Expert: Marilyn - 6/1/2009

Question
QUESTION: could you explain Genesis 1:26 thru Genesis 1:31 in comparition or relationship to Genesis 2:2 through Genesis 2:8

ANSWER: Hello Jesus;

Western thinking is modeled after the Greeks. Stories flow in chronological order, in a linear fashion. Orientals often don't think of stories in that way. They may tell a story several times, but each telling will be from a different point of view, or contain different details or focus on different high points. To the western mind this is a jumbled mess that doesn't make much sense, but the reason it doesn't make sense is because we don't think that way.

God tells us the creation story in this "oriental" fashion. Adam's creation is described twice, each time with different details.

In Genesis 1:1 we are introduced to Elohim, the Name translated "God" in English Bibles.  Elohim is a compound Name composed of "El" which means "Strength" + ohim which is a latent plural, indicating a minimum of Three in One, meaning "Faithfulness." God portrays Himself from with the first verse in the Bible as a Triune Being, Three In One. God the Father is the Person who utters the Words.  God the Word, or Son, exits the Father's Mouth and does what He has commanded, see John 1; Hebrews 1 and Isaiah 55:11. The Spirit of God is mentioned in verse 2.

In Genesis 1:26, God says "Let's make man in Our Image..."

Paul tells us in I Thessalonians 5:23, "...May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless..." God is Three in One, Father, Son or Word and Holy Spirit. We are three-in-one, spirit, soul and body. To computer literate persons it's easy to explain our three-in-one nature. The body is the hardware, the soul is the programs and the spirit is the operating system.

Created in God's Image we are three-in-one, but we also have a superficial resemblance to God in appearance. When God places Moses in the cleft of a rock and tells him that he cannot see his "face" because doing so would kill him, He explains He will cover Moses with His "hand" and that Moses will be able to see His "back" after He has passed, Exodus 33:21 & 22.

Isaiah describes his vision of God in Isaiah 6. He sees God seated on a throne. Ezekiel has a vision of God in Ezekiel 1. "...a throne of sapphire, and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up He looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire; and brilliant light surrounded Him," verse 26 & 27. In Revelation 4 John describes a similar scene.

Thus we know that God has hands, a face, a waist, a back...our physical appearance is like His, though only a faded copy.

God gives the earth and the universe, by extension, to man as his kingdom to rule and reign over, Genesis 1:26. Like God, we have a kingdom that is our responsibility.

Jesus emphasizes this in a verbal jousting match with the Pharisees in John 10:34-38. He quotes from Psalm 82. "Is it not written in your Law, 'I have said you are gods'? If He called them 'gods,' to whom the Word of God came--and the Scripture cannot be broken--what about the One whom the Father set apart as His very own and sent into the world?"

We were created little "g" gods, rulers of earth to have dominion over it which includes coming to understand how the universe works. There can be no true dominion without understanding.

In His Image God created material beings who are three-in-one and have a kingdom.

Genesis 1:27 says, "So God created man in His own Image..." The Hebrew word translated "created" is bara, "created from nothing."

"...in the Image of God He created him, male and female He created them." In this phrase we see that God's Image in a single gender is incomplete, it takes the two, man and woman, together in marriage, Genesis 2:23 & 24, the "one flesh" union, to re-unite the two halves which are the Image of God. This is why homosexuality is such a grave sin, because it unites two of the same gender in one flesh and thus is a slap against the Image of God as He intended it.

In Genesis 2 God's Name receives an addition, Yaweh or Jehovah in English. Most English Bibles use LORD to indicate Yaweh. Lord is used when "Adonai" is applied. Adonai means "Lord," but it was also used to apply to someone in authority. Sarah uses it to address her husband, Abraham, for example. Jews often substitute Adonai for Yahweh (YHWH in Hebrew) because they feel His Name is too sacred to utter.

Jehovah is added because the focus in chapter two is on what God promises to do about sin, Genesis 2:15, and His example of slaughtering an animal and using the blood to cover sin foreshadowing Jesus, the Lamb of God, and His atoning death, Genesis 3:21. Jehovah is the One Who Redeems.

