Hi PD,
purpledawn writes:
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
So the narrator is telling us that God first brought the sky and land into existence. That's all. Neither heaven nor earth are capitalized, therefore in modern reading
heaven only refers to the the expanse of sky we see above our heads and
earth only refers to the ground. Notice all these verses start with "and". (BTW, there is nothing in the first sentence that says the land was created to be inhabited.)
My 1611 KJV Bible says:
quote:
In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth.
So they were both capitalized so it pays to research what we are talking about.
So Genesis 1:1 declares God created the Heaven that is the universe. It also declares God created the Earth which is the planet we live on.
Since the only water mentioned was a mist or the river that turned into 4 rivers to water the earth there was no other body of water mentioned in the story in Genesis 2:4-25. There was no water creatures created in this story.
purpledawn writes:
2 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.
The narrator goes on to tell us (And) that this ground that God brought into existence was without form and that the depths of the sea were dark and that the supernatural essence of God moved across the top of the waters.
Now you begin the story found in chapter 1 of a series of events that took place at some point after Genesis 1:1.
The history which we have of that day we find recorded in Genesis 2:4-25.
Genesis 1:2 as recorded in the 1611 KJV Bible:
quote:
And the earth was without form, and voyd, and darkness was vpon the face of the deepe: and the Spirit of God mooued vpon the face of the waters.
So according to your argument the Earth was not what was without form and void. The land mass was without form as it was covered by water. There was no land mass above water so it was not inhabitable as Isaiah said that God said He created it to be inhabited and not formless and void.
The narrator does not tell us what you said.
He did tell us that at the moment he is referencing that the ground is covered with water and darkness nothing else.
purpledawn writes:
3 And God said Let there be light and there was light.
The narrator tells us that God spoke light (illumination) into existence.
This verse does not tell us that Light was brought into existence.
It does tell us light became visible to the water that covered the land.
purpledawn writes:
In 4, and God separates the light from the darkness.
I Agree
purpledawn writes:
In 5, and God calls the light portion "Day" and the dark portion "Night". Thus we have day and night and a solar day is born.
The evening dark period coupled with the light period (day) God created the Heaven and the Earth was declared the first day.
The text does not tell us the length of the light period or the length of the dark period. It just states that the evening we find in Genesis 1:2 and the beginning of the light period following a period of darkness ended with the light of the following morning.
I do assume from that time until now that a light period and a dark period has been determined by the revolution of the earth in relation to the light source which we call the sun.
purpledawn writes:
6 And God said Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters and let it divide the waters from the waters
Then God spoke a firmament into existence and put it in the middle of the waters.
Firmament is the vault or arch of the sky.
Here We find the definition in the Merriam-Webster Collegiate dictionary for firmament.
quote:
1 : the vault or arch of the sky : HEAVENS
Here We find the definition for heaven as linked in the definition of firmament.
quote:
1 : the expanse of space that seems to be over the earth like a dome : FIRMAMENT
So the modern usage is that the firmament is the expanse of air, atmosphere above the earth where the birds and our airplanes fly.
Since the Earth is surrounded by this expanse of atmosphere it stands to reason that the writer of Genesis knew the Earth was some kind of circular mass. Whether his readers understood this or not is not important.
purpledawn writes:
In 7, the narrator tells us that (and) there are now waters above the arch and waters below the arch.
Is there water above that expanse?
If hydrogen atoms and oxygen atoms exist above the atmosphere our birds and planes fly in then water exists above the expanse.
Science believe that it does. The water that filled our oceans is believed to have come from comets.
purpledawn writes:
In 8, and God calls this arch, Heaven.
Thus we have the first Heaven above Earth.
purpledawn writes:
9 And God said Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place and let the dry land appear and it was so
So now God is gathering the waters under the arch into one place (not many places) so the dry land would appear.
Which would make the Earth look like my Avatar.
purpledawn writes:
In 10, God names the dry land, Earth, and the waters that have been gathered together in one place he called, Seas.
Now earth and heaven are capitalized in the KJV because they are written as names in the story. They refer to dry land and the arch per the story. Even in straight reading we take what the story says.
The dry land is called Earth.
Does that mean that the rest of the mass of solid materials that existed in Genesis around the core of the Earth has ceased to be the Earth?
The waters was called seas.
A sea is a continuous body of water as shown in my Avatar.
purpledawn writes:
In 11, God had the ground start to grow plants.
Be specific the text says:
quote:
Genesis 1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
1:12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
1:13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
Verse 11 says the seed was upon the earth.
Where did those seed come from?
purpledawn writes:
14 And God said Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years
So in 14-18, God put lights in the arch. A big light, a little light, and twinkle lights.
God did not create and place a big Light, and a little Light in the expanse as no light source of any kind exists there, it would crash into the Earth if it did.
Those lights already existed as they were created in Genesis 1:1.
So in these verses God made the lights visible in the darkness that was upon the earth.
purpledawn writes:
20 And God said Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven
Then God creates fish and birds (20-22). The birds would fly above the ground (not the planet) in the open arch of the sky (not space).
The text does not say God created anything, only that He called them forth from the waters even the fowl. Which in the story in Genesis 2:7-25 the fowl was formed from the ground.
What happened to verse 21 where God created great whales?
This is the first thing that has been created in Genesis 1:2-21.
purpledawn writes:
24 And God said Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth after his kind and it was so
In 24-25, God creates the land critters.
