Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Back To The Bible



As I mentioned earlier in my post entitled "In Our Image", Genesis, Chapter 1:26 intrigues me. It reads:

“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.”

God had created male and female “in his image”. So if God had created man in “his image” then “God” must have had a physical form and was not just a spiritual being. And if humans were created in the image of “God”, then our creator didn’t look like a stereotypical extraterrestrial with a big head and big dark eyes and grey skin. But who’s to say how many different kinds of celestial beings there are out there; each group could look different.

Genesis Chapter 2 begins with reference to God ending his work and resting on the seventh day. However, Verse 5 says“…there was not a man to till the ground.” What had happened to the man he had created in Chapter 1 whom he told to be fruitful and multiply? Reading further, Verse 7 says:

“…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.”

Was this a second creation or a restatement of what was described in Chapter 1? And I saw that “God” was “God” in Chapter 1, but now a quick scan of Chapter 2 shows that this has been changed to “the Lord God”. What did this mean? Was this a different entity and a second creation story?

Chapter 2 continues with the Lord God saying “it is not good that the man should be alone.” And then, for the second time, God continued to form every beast of the field and every fowl of the air. But for the man there was not found a “help meet” for him. The creation of woman, again for the second time, follows beginning with 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 man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.”

Then the serpent shows up in Chapter 3 and we all know how that goes. I especially noted the verses that read “And the serpent said unto the woman, ‘Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day you eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” And once they had eaten of the tree, they did not die as God had said, but they did know they were naked.

I wondered who the serpent was. Was he ‘Satan’, or was he an emissary of an extraterrestrial community interfering with this little creation experiment for some reason? And if so, exactly what was their agenda?

I also noted that the serpent uses the word “God”; yet throughout Chapter 3 the words “Lord God” are used. “God” was the creator back in Chapter 1. Were ‘God’ and ‘Lord God’ two separate entities? Was the serpent connected with the ‘God’ of Chapter 1 and out to sabotage the ‘Lord God’ of Chapter 2?

Reading further in Chapter 3, I came across that second reference to “plural gods” when the Lord God says “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil…”

I noted that once I got into Chapter 4, the Lord God became just “Lord” and again wondered if that had any significance. I kept reading past Noah and the flood story and came to Chapter 11 which began “And the whole earth was of one language, of one speech.” And described the building of a city and “a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” And this was followed with:

“And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the Lord said Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel: because the Lord did there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.”

Up through Chapter 11 there are three separate references to plural gods, and in each of them it is a direct quote of "god” speaking to others who appear to be of similar standing. And in the Babel story he is saying “let us go down”…like fire up the spaceship we’ve got to go down there and confuse the hell out of those people because they’re getting too smart for their own good.

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