The book of Genesis is the story of creation according to Hebrew text, God creates the world as a paradise, a lush green world that is good, a world that is right, God himself is presented as being caring and fair. However later on there are many stories within Genesis which question God's morality towards his creations. The supposedly just God is at many times shown to be petty, deceiving, and unequal in his treatments towards his creations. As a result of God's own duplicity the men he created covenants with, God's numerous prophets and their respective bloodlines, themselves are often two-faced and unjust. Because of God's: ill treatment towards men, his favoring of certain individuals over others, and his own prophets being devious, God is in actuality a shallow and unfair being. Therefore God's actions in Genesis show that it is his own morale wrongs which create an imbalanced and chaotic world, one which is filled with cruelty and injustice.
God's treatment towards his creations is highlighted with contempt and disappointment many times throughout Genesis. In the beginning God creates Adam and his many companions, giving his creations free reign over the Garden of Eden, and in return asking them to not eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge, later on however it is one of God's own creations, the serpent, who coerces man and woman to break God's word and eat from the tree of knowledge. Surely enough all parties are punished, with man and woman banished from the Garden and forced to toil upon the land for sustenance (New Oxford Annotated Bible, Gen. 2.7-3.19). The story of the Garden of Eden serves to demonstrate two major reoccurring themes in Genesis, God's creations failing his convictions, and his subsequent punishin...
... middle of paper ...
...he freedom of choice, choice to better themselves.
All in all the book of Genesis shows the deceitfulness of God. While God does create the earth, it is filled with imbalance and disorganization as a result of his own actions. Because God's creations themselves are flawed, eventually the sinfulness will overcrowd the good. Despite God's best attempts at instilling order, all efforts are ultimately too little and too late. In spite of God's prophets trying to promote the goodness that was envisioned, they themselves are full of hypocrisy and morale failures. In fact God creating ties with certain men served to do little but alienate the general populace and create a sense of inequality about the human race. God as presented in Genesis is ultimately not a just and moral being, instead it is his own terrible deposition which creates and condones a disparate world.
In the stories the Popol Vuh and Genesis, the gods punish their creations because they “regret” it, but the punishment is very different in each story.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis1:1.) God’s perfect wisdom created everything. In Genesis 1 and 2 we can see that God has loving and gentile nature when He created the earth and heavens. God created man in his image and we are the only creation that God breathed in the breath of life for human beings (Genesis 2:7). God did not do this for any of other creations but only for humans. The Bible has many scriptures that tell us how creative God is. Genesis 1;26 states “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created all of this for us to have fellowship with him.
The creation story in Genesis refers to a serpent classically interpreted as an evil entity. If we consider God’s warning that eating fruit from a certain tree would result in death the same day and that the record indicates that the only two humans on the planet did not, we must reconsider the role of the serpent and reevaluate the roles of good and evil and how they apply to ...
Now, to the untrained eye, it may be possible to interpret the aforementioned text as having certain "scheisty" tendencies coming from both the serpent and, believe it or not, God himself. As possible as it may seem, the main theme of the passages of Genesis are not trying to show God as being greedy with the knowledge of good and evil. It isn't like God was worried that Adam and Eve would gain knowledge that would empower them and make them as gods. That is almost preposterous to think that God, the almighty creator of heaven and earth, would be worried about two mortals obtaining a little bit of information. In all actuality, that idea is incredibly far from the truth. God gave Adam and Eve the world, literally. This perfect world, a "heaven on earth", was just given to them out of the goodness of his heart. All they had to do was look over God's creations and enjoy true eternal bliss. As a matter of fact, the only rule that God gave to Adam and Eve was to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. All they had to do to live in the eternal paradise, with all the cookies and milk they could stomach, was to follow that one freakin' rule. Acknowledging the fact that the serpent (a.k.a. Satan Incarnate) did do its part in persuading Eve to eat the fruit and to give the fruit to her husband. Even still, Eve should have realized that she was risking eternal happiness for the words of a snake.
Most importantly, Genesis offers teachings on the natural world, human identity, human relationships, and civilization. Natural World In regards to the natural world, Genesis 1-3 tells of how God created the world, the creation of man, and the fall of man. The Earth was dark and without form, then God spoke everything into existence. Relationships play a major role in humans’ lives on a day-to-day basis.
