Genesis Chapters 1 - 3
Problem: God’s Empty Threat
• Genesis Chapter 2 (KJV): 16 And the LORD God
commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the
garden you may freely eat; 17 but of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the
day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
• But this doesn’t happen > Adam lives to the age of 930.
Eve lives a similarly long life.
• NB: Bible is the word of God. It is also assumed by
ancient interpreters to be perfectly coherent.
A Day of God
Sometime before the 2nd century BCE, someone
connected this problem with a verse in the book of
Psalms. Psalms 90: 4 - “For a thousand years in Your
sight are as yesterday, the way it passes, or like a
watch in the night.”
If one day (“yesterday”) in God’s sight actually
equals a thousand years, then the fact that Adam
died at the age of 930 would put his demise some
time in the late afternoon of a single “day” of God’s.
The Sun Created on the Fourth Day..
• This idea helps solve another problem.
According to Chapter 1, God created the world
in six days. But the sun, moon and stars were
created on the fourth day. How could there be
‘days’ without a sun? They were ‘days of God’
– a thousand year unit of time known only to
Him. World really created over a period of
6000 years.
But how were Adam and Eve
punished?
• New problem > So Adam died on the ‘day’ he ate
from the tree of knowledge but what kind of
punishment is it to die at 930?
What if God had originally intended Adam and
Eve to be immortal? Then, it was the loss of
immortality that would be their punishment.
Perhaps their immortality was to be sustained by
the Tree of Life and so banishing man and woman
from the Garden was to take away their
immortality.
The Documentary Hypothesis
• Modern scholars, observing what seemed to
be inconsistencies in the text, questioned
whether chapters 2 and 3 (the Adam and Eve
story) had even been written by the same
hand that wrote chapter 1 (creation of the
world in six days).
When did God create woman?
• Chapter 1: 27 So God created mankind in his
own image, in the image of God he created
them; male and female he created them.
Chapter 2: God creates Adam. At first he is
alone. Almost as if the creation recounted in
chapter 1 had never happened. Then creates
all the animals and has Adam name them and
only then creates Eve.
When did God create birds?
• [On the 5th day, prior to creation of man and woman on
the 6th day] 20 And God said, “Let the water teem with
living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across
the vault of the sky.” 21 So God created the great
creatures of the sea and every living thing with which
the water teems and that moves about in it, according
to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its
kind.” [Man and woman created on the 6th day].
• Gen 2:19 Animals and birds created after Adam, in
conflict with chapter 1.
When did God create plants?
• Gen 2:4-7 seems to announce a wholly new
beginning. Seems to say humanity was
created before plant life but Chapter 1 has
vegetation created on the third day (along
with the earth) and humanity created on the
sixth.
What is God like?
• Chapter 1: God is a cosmic sovereign.
• Chapters 2 and 3: God is a divine craftsman. He
Himself shapes Adam out of the mud and
breathes air into his nostrils. God walks about the
Garden (Gen 3:8). When Adam and Eve hide from
him, he calls out “where are you?” Apparently, he
does not know. At the end, God makes clothes for
the pair – another hands-on act.
‘God’ vs ‘Lord God’
• God is referred to quite consistently in chapter 1 by the
word “God” (elohim).
• Starting at Gen 2:4, exactly where the story of Adam and
Eve begins, he suddenly becomes “the Lord God”. The word
“God” is now preceded by YHWH (the proper name of the
Hebrew god). “The Lord God” is used consistently until the
end of chapter 3.
• The writer who referred to him as God saw him as a cosmic
deity.
• The writer who used the name “the Lord God” conceived of
him in more personal terms, a sort of divine humanoid who
walked around and shaped things and made clothes.
The Documentary Hypothesis
J
• Story of Adam and Eve a product of the author known
as J: uses YHWH; anthropomorphic conception of God;
focused on humanity; the effect of past events on
humanity’s present condition
• People have to work for food, women have to suffer
the pain of childbirth because of the first humans’
disobedience.
• Human beings are called man (adam in Hebrew)
because that’s what the first created human was
called. This in turn was because he was made out of
the ground (adamah)
Adam and Eve as allegory
• Interesting theory about the meaning of Adam
and Eve – seems to reflect the moment humanity
discovered the secret of agriculture.
Figuring out that seeds can be collected and then
deliberately planted in fields was a great step
forward for humanity.
But agriculture brought with it certain pains –
working long hours under the sun, earning one’s
bread “by the sweat of your face” (Gen 3:19)
Adam and Eve as allegory
• At a similar stage of historical development,
people began to wear more clothes.
• At a similar time, human beings discovered
that childbirth is the result of an “act of
planting” nine months earlier. Before this
discovery, a father may not understand he has
any specific relationship to this or that child.
Afterwards, the man “will cling to his wife and
they shall be one flesh” (Gen 2: 24).
Adam and Eve as allegory
• Ancient Israelites were engaging in a
speculative reconstruction of how these
events – how humans came to be farmers,
learned the secrets of childbirth and came to
fashion clothes for themselves - occurred
millennia earlier.
The Snake
Serpent of the story is clever and convinces Adam
and Eve to become ‘clever’. May have connection
with worship of snakes elsewhere in the Near East.
Divine serpent an apt vehicle for transmission of
the sacred knowledge of agriculture.
By eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge,
humans have acquires powers previously held
exclusively by God: “the man has become like one
of us, knowing good and evil” (3:22)