Author: Ian Taylor
1. Review. Adam was created on Friday afternoon of the first week. In The Creation of Adam we saw that Adam was trichotomous, that is, consisted of three parts: the soul and the body, each of which was given life by God’s Spirit of Life. [Genesis 2:7]. This is not the Holy Spirit but a part of God that exists in every living thing in the animal kingdom from the amoeba to Man. Scripture tells us that Man has a soul and that the beasts of the earth also have a soul; there is no mention of a soul for the plants, however, all living things have life and thus have God’s Spirit of life. Upon death, the Spirit of life for the body, whether Man or animal, returns to God who gave it [Ecclesiastes 12:7] while the body returns to the dust – or should do [Genesis 3:19]. Scripture is silent about the destiny of the souls of animals, however, it does have a lot to say about the destiny of the soul of Man. We are told that God is not the God of the dead but the living [Exodus 3:6, 15; Matthew 22:23-32] therefore upon death, our soul retains the Spirit of life but remains in a state of dormancy until awakened at the Second Coming. Man’s soul was created to be eternal and cannot attain immortality until established in heaven; so far, only God is immortal [1 Timothy 1:17]. At the Fall of Adam, God cursed the ground so that all the food that Adam ate came from the cursed ground and cell by living cell his body changed from eternal to mortal; our cells begin to die in our body from the moment we are born; eventually, the rate of replacement is exceeded by the rate of decay. Adam finally died aged 930 years [Genesis 5:5]. Adam’s soul was created in perfection, it does not consume food and is the real and eternal person. In order to love God we must have sufficient free-will to be obedient or to be disobedient. For this reason, God placed a veil over Man’s soul to limit its capability. The veil will not be completely removed until after the marriage supper of the Lamb [Matthew 27:51;2 Corinthians 3:13-16; Revelation 19:7-9]. God placed Adam in the Garden of Eden and gave him one commandment: Not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil [Genesis 2:15-17]. God saw that Adam needed a helper then asked him to name all the animals [Gen. 2:18-20]. A name is a noun and the first requirement for language. It almost seems that God was showing Adam the animal kingdom to see which one he would choose as the helper! Finally, on the sixth day, late Friday afternoon, God took one of Adam’s ribs and made a wife for him [Gen. 2:21-25]. The following day, [7th], God rested from His work [Genesis 2:2] and later declared it to be a day of rest in commoration of all His Creative work.
2. The making of Eve. Adam was created from [non-living] dust of the ground. Eve was made from living flesh i.e. a rib bone of Adam. When reconstructive bone surgery is carried out, the surgeon takes a part of the lower rib bone, grinds it to a paste, packs it in position and it eventually becomes the replacement bone. Provided the rib-bone sheath is left intact, this particular bone will regrow. God has provided us with just sufficient information in His account of the creation of Eve for us to conclude that both the body and the soul of a new human being is produced at the moment of conception. In Eve’s case she was a clone of Adam. God blessed them and declared the Edenic Covenant. This consisted of five requirements: To be fruitful; to multiply; to fill the earth; to subdue the earth and to have dominion over every living thing [Genesis 1:28].
3. The Fall. Genesis chapter 3 describes the temptation in the Garden. We are not told what specific kind of tree the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” was, and it is likely not important. What is important is that prior to the making of Eve, Adam was instructed by God, “but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” [Genesis 2:17]. During the seven years of innocence Adam likely told Eve this one negative commandment so she got God’s warning passed-on from Adam. In her words to the serpent she, or possibly Adam, had added to God’s words, “nor shall you touch it” [Gen. 3:3]. The serpent was aware of this slight inaccuracy and replied, “You will not surely die.” [v.4]. Here is a half-truth: Adam and Eve did not die that day but died 900 years later, however God was correct, their body cells began to die that day. As soon as they ate of the fruit – Greek mythology says it was golden apples – they knew that they were naked [v.7]. Of course, they realized that they had chosen to be disobedient and felt guilty for the first time in their short lives. However, there may be something else: We are told that they were made in God’s image and likeness [Gen. 1:26] then in Psalm 104:2: “[God] who covers Himself with light [OR] as with a garment.” We saw in How Intelligent was Adam? that possibly this is the kind of light that shone from the face of Moses [Genesis 34:29-35] and it is suggested here that Adam and Eve were initially clothed in garments of this same light. This could explain why they felt naked at the sudden loss of their garments of light. In verse 11 the Lord God spoke to them and asked, “Who told you that you were naked?” Seemingly an odd question if they had not been previously clothed and animal skins were not an option.
