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My lecture along with my socialist translation of Genesis 1-2'
The First creation in Genesis
At the start, when God was creating the skys and the land the land was a primeval emptiness, while darkness veiled the face of the deep. God’s breath skirted the surface of the waters.
God said, “There shall be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good.
Then, God made a rift between the light and the darkness. He gave the name day to the light and to darkness the name night. That was the evening and the morning of the first day.
God said, “There shall be firmament in the midst of the waters. There shall be a split between waters to waters.” Therefore God made the firmament and there was a split between the waters above the firmament and below the firmament. So it was. God gave to the expanse the name sky. That was the evening and the morning of the second day.
God said, “The waters shall gather from beneath the sky into one place, and the dry ground shall appear.” So it was. God gave dry land the name Earth, and gathered waters he called sea. God saw it was good.
Then God said, “The earth shall produce greenery; seed filled plants, fruit trees in labor with fruit of all the kinds of seeded fruits of the earth. So it was. The earth produced greenery; seed filled plants, fruit trees in labor with fruit of all the kinds of seeded fruits of the earth. God saw it was good. It was the morning and the evening of the third day.
God said, “There shall be lights in the atmosphere of the heavens to separate day and night. They will be signals for seasons, days, and years. There shall be lights in the atmosphere of the heavens, to shine on the earth. So it was.
God made two great lights, the greater light to influence the day, and the lesser light to influence the night, there were also stars. God put them into the heaven’s atmosphere, to shine upon the earth, governing in the day and in the night, to separate light from darkness. God saw it was good. It was the evening and the morning of the fourth day.
God said, “The water shall swarm with the souls of living creatures. Birds shall fly above the earth, caressing the face of the sky.”
God created vast sea creatures and the soul of every moving thing thriving in the water, and all the kinds of winged birds. God saw it was good, so God blessed them, “Be fruitful, become numerous, fill the waters in the sea, and birds, increase upon the earth.” It was the evening and the morning of the fifth day.
God said, “The land shall produce living things of all kinds, cattle, crawling things, and wild animals of every kind.” So it was.
So God made wild animals of every kind, cattle of every kind, and dirt crawlers of every kind. God saw it was good.
God said, “We shall make man in our image, our likeness. They shall rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the air, over the cattle, the wild animals of all the earth, and above all the crawlers, the ones crawling about.
God created man in his image. In the image of God he created him, both man and woman.
God blessed them, and said to them, “Be fruitful, increase, be numerous, fill the earth, and dominate it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky and every living thing of the land.
God said, “At this very moment I am giving you every seed bearing plant on the face of the earth, every tree bearing fruit with seeds. For you this shall be food. To every creature upon the earth, to the bird of the air, every crawling thing upon the ground that has life. Every green plant is to be their food.” So it was.
God observed all of his creation, all this was in front of him was very good. It was the evening and the morning of the sixth day.
The heavens and the earth were done in their completeness, so on the seventh day God was finished with his work, which he had done. So he rested on the seventh day from all the work which he had done. God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, because he rested from all his work of creation, which he had done.
The Second Creation in Genesis
These are the histories of the heavens and earth, when they were created. On the day the LORD God made the earth and heavens none of the field shrubbery existed on the earth; none of the plants of the field had sprung up, because the LORD God had not sent rain upon the earth. Man was not there to work the ground. Then streams rose from the ground and watered the whole surface of the soil.
The LORD God fashioned the man from the dust of the ground, then he breathed the breath of life into his nostrils. Therefore, the man became soulful, having life.
Now, the LORD God planted a garden in the east, in Eden, and there he put the man who he had formed. The LORD God made every tree pleasing to the sight and good for food to grow from out of the ground. The Tree of Life was in the middle of the garden, as was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
When the river flowing through Eden to water the garden flowed from that place it divided and became the mouth for four rivers. The name of the first river was Pyshon, the one winding through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold, God and good Bdolach and Onix stones. The name of the second river was Gychon, the one winding through all of the land of Cush. The name of the third river was Tideqel (Tigris) the one running east of Ashur. The name of the fourth river was Prat (Euphrates).
The LORD God took the man and he put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. The LORD God commanded to the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you are to eat, but from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil you will not eat, because on the day that you eat from it you will die a death.
The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to exist alone. I will make a comrade that will suit him.”
So the LORD God formed from the ground all of the beasts of the field and every bird of the sky. He brought them to the man, to see what he would name them. Whatever the man named the living creature that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but there was no comrade for Adam.
So the LORD God made a deep sleep fall upon the man. He took a rib from him, and closed up its place with flesh.
Then the LORD God made the rib, which he had taken from the man, into a woman.
He brought her to the man, and the man said, “This, this is bone from my bone, flesh, from my flesh. She shall be called (wo)man, because she was taken out of man.”
Because of her company a man will leave his mother and father and will be united with his wife as one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, but without same.
