Understanding Genesis 1&2

Just to put a little science and historical research into all of this...

First of all, Genesis 2:4b to 5:1a was written by a different author than Genesis 1:1-2:4a.

In the 1930's, a fellow named Wiseman was doing some archaeological research in the Mesopotamian area and, looking at the most ancient tablets we have found, noticed something interesting. The author was not signing his tablet at the beginning, as we do now, but at the end. This was done only on the very earliest tablets. It very soon changed to what we still do today -- the author's name at the top.

Wiseman took a look at Genesis. The style was exactly the same. Adam had signed off his tablet in Genesis 5:1. He was not a caveman or prehistoric half-man; he was a fully-created and perfect human being with great intelligence and abilities. He wrote what he had experienced. Genesis, it looks like, is indeed a series of eyewitness tablets.

So who was the eyewitness author for Genesis 1:1-2:4a? Only God. But, after all, He wrote the Ten Commandments with his own finger on stone...

We can see where there were editorial comments put in the Genesis tablets, the first being Genesis 2:5-6. They were probably inserted by Moses, who edited all the tablets and put them together with the four books he himself wrote. Thus the first five books are known as his.

So Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are and are not, simultaneously, the same story. Genesis 1 details a great deal about God's creative acts in the creation of the cosmos and life. Genesis 2 -4 tells us what Adam recalled. A different perspective; even a different title for God.

Looking at the original language in Genesis 1, it becomes clear there are some misinterpretations we have held to traditionally which are not supported by the text.

First, Genesis 1:1 IS the initial creation ex nihilo event of time, space, and mass. That is the continuum in which we live.

In the beginning
God created (ex nihilo)
the heavens (literally, 'that which is lofty or lifted up')
and the earth (literally, 'that which is firm').

The condition of the firm stuff was that it was formless and void -- it had no shape, form, or inherent organization. This is supported by the word 'tehom' which is translated 'deep.' Its actual meaning in the Hebrew is 'surging mass'.

Twelve times in the Bible the Lord tells us He stretched out the heavens. Twelve times. All He has to do is say it once to be true. Twelve times SHOULD make the point, right?

The stretching of this initally created (and superheated, by the way) mass, would have cooled it and allowed it to come together. Because the word 'waters' is used, we have an important clue.

We have clear indication in both science and in the Bible (with the terms null, void, etc.) that the first created mass was not matter as we are accustomed to seeing it or thinking about it, but rather a plasma -- the nuclei of atoms stripped of their electrons. Our sun is a plasma. The auroras are plasmas. Stars are essentially plasmas. We see plasma filaments all through space, filling it. Because the Bible clearly says 'water', we can assume that the first nuclei were those of oxygen and hydrogen, in a ratio of 1:2.

Dr. Ed Boudreaux at a university in Louisiana has shown mathematically that, given these two starting elements and a very high heat, all the elements in the cosmos can be formed in their known abundances in an hour or less.

Another interesting thing is that, in the laboratory, we can bring plasma filaments close together and they will pinch and then form all the known structures in the universe, including miniature quasars and spiral galaxies in a very short time.

Thus, science may just now barely be catching up to what the Bible has been telling us all along. It is very much not what our traditional ideas of Genesis 1 are telling us, but it may very well be closer to the truth.

When the plasma model is extended to the entire cosmos and the higher speed of atomic processes at the beginning factored in mathematically, we get the first quasars lighting about half-way through day one (Let there be light), the central cores and hubs of the galaxies lighting within a few hours later (the morning stars of Job) and the spiral arm stars lighting on day four (our sun is in the spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy).

In addition, the behavior of plasma filaments also shows us that, if the plasma model of creation is correct, then yes, the earth (and all the planets) were formed before the sun. A plasma filament will form a string of 'beads' around its middle which will then circle and swallow up one another until only one is left. Then another ring will form inside the first, with its own beads, which repeat the process until one is left. Then another ring inside the first, etc.

The last thing to form is the core, or the sun.

Some extra stuff from my husband's and others' researches which might be of interest here.

 

You need to tell me where I said that I do not "agree" or "understand" Genesis 1 and 2.

 

That, or you cannot discern the difference between disagreeing with Scripture and disagreeing with what you say about Scripture.

 

Thank you for specifying the inserts of "Death" for darkness supposing that someting ALIVE was dying or had died BEFORE anything ALIVE had been made.

but that is a form of "eisegesis" inserting into the text what you choose to believe apriori.

Not exactly a sound method of Bible study or even science.

I do agree with you that Gen 1:1 states the fact of all creation being made - and does not necessarily get to the point of "this world" until we get to Gen 1:2.

Deep never means empty in the bible.

Darkness never means death in the Bible

You do not have "Adam lived 920 years and then he went dark" for example.

What translator renders John 1 that way?

 

Jesus is the light of the world.
He is the way the truth and the life.
In Him alone there is life.
He said: I have come that you might have life and that you might have it more abundantly. He is the source of all life. He is the Creator.

Yet you imply that Christ is a created being; that he once died, and then when the Word was spoken Light (Christ) came and dispelled death into life (also Christ).

I don't find this in the Bible at all. This is your imagination; your allegorical way of interpreting something that is very simply written for the common man to understand. You still have death before Adam, which goes contrary to Scripture. Not once have you accounted for that.
"For by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; so that death passed upon all men; for that all have sinned."
Please explain this statement by Paul. The bible does not contradict itself.
DHK

 

Who fears education? No doubt it is the originators of the JEDP theory that fear education--a proper education of the Scriptures.

