Hey everybody. So I thought I would try
something in this video. I thought I
would try
simply reading through Genesis 1 and 2
with you.
And thereby, in our study of world
mythology,
take a deep dive together into what is
clearly
the dominant creation story in the world.
You know Christianity is the number one
religion in the world. This is their
creation story.
But it wasn't originally a Christian
story was it? It's a Hebrew story, or that
is to say, a story from the religion of
Judaism. And so that's a longer story than we can
tell here, but most of you are
well aware of this. Jesus was a Jew. And
Christianity comes right out of Judaism.
And when the Christians put their Bible
together in the 4th century
they grabbed the Jewish Bible, the Hebrew
Bible, slapped it on the back of their
Bible, they called it the Old
Testament, and then they added the New
Testament -- all those books about Jesus.
You know, the Gospels and the letters of
Paul, and so on.
So the Bible is a library of all these
different books. And we're going back to
the very
first book today. So here we are studying
cosmogonies, creation stories, under the
heading of cosmic
myths, and this story really packs a
wallop. And I just think it's so rich.
And it might be worthwhile for us just
to kind of go through the first two
chapters
line by line, not literally every line --
I'll jump
over a few spots -- but there's a lot of
great content here that we just have to think
about. And I'm eager to think about with
you.
There is a little housekeeping
though before we begin. Did you know that
Genesis 1 and Genesis 2
were written 500 years apart?
And as far as we can tell Genesis 1 is
the much more recent
version, the newer version. Genesis 2 is
500 years older
than Genesis 1. So Genesis 1,
when they put the Bible together, they
clearly wanted to start with Genesis 1 even
though it's the more recent account.
And we'll see why that's significant as
we get into both of them here. But just
to put some dates on it,
we think that Genesis 1 was written
around 450
BCE and Genesis 2 was written
500 years before that in 950
BCE.
So let's begin, and let's notice
some of the differences
between Genesis 1 and 2. Because they
generally line up, but there are some
glaring
plot problems between one and two, the
sequence in which
things happen are quite different, and
also -- and of particular interest to us human
beings is
how human beings were made. Totally
different
in both stories, (or are they?) Yeah, so
we'll see.
So Genesis begins, "In the beginning
God created the heaven and the earth."
I'm going to jump out already and ask is
that ex nihilo?
Some say it is because apparently there
was just God and nothing else.
And then God created the heaven and the
earth and the next line it says you know
verse 2 it says,
"And the earth was without form and void
and darkness was upon the face of the
deep,
and the spirit of God moved upon the
face of the waters.
And God said, 'Let there be light'
and there was light. And God saw the
light,
that it was good. And God divided the
light from darkness."
So notice how God
makes light.
It's very unspecific about how he made,
you know, the other stuff before light.
But when God makes light it it says it
plain as day, "And God
said, 'Let there be light.'" In other words
he uses vocalization, he uses language
to bring non-being into being.
The conjuring power of words --
don't shoot past this -- it's little stuff
like that that has enormous significance.
In Judaism, in the Hebrew tradition,
and I would argue
that this is emphasized more than in any
other tradition I can think of,
the power of words to conjure reality.
And here we have God himself making the
first really amazing thing, light, through the
power of his voice. He
calls them into being. He says "Let
there be light," he doesn't say "I demand
that there be light" or he doesn't point
his finger and
make light...he says "Let there be light."
There's a kind of nice,
almost passive quality to the way God
makes light.
And then after that, verse 4, 5, and all
the rest, where God just starts making
all the other stuff. Verse 5, "And God
called the light
day and the darkness he called night and
the evening and the morning were the
first day."
Verse six, "And then God said let there be
a firmament
in the midst of the waters, let it divide
the waters from the waters."
Firmament means space, you know, emptiness.
Like sky,
air. "And God made the firmament and
divided the waters which were under the
firmament
from the waters which were above the
firmament." You know, where rain comes from
I guess. "And it was so. And God called the
firmament heaven.
And the evening and the morning were the
second day."
