Genesis 1 and 2: The Difference Between Created and Formed

added by edit: sorry pd, saw the message after the post.Edited by arachnophilia, : post retracted.

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you mean me? i don't actually speak hebrew (fluently) but i do know a little. but i have run into two (former?) members that did speak hebrew. one was fairly new and from israel, and the other was amlodhi.anyways, i'm not sure the hebrew would say anything the english doesn't, because the translation of ‘ to "created," to "formed," and to "made," is fairly strictly literal and consistent.

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Isa 43:7

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Even every one that is called by my name:
for I have created him for my glory,
I have formed him;
yea, I have made him.

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Isa 45:18

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For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens;
God himself that formed the earth and made it;
he hath established it, he created it not in vain,
he formed it to be inhabited:
"I am the LORD; and there is none else."

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Psa 95:5

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The sea is his, and he made it:
and his hands formed the dry land.

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Isa 27:11

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When the boughs thereof are withered, they shall be broken off:
the women come, and set them on fire:
for it is a people of no understanding:
therefore he that made them will not have mercy on them,
and he that formed them will shew them no favour.

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Isa 44:2

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Thus saith the LORD that made thee,
and formed thee from the womb, which will help thee;
Fear not, O Jacob, my servant;
and thou, Jesurun, whom I have chosen.

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Isa 45:7

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I form the light, and create darkness:
I make peace, and create evil:
I the LORD do all these things.

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although not in hebrew, since you're concerned with english:

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Rom 9:20

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Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?

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one has to understand the structure of hebrew poetry. one line often repeats the next, in very similar (synonymous) wording. the isaiah verse about evil is an especially good example. "light" and "good" are clearly being associated, yet look at the verbs. "make" and "form" also mean the same thing, and HAVE TO mean the same thing. this is an incredibly contortionist way to read the text. how do you make something, and then form it? you can make the raw materials, and then form something out of the materials, but that's not what's happening here. in genesis 2, the material god uses to make man is the ground.but there's an even bigger problem with your idea.

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Gen 2:22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

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god makes woman, not "forms" woman. there's another problem here. nowhere in genesis does it say that god "formed" the earth. so if "created" covers the void problem, and "formed" covers the without form problem -- where does the earth acquire form? secondly,

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Gen 1:2 And the earth was without form, and void;

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this is one sentance. what's further is that god does not "create" the earth in genesis 1, unless you're considering the first verse to mean that. and if so, that happens before "the void problem" and not after. on the contrary, it is because we're reading it in a very literal way. i think you will find that i am often the most literal person in biblical debates here. i have no porblem, however, with the contradiction because i understand the context. not just the textual, but the historical and social context as well. no, the first 3 and a half verses are the end of chapter 1. the chapters should split here:

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Gen 2:4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created.

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In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,

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try reading it that way, read from genesis 1:1 to the first half of 2:4, stop, go get a snack, and come back and read the second half of genesis 2:4, to the end of the chapter 2 (or 3, or 4). it really makes a lot more sense that way.

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no problem.

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why is the relation specific about adam coming before plants and animals, in direct contradiction to the chronology?as i pointed out in the previous thread, animals in particular are created because adam is lonely. adam has to exist, for him to be alone -- the story does not have god saying "well, i know adam WILL be lonely after i create him." it has adam being lonely, god creating animals and bringing them to adam, adam judges them all as unsuitable, and then god creates woman.and in regards to plants, it literally says (in the original...) adam was created before plants.

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yes and no. while the earliest biblical hebrew texts use a different script, the language itself (iirc) is the same.

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the stories make very little sense next to each other, don't they?the really weird part is that later in the same story -- cain and abel -- we get a hint or two that there are other people around, even though "eve" is the one whose name means "causes all life."Edited by AdminPD, : Off Topic WarningEdited by AdminPD, : Removed Warning

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sorry, i wasn't ignoring you to be evasive, i was ignoring you because adminpd said to drop it. but i'll post it anyways, since it might really be on topic afterall.a posted the original hebrew (and partial translation) in message 175 of the other thread. just for further clarification, here is the complete verse, again.

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— — , ‘‘: ‘, —-- . — , ‘, —-‘ , : — —, —-, , —‘ -.

