Previously, on The Outcast:
So, I’ve already done the whole expulsion from paradise thing. In that post, I compared God to a father who leaves a loaded gun in his children’s reach and tells them not to play with it. And while I do stand by that post, and the analogy, it was pretty generalized. So after doing the first chapter of Genesis line by line, I’ve decided to continue that method and go on to Chapter 2, which deals with the aforementioned subject.
When we left off, God had just created everything. As we saw, he seems to have some pretty mysterious powers - light with no source, higher organisms without the lower organisms to support them, and a shell of water above the sky. In Chapter 2 of Genesis, we see that 6 days of work following an eternity of sitting around doing nothing can be pretty tiring, so God decides to take a nap.
Genesis Chapter 2-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
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Exactly how long he rests for is unclear, but I’d imagine you’d be ill prepared to run a marathon after a sedentary lifetime.
Genesis Chapter 2------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,
5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.
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Now we see one of the first things God does, presumably after he’s rested. It seems he had such a great nap, he decided to make the seventh day the napping day for the whole world, and so he blesses and sanctifies it. It actually gives his reasoning for this: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
Interestingly, the very next line says something that would seem to be contradictory. The first chapter clearly says it took six days to create everything, yet Chapter 2, Verse 4 says, “In the DAY the LORD God made the heavens and earth.” As I mentioned in that post, there are two creation accounts, this is the start of the second one.
Then the pattern of contradiction seems to grow. The plants of the fields and the herbs of the fields did not grow, it says, for two reasons. God had not made rain, and Man wasn’t there. Yet in Chapter 1, it clearly says that the plants and herbs were indeed growing before God created Man.
Genesis Chapter 2-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.
7 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.
8 ¶ And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
9 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 knowledge of good and evil.
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I’d like to point out that God is, again, repeating himself. He already created all the food bearing plants in Chapter 1. The only thing seemingly new here is the Tree of Life, and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. [Note: Although I cannot verify this personally, as I don’t read Hebrew, I’ve been told that the original text says something closer to the “Tree of Knowledge of Everything” not the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.”]
Genesis Chapter 2-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.
11 The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;
12 And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.
13 And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.
14 And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.
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Ahh, more details. We like details, because details are specific. Vague information tends to be harder to understand, but details are clear.
What we see here is, basically, a map. From the Garden of Eden, water flowed, and that water split into four rivers. The Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel, and Euphrates. The great thing about rivers is that while their course will change a little over time, they don’t usually change so much that they are completely unrecognizable. The Nile, for example, used to run right in front of the Great Pyramids, but they don’t any longer, yet we still know it’s the Nile. So, where are these rivers?
Well, the Euphrates is a name that is still used for a river today, although it used to be called Prath. The Euphrates starts in Eastern Turkey, flows through Syria and Iraq, eventually joining the Tigris before flowing into the Persian Gulf. And since we know from the Bible that these rivers originate in Eden, we can assume that Eden was in Turkey if the other three rivers match. So let’s take a look.
How about the Hiddekel River? Well, this one is actually believed to be the Tigris River, which I just mentioned. So, two for two, right? Nope. See, the Bible is very clear about this; these rivers begin in the same place. And while the Tigris and the Euphrates do start in Turkey, they don’t start in the same place and don’t even meet each other till near the end of their journey into the Persian Gulf. But that’s okay, right? One little detail isn’t a big deal. They just got the direction of the water wrong, and Eden is actually where the two rivers meet instead of the source. So maybe the other two rivers will meet there too.
And this is where we run into another problem. Once again, the Bible says these four rivers are connected. So even if they got the direction wrong, then there should still be four distinct rivers where they meet, but there’s only two. The Tigris and Euphrates. The truth is, the other two don’t seem to have ever existed, and the ones that people try to say are those rivers aren’t even possible because they aren’t connected, as the Bible says they should be.
Genesis Chapter 2-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
15 And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
17 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.
18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.
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Now, while God made the seventh day a blessed and sanctified day, he hadn’t made any rules for it yet. That comes later. Here we see the first rule of God, but we’ll get to that in a moment.
After setting up the two known and two missing rivers, God took Man and placed him in the garden. So far, he is the only man in existence, which God decides is a bad thing even though before, right after creating this man, he had no problem with it since he said it was good. So God now says “I will make him an help meet for him.” A rather confusing wording, but basically God said he’s going to make a woman for Adam. God then creates every beast of the field (which happened prior to creating man in Chapter 1) and tells Adam to name them. You would think God would get the order right, it’s not as though this is the end of the book. It’s Chapter 2, the chapter right after this all happened.
Let’s take a quick look at Verse 16 and 17. This is part of what I covered previously, so I’m not going to go into detail here. But it does set a certain tone. The thing to look at here is that God put man in the garden to tend the garden, but then forbade Adam to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, yet not the tree of life, which was also in the garden. At this stage, Adam is a mindless automaton just doing what he’s told; his reason for existing is to tend God’s garden, and God knows that eating from that tree would make Adam think about other things, like the fact that his wangdoodle is hanging out for all to see. And yet, he sticks the tree in the middle of the garden where Adam can get to it, something an all knowing god would know not to do for reasons that we’ll see in Chapter 3, and I’ll explain in greater detail there.
Genesis Chapter 2-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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;
22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
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Here, the second human is created. God puts Adam to sleep so he can take a rib, and then takes that one rib and creates an entire woman. I shouldn’t have to point out the problems this brings up, but I’m sure someone will read this and go “What’s wrong with that?” So here we go.
As we understand genetics, the “sex chromosome,” more commonly known as X or Y chromosomes determine our gender. If you have two X chromosomes, you are female, but if you have one X and one Y, you’re male. But as we’ve seen with our own attempts at cloning, it is incredibly difficult to even get an exact copy, let alone one of the opposite sex. The other issue with this is something called Deleterious Recessives. These are when certain genetic traits, like a tail or full body fur, manifest themselves in later generations. It’s rare, but it does happen. But in the case of God, taking Adam’s X chromosome, copying it, and splicing it with itself would create a whole slurry of these traits. She could have a tail, big ears, claws, full body hair, and hand like feet, because even at this time those traits would be present in the DNA. Luckily, Adam didn’t know any better since he was a good little boy and didn’t eat from the tree, or he might have run screaming from the sight of Eve.
There is one last thing I’d like to address here. There is a common misconception that’s being going around for a long time, and as much as I hate to admit it even I believed this. The belief is that males have one less rib, or one less pair of ribs, then women do. This is because God took a rib from Adam. To put this succinctly, it’s flat out wrong. Both men and women have 12 pairs of ribs.
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