And now down to verse nine. "And God said,
'Let the waters under the heaven
be gathered together into one place and
let dry land appear.' And it was so.
And God called the dry land earth and
the gathering together of the waters he
called the seas. And God saw that it was
good."
So that's the second thing that was good.
"And God said, 'Let the earth bring forth
grass
and herb yielding seed, and fruit
and fruit trees yielding fruit after its
kind whose seed is in itself
upon the earth.' And so it was. And
then grass and herbs and
and then lights in the firmament..." I'm
passing over the next few verses here.
And after everything he makes God
said,
and it was good, it was good, it was good.
The affirmation of the goodness of the
world.
You don't find that in other creation
stories. This is
a unique quality. And again, thinking
always about the cosmological function --
what information is this passing on to
the people whose story
this is, who hold this story sacred?
The universe is not a meaningless,
nihilistic
place of randomness. It's...it all
comes from the mind of one God
and apparently it's very good because
they keep saying how
how good it is. Now
making great whales -- I'm down to verse 21.
"And God saw that it was good. And God
blessed them all, the animals, and saying
be fruitful and multiply, fill the waters,
and the seas, and let the fowl
multiply in the earth. And the evening in
the morning with the fifth day." So God's
making all
all the land, and all the plants,
and all the animals -- still no human
beings right?
And so he's setting the stage for his
ultimate creation, us.
Verse 26, "And God said, 'Let us make
man in our image, after
our likeness, and let them have dominion
over the fish of the sea
and over the fowl of the air and over
the cattle and over all the earth and
over
every creeping thing that creepeth upon
the earth.'"
I'm sure it's catching your ear. Why is
God referring to himself
in the plural? "Let us make man
in our image." Many people have commented
on this. There's a couple of different
things we can do here.
First of all, of course we're talking
about a monotheistic tradition.
But is this the vestige of an earlier
polytheistic time?
Some speculate that it was, you know, it's
not that the Hebrews just
woke up one day and said, "Hey, we're
monotheists." You know,
clearly this monotheism, of what will
become the Judeo-Christian
Biblical tradition, didn't just spring
out of somebody's head one day
and then everybody was instantly
monotheist. It's
reasonable to assume an evolution from
polytheism. Like all the people around
the Hebrews right,
the Sumerians, and the Babylonians, and
the Phoenicians, and the
Egyptians, and everybody's
polytheistic.
Except the Hebrews, who start championing
this idea of one God.
And perhaps there was a transition
period. And that's where some of the
plural language comes from.
Others, from the Christian side, we could
say, well, "us" refers to the Father, and the
Son, and the Holy Spirit.
That's a later Christian revision
because when this book happened, when
this book was written, there weren't any
Christians around. There's no doctrine of
the trinity.
So that's a kind of later Christian
reading. But there it is.
You know, or it could just be the
royal "we," you know, like
"we" and "us," you know, maybe
God's just referring to himself that way.
I don't know.
But it's an interesting linguistic
challenge when God suddenly starts
referring to himself in the plural.
But let's get to the really good part
and that's verse 27.
"So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God created he him,
male and female created he them."
That's it. Human beings are here suddenly.
Male and female made in the same instant,
in the same
moment, and made in the image of God. What
does that mean?
That's an important question in our
investigation
of the cosmological function of this
myth. What portrait is being painted
of the nature of the cosmos, and the
nature of human beings,
our place in the cosmos. We are made in
the
image of the creator. That's a pretty
exalted position.
And men and women are equally
made in the image of the creator. We'll
see that shift here in a second
when we get to Genesis chapter 2.
Verse 28. Let me close out this here.
"And God blessed them and God said unto
them, 'Be fruitful and multiply,
and replenish the earth, and subdue it,
and have dominion
over the fish in the sea and over the
fowl of the air and over every living
thing
that moveth upon the earth.'" So here human
beings, in the Biblical order, in the
Biblical cosmos,
human beings are above all of the
animals. We are to have dominion, which is
a word meaning stewardship, leadership,
Lordship, control.
