I thought I would get through a few pages of Genesis without reading something surprising. After all, everyone knows the Christian creation myth. God creates the heaven--yes, it's singular--and the earth and all the animals and then Adam and Eve. Someone eats something he shouldn't and the party comes to an end. Pretty straightforward, right?
But I did a double-take on the last line of page one: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." What's this, now? Our likeness? As in more than one God? Is this some reference to the Trinity--God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit (nee Ghost)--at the beginning of a book supposedly written by Moses? Some might see it as prophesy; I see it as either bad copyediting or polytheism. I can't decide which is worse.
God pluralizes himself more than once in Genesis. The Big Man must have a regular commune of jealous gods up there in heaven. I think the Lord is a self-important blowhard and pumps up his numbers just to frighten people. Yeah, that makes sense.
God Makes the World...
Imagine the first line of Genesis 1 in the Star Wars crawl backed by a John Williams score and it's awesome: "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth." As long as Ewoks don't show up, this will be the greatest movie ever! Unfortunately, the narrative is a bit dry and skips over a lot of detail. A quick synopsis for those who don't know the story.
Day 1: God creates
- The heaven and the earth
- Light, which is separate from the dark
Day 2: God creates
- The Firmament, which has something to do with water, and which God then calls heaven
Day 3: God creates
- Dry land, by gathering the waters together in one place; he calls the water seas
- Fruit trees, grass, and herbs
Day 4: God creates
- The Sun, moon, and stars
Day 5: God creates
- Fish, fowl, and whales
- Cattle, "creeping things," and "beasts of the earth"
- Man and woman
Day 7: God rests, is bored, then creates Mike's Hard Lemonade and football
...Then Makes it Again
But wait! That was Chapter 1! In Chapter 2, God remakes living things in a slightly different order. After resting on the seventh day, God evidently decides that Creation 1.0 is in need of an upgrade and re-creates plants and herbs and then man. The new man-making process is the familiar one: God molds a mannequin of dust and blows life into its nostrils. He then creates Eden and places man in it. In Eden, trees grow, including the dreaded tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. God instructs Adam not to eat of the fruit of either tree. SPOILER ALERT: Adam does!
God sees that Adam is lonely, so he creates animals, which you may remember were created on days 5 and 6 before man and woman, who were created at the same time on day 6. The animals fail to entertain Adam--God forgot to create concertinas for the monkeys to play--and God realizes that Adam needs a "help meet, " aka woman.
God slips Adam a mickey, and as Adam sleeps God removes a rib and fashions Eve. The next morning, Adam wakes up in a tub full of ice with a note taped to his chest and a telephone by his side. Adam swears off picking up deities at closing time.
Chapter 2 ends with Adam and Eve naked, and they are not ashamed about it. Adam puts on some Marvin Gaye and they feed each other figs. Fade to black.
Broken Promise No. 1
Chapter 3 gives us God's first empty threat. "And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."
Adam and Eve do eat the fruit--not an apple, by the way, but fruit--and they do not die. In fact they live an impossibly long time. But the serpent--which is not described as the devil, just so you know--tells A & E that the opposite is true. Not only will they not die if they eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (ToKoGaE), if they eat it they will be like gods! God later confirms this: "Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil." Not good from evil, which is necessary for morality, but good and evil, which is necessary for sociopaths to take advantage of others. That means to be like the gods you must be both good and evil. True enough, I suppose.
As you can imagine, God is righteously pissed about the off-limits ToKoGaE, so pissed that he curses the snake to forever go around on his belly, a strange punishment for a creature that already gets around on its belly. God condemns the woman to sorrow in conception, understandable considering the she's forced to sleep with the first man she ever laid eyes on. Adam is destined to eat in sorrow. Luckily he soon stumbles on a great oatmeal cookie recipe and learns to enjoy eating again.
But how did God know that A & E had eaten from the ToKoGaE? Well, they tried to hide their nakedness from him; their shame betrayed their knowledge. Damn, this is sounding more Catholic with every sentence.
Before he kicks his creations out of paradise, God plays haberdasher and makes new clothes for them to hide their nakedness, leading me to ask, Who exactly is ashamed of whom?
Terrible Words to Say at a Funeral
Every funeral I've ever attended has featured humbling words about the deceased returning to the dust from which he came. In chapter 3 God does say to Adam "for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return," but he says it after Adam eats the fruit. God is pissed and wants to remind Adam of his roots. "You are dirt, and you'll be dirt again," God is saying. "So don't screw with me."
So much for not speaking ill of the dead.
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