Genesis 2; it begins again...

Yaay I finished! Man that was knackering... even for an omnipotent being... think I'll take a rest.

Already, within the first two chapters, now we begin to get some contradictions. Impressive stuff, and surely pretty daunting if you're determined to take the entire thing as the literal truth... In chapter two, the earth does not bring forth grass before man is created, for there is no man to till the ground (an obvious essential for plant growth) and it hasn't rained yet.

Then man was formed, and a garden was planted to the east of something... man, supposedly. Now this is the sort of inescapably specific detail that people taking the tale metaphorically have to just disregard. Even more so the subsequent river description, with the lands all specifically named.

Man gets put into Eden, and then the animals are formed AFTER them. But they were formed BEFORE him/them just a page before. How can this possibly not be a contradiction?? Even if chapter 1 was just a summery of events, it still stated the order (with helpful days just to emphasize the chronological order of events), and then the order of events is changed on the very next page!! Seriously, people, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU???

Man was formed from dust, apparently. Not, as is suggested by the world, evolved over hundreds of millions of years from the same primordial cells that all other life on the planet also evolved from. Evolutionary evidence is so overwhelmingly convincing that I cannot take this sentence or two as anything but poetic imagery if I want to take it seriously...

Now this tree. Or is it two trees? It's a bit confusing at this point, but God makes a magic tree of life and one of knowledge of good and evil. Are these the same tree? it is not clear at this point... but I think we might come back to this later.

Then God splits a river and names some countries for no apparent reason. And then, unexpectedly, the meaning of life is thrust upon us! We are put here to tend and keep the garden of eden! Because nature gets a bit messy when we aren't around... just look at Brazil! Everyone, join Greenpeace. It is why you're here! Actually, the sentiment here is quite nice... you could definitely do worse than take care of nature as your life's work. Woo environmentalist Bible!

Don't eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, or you will die that day! And yet... 930 years? Adam lives a pretty long day.

Then God sees Adam is lonely. God, of course, being omniscient saw this coming... then why did he not make a companion straight away? Or why didn't he make a being not capable of loneliness? And why didn't he hit on the solution first try, rather than waste what must have taken years and years, i.e. making all of the animals and making Adam name every single one! To give you an idea of the scale of this, 10,000 insects are discovered every year. Surely not a realistic event? Never mind... Also... is it me, or did God just walk Adam through all the animals seeing if he took a fancy to any of them? Hmm.

Then woman was made for man from one of Adam's own ribs. Back in the day, there was a great deal of controversy when it was discovered that both sexes have the same number of ribs! Amazing... you would have thought people would actually check something like that before believing completely that man has one less rib than woman... anyway, this twist is contrary to chapter 1 again, which implies that they were created at the same time (and a bit more equally), and has profound social connotations. Woman was created for man. Which seems a bit... rubbish really. Definitely a clear and fundamental root of sexist attitudes.

Then there's a nice bit about them being a devoted and proudly nudist couple, and the chapter ends.

It's been a while... I was contemplating deleting this, and I still might. The Bible is clearly such a complicated series of documents, impossible to see much of it in any great detail as regards when, where and by whom it was actually written, what the writes intended to convey, and what has been lost or added in translation. I guess my objective here is to take what direct meaning I can from it, which many many thousands, millions even, of scholars and historians far more qualified than me have already done. 3 Next! Talking of 3... this is just weird.