As a teenager I read the first book of the bible a couple of times, but I suppose I was so used to the stories that I didn't notice anything strange. Today when I read it, I see a completely different story.
The bible is completely true, or at least that's what many people believe. When asking them which translation is true, the person might pick their favourite translation. When asking about things that contradict, be logically incorrect, or refer to unscientific things like the four corners of the Earth, one might get a response that some of it is symbolic, and not meant to be taken literally, but everything else is entirely true.
The same principle can be applied to ANY piece of writing. All writing is entirely true, except for the parts which you don't take literally.
Of course this is quite ridiculous, so I'm just going to take Genesis as meaning exactly what it says and show you some interesting things that you may never have seen before.
I'm going to use the NIV, because I think it's the most popular version.
Gen 1:1 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."
It takes a lot of imagination to imagine this. Because this is so unusual, it could probably mean anything. The earth was formless, and empty... how can something be formless? Anyway, it was empty... does that mean there were no trees, or does that mean it was a hollow ball? Depending on your beliefs, you will probably choose your own definition for all of this.
Gen 1:3 "And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light."
So God created the heavens, before he created light? Okay, I suppose this could be possible, depending how you interpret it, like "heavens" could refer to the atmosphere, but it sounds to me like he made all the stars, but they weren't glowing. Lets skip ahead to verse 14...
Gen 1:14 "And God said, "Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night... etc."
Gen 1:16 "God made two great lights-the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars... etc."
Confusing... I thought he already made the light, back in verse 3. Anyway, it sounds a bit like God is using a 3D modelling program, like 3DS max, where you can create things in any sort of order, and enable them, and then disable them.
Gen 1:31 "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning-the sixth day."
Now can anyone argue that the bible says that everything was created in SIX days? Scientists think that the world is 4.5 billion years old, and the universe is 13.75 billion years old. If they are correct, then the universe was created 9 billion years before Earth. From the geneologies in the bible, we can calculate that this all happened about 6000 years ago.
The only sense I can make out of this is that God must have made everything look a lot older than it really was. God tends to take a lot of effort to make it appear as if he does not exist. He's really good at keeping himself invisible, and not talking to anyone, except through dreams and visions, and only cures disease that might have been misdiagnosed, or cured by themselves. He never cures amputees.
Gen 1:20 God makes all the living creatures. I would assume this includes snakes, spiders, cockroaches, worms, bacteria, germs, viruses, scorpions, lions, wolves, etc.
Gen 2:5 "Now no shrub had yet appeared on earth and no plant had yet sprung up..." (What? okay, we have gone back in time) "..., for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground."
I guess this means that water didn't used to evaporate and condense? The laws of physics were somewhat different?
In Genesis 2:8, God builds the garden in Eden. He makes some trees, including the "Tree of life", and the "Tree of the knowledge of good and evil".
Why did God create these trees? Did he want Adam and Eve to eat the fruit? It reminds me of an experiment that Derren Brown did, where he made a girl kill a kitten on television. Well, she didn't actually kill the kitten, because it was just a test, but she pushed the button that she thought would kill the kitten. Why did she do it? Because Derren put her in a situation where she would be unable to control her urge to push the big, red button. God did the same to Adam and Eve by sticking the tree in the middle of the garden, and telling them not to eat the fruit. It's an inevitable result of human psychology that we will want to eat the fruit. God knew this, because he made them, and would have expected them to eat the fruit.
Gen 2: 18 "The LORD God said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.'"
At this point, I'd like to know, did God create only male animals, or did he create male and female animals and only consider making a female human later? Also, did Adam have the parts required to reproduce, or did God have to modify him after creating Eve?
No, hang on... the bible's not talking about a woman yet, because the next verses say:
Gen 2:19 "Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals. But for Adam no suitable helper was found."
God was looking for a helper for him amongst the animals?
Gen 3:1 "Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, 'Did God really say, "You must not eat from any tree in the garden"?'"
Imagine the situation... the serpent is more crafty than the other wild animals. So the lions and dogs might have been crafty, but not quite as crafty as the serpent. That's a pretty wierd thing to say. And then suddenly the serpent talks! If I were writing Genesis, I would probably have written the following at that point: "And the woman shouted 'HOLY CRAP!' and ran to Adam, yelling 'The snake just spoke!' And Adam replied, 'Holy Crap! Where's God? Have you told him?'"
I also wonder how the snake would have spoken, and what it would have sounded like. I imagine it thpeaking with a lithp.
Gen 3:14 "So the LORD God said to the serpent, 'Because you have done this,
Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life...'"
Interesting to learn that snakes used to walk around on their feet, before this curse. Strange that snakes no longer eat dust, but still crawl on their bellies.
Gen 3:16 "To the woman he said,
'I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.'"
I have a couple of things to say about this. Obviously these curses are implied as curses to descendents as well, because women still have lots of pain when they give birth.
Who thinks this may have been a little bit of an over-reaction on God's part?
At this point I think I should explain the difference between punishment and revenge, because the bible gets them muddled up a lot.
Punishment (or justice) exists to make the world a better place for the majority of people. It does not exist to hurt people, but people get hurt so that they will know not to repeat the offence and as a warning to others.
Revenge does not serve the world. It exists mostly as a way to resolve feelings of anger.
Now, was this punishment, or revenge? I'm not going to tell you, because you're smart enough to figure it out.
Gen 3:17 "To Adam he said, 'Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, "You must not eat from it,"
'Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.'"
Again... is it punishment, or revenge... does it solve a problem, or does it exist to resolve anger?
Interesting that it says "By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food", since most people no longer sweat while we work for food. Were we actually able to save ourselves from this curse, or are we sinning by working in air-conditioned offices?
Gen 3:21 "The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And the LORD God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.' So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life."
I love this bit, and I think I will stop here. Firstly, there's a tree of life, which gives you eternal life... The logical thing would have been to not plant it in the first place, ... or just let us eat and live forever. Anyway, do you think this tree has died now? It is the tree of life, so probably not.
It's probably still there... all we have to do is look for the cherubim and a flashing sword.
So the cherubim and flashing sword are on the east side... can't we still get in through the north, south and west? Or does this imply a wall around it? And, if there was a wall around the garden, I would imagine that in order to get to the streams they had to walk out of the east side of the garden, because a stream cannot flow through a wall.
Maybe God should have just placed the cherubim around the tree? wouldn't that have been easier?
Since swords had not been invented yet, I wonder if the sword looked more like a light sabre?
If you've read this far and you're thinking up a load of excuses for each and every one of these problems, just stop and be honest with yourself for once. The bible is supposed to be God's word, the best book ever written, and does not require excuses. The truth is obvious... that the simplest explanation for these problems is most likely the true explanation... figure it out.