1. Historical Critical
2. Hebrew
3. Translation
1. Read my translation of 2 Creation Stories (2 students)
2. What have you heard for reasons of having 2 Creation Stories?
3. The Rabbinic tradition 2 explanations I know of 1. The Idea vs. the Deed. The first CS is the ideal how God wants humanity to interact the second is what humanity does. 2. Lilith Submissive sexual position? No. Harpy, Jewish Boys. Feminism
4. Another way to explain this is in a secular scholarly manner. Historical Critical. HC means, as DF put it Bible “Text context” (FalknerSouth “Past is not dead, it isn’t even past” Toni Morrison, Black women, black women’s issues)
5. An example of this scholarly study would be to look at previous myths of the time-period in the Middle East. Look at the context in which the author was writing in.
6. First lets look at the Epic of Gligamesh, an Assyrian story written in 2000 BCE about 1000 years before earliest pieces of the Bible were written. The story goes thus. Gilgamesh, legendary ruler of Uruk (a name remarkably similar to Ur of Abraham’s birth I might add) is hanging out with Enkidu, his companion, a furry wildman. A goddess tries to seduce Gilgamesh, he’d rather be frolicking with Enkidu, so she kills Enkidu. Gilgamesh realizes death is real, so he goes out looking for eternal life. He finds the only immortal man, Utnapishtim, who has effectively the same story as Noah. He tells Gilgamesh the story of how the gods flooded the whole earth. A god known as Ea tells him to build an ark, take his family and 2 of every animal with him and float around for a while. After a few 7 day periods he lets loose a dove, who comes back, then a swallow, who also comes back to the boat, then he lets out a Raven, which flies away. Then the gods give Utnapishtim a rainbow necklace to promise never to flood the earth again. After telling this story Utnapishtim points Gilgamesh towards the tree of life. He is about to eat the tree’s fruit when a snake comes along and gobbles up the food. Gilgamesh is consoled by the Gods, being told. “As for you, Gilgamesh, fill your belly with good things; day and night, night and day, dance and be merry, feast and rejoice. Let your clothes be fresh, bathe yourselves in water, cherish the little child that holds your hand, and make your wife happy in your embrace; for this too is the lot of man. Similarly Ecclesiasties 9:7-9 echoes these thoughts saying; “Go, eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a glad heart; for what you do God has approved beforehand. Wear white (GOFestivity) all the time, do not stint your head of oil. Spend your life with the woman you love, through all the fleeting days of the life God has given you under the sun”
7. Looking at another myth of the time, specifically a creation myth of the time we see the first creation story of Genesis loud and clear. In the Enuma Elish Marduk, a Babylonian god, beats up Tiamat, the watery chaos. He kills Tiamat and divides her corpse into two, forming the dome of heaven and the dry land. Marduk creates 1. Light which emanates from the gods, 2. The sky as a dome, 3. Dry land 4. Hevenly lights 5. Humanity as a slave for the gods, basically they take over controlling the world, the God’s need their sacrifices or they get hungry + the world becomes imbalanced. With the humans taking over the gods rest and feast.
8. Things that Gen. 1 obviously borrowed (1)Tachom “the Deep” Tiamat. (2) 6 stages of creation 1. Light 2. Sky dome 3. Dry land 4. Heavenly lights 5. Man 6. Rest (3) heaven and earth result from the action of dividing.
9. Differences: 1. Humans pinacle of creation 2. Humans slaves 3. God doesn’t battle 4. God is one, not part of a pantheon 5. God maintains a stable universe w/out support from human ritual acts.
10. Now that I’ve explained the basic idea of historical critical let’s get back to Genesis. Why do Biblical scholars think there are 2 creation stories? They have analyzed the word use and style of the Hebrew Bible authors and have figured out that there are at least 4 traditions represented within the Bible, basicly 4 separate texts that were redacted, stuck together to form the Hebrew Bible sometime after the 5th century BCE. These traditions are called J,E,D, and P and come from around 1000 BCE until about 500 BCE. For the purposes of Genesis we’ll stick with E, from 900 BCE in northern Israel (Genesis 1) and J (some think P) (Gen 2) from 10th century BCE Judah (that is the south). So, the reason neither creation story was thrown out is because both sources were valid and had traditions going back many centuries. In fact this process of squishing together divergent texts is quite common. So common it has a name, Doubling. The most obvious example of doubling, outside of the 2 stories of creation, is found in the story of Noah. Two different flood stories are within the one account, one from the P source and one from the J source.
11. Example Genesis 7:1-5 “Then Yahweh said to Noah….Take with you SEVEN pains of all clean amimals,… a pair of the animals that are not clean… seven pairs of birds…” Gen. 6:13-22 “And Elohim said to Noah…. “And of every living thing, of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark.”
12. Example again Genesis 7:16b-20, “Yahweh shut him in. The flood continued FOURTY DAYS on the earth…” Genesis 7:24-8:2a, “And the waters swelled on the earth for one hundred fifty days. But Elohim…”
13. As you might have guessed the name of God is one of the indicators for scholars to tell which source wrote which thing. That in a nut shell is Historical Critical.
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