Don't Know Much About the Bible - Kenneth C. Davis [23]
So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Gen. 1:27)
Clearly, in the first Creation account, there is no differentiating between male and female. There is no Eden. No forbidden tree. No women out of a man’s rib. No submission of women. God creates both sexes at the same time, both “in his image.”
Of course, this first Creation account raises all sorts of troubling questions on its own—even without a competing version in the next chapter. Who is this “us” that God mentions when he says, “Let us make man in our image”? So far, the Creation hasn’t included anyone else. Is it the regal “us”? Or is it the three-part God (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) of Christianity? Or is God speaking to the Heavenly hosts, all those angels, cherubim, and seraphim who work with God but get no credit line? And if mankind is created in God’s image, does that mean we look like God? And would that image be black or white? European, Chinese, or Eskimo? If man and woman are created together, both can’t literally be made in God’s “image,” can they? And if God says this Creation is good, why does it go so bad? Of course, questions like these have puzzled philosophers and religious thinkers for centuries, filling libraries with discourses on the nature of God and Creation.
Certainly, those problems are vexing enough. But Genesis 2 complicates matters as the Creation story is retold with significant changes. In this version, attributed to J, God creates earth and the heavens and then makes Adam “from the dust of the ground.” He sets Adam down in Eden, where there are trees that are pleasing to the sight and good for food, as well as the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. After that, God makes the animals and birds to keep man company. Seeing that Adam is still lonely, God makes woman out of one of Adam’s ribs. In this account, there is no mention of how many days this took and when—or if—God rested.
First of all, a brief Hebrew lesson. The word “Adam” is derived from the Hebrew word for “man” in the collective sense, as in humanity or mankind. It is also related to the Hebrew word adamah, which means “ground” or “earth.” In other words, the author of this part of Genesis was engaging in wordplay. Adam, man, came from adamah, the ground. Puns, acrostics, and cryptics are all used widely throughout the Hebrew Bible. In later books, for instance, the name of a rival god, Baal, is changed to Baalzebub, which meant “lord of the dung.” And many personal names in Hebrew scriptures, such as Abraham (“father of multitudes”), had some significance. Such wordplay was a highly valued poetic device in Hebrew writing.
Another significant aspect of these stories is that they were not entirely original. Both the first Creation account, in which God speaks and the world is made, and the second Creation account, starring Adam and Eve, share similarities to other creation myths of the ancient Near East. The very idea that God could “create” simply by speaking was not exclusive to the ancient Israelites. The myths of Mesopotamia and Egypt, the two great civilizations that bracketed the land of the Israelites, also celebrated the concept of a “divine word.” In other words, the ancient Israelites drew upon commonly held beliefs about the Creation, ancient folklore that came from the lands and people that had the most impact on the ancient Near East. That basic fact will be repeated often throughout Genesis. The difference was that in Genesis it was shaped into an account of a special relationship between the Israelite God and humanity that had no precedent. The ancient nature gods, whose behavior was more human than divine, were transformed by the Israelites into a personal God with a very clear and rigid moral code. This God was going to make these people his favorites—but they had to toe a very sharp line of good behavior. Or else.