Genesis 1 vs. Genesis 2

Hi Chesterson:

Chesterton said:

Terral, with respect, your posts are largely too cryptic to be meaningful.

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Please “quote >>” anything that appears off in ‘my work’ and kindly present your opposing arguments for something else using Scripture. 2Timothy 2:15. There are more than 2000 denominations of professing Christians in the USA alone and yours represents just one of them.

You give yours and I will do the same, with all due respect, and everyone else can decide if either side has a case for anything. 1Corinthians 11:19. I speak God’s wisdom in a ‘mystery’ (1Cor 2:7 = Vine’s Definition), which by definition means the 'MANY' do not see it. :0)

In Christ Jesus,

Terral

I don't want to debate, but if I did, how could I possibly debate someone who claims to know mysteries and have secret knowledge?

Terral said:

“Assyrian’s idolatry…”

“You are guilty of worshiping something ‘IN HEAVEN’…”

“The majority of you are worshipping 'The Word/Son' (F+S+HS) as the 'Only True God,' which amounts to nothing short of IDOLATRY ‘and’ that is the reason my Genesis 1+2 statements of‘the truth’ continue to fly light years (understatement) above your deluded heads . . .”

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I'll tell you this though, I think these condemnations are improper.

Terral said:

Hi Gluadys:
That is the way the Lord God (Christ) formed Adam in Genesis 2:7.

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How do you get from Genesis 2:7 that Adam is a heavenly being? Or do you take that from somewhere else in scripture? Or from a source other than scripture? Please cite the source simply. Or if the source is Genesis 2:7 please explain simply why you equate the human formed there with a heavenly being.

Do you see Eve or her seed walking around anywhere in Genesis 2:7-19? No. Where are they?

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Eve is not created yet. Her children are not born yet. Why would I expect to see them before these events?

That's enough questions for now. See if you can stick to answering these without going on at length to other topics.

Hi Gluadys:

gluadys said:

How do you get from Genesis 2:7 that Adam is a heavenly being? Or do you take that from somewhere else in scripture?

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Where do you get the notion that the Lord God formed Adam into an earthly being? Or did you take that from somewhere else in Scripture? :0) How many regular ‘men’ do you know running around with a woman and everyone here IN them? 1Cor 15:22. The Lord God is walking in this heavenly garden with Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:8), as Heaven is His throne and this universe is merely His footstool. Isa. 66:1. We know Adam was a heavenly being in the beginning, because of the actions taken by the Lord God (Christ) in connection with the coming fall.

“Then to Adam He said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat from it'; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field . . .”. Genesis 3:17-18.

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This curse makes no sense if Adam has been eating of the plants of the field starting in Genesis 2:7 or Genesis 2:20-22. Adam had no need of eating the plants of this physical earth, because before the curse and before taking on the human ‘skins’ of Genesis 3:21, he was a heavenly being without the need for earthly sustenance. The Lord God (Christ) finishes the curse with driving Adam and Eve from the garden:

“. . . therefore the Lord God sent him out from the Garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.” Genesis 3:23-24.

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The Lord God formed Adam using the ‘breath of life’ and the ‘dust of the ground,’ which amounts to the components of the ‘heavens’ (stuff of angels) and ‘earth’ (stuff of men) rejoined together and formed together so that Adam became a living soul/being. Adam did not have a spirit or body or soul, but those three witnesses were ONE and the same thing. The fall and the curses show us how the Lord God ‘divided’ (pierced) Adam to take out Eve (water) and her seed (blood), until he was driven out of Eden (Heavenly Garden) to find himself toiling in the ‘earth’ from which he was originally formed; so that he and Eve took on the image of the sixth day people from Genesis 1:26-28. We know that Adam and Eve came to dwell on this earth in human skins in Genesis 3:21-24, because that is what Scripture says in Genesis 5:

“This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day when God created man, He made him [Gen. 2:7] in the likeness of God. He created them male and female [Gen. 3:21], and He blessed them and named them Man in the day when THEY were created [Gen. 3:21].” Genesis 5:1-2.