You know, we're the
boss. The animals
are here for our use, for our pleasure,
for our purpose.
That's a big difference from so many
of the indigenous
mythologies around the world where human
beings are on an equal playing field
with
all of the other animals. And in some
ancient hunter-gatherer cultures
the source animal of the hunt, whether it
be
whales or caribou or whatever,
are understood as being superior to the
humans,
divine emissaries that come from the
great Mother Goddess
to keep us alive. But here in the
Biblical worldview -- and oh my God is this
going to have
ramifications throughout the triumph
of the Judeo-Christian world, and how
Christianity is now
the number one religion in the world --
that they bring with them this
Biblical mandate of the superiority of
human beings to all life.
It's part of the Conquest energy that
comes up many many centuries later --
getting ahead of myself -- but
you know we're looking in these old
stories for
clues as to how civilization ended up
this way. Why we have this sociology, etc.
Why we have this attitude toward the
environment, etc.
So let me just close out Genesis 1
there moving through a few lines, but
I'll read the very last line, verse 31:
"And God saw everything that he had made
and behold it was
very good."
That if, you know, just in case you
weren't listening the first seven times
when he said, "And it was good,"
he closes with, "And it was very good." So
we see unequivocally here in this Jewish
worldview and later Christian worldview --
although those two religions will
interpret this very differently --
in this Hebrew or Jewish worldview, the
affirmation of the goodness of the world,
made by a loving, intelligent being who
made
us in his image. So everything's pretty
cool right here. Everything's pretty good.
Nothing's gone side sideways yet. So
let's get to chapter two
and think a little bit about that one.
Same basic creation story, except the
plot shifts. The
sequence of creation is very, very
different. 
God makes some of the
world and he makes some of the plants,
but he hasn't made
all of the animals yet, and then in verse
7
look at how Adam is made. Verse 7 says,
"And the lord God
formed man of the dust of the ground
and breathed into his nostrils the
breath
of life, and man became a living soul."
Where's Eve? There's no Eve yet.
So God makes man first, before
all the animals are even done. And
what we know about man from this famous
passage Genesis
chapter 2 verse 7 is that
men anyway are of dual nature.
We're made of the earth, you know he
picked up some clay
and then breathed into our nostrils his
spiritual essence, so we are
part matter, part spirit.
"And then the lord God planted a garden
eastward in Eden and there he put
man who he had formed. And out of the
ground made the lord God to grow every
tree that is pleasant to the sight and
good
for food, the Tree of Life also in the
midst of the garden,
and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good
and Evil. Ah, two magical trees. A bunch of
fruit trees,
but then something called the Tree of
Life and something called the Tree of
the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And one
dude,
Adam, running around.
And the purpose of Adam really is to
keep the garden.
Verse 15: "And the lord God took the man
and he put him in the garden of Eden to
dress it and to keep it."
You're a landscaper. That's your job as
first man. But then God --
this is really a potent part right -- God
gives Adam a warning.
He says to Adam in
verse 16: "The lord God commanded the man
saying,
'Of every tree of the garden thou mayest
freely eat.'"
You can eat from whatever fruit you want
to, whatever tree you want to,
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.'"
So, super big warning. This is a common
motif in folk tales and world mythology.
It's called "the one forbidden thing." You
can eat the fruit of all these tree, oh,
but this tree here?
If you touch this fruit you will die.
Do not touch the fruit of the Tree of
the Knowledge
of Good and Evil. And Adam's like, "Okay."
And he goes about his business. And
and then God says, "It's not good that
Adam should be alone. I'm going to make a
helper
for Adam." I'm going to make a helper. And
and so God starts making all these
animals
and bringing them to Adam for job
interviews.
Like here's a, you know, here's a Labrador
retriever.
How about this? How about this as a
helper? And Adam's like, "Well, I love
this dog, it's really cool, but can't
really help me around the farm."
So, fail after fail, after fail, after fail.
God keeps making these animals, bringing
them to Adam
as a potential partner ,and Adam's like,
"No."  And so
Adam gives names to all the creatures.
