Caleb
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I need help understanding this.....
||October 03, 2008|391 reads
 

To add a comment to "I need help understanding this....."
Angela
October 03, 2008
HMMMMM good question,not sure! I can be sure that God came first though hehe I know I'm not much help sorry!
Caleb
October 03, 2008
At least we got that right, He came first.
Paul Hospodar
October 03, 2008

Well, my take is that separating light from darkness did not have to be ther LITERAL "Here's things that make light" and "here's things that don't", but more the separation of the VOID from creation, day from night....it can get tricky, since people say "well, it's DAYTIME if the sun is up, and NIGHTTIME if it's not".  But think about places in northern Canada and Alaska where it's DAYTIME (according to that definition) for six months straight, because the sun doesn't set.  There's still a division of "this is day, this is night" in those places, even if the LIGHTsource (the sun) doesn't go away like it does elsewhere...so I don't find that too much of a problem.

As far as the 2nd question - is your issue with the order it is presented?  Meaning - the fact that it says "man and women", and then it goes onto how Adam was alone and the animals were named?  Once again, I think this is a matter of how deep you want to go - I've always read it like this:

1.  We're given the 'grocery list' of what God did in creating the world.

2.  Then we're given the details of what happened with man, his dominion over animals, and his need for a mate.

 

I hope that helps... and like I said, it's my interpretation and  it's based on what I've read as well.

Caleb
October 03, 2008
Funny thing is that if you believe the Bible is inerrant then no interpretation is need, or is it? Thnak you for your comments. God bless!
Shandon Guthrie
October 03, 2008

I'll do my best to give the short answer here :)

First, it's important to understand that Genesis was not written as an astrophysics textbook for 21st century readers any more than Jesus' description of the "mustard seed" is intended to be a lesson in botany.  The author's intent was to script a creation account that combated the creation myths of Israel's neighbors. As such, the author uses theolgical motifs embedded in the cosmologies of the Ancient Near East.  For example, in the Akkadian and Sumerian accounts you have sky and water formed by the gods cutting another god in half (Tiamat).  Or, the heavens and earth are formed out of the slaying of a god.  The Genesis account speaks to the contrary by establishing that Israel's God is the God of creation - absolutely distinct from creation - and there are no other deities involved.

Secondly, Genesis is not written as a temporal sequence (especially since the sun, moon, and stars are not created until Day 4 which is contrary to cosmogony, so hopefully this note answers your last question raised).  Rather, it's written in a way to show how God creates and provides purpose out of chaotic landscape.  Here is a breakdown of that scenario:

Day 1: Light (the landscape)                -->     Day 4: Sun, moon, & stars as signs (the purpose)

Day 2: Water & sky (the landscape)     -->     Day 5: Creatures to inhabit the sky and waters (the purpose)

Day 3: Dry ground (the landscape)       -->     Day 6: Land creatures & Man (the purpose)

Genesis is not giving us a temporal order of when the events took place, it's more of a framework showing God's creation and then its purpose - and these days correspond as the sequence above illustrates.  As the Vice Principal of Biblical Studies in Bristol, England Ernest Lucas explains, "the creative acts of the first three days correspond to those of the second three ....  In the first three days empty 'structures' are created by acts of 'separation.'  These are then filled with creatures in the second three days.  This structuring emphasizes that the creation is planned and ordered" (E.C. Lucas, "Cosmology", Dictionary of the Old Testament Pentateuch, T.D. Alexander and D. Baker, eds. (Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2003), p. 136).

So when we approach Genesis 2 and notice the events "out of sequence" we should not be at all disturbed.  For Genesis 2 is now seeking to show the purpose of animal life for Man.  As Old Testament scholar Walter Kaiser humorously noted in a lecture once, God created the animals for Adam and after he discovered that none were his type, God then created Eve.  The point?  Chapters 1 and 2 in Genesis are only attempting to show a landscape-fulfillment motif in the former case and how the animal kingdom is purposed for Man in the latter.

I hope this helps!

Prophet Jay
October 03, 2008

Psa 139:11, 12; If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.

Revelation 21:23; And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.

If we look at it from this perspective God was the light, which would explain why there was light without the sun and the moon. The answer to the question about the morning and the evening is very simple. A literal day is a full revolution of the earth, which would imply that the heavenly bodies were in motion.

Genesis 1:14; 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 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 the stars also.

Now in this portion of the creation we see that in order for the earth to have gravity there had to be rotation as well as the gravitational and magnetic forces from the sun which allows the uniform orbit around the sun. So the sun had to be already in place but it was not giving off enough light to warm the earth and to give light to the moon which does not have any light of its own but reflects the light from the sun. Another explanation could be that the darkness was a result of something in the atmosphere that blocked out the light from the sun and moon and stars and that removing this darkness from the atmosphere allowed the light to reach the earth. When Mount St. Helen erupted in the 1980's we saw how the smoke from the volvcano was able to block out the sun and it appeared to be night when it was actually day. There is no contradiciton in the bible when you look at thw whole bible to find answers. God bless you.

Caleb
October 03, 2008
Jay just one point of order. The moon has no light of its own. The contradictions can be seen if we insist on the premise that the Bible is inerrant and fully inspired or the exact world of God. If that premise is without question then God would be the ultimate astrophysics and there would be no contradictions in the order that He created all. Furthermore, the six days is an allegory. Each of those years would probably represent thousands or more years. Gen 1:22-25 supports the idea of evolution and the idea that it took more than a day for creatures to multiply. 

To me the contradiction is not such when I read the Genesis and other books not in a literal manner or under the premise that there is no contradictions. My premise is simple: if we today have so many different ways of interpreting past and present events why not then those who wrote the Bible from oral tradition? 

Thank you for your comments.