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This is where we separate the Lord God forming Adam (Gen. 2:7) form the Lord God forming Eve (Gen. 2:20-22) ‘and’ the Lord God creating them ‘male and female’ in human ‘skins’ in Genesis 3:21. “THEY” were not created/formed in Genesis 2:7, because that is the day the Lord God formed “Adam.” Again, “THEY” were not created/formed in Genesis 2:20-22, because that is the day the Lord God formed “Eve.” However, the Lord God ‘did’ create ‘THEM’ on the same day and together in Genesis 3:21 when He put them in human skins to drive them out of the Garden. If you backtrack to Genesis 2:7 and read through Genesis 2:20-22 and then down to Genesis 3:24, then you will see that ‘this’ (Gen. 3:21) is the ONLY time that the Lord God is working upon Adam and Eve together in the day that He gave them human skins to begin toiling on this literal earth for bread by the sweat of Adam’s brow. Therefore, Adam’s 930 years (Gen. 5:5) in human form begins right here in Genesis 3:21 with the FALL, as he existed in this universe as a ‘heavenly being’ from the time the Lord God formed him in Genesis 2:7 for thousands and thousands and thousands of years even before Eve was taken from his side.

gluadys said:

Or from a source other than scripture? Please cite the source simply. Or if the source is Genesis 2:7 please explain simply why you equate the human formed there with a heavenly being.

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Did Christ say, “I am the Messiah, so you should listen to Me!”?? No. Christ warned His disciples that they should tell NO ONE He is the Messiah (Matt. 16:20) to run around making His case saying, “. . . just as it is written . . .”. Matt 26:24, Mark 7:6, Mark 9:13, Mark 14:21, etc.. If you will not believe the testimony from what is written in Scripture, then you will also not be convinced from sources other than Scripture.

gluadys said:

Eve is not created yet. Her children are not born yet. Why would I expect to see them before these events?

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Scripture says that God created ‘them’ male and female (Gen. 5:2) “in THE DAY when they were created.” Okay. So ‘they’ were not formed in Genesis 2:7 ‘together’ and were not formed in Genesis 2:20-22 ‘together,’ so WHEN did the Lord God create them TOGETHER male and female? :0) The answer is that the Lord God created them MALE AND FEMALE in Genesis 3:21 on the day He gave them human ‘skins.’ You have believed the commentary of others saying that the Lord God formed Adam in Genesis 2:7 as a human man and that is what you want to continue believing no matter how many times I show you the difference. Please provide your Scriptural reasons for believing Adam is a mere man with human flesh in Genesis 2 and then maybe we can gain some perspective on the basis for your questions.

gluadys said:

That's enough questions for now. See if you can stick to answering these without going on at length to other topics.

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You can control the ‘questions,’ but the CF.com members providing the answers are in charge of the content of our thoughtful replies. We have a wide spectrum of believers from the fleshy babes (1Cor. 3:1-3) to the ‘mature’ (1Cor. 2:6-8) and my answers are drafted for the benefit of those on all sides of the equation. There is something for the men of faith (babes/infants) and the men of knowledge (with some stature IN Christ) and the men of wisdom (the mature) looking intently for the deeper things (‘breadth and length and height and depth’ = Eph 3:18) in search of greater rewards (1Cor 3:12-15, 2Cor. 5:10) and a higher position in Christ’s Body (diagram) than the average bear or park ranger. :0)

In Christ Jesus,

Terral

Terral said:

Where do you get the notion that the Lord God formed Adam into an earthly being? Or did you take that from somewhere else in Scripture? :0)

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From Gen. 2:7 mostly. But also from other scriptures. Gen. 2:7 says God formed a man from the dust of the earth. Even the Hebrew term for 'man' means 'earthy, from the earth'. The Hebrew words for dust (adamah) and man (adam) are based on the same root.

You yourself mention Gen. 3:23 in which God speaks to Adam of "the ground from which you were taken" and earlier we have the reference in 3:19 ":until you return to the ground for out of it you were taken; you are dust and to dust you will return."

How many regular ‘men’ do you know running around with a woman and everyone here IN them?

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I don't understand the point of this question. Are you alluding to the old notion that the sperm is a homunculus? Do you believe that Adam contained in his loins all humans ever to be born in the future?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus#Homunculus_of_spermists

You must realize, of course, that this is a false conception of the sperm.