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eleh toldot ha-shamim v'ha-eretz: b'(ha?)-baram: b'yom asot yahueh elohim -- eretz v'shamim v'kol shich-ha-shadeh, terem yehayah b'eretz, v'kol eshab-ha-shadeh terem yetsmach: ki lo hamatir yahueh elohim al-ha-eretz, v'adam ain, l'abad et-ha-adamah

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these (are) "origns" the-skies and-the-ground when-created, in-day made (pl/fm?) yahweh god -- ground and-skies and-every plant-wild, before it-was in-ground, and-every herb-wild before it-grew: because no watered yahweh god on-the-ground, and-man(kind) none, to-till (d.o.)-the-soil.

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these are the origins of the skies and the ground when they were created
when the lord god made -- ground and skies,
and every wild plant before it was in the ground,
and every wild herb before it had grown,
because the lord god had not brought rain on the earth
and there was no man to till the soil.

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the important point here is that there are no plants because there is no man. that much should be obvious, i hope. it's what the text says, even in english. the next few verses go on to describe man being formed:

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— -

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v'yatsar yahueh elohim et-ha-adam

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and the lord god formed the man...

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and then god making plants:

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—, -, —-

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v'yatsmach yahueh elohim, men-ha-adamah, kol-etz...

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and the lord god made every tree [...] grow from the soil...

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with the implication that because there is man (and water), god can now make those plants.i must admit though, this is a bit of a counfounding text for me. and a lot of the point against the op (not the above claim) is a bit more subtle, and relies on the implications and connotations of the way hebrew grammar works. for instance, if i meant to say "before they were in the ground" with implication of prior existance and movement, i'd probably say — ‘ (lefnay b'eretz) or "prior to [being] in the ground." but use of is rare, and often (not always) implies that we are talking about existance. it's a word that's commonly left out, unless it's important or specifically talking the past (never the present). saying ‘ (terem yahayah b'eretz) implies that you mean "before they existed, in the ground."but i'm even not fully sure how some of these form sentances, thought the above is my best guess. there are still some bits i can't make sense of, like why the "made" in the second half of verse four is plural and female.i will provide an alternate viewpoint, from my copy of the chumash's heavy footnotes.

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5. was yet in the earth ... had yet sprung up. This was the position after the six days. Although they were brought forth on the third day (cf. i. IIf), they were still on the surface of the earth and needed the watering of the mist to make them grow (Rashi). Nachmanides explains more simply: On the third day they were indeed created with their form and stature; but they could not be further planted or sown, and they could not grow anew until the mist ascended.

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there are a number of problems with this view. the two opinions, of course, do not agree. are the plants seeds? or fully grown? the other problem is in genesis 1. for rashi, what does "brought forth" mean, if not "grew?" and for nachmanides, how to explain the presence of plants that are not yet in the ground?further, it fails to explain why animals are apparently created twice. yes, i checked, my footnotes are mysteriously silent on the matter. and in this part of genesis, they take up half the page or more. the other half split between hebrew and english, so really, twice as much commentary as verse for any single reference. yet no reason for animals being created again.so there's no good, consistent explanation for plants being createdthere is a bit of commentary in it that pertains directly to the op, so i will post that as a separate entry,

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actually, that's totally irrelevent. nearly every sentance in the hebrew bible starts with a vav "and-" and punctuation was a relatively recent addition.it's an odd point of trivia that the longest run-on sentance in existance is the old testament.

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(from my chumash)

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2. [...] which God in creating had made. (The literal translation is 'which God created to do' or 'make'.) The work which was still 'to do' on the seventh day was done on the sixth day (Rashi). Ibn Ezra comments: the work which God had created with the power to reproduce ('to make') itself. Nachmanides holds that bara 'created' always refers to creatio ex nihilo and asah 'made' to the shaping of existing matter, and accordingly renders: 'He rested from all His work (i.e. matter) which God had created (ex nihilo) to make' (from it the things which were made in the six days). (This accords with the view that everything was potentially created on the first day.)

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again, there are a number of problems with this view. genesis 1 fails to describe such creation ex-nihilo. but that's a subject of MANY debates here. but the other problem is that while many hold ‘ (bara) to describe ex-nihilo, it's hard to find agreement on the others.for instance, from what does god "make" the sun, the moon, and the stars? from what does god "make" man, in genesis 1? god says in one verse, let us "make" (asah) man, and in the next verse, god "creates" (bara) man. earlier in the chapter, god "creates" (bara) the great sea serpents (or "whales"). why when the fish and animals are not made ex-nihilo?indeed, even the op agrees that ‘ and are obviously synonyms. (yatsar) is clearly the one that means "formed" and implies a physical shaping process.but they are, however, used as synonyms:

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Isa 43:7

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for I have created (baratiu) him for my glory,
I have formed (yatsartiu) him;
yea, I have made (asitiu) him.

