Questions about the Creation Myth.

Genesis 1:24-27

Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind”; and it was so.
God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good.

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

http://nasb.scripturetext.com/genesis/1.htm


Question 1.
What does it mean when God says that He creates creatures after their kind ?

Question 2.
When God says, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness," did He mean that He would make man psychically similar to Himself, or perhaps mentally.. what ?

Question 3.
And what's with "Our image" and "Our likeness" ?
Were there more Gods, or is it just some sort of majestic plural (lol) ?

 

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1) I suppose "micro-evolution" may be a good place to start.

2) I think it describes form. Two arms, two legs, one head, and so on.
God is described as having such a form, among others. Although not all
religions adhere to this idea.

3) The Qur'an gives more of an explanation of this. It states that he was conversing with some angels, before Adam was placed on the earth.

jan.

 

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Some parts of the Bible are very cut and dried. Others are not.
Genesis and Revelations are among the hardest to understand because they deal with subject matter foreign to the human experience.
I think these difficult passages need to be interpreted by the reader. Historically these passages are taken out of context and used by leaders to enforce their own interpretations on people. Oddly, this is done despite being expressed as a big no no through out the Book.


What do they mean to Enmos?

 

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Can you explain further ? I don't quite get what you mean here.

But.. God has a form ? What does he needs form for ?
Remember that he existed before Creation, so he would have no need for form.

Hmm ok, this could be an explanation. I'll wait to see if others come up with the same explanation.
In the mean time, could you provide a source for this ?

 

1) Well.. I'm at a loss to explain the "after their kind" thing. How can they be created after there own kind ? They didn't exist before.

2) I think "in Our image" means something like 'according to his ideals'. Although I obviously can't know what they would have been.

3) I think Adstar might be right. But on the other hand, monotheism did evolve from polytheism. Or at least polytheism predates monotheism..

 

Among other things,I've heard this is a reference to the Holy Trinity,that being The Father, The Son (Jesus) and the Holy Spirit.
In that way, the Bible has it's own twist of polytheism I guess.

 

Yes, I guess so. Although it is different from true polytheism like the abcient Romans, Greeks, and Egyptians had, to mention a few.
Especially Egyptian polytheism seems related to Christianity (the other way around of course..).

 

Enmos,

Dogs give birth only to dogs, cat's to cat's and so on.

What's your point exactly?

Qur'an. Al--Baqara..
(30)And when thy Lord said unto the angels: Lo! I am about to place a viceroy in the earth, they said:.....

I hope somebody with knowledge of the Qur'an can explain it.
I've just used that example because it seem very obvious.

jan.

 

Uh.. yea, but when God created the first dog

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rolleyes

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there was no dog before it to create its likeness after..

My point is that our bodies are shaped the way they are for very obvious reasons, those reasons are obviously lacking for a pre-universe God.

It's not clear to me that this viceroy should have been man.

 

Enmos,

Yeah-but no-but, within their DNA is information that is passed on to the next generation, which are always dogs.

Maybe this form is the best form in which to understand God, and ourselves in relation to God. Looking at the great things man has achieved through the ages, compared to what the non-human animals have achieved, it stands to reason.

Well, it seems as though he is talking about Adam. And it was later revealed that Adam was made of clay (earth).

jan.

 

Besides the point.
God created the animals after their likeness. This has got nothing to do with how reproduction works.
I can't very well paint a painting after it's own likeness, can I ? It makes no difference whether or not it turns out that the painting can reproduce itself..

Err..

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We are, at this point, discussing why God would have a form as similar to ours. Not the other way around.

It doesn't seem to me that he is talking about Adam, from that reference. For all you know he could have been talking about putting an angel on Earth to govern his creation.

 

This should be expected language when the anonymous author(s) of Genesis wouldn't be expected to know anything about a science that hadn't yet been engaged in. From the superstitious point of view, a god must have created life since there it (life) is. The idea and fact of evolution hadn't occurred to them nor should it have in the Bronze and Iron Ages.

Just to clarify, when you write "when God says," you mean that in the literary sense as one might write "when Huck Finn says," when critiquing Mark Twain, right?

The early authors undoubtedly expected that their gods should look like them. The interesting thing about this language, however, is the plural forms you find throughout Genesis. This is evidence of the transition from a pantheon of gods present in the Canaanite cults that eventually evolved into Jewish ones. And more than one Jewish cult clearly existed when one evaluates Pentateuch in literary terms.

But for the early Jewish authors (and for their Canaanite progenitors), a divine connection between man and gods was necessary if only for their egos.

No, not a "royal we." Indeed, I would suspect the "royal we" and plural language within royalty is the result of the plural language in early Jewish texts which were later adopted into Christian cults. The Elohim are the pantheon of gods (not *a* god as Genesis implies) and is linguistically remnant of Canaanite culture. "El" was a god within the Canaanite pantheon as was Yahweh, Asherah, Ashtar, Baal, and many others. El was the father of the gods.

Later in the Pentateuch, we see the words, "no other god before me" attributed to Yahweh, which may even have had a literal implication (though I'd have to examine the original Hebrew and corresponding translations) since people of Canaanite culture were known to have figurines of gods organized in little diorama-like shrines. The god which held the most importance for the family at that time was likely placed up front or given prominence over the others. As the cult of Yahweh evolved, the priests would be expected to emphasize the prominence of Yahweh and even demand it. Monotheism probably emerged over the course of a generation or two as earlier polytheistic ways were abandoned.

 

God had already created a bunch of "spiritual" life forms before life on earth. Consider them prototypes. God then created creatures on Earth in the "image" of those prototypes.

Both of course. As you can see it's a clear cut case of anthropomorphism.

This particular God is the Christian one and it has a collective consciousness made of three distinct parts that can act independently or as a whole.

 

You are right, of course. But even without the notion of evolution etc., creating something after it's own likeness must have seemed pretty illogical even to ancient man.

I guess.. I took that from the bible.
The bible says: Then God said, “Let Us make man..
Without further clues I can only assume that the writers meant that as in your example ("when Huck Finn says,").

Agreed.

 

Enmos,

It's all in the information encoded in the DNA structure.
The infor says this is this type of body, and then nature deals with it.
If the painting starts in your mind, where it is most likely to start, then yes you can create it after its own likeness (mind)

If everything starts with God, then there is only one way round.

Don't you think Adam ties in (the account), more than another angel?

jan.

 

Yes.. lol
This was what I had to think about when I read it. Blueprints

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Yep. But I doubt the writers viewed it that way.

That sounds like schizophrenia..

 

I take it that you believe God does not exist?
And as such the whole scripture thing is just mans imagination?

jan.

 

No, that won't do. The animals were created "after their likeness".
Not after how God imagined them to be. Or, at least, it does not say so in the bible.

Which is why I ask you why you think that God had limbs like ours, a head, and a torso.
You seem to acknowledge evolution. In this light, do you think it is plausible that the pre-universe God looked like us ?

No. Why would I ? All it says is that God (was planning to) put a viceroy on the Earth.

 

Blueprints made by his angels perhaps. The one who made mosquitos just wanted to eff with everything.

I doubt they even know what it was. It's hard to escape an erroneous thinking style when it's undefined and built into your genetics.

I wonder if the writer(s) of Genesis may have been affliected with multiple personality disorder?

 

No, they are part of the kill-switch.

Perhaps.

I understand that multiple versions of the Genesis story have gotten mixed up through time.