And what would this have to do with Adam not being a creature of the earth? Even if the homunculus theory were correct, it would not imply that Adam was a heavenly being.

The Lord God is walking in this heavenly garden with Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:8), as Heaven is His throne and this universe is merely His footstool. Isa. 66:1.

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I don't know why you consider this relevant to the question. Obviously Adam and Eden go together. If one is heavenly so is the other. If one is earthly, so is the other. But we have nothing in scripture I can see to say Eden was not on earth. At the beginning of the story we are presented with the situation that "there was no plant of the field yet in the earth" and "there was no one to till the ground". Then God makes a man to till the ground and subsequently "planted a garden in Eden in the east" and put the man there to care for it. Given the flow of the story, it makes no sense to place Eden or Adam in heaven.

We know Adam was a heavenly being in the beginning, because of the actions taken by the Lord God (Christ) in connection with the coming fall.

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What actions? How do they determine that Adam was a heavenly being?

This curse makes no sense if Adam has been eating of the plants of the field starting in Genesis 2:7 or Genesis 2:20-22. Adam had no need of eating the plants of this physical earth,

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I think you are arguing in circles here. Adam did need to eat, for God tells him he may eat of every tree in the garden. Of course, since you claim the garden is in heaven, this is "heavenly" food. But you have to establish first that the garden and the man are in heaven. You haven't done that yet.

The scripture seems to place both on earth so Adam is eating earthly food and needs to.

because before the curse and before taking on the human ‘skins’ of Genesis 3:21,

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The text does not specify that these were human skins. The most natural reading is that they were animal skins used as clothing.

If you will not believe the testimony from what is written in Scripture, then you will also not be convinced from sources other than Scripture.

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I was not concerned about being convinced. Just curious as to where your ideas are coming from.

So ‘they’ were not formed in Genesis 2:7 ‘together’ and were not formed in Genesis 2:20-22 ‘together,’ so WHEN did the Lord God create them TOGETHER male and female? :0)

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It seems to me that you are putting a lot of emphasis on the word "together" which does not even appear in the text. Scripture tells us God made them male and female "on the day they were created". It doesn't say they were created together in the same minute.

Please provide your Scriptural reasons for believing Adam is a mere man with human flesh in Genesis 2 and then maybe we can gain some perspective on the basis for your questions.

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See above.

To marciebaby:

The confusion over this is largely caused by poor translations and an ignorance of Hebrew by the majority of Christians today. You see, in Hebrew, the precise tense of a verb is determined by the context or action cf English where the tense is related to time (Batten, 1996:44-45; How Are The Hebrew Terms Different From English? 2007). We read from Genesis 1 that the animals, birds, and so on were already created before Adam, that is, it is a completed action, and so Jewish scholars would have understood the verb 'formed' (in Genesis 2:19) to mean 'had formed' or 'having formed'.

The Today's New International Version translation understood this and so accurately reads: Now the LORD God had formed ... (2:19).

So, we can therefore say that when we have proper understanding of Hebrew writing and language approaches and principles that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are completmentary, not contradictory.

References:
Batten, D. (1996). Genesis Contradictions? Creation 18(4):44-45.
How Are The Hebrew Terms Different From English? (2007). Ancient Hebrew Research Centre. Accessed 5 October 2008 from: ancient-hebrew.org/1_faqs.html#tenses1

Hi sfodz welcome to OT

sfodz said:

To marciebaby:

The confusion over this is largely caused by poor translations and an ignorance of Hebrew by the majority of Christians today.

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I agree that few Christians today, or any time since the first century, know very much Hebrew. If we are going to study a biblical language we usually pick NT Greek first.

However this explanation of Gen 2:19 depends not just on your average believer in the pew being ignorant of Hebrew, but also all the bible translation committees responsible for all the poor translations you refer to. Every Hebrew scholar responsible for translating Genesis 2 in every English bible from the time of Tyndale until now with, the exception of the NIV and follow ons. This just seems implausible. I could understand why a fairly loose translation like the NIV might want to fudge the translation of 'formed' to make it fit in with Gen 1, but not that every other translation from the most literal to paraphrases would get such a simple tranlation wrong.

