history of Adam and Eve. The verses of Genesis 2:21 - 29, and of Genesis 3 and of Genesis 4, and even many passages later in Genesis, make a lot of sense in a social setting such as this. Few questions remain if we accept this was indeed the setting of the beginning of our history as God's chosen.

When the forbidden fruit was eaten, Adam and Eve lost their holy sanctification. They were immediately embarrassed by their nakedness and quickly resorted to creating acceptable clothing. Obviously, they already knew how to make it, and how to use it. Then their lives went on. They remained close to God, and Adam continued his priestly office, but they were no longer set apart in the most blessed Garden.

	To Purchase Hey Mom, What About Dinosaurs? If you'd like to review the research and see for yourself just how and why this very new translation of Genesis 1 & 2 came about, use the link to the left and purchase a copy of the book. WinePress Publishing, 2000. $12.95 includes S&H.
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