Day 2: Genesis 2
So Genesis 2 is sort of weird. The first three verses are the epilogue of Genesis 1 where God takes a break on Seventh Day after creating the universe (I mean if you create the entire universe, you have to take a break every once in a while.) But then apparently, the first creation story wasn't enough because, oh man, time for creation story number two!
The second time God made the universe, he made it in this order:
The heavens
The earth
Plants/Herbs
Mist (rain?)
Man
Land creatures
Sky creatures
Woman
So this time, God is a little bit more focused on the destiny of humanity (very nice of him), so he sets man up inside a garden eastward of Eden where literally every type of edible and inedible plant grows. Also, he decides that this is the best place to put both the tree of life and the tree of knowledge. I guess this is some metaphor to how humanity is a garden with life and knowledge thriving at the center.
Then god warns man to not eat from the tree of knowledge or we will die. Hmm.
Then god tries to make a partner for man by making a bunch of other animals. As a last resort, God decides to make woman out of man which is sort of degrading to woman since God prioritized animals over woman. But God saves his reputation by stating that man must become one with woman in order to "be one flesh", so this importance of woman in societal structure sort of saves the day. Nice job God!
My response to the readings at this point is extreme skepticism as I usually experienced in response to the creation stories. Having been trained thoroughly in an academic setting, I find this abrupt and arbitrary creationism very unbelievable. It's just 2ideal5me to imagine two grown-ups running around naked in a garden that was made perfectly to suit their needs. Of course, I can respect the metaphorical and symbolic nature of these stories within its culture, but creation as outlined by the Bible seems more like a fairy tale than anything else.