My NIV reads, "And the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being," Genesis 2:7. The English uses "formed" instead of "created" and the Hebrew uses "yatsar," which means "made from pre-existing material." This refers to the physical body of man which is made from dirt. God breathes into this adamah, "man made from dirt," the "breath of life," actually, the breath of LIVES, plural, in the Hebrew. This "breath of life," is the part which is created from nothing mentioned in chapter 1--the operating system, the human spirit. And the adamah, the man made from dirt, the dirt being the pre-existing material, became a speaking spirit.

Here we see that the gift of language, which includes the self-conscious mind capable of abstract thought...poetry, fiction, story telling, analyzing history...etc. etc...is part of the Image of God so that a creature made from dirt is unique among all the material beings upon planet earth for its ability to think and speak. In God's Image, we speak.

You and I were breathed into Adam at the same moment Adam received his own spirit. Eve's spirit was breathed into Adam also.  Thus, in the beginning, Eve and Adam were literally one flesh. Later God takes Eve out of Adam and they only become one flesh again in marriage.

The man's sperm is the vehicle which carries the "breath of life." But it is not a human being until it meets with a woman's egg, thus the picture God breathing the "breath of life" into dirt is played out over and over every time a child is conceived. It is only when the breath of life meets the "dirt" that a human being is formed, just as there is no fire until the spark meets the wood.

This is how Jesus can be born of a woman and yet be sinless. It is Adam's disobedience when he eats the forbidden fruit that brings sin to humanity, every potential human he carried in his sperm was infected with sin in the same moment he was infected.  But a woman's egg, being simply the "dirt" is not infected because there is no "breath of life" there to infect. Jesus' "Breath of Life" came directly from God, spoken to Mary--the Word Made Flesh, John 1. Thus, Jesus can be fully human and yet fully God. The spark meets the wood, or actually the "dirt" and a speaking spirit in a material body comes to life. In Jesus' case, a perfect "Breath of Life."

This concept of each of our lives in potential breathed into Adam is confirmed in Hebrews 7:9 in a discussion about tithing where the author says, "...because when Melchizedek met Abraham, Levi was still in the body of his ancestor."

Once a person realizes what happens at conception, it is clear that abortion is murder. Everything that the person will be is there in that moment of conception, all that is needed is time and opportunity to grow for the full expression of that individual to be made manifest. Indeed, for the redeemed person of God, the full expression of our personhood will not be complete until we receive our resurrection bodies, and I expect, even then, we will still be growing in God.  Thus, at what point from conception onward can a person be said not to be a person? There is no such point--we are a continuum from conception into eternity with no point, not even death in the case of a believer, where we cease to grown and change.

Genesis 1:3-2:3 focuses on an overview of creation. The issue of time is not addressed. The word "day" in Hebrew can be translated as "a 24-hour period," "the daylight hours," or "an era in which certain things occur." For example, we say, "Well, back in my father's day..." We don't mean that our fathers only lived 24-hours, we refer to an era. Also, the words "evening and morning" can equally be translated "disorder to order." Thus, in alternate translation the verses would read, "disorder to order, the first era," and so forth.

Genesis 1:1 tells us the most important facts we need to take from the entire story--the "oriental" style of telling us the most important information first, "In the beginning Elohim created from nothing the all that there is, the heavens and the earth."

Genesis 1:2 tells us a fact that will be left out of the main creation story, that the earth became formless and empty.

Genesis 1:3-5 describes the first "day" or "era," hence I deduce that as I said above, Genesis 1:3 through Genesis 2:3 is the main creation story since it describes the first "day" on through the seventh.  

Genesis 2:4-25 is another retelling of the creation story, but now the focus is on man, his relationship with his wife and God's relationship with him.

The same story is told from various points of view with different points of emphasis, first in Genesis 1:1, second in Genesis 1:3-2:3 and third with more information on human beings in Genesis 2:4-25.

This is a non-linear form of story telling that the western mind finds confusing, but once a reader gets the idea it all makes sense and adds richness the linear style would not be able to convey so quickly and succinctly.

Sincerely,

Marilyn







---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Marilyn allow me say thay I have enjoyed your answers, explanation and sincerety. I would like if possible for you to allow me to explore His truth with your assistance. my email is . your response would be greatly appreciated.

Answer
Hello Jesus;

The bot which controls AllExperts answers and questions apparently didn't permit your e-mail to go through. We'll have to struggle onward in this format. You can set the question to "private" and nobody else but you and I can read our correspondence.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Marilyn