Day 1 Genesis 1-3

God creates light, earth, plants, animals and us in six days in chapter one and then rested on the Seventh. So already we’re getting pretty controversial. Young Earth creationists insist that there are no mistakes or metaphors in the Bible, so God made all of these things in (6*24=)144 hours about 5000 years ago. Usually you expect to hear something like this coming from a politically ultra-conservative southern blond lady, but I know a couple very liberal, educated young earth creationists. Ultimately, I think it’s not a point worth splitting the church over. I mean how much time did Jesus spend talking about the exact mechanics of creation?

I guess I don’t actually know, but I’m pretty sure it’s not very much. I’ll have to remember to watch for that when I get to the Gospels.

The snake tricks Eve into eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thus making the first sin, then Eve gets Adam to eat. God punishes all three of them by taking the snake’s legs away and making women undergo painful childbirth and being subservient to their husbands. Also, they can’t stay in the garden; from here on out they’ll will have to scratch a living out of the land.

I don’t have a problem with accepting metaphor in the Bible. Actually, Gen 1:27 is formatted in a very popular style of poetry from the time the book was written so it’s not like we’re talking about a booklet of stereo instructions here.

I read a great book called Ishmael by Daniel Quinn that suggested the creation story was written as the Semites interpretation of the agricultural revolution happening all around them. The reason we have so much trouble interpreting it is because it’s written about our own culture, but from the outside. The nomadic, herding Semites looked around and were surrounded by the agricultural revolution and the beginning of Genesis is supposed to be about how these farmers were cursed by God to have to live that way. It’s hard for us to see ourselves in that story though, the same way it would be hard for a Neanderthal to recognize the caricature of himself in the movie Encino Man.