1 Corinthians 2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Unsaved people cannot understand the Bible. Their minds cannot be illuminated by the Spirit of God.
The authors of the JEDP theory were not saved. They were liberals that denied the supernatural in the Bible. They looked for a way to disprove the supernatural, to disprove the Mosaic authorship, to disprove any authentic prophetic passages--in short to discredit the Bible. Why should we take the word of those that are trying to discredit the Bible and accept their work as so-called "scholarship?" I don't call that "education" but ignorance. Truth comes from God and His Word.
DHK

 

"brought forth" has certain theological implications which tend toward theological error and the implication of a created being. Christ in eternity past was not brought forth. That implies that, if he was "brought forth," he was created, or that he somehow had a beginning. No. Rather he is the Apha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End--expressions that are indicative of his immortality; that he has no beginning or no ending. He is an eternal being without beginning and without ending. Your teaching smacks of Jehovah's Witness teaching.

I don't assume anything. I quote to you the Word of God. It is your duty to give a Biblical response to it--not your speculatiions and imagination. Vain is the imagination of man's heart.

Genesis 6:5 And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

The above verse tells why we need to rely on God's revelation to mankind and not our own imaginitive interpretation thereof. Genesis one is an hisorical account which needs no metaphors, no allegories, no spiritualizing at all. Moses is giving a hisory of how God created the world and all that is therein. He explains how God did it. It is not a difficult reading. If we each interpreted the Bible as you do, then we each could write our own Bibles.

Metaphor or not; words have meaning. There was no death before Adam.
Is the resurrection physical or spiritual?
Is darkness real or spiritual? Are you a JW? Darkness doesn't equal death in any way, shape or form. It is the absence of light. Christ the Creator created the Light. He wasn't the Light that was created.

Bold letters can emphasize a point, but used in such a manner it usually indicates anger, as does using all Capitals.
That being the case, I did base my post on what you said--not on any assumptions. I based on Scripture--the Scriptural rendering of Genesis one, and the teaching of Romans five. That teaching is given by the Holy Spirit; it is written in His Word which I have quoted to you. It is hardly a story that I make up. The story that I have read that is made up is the person on the board that is using metaphors.

Adam's sin is not off topic. When God was finished his creation (from day one to six) he looked upon it all and said that "it was very good." That excludes death or anything remotely close to it. It was all very good. God doesn't make mistakes. What mistake did God make in creation that you allude to and describe as death?

I think that you are confused. My theory is this. And it is the only one that I have presented to you:

Romans 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

How you get anything "flawed" out of that, I don't know.

If you want to discuss and learn about the Bible then stick to the Biblle and not any vain man's imagination.
DHK

 

I don't have a dog in this hunt because I don't agree with a lot of what 4Pillars has said. However, DHK, you have totally missed his point. He never said that Christ was created.

You are pushing your word definitions onto what he has said and then accusing him of being theologically incorrect.

Christ was not created, but He was indeed brough forth from heaven to earth in the form of a man. He went from one dwelling place to another minus His Glory and taken on a human body without its sin nature.

I think it would do a number of people, including myself sometimes, to stop and try to figure out what people are saying and then proceed instead of proceeding with what they "think" someone has said.

But that's just human nature. We hear what we want to hear and see what we want to see by nature.

 

You don't know this; you assume it because you disagree.

I respectfully and emphatically disagree with your characterization of these scholars.

The fact is that there has to be an explanation for why there are a variety of writing styles, names for God, etc. in single books attributed to Moses. Aside from proper/praise titles for God ("El Shaddai" for example), why alternate "Jah" and "El?" Why intertwine two flood stories? The questions go on.

The Bible never claims that Moses wrote anything. Tradition tells us this, and tradition alone. This tradition existed in Jesus' time as it exists today, and while there is nothing wrong with thinking that Moses penned the first five books, there is no evidence of it outside of tradition.

The fact is that one can both investigate the authorship of Scriptural texts from a critical viewpoint and affirm the inspiration and authority of that Scripture. The problem comes from Fundamentalists who insist that if Moses did not personally pen the first five books of the Bible, then Scripture is a farce. No one else claims that; we understand that God can use whoever God chooses and in whatever way God chooses to bring Scripture to us.

So what if the entire Hebrew Bible wasn't assembled until the sixth century BC? Does this mean God didn't inspire Scripture? Does this make our faith null? Does this mean Jesus did not rise from the dead? Of course not.

We worship God, not words, people.

 

Genesis 1: 27.

"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."


This is before the account of the fall, and a separate event. One doesn't have to believe in the literality of Genesis 1-3 to see this obvious point.

 

So what would you suggest the writings of Moses were when Jesus said Had you believed Moses you would have believed Me, because he wrote of Me would be if not the first five books of the Scriptures?

 

Jesus was speaking to tradition, not history.

He could have said "the Torah" instead of "Moses," sure. That would have made life easier.

I'd argue that He was likely speaking of Moses' final speech, as recorded in Deuteronomy 18, and specifically verse 18 (quoting God): "I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers; I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him."

For all we know, Jesus (being born and raised as a humna, with all of the learning and traditional experiences thereof) really did think Moses wrote the Penteteuch. I'm betting He didn't think about such things much, though, since He came to seek and save the lost, not debate critical scholarship.

 

You would really have us believe that the All-Knowing God was relying on man's tradition and spoke on man's authority instead of His Own Authority. Sorry I don't buy that.

He said "wrote." That doesn't mean verbal tradition, it means Moses wrote something. Now you could argue that Jesus was speaking of something else other than the first five books of the Bible, but to say that Jesus was speaking to oral tradition just doesn't jive.

Wow that's a frightening statement coming from a fellow believer. You really think Jesus didn't "know" the Truth, but just relied on what He had been taught? Wow . . .

 

That is not what I said, and you know it.

Knowing the Truth doesn't have anything to do with knowing authorship, dating, textual criticism, or any such thing.