24 Cindy K,

You said:

Gen 1 and a good part of Gen 2 says “man” multiple times, but we know not if it means man as male or man as species. So we do add that to the text, probably interpreting gender because the distinction is soon made when female is introduced.

We can know when God means both male and female when He says “them” and “you (plural)”. We can know He means the male alone when he says “the man”.

The bottom line is that we don’t know any more than what we’re told, and we have a limited number of possibilities of what could have possibly happened based upon what we are clearly told.

I agree. We need to just read the account and not add to it. However if we read the account and very carefully map it out, I think that God did a good job of letting us know what He meant.

The creation order is problematic for evolution, because some creatures were made before their food would have been created, so they would have either have been divinely sustained if there was a long earth day versus 24 hours.

Amen!

I had not considered this morning also that ex nihilo could have been complete on day six with Eve created later as made from something as opposed to nothing. No?

I had not heard this one before, but I don’t think that there is merit in the text for seeing Eve created after God rested. How could God have blessed them (plural) and told them to multiply if there was only one person in creation? I just don’t think it fits.

I just (personally) do not agree that right about calling a particular group of JudeoChristian beliefs as pagan (that Adam was a “they” of male and female and then the flesh drawn out of him with an aspect of him that would have been notably Eve’s essence, equal in flesh and any other metaphysical property that was expressly Eve or just a portion of Adam).

Perhaps you misunderstood me. I didn’t say the belief was pagan but that the only support for the belief came from pagan sources. What I did say was that it was a myth. If someone can show me that it has real support in the scriptures instead of an argument from silence, then I would retract my comments about “myth”. However I am not calling people who believe this way as “pagans” or their belief as “pagan”. I am trying hard to encourage all to be bible bereans and to work hard at seeing what is actually in the text so that we all can be assured that there is nothing for us to be ashamed at because we have rightly divided the word of truth. I am working hard to challenge those precious people who come to my blog, to see that God says what He means and means what He says. When he said “them” and “you (plural)” he was not referring to a single person but to the man and the woman. There is no biblical precedent to allow a single person to be called plural. That is except for the one God who is three persons in one and who can rightfully be spoken of in the plural form for plural persons.

As I understand it, God would have to be greater than both male and female, so it would not necessarily be evil to say that viewing Adam this way (pre-split) necessarily violates God’s nature or other Scriptures. In what terms was Adam made in God’s image, exactly, and is this reflected in a gender expression? I guess that’s the real issue. (Maybe not?) And I could be entirely wrong.

The question here is what can we add to the account? Can we say that God made Adam to be an angel first and then his humanity came next just before Eve was create? This would also be adding to the text.

Ken Copeland has another teaching that because God stretched out the heavens with the span of his hand, Copeland calculates that God, in the form of Jesus, was a certain height and would have been a certain stature. (Isaiah says God is 6?4? or something like that.) It makes for interesting academic speculation and muse, but not doctrine as Copeland teaches it. And we get ourselves headed into error.

I agree that this would be speculation, however it also is blasphemy making God in our image. God fills the heavens and the earth so it is impossible for God to have a size and to bring Him down to our size would cause us to see God like a man instead of seeing Him as the awesome Deity that He is.

I don’t know. We hit a point where the poetic nature of the language gives us over to speculation. Hhmmm.

You hit the nail on the head. Poetry causes us to speculate. Unless the text is clearly poetry, we can find ourselves pulled away into speculation and for some this can ruin their faith.