You see, in Hebrew, the precise tense of a verb is determined by the context or action cf English where the tense is related to time (Batten, 1996:44-45; How Are The Hebrew Terms Different From English? 2007). We read from Genesis 1 that the animals, birds, and so on were already created before Adam, that is, it is a completed action, and so Jewish scholars would have understood the verb 'formed' (in Genesis 2:19) to mean 'had formed' or 'having formed'.

The Today's New International Version translation understood this and so accurately reads: Now the LORD God had formed ... (2:19).

So, we can therefore say that when we have proper understanding of Hebrew writing and language approaches and principles that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are completmentary, not contradictory.

References:
Batten, D. (1996). Genesis Contradictions? Creation 18(4):44-45.
How Are The Hebrew Terms Different From English? (2007). Ancient Hebrew Research Centre. Accessed 5 October 2008 from: ancient-hebrew.org/1_faqs.html#tenses1

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Unfortunately the context that determines the tense of the verb is the story in Genesis 2, not AiG's interpretation of a completely different creation account in another chapter. I don't think AiG have thought this through here. If the tense of "And The LORD God formed every beast of the field" is determined by the context of the previous chapter, then all the other verbs in the passage with the same tense and construction would have to be pluperfect too. Gen 2:18 Then the LORD God had said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him." 19 So out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and had brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man had called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man had given names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. 21 So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to have fallen upon the man, and while he had slept, he had taken one of his ribs and had closed up its place with flesh.

It is true Hebrew often relies on setting the context, telling us when the action takes place, rather than simply using past present or future like English does. We see this in Genesis 2, the scene is set up for us in verse 5 When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up... But whether all the action in the chapter takes place in the future or past, we know when the verbs take place in relation to each other. The verbs are strung together with waw consecutive constructions which places each waw consecutive after the one before it. It is the standard construction in Hebrew narrative telling us what happens then what happen next. Usually all we see of this construction in English translations is a series of verses and phrases beginning And... Then... This construction puts the Lord God creating the animals after placing Adam in the garden and saying it was not good for man to be alone, and before he brought the animals to Adam.

I understand why people who love the Lord want to defend his Word and try find other meanings and explanations where our understanding of one passage contradicts another. Personally I think it is much better to let the plain meaning of scripture speak for itself and let that challenge our attempts at interpretation and our limited understanding of how God speaks to us through his word.

sfodz said:

The Today's New International Version translation understood this and so accurately reads: Now the LORD God had formed ... (2:19).

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Quite apart from whatever the original Hebrew says, it is not generally wise to try to win textual arguments with the NIV (and even more so with the tNIV, with its particular genderbender "neutral language" emphasis). The translators in that line of thought have explicitly moved away from literal translation towards "dynamic equivalence" where they see fit to translate the text in a way that prioritizes smooth reading over grammatically reflecting the original text aspect by aspect.

Not that this is wrong; but it does mean that the NIV is generally not as accurate as reflecting intricate details of the original text as other translations. As a practical example doing word studies with the NIV can be a little haphazard because it often chooses to translate the same word in different passages differently (for variety's sake, I suppose) where using the same English equivalent would have been possible although perhaps not as readable. The older translations like the RSV are still better for word-to-word equivalence and among the newer translations the ESV has that equivalence as an explicit priority as well.

Originally Posted by sfodz

The Today's New International Version translation understood this and so accurately reads: Now the LORD God had formed ... (2:19).

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Hhm. I get this tense.

http://www.scripture4all.org/


Gene 2:19 And YHWH 'Elohiym is forming from the ground every of animal of the field, and every of flyer of the heavens, and he is bringing to the 'adam to see what he shall call to him, and all which the 'adam is calling to him, soul of living, he name of him.

Terral said:

This curse makes no sense if Adam has been eating of the plants of the field starting in Genesis 2:7 or Genesis 2:20-22.

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yes it does make sense.

'plants of the field' is a reference to Agriculture. Whilst in the Garden, he ate what naturally grew, it wasn't a farm. After being evicted God made him work for a living.