Author: Editor

Last time we left Adam and Eve together in the Garden of Eden. Was this a real place or poetic licence? Well the Genesis story if pretty clear that God placed Adam and Eve in a ‘garden’. It certainly wasn’t some sort of formal garden as we might imagine but a space which was in some way protected in that they could live in it without fear and really without much to do apart from tend what was already growing and collect food from it. One could perhaps image it as some sort of ‘nursery’ where the newly created (whether this be in a physical or spiritual sense – see previous post) humans could develop and mature. The reference to them as being naked suggests a childlike naivety like that possessed by children. Certainly the impression that the story gives is one of an idyllic life without cares and responsibilities, just like that of young children in our society.

We are told that God gave then only one instruction – not to touch a particular tree in the garden. Enter the talking snake. Was there really a talking snake or imagery? Well there is no way of knowing. Again if you imagine a young child coming across a talking animal they would in all probability take it at face value – they wouldn’t know any different. However, it is not particularly important whether Eve had a conversation with a physical snake or not; the important thing is that she had an encounter with Satan (the devil). So where did he come from? There is no explanation in Genesis but what is clear is that Satan is not any sort of God alter ego, he is not an evil equivalent of God but a part of creation. A few verses later on God makes this absolutely clear. Much later on in the Bible there are references to Satan as a fallen angel: an angel who challenged God and was thrown out of heaven. The meaning of the word ‘satan’ is deceiver. He persuaded Eve to break the one rule that God had given her and Adam; not to eat from the particular tree. Again, are we really talking about an actual apple from an actual tree? It doesn’t really matter either way; the message is clear; God wasn’t just being perverse, Adam and Eve were not ready to handle an understanding of good and evil or mature enough to make the right choices. We can use the child analogy again – we might well tell our children that they can pick and eat the raspberries but under no circumstance should they eat the laburnum seeds (these are very poisonous). Adam and Eve lost their childlike naivety before they could handle it. That was Satan’s strategy – to disrupt God’s plan for humanity.

Next time we’ll look at the effects of this one act of disobedience

In the last post on the subject of ‘The Bible’ we looked at the early chapters of the first book of the bible to demonstrate that the various books of the Bible must be read in context and giving due regard to the original target readership. However we also need to recognise that the Bible in it’s entirety is ‘the Word of God’; it was written by a multitude of different authors over several millennia; some of it is to be taken literally and some not. But how do we tell which is which?

In this post we will look a bit more closely at the early chapters of Genesis. WE established last time that the creation story wasn’t necessarily to be taken literally and we explained why. The essence of the creation story is that the world, indeed the universe, was created at God’s command, not by some mindless spontaneity. The mechanism by which it came into being is the domain of the scientist and not for consideration here. If we accept that then, also accepting that the initial readers (and indeed readers up until the middle of the second millennium) had no concept of a universe that didn’t have the earth at its centre , then progression of creation from the separation of dark and light right up to the creation of all living things is not really very problematical, remembering that the timescale is not intended to be taken literally. However, when we come to the creation of ‘man’ it does require a bit of unwrapping.

‘God created man in his own likeness’ (Genesis Chapter 1 verse 26). What does that mean? It is self evidence that humans as distinctly different from all other animals. Not genetically – humans and chimpanzees share 96% of the same genetic material and humans and chickens share around 60% of the same DNA! Nevertheless humans are very different from every other living thing in that we have the abilities; of reasoning and making decisions way beyond instinct, of abstract though, of perceiving the existence of God, of having the potential to become God like. That doesn’t necessarily invalidate the possibility of evolution as the mechanism as to reaching our physical form, but Genesis does make it clear that God created us with a distinct and separate dimension from the rest of creation. We call that ‘the soul’. From the Genesis story it seems that God created a male only. He then looked around for something else that he’d created to find the man a companion. How come? All other creature (with the odd exception) have both male and female so why only male humans? This part of the story is not primarily looking at procreation but at companionship – God created humans to be social not solitary. Did God really create a woman from Adam’s rib? There is no way of telling but the essence of this passage is that God created woman with the same spark of divinity as man. They were created equal.

Next time we’ll explore the ‘talking snake’