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i see no reason to read it has god going through a two-step process to make the world, first creating the matter and then shaping it. genesis 2 simply uses a more personal, physical word.

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i'm really tired of these arguments. "creation ex nihilo" are human words. they describe creation ex nihilo, don't they? we are capable of expressing just about anything we want in human language. the argument that "we need god's help to get it" is frankly just an excuse for something not making sense as you think it should. it mean, primarily, that your reading is not based on the text. and if based on what god tells us in our own hearts -- why do we need the bible? these arguments make the bible a useless and ineffectual text, if god has to read it to us. they correlate more or less directly to their english equivalents. we're talking about distinctions of implications and flavor. really, they are interchangeable and it's a matter of taste and emphasis. if you pull out a thesaurus, you'll probably find them listed as synonyms. i doubt that. well, that's the problem. that's not a hebrew concept. the first verse of genesis can acceptably be rendered:"in the beginning of god's creating of heaven and earth, the earth was unformed..."genesis particulary describes god forming the earth. he creates by organizing; dividing something from its opposite. the description is of creation by way of making order from chaos. i don't see it. you might be able to read "was" as "existed." but that's a stretch. i'm not sure what you think that proves. both are in the image of god. one verse parallels "image" one way, the next a different way. if god "made" you king, what has he done? this is an acceptable usage in english, too.don't use strong's like a dictionary. it's not. it catalogs the usages throughout the bible, regardless of context, conjugation, or grammar. seeing the word used one way in a particular verse does not mean that you can use it that way in another verse. likeness and image are the same thing. there is no idea of gradualism in the text, even if the verb is imperfect. it's still a past tense, singular action. tricks and distortions of grammar, and creative usage of a concordance don't override the basic idea of the text, and a plain and properly grammatically correct reading. and the text of genesis 1 is not very complex hebrew. that's a different story, and still not a valid reading. in the image or likeness of god does not mean something is god, or has all of the properties of god. it means similarity, though obviously not in all aspects. in the most literal reading, it means we look like god. and that's about it. extended readings might refer to emotions, or intelligence (but not neccessarily awareness), etc.Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.

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entirely possible. but like i said, i doubt the story. there have been threads here before about paul that have suggested he wasn't even jewish at all.

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yes. i know. but you missed the point. clearly, the concept is able to be expressed in human language. i could probably even come up with a way to express it in hebrew. if god delivers us new revelations, in our own hearts, of what use is the bible? it either applies, or it does not. no, i doubt that paul was jewish. i'm not saying i disagree with it, i am saying that i'm skeptical of it. his words read like a fundamental reinterpretation of the text is some places (the wage of sin is death -- surely a pharisee would be more educated in levitical law) and entirely perushim in other places (subjugation of women). why do you think that i'm out to destroy the christian church? i'm out to understand my own faith and the traditions that influence it. it's a book of origins. of course there's more to it than static creation. but that has no bearing on whether we are made IN god's image, or TOWARDS god's image. the bible says "in." when we were made, not at some later point in time. no, the tree of life story comes from a different text. this is a matter of academic scholarly opinion. it has nothing to do with man being created in the image of god, the way you are reading it. you might read genesis 2 as a further explanation of how made was created in god's image, but the two are not actually related. they put them together from separate parts. and you have no idea how the original scrolls were divided.

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we've debated this before. i find no indication of a prior creation in the text. i'm sorry, but it's not there. and these games about the english "replenish" sounding like it means "plenish again" (even though "plenish" is not a word hint hint), and desolation described as un-creation don't make a world before the world.genesis 1 starts, "in the beginning..."the book is a book of origins, and it makes no sense to just make up stuff and insert it before "the beginning."

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it doesn't say "but." it says "and." it flows as one sentance. in hebrew. there is a long and wonderful history of jewish rabbis reading a lot into the text where there is very little support. this is ONE of those traditions. i've brought up lilith before, and she comes from the same text.genesis 1 explains the origin of not just this planet, but this universe, in hebrew cosmology. god has to "recreate" the sun and the moon? redefine light and dark? that's a heck of a do-over. by contrast, look at where god actually DOES take a mulligan in the text, genesis 6-9. does he have to recreate the sun and moon? light and dark? day and night?it's QUITE a stretch, and i find no justification in the text, its grammar, its semantics, or its purpose. it's just not there.

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