4. The Curse upon Eve. Genesis 1: 1-31 and 2:1-3 is God’s summary of the first seven days of His creation with brief reference to Adam and Eve. Then Genesis 2:4-25 provides in greater detail the creation of Adam and, in the last four verses, the making of Eve. Genesis chapter three immediately follows the making of Eve and the reader might be inclined to think that the Fall occurred the following week! Afterall, they were both naked in an idyllic environment, no work was necessary and there were no children. Augustine asked the same question but this is simply imposing the mindset of a long-fallen world upon the innocence of creation. In The Creation of Adam in this series, note #8 pointed out that according to The Book of Jubilees Adam and Eve were in the Garden for seven years before the Fall and had their first child, Cain, at the age of 70. From Genesis 5:5 Adam lived to the age of 930 years and it would be reasonable to expect that their rate of maturing and aging was far less than it is today. It is proposed that they were created as pre-pubescent children, with the appearance of being, say, 12 years of age, living in a perfectly safe environment. In this way they would experience puberty and recognize it in their own children. At their Fall, God pronounced a curse upon Eve and the significant words in Genesis 3:16 provide a hint of their lower rate of maturity and aging. “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception [HER’ON].” This Hebrew word is used only once in Scripture and some commentators have pointed out that HER’ON is related to conception using the same letters but accented differently and likely means “capability of conception.” Most reasonably, this refers to the menstral cycle occuring every 28 days today. “Multiplying” means that it would have been less frequent in the beginning, say, every seven years. Indeed, The Book of Jubilees says that Eve had a child every seven years while Josephus adds in a footnote that Adam and Eve had 33 sons and 23 daughters – just about the expected number over a proportionate period of fecundity. Perhaps not coincidentally, “the curse” is an old English expression for the menstral cycle.
5. The Protoevangelium and 3 curses [Genesis 3:14-19]. God first addressed Adam who immediately blamed, “The woman whom you gave to be with me …” Adam’s pride would not allow him to confess his guilt and ask for forgiveness [v.12]. God asked Eve and, because of her pride [the original sin], she blamed the serpent [v. 13].
The First Curse. The Lord God cursed the serpent saying, “on your belly you shall go”[v.14] suggesting that originally it had been created with legs. Verse 15 is prophetic, speaks to Satan and is known as the Protoevangelium – the first good news: “And I will put enmity between you [Satan] and the woman, and between your seed [Satan’s seed] and her Seed [Jesus]; He [Jesus] shall bruise your [Satan’s] head and you [Satan] shall bruise His [Jesus] heal.” When the sainted Jerome [A.D. 347-419] translated the Hebrew to produce the Latin Vulgate Bible there was a slip of one letter in the Latin pronoun ipse [his] to ipsa [her]. In 1609 the English Catholic Church in exile in France translated the Latin into English to produce the Douay-Rheims Bible and the gender of Genesis 3:15 was erroneously retained as “her head” and “her heal”. The error was corrected in the 1961 edition of the New Jerusalem Catholic Bible where a footnote explained that there had been a typographical error! This is the foundation verse for the doctrine of the goddess. Statues of “Our Lady” will often show the serpent’s head beneath her left foot, a direct result of the gender change in Genesis 3:15 and epitomizing the doctrine that has resulted from it. The theme is found throughout the ancient mid-East, for example: in Egypt the goddess piercing the serpent’s head, in India the mother and child motif and in Greece the perpetual virgin goddess of wisdom and war, Athena, with the serpent at her side providing the wisdom. The Greek word for death is THANATOS and prefixed with “A” becomes ATHANATOS meaning without death, an immortal; her name became Athena and Athens is her capital city. The Parthenon was her temple and this word in Greek, PARTHENOS, means virgin. Perpetual virginity ensures there will be no seed to bruise the serpent’s head. Behind the altar in the Sistine Chapel there is a Judgment scene with Jesus the Judge in the centre and Mary at His side providing the wisdom!