In these verses God called the creatures forth from the earth after their kind. He did not form them from the ground as He did in Genesis 2:19.
purpledawn writes:
In 26-27, God creates people.
God creates mankind male and female and called them Adam.
purpledawn writes:
In 29-30, God says that the birds, beasts and all that crawl on the land can eat plants for meat.
2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all the host of them
So now the arch and the land are finished, plus the multitude within.
You are stuck on an arch which you have determined to be something that is solid. The air is not solid and neither is space.
The KJV Bible translators understood firmament to mean the region of the air where birds fly.
purpledawn writes:
Heaven was singular in 1:1 and the multitude wasn't included in 1:1.
The Heaven (universe) was in existence with the Earth in it in Genesis 1:1.
God formed the first heaven when He separated the waters on the Earth and the waters that are above the expanse we call our atmosphere.
purpledawn writes:
In 2:2-3, God ended his work on the seventh day and rested. He then blessed the day and set it aside for religious use.
God ceased to create when He created mankind in His image/likeness in Genesis 1:27.
God still has not created anything from that time until the present.
The next thing He will create is the New Heaven and New Earth.
God sanctified the seventh day and set it apart from the rest. There is nothing religious about the setting apart of this day.
Later when He gave the law to the descendants of Abraham He set the seventh day as a day of rest.
Under the law no work was to be done. Neither was a man or any of his to leave his property on the seventh day. The Jews later changed God's law to suit themselves.
purpledawn writes:
2:4a These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created,
Now the narrator is going to tell us about the people God created. Generations deals with people.
Where does it say this is the generations of the people which would be their history?
The text says the generations (history) of the heavens and the earth in the day the Lord God created the Heaven and the Earth.
purpledawn writes:
2:4b-6 in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,
This part of the verse is telling us the time frame that is covered in the first part of the verse.
purpledawn writes:
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, But there went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground.
The narrator is telling us that back when God made the earth and the sky, before anything was growing, and before man was around, God caused a misty rain.
There was no misty rain. The ground was watered from beneath.
The narrator is telling us that in the day God created the Heaven and the Earth before there was man, plants, animals or rain.
THAT GOD:
purpledawn writes:
2:7 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
God formed man from dust and blew into his nose. The man then came to life.
God breath the breath of life into that form He had made from the dust of the ground and that form became a living being.
purpledawn writes:
In 8, God planted a garden towards the east in Eden,where he placed the man.
I agree.
purpledawn writes:
In 9, God caused the plants to grow, plus the special tree of life and the tree of knowledge.
There is no tree of knowledge.
There was a tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it covered no other knowledge.
purpledawn writes:
In 10-14, the narrator gives us a geography lesson.
In which he tells us of all the bodies of water on the face of the earth. There was no sea or seas mentioned.
purpledawn writes:
2:15 And the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it
God places man in the garden, again; but this time to prepare it and manage it.
I agree God gave this man a job.
purpledawn writes:
2:16-17 And the LORD God commanded the man saying Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, 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
God sets the boundaries of what the man can eat and over exaggerates a threat of death (as is common today) if disobeyed.
I agree that God set the boundaries of what the man could eat as He commanded him not to eat of a specific tree.
I disagree that God exaggerated the punishment for disobedience.
Because that man died in the same light period in which he was formed from the dust of the ground as he did not exist in Genesis 1:2.
purpledawn writes:
In 18, God realizes a man needs someone to help him tend the garden.
God did not realize any such thing. He made a statement it was not good for man to be alone.
purpledawn writes:
2:19-20 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, 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
Now God brings out the animals and birds for Adam to name and search for a helper. No helper suited his purpose.
He actually had several helpers but just not one suited for God's purpose for mankind.
purpledawn writes:
In 2:21-22, we have major surgery and a rib is removed from Adam. Woman is made from bone and taken to Adam. Men from dirt and women from bone.
Men were not from dirt. Man was formed from the dust of the ground. But that did not make him a man as the form was lifeless. God breathing the breath of life into that form is what caused the resultant living being constituting a man.
purpledawn writes:
In 23, Adam accepts the woman and calls her woman.
I agree.
purpledawn writes:
In 24, the narrator states that a man will leave his family, stick with the woman and make a baby.
The narrator states that the man said:
quote:
Genesis 2:23 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.
2:24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
So the man said it not the narrator and there is nothing mentioned about a baby.
purpledawn writes:
In 25, they are naked and not ashamed.
I agree, and a lot of people have tried to get back to that form of life and call it nudist colonys.
purpledawn writes:
From a modern perspective, the stories don't have the same intent.
So where do you get the modern perspective from?
purpledawn writes:
Genesis 1 is basic creation, building the base and then filling it. Mankind isn't the point of the story. God creating and resting is the point of the story.
I don't know where that conclusion comes from as your analysis does not confirm it.
purpledawn writes:
Genesis 2 is about mankind and how they progress. The A&E story is still a just so story. The creation elements aren't the point of the story. The people are the point of the story.
Your commentary does not make it just a story.
purpledawn writes:
Neither story is written as an actual event from a modern viewpoint.SigScripture is like Newton's third law of motionfor every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
In other words, for every biblical directive that exists, there is another scriptural mandate challenging it.
Your disbelief in the story has no effect on what is recorded in the KJV Bible.
But thanks for spending the time to go verse by verse even though you don't believe the stories.
God Bless,
"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."
™ Version 4.2