And God causes all the animals to come into
being.
And then in verse 21, "And the lord God
caused a deep
sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept.
And he took one of his ribs and closed
up the flesh instead thereof,
and the rib which the lord God had taken
from the man,
made he a woman, and brought her unto the
man."
So now we have the origin story of woman.
Quite a bit later than the origin story
of man.
How different is that from Genesis 1
where they both emerged
together at the same moment, in the image
of
God, equally patterned after god?
But here in Genesis 2, which you recall
is 500 years
older than Genesis 1, we have a
kind of a more primitive tale of God
making Adam first,
and out of his own spirit. So man
is matter AND God's spirit, but woman is
made just from matter.
Do you see that? Woman is made
just from matter.
She's made from a bone pulled out of the
man.
So there's a sociological function
component
coming into this now. There's something
potent here
about the status of men and the status
of women
vis-a-vis God, you know, in the face of
God. Which one's closer to God?
Whose nature is more God-like, men or
women?
So wow, we're really getting a lot of
information that is going to have
far reaching impact in the formation of
Jewish and
Christian theology.
Particularly around the status of women.
And let me just say it bluntly --
are, you know, the last two, three thousand
years of patriarchy
and misogyny, is this where it begins?
Is this the sacred scripture that
authorizes
the subjugation of women as inferior?
So in the Roman Catholic Church to
this day, there will,
there are not women priests.
Men get to be priests, not women. Women
get supporting roles. In fact, Saint
Augustine, the great Church Father -- now
I'm jumping to the fourth century
CE -- Saint Augustine
argued for much -- you know he's one of the
architects of Christianity --
he argued for much of his life that
women do not have souls.
They're kind of upright walking animals,
driven by instinct and emotion.
Men have souls, men have reason, men have
spirit.
Because of this story. Wow.
Now, toward the end of his career
Augustine changed his mind
and he conceded, "Okay, women have souls."
Women are full
human beings. How nice of him. And so
it just just reminds you -- and in one of
the Crash Course videos we'll
we'll get into this question too -- 
the sociological
function that comes out of these
creation stories. Not just the
cosmological.
You know we've talked a lot about
the cosmological importance of these
stories, but now
we're seeing sociological structures
being born --
the status of women, the status of men,
and so on and so on.
So now we're getting to the Adam and Eve
story of course,
and that is what chapter 3 of Genesis is
about. We'll save that for another day
because there is much to unpack there.
Once there
is man and woman, once there is Adam and
his helper
Eve on the scene, as you know I'm sure,
all hell is going to break loose around
that tree, that forbidden thing, the Tree
of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Not to
mention the Tree of Life.
That plays a small part of the story.
Maybe we'll touch on that one too.
But I want to do -- in an upcoming video --
I want to do a deeper
dive into Genesis 3. Let's call it the
Garden of Eden story.
Because what's going to happen between
Adam, and Eve,
and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good
and Evil, and the serpent,
and the fruit on that tree, and then you
know what happens, they break the rule,
they eat the fruit, and they get banished.
And for thousands of years Eve's
lawlessness, her willingness to break
that law,
has created in some religious circles in
the Judeo-Christian world
the vilification of women. That
Eve is blamed for the Fall of Man,
for our alienation from God. But I want
to look at
an alternative interpretation. You know
we're getting better at
interpreting the metaphors here, and
I want to share with you some thinking
from a guy called Rabbi
Harold Kushner. And he's a Jewish
cleric, you know, a leader of a
congregation
in Judaism, who wrote a wonderful book
called "How Good Do We Have To Be."
And it's really a kind of reimagining of
Eve. Maybe she isn't the villain. Maybe
she's the hero.
Maybe her courage and curiosity and
philosophical
longing to know the difference between
good and evil,
maybe that was a trigger, like a
a mechanism, that brought humanity out of
mere creature status
into full human status. So that's a whole
different sociological function read
that we get from Rabbi Harold Kushner of
this exact same story.
Genesis 3, the Garden of Eden story. Which
we'll take up soon
in another video. See on the other side.