“Abraham is a new Adaman and the seed of Abraham is a second Adam, who brings a new humanity” (John H. Shallhamer). In the first book of Genesis, Moses describes to the ancient Hebrew the creation of the world and humankind, so, that God as Yahweh can delight himself with his creation (Genesis 1-2). However, this first book also describes the fall of humankind that broke the relationship with God; the disobedience of Adam and Eva in Eden, the righteous mixed with the unrighteous, and the wickedness of the descendants of Noah (Genesis 1:1-11). God saved Noah to make a covenant with him to rebuild the earth, but they forgot about God. The author of the book of Genesis, Moses, pictures the call from God to Abraham as a divine gift of salvation in the midst of judgement (John H. Shallhamer), because the world was in the darkness after Babel (David E. Brisben).
God had created the luscious Garden of Eden and given the man and woman he created all the plants and animals they could ever want for food and also given them the gift of free will. His only request was that they not eat the fruit from a single tree, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which was located in the center of the garden. He warned them that if they ate from this tree, the consequences would be bad. There was a serpent in the tree, though, who tricked the woman Eve into eating the fruit, and she, in turn, had her husband Adam eat it. When God saw they had eaten the fruit, he was angered and deprived Adam and Eve from paradise and essentially cursed humanity.
In Genesis there is a much more acceptable reason for God to eliminate mankind. The humans are so wicked and evil that "It repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart" (Gen. 6:6). He says: "I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth. . . " (Gen.
Throughout the world there are various cultures with varying religions and creation stories to explain the creation of the Earth and it’s inhabitants. Of these creation stories two with similar and also different characteristics is the Creation story in the book of Genesis which is a part of the 1st Testament in the Hebrew Bible and explains the creation of Earth and humans, and the Theogony which is the greek creation story that describes the origins of the Earth and the Greek Gods. Both the Theogony and the Creation in Genesis show nature as a blessing for humans but it can also affect them negatively, However the myths differ in the ways that the Earth and humans were created and how humans interact with the deities of the creation stories.
In addition to making man God made a peaceful world for man to live in. Adam, Eve, and Gods relationship was perfect and they were obedient until sin entered their hearts and spoiled that relationship. What spoiled the relationship was temptation from the serpent to eat the fruit from the forbidden tree. This forbidden tree was called the tree of knowledge, which would open their eyes to reality. By Adam and Eve giving in to temptation they choose a human determined life rather than a God determined life.
The God of Genesis is portrayed very differently. God is a forgiving God. One sees this when God states, "of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die" (Genesis 2:17). However, when Adam and Eve do eat the apple-though he does make them mortal-God allows them to live. God also does not strike down Cain. The God of Genesis is also a personable God. God talks directly to the h...
This echoes the earlier chapters in Genesis when God presents the garden to Adam and Eve as a gift out of goodness and love. The earth which they are given is their home where they can be nourished and sustained, but God explicitly warns them, “From [the tree of the knowledge of good and evil] you shall not eat; when you eat from it you shall die” (Gen 2:17). The serpent, and thus sin, are ever present in our world just as in the garden of Eden and the fields of Cain and Abel. It is a temptation that “lies in wait”. It follows us, but it is not altogether unavoidable.
God issues his punishment to the serpent, but he also extends it to Adam and Eve. God cursed the serpent “above all animals,” and the serpent becomes an eternal enemy of humanity (Genesis 3:14-15). God condemned the man to a judgment of sustaining life through hard labor and the woman to creating new life through painful childbirth (Genesis 3:16-19). Although this judgment is hitting and harsh, it goes much further. God banished “the man” from the Garden and posted cherubim and a flaming sword, flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life, (Genesis 3:24).
When you read chapter one of Genesis you have the feeling that God is perfect. God holds all power and control. God turns chaos into order. "God said 'Let there be light.' And there was light, And God saw the light, that it was good" (Gen 1. 3). God's word is action, God's word is law in the universe. When God creates something, he ends it with God seeing that's its good. This is in effect giving support to the perfect nature that is God and the creations God has made. "God does not play dice" (Armstrong 9), God has order and a purpose for what he makes. An important aspect to God is seen while he is creating the world. He separates water from land. Light from Darkens, Day and Night, Male and Female. This shows that boundaries are important to God. We see examples where God put boundaries on mankind with their language by mixing the language up so confuse man and killing off the evil from the good.
Genesis is the first creation story. God creates, establishes, and puts everything into motion. After putting all of this in motion he then rests. He creates everything on earth in just seven days. Before creation Gods breath was hovering over a formless void. God made earth and all of the living creatures on earth out of nothing. There was not any pre-existent matter out of which the world was produced. Reading Genesis 1 discusses where living creatures came from and how the earth was formed. It’s fascinating to know how the world began and who created it all. In Genesis 1 God is the mighty Lord and has such strong power that he can create and banish whatever he would like. His powers are unlike any others. The beginning was created from one man only, God.