The Second Curse [v. 16] was directed at Eve addressed in note # 3 above. The second part of this curse, “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you” has never been accepted with much enthusiasm but results from Eve’s disobedience to God’s warning given to her by Adam, that is, she heard the warning repeated to her by Adam.
The Third Curse was directed to Adam because he heeded the voice of his wife and because he had eaten from the tree. However, Adam himself was not cursed but rather the earth from which all that we eat grew was cursed. There is a principle here that becomes clear in Genesis 9:20-25. Some years after the Genesis Flood, Noah became drunk. Ham had ridiculed the drunken Noah but later his father cursed Ham’s son, Canaan, rather than Ham so that the disgrace of being perceived as a poor father would fall upon Ham and not Noah. It is suggested that this is one reason that God cursed Mother Earth and not Adam; however, the greater reason was to introduce mortality to all living things including Man. The prospect of Man living forever and in total rebellion against God would not only be displeasing to God but absolutely awful for Mankind. The curse imposed upon Adam also included thorns and thistles [weeds] that would grow meaning Adam would have to till the ground to grow crops in order to eat. In other words, the holiday was over, now Mankind would be faced with a lifetime of work to keep him occupied then, upon death, he was commanded to return to the earth [v.19].
6. Who were the sons of God? Genesis 6:1-4 “the sons of God [B’NAI HAELOHIM] saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives for them-selves of all whom they chose… There were giants [NEPHILIM] on the earth in those days, and also afterwards, when the sons of God [B’NAI HAELOHIM] came into the daughters of men and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.” Many conservative scholars believe that the context of Genesis 6:1-4 demands that it refers to the fallen angels. Scripture describes every angelic appearance as male and reasonably were male in every respect. In contrast, liberal scholars say that the Sons of God were the sons of the godly line of Seth who had married the daughters of the ungodly line of Cain.
The Fallen Angel Theory. The “sons of God” in this context is a term consistently used in the O.T. for angels. The word NEPHILIM, given as “giants” in the KJV or “tyrants” or “heroes” in other translations, is fairly explicit and were the evil product of these unions. Thus, without strained interpretation the fallen angels were capable of reproduction and it may reasonably be assumed that the NEPHILIM were also just as capable of reproduction. It seems that Satan’s objective was to pollute the human race and prevent the Messiah from coming and “bruise Satan’s head” [Genesis 3:15]. The “sons of God” also appear in Job 1:6 and 2:1 as the fallen angels while the fallen angels appear again in Jude verses 6 and 7. Here it describes these as, “the angels who kept not their proper domain [heaven], but left their own habitation, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day; as Sodom and Gomorrah … had given themselves over fornication, and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.” Just as men were going after men in Sodom are described as “going after strange flesh” [See Genesis chapter 19] this similarly applies to angels going after the daughters of men. Finally, in the context of the wife being under her husband’s authority, Paul reminds his readers in 1 Corinthians 11:10 that women need to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.” This refers to Genesis 6:1-4 where the daughters of men were evidently not under their father’s protection.
The Sethite Theory. This is a naturalistic explanation and does not involve angels. An appeal is made to Matthew 24:37-38: “As in the days of Noah they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage”. It is then pointed out from Matthew 22:30 that angels are sexless and cannot reproduce: “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels of God in Heaven”. The important words of Jesus here are “in heaven.” While the angels in heaven might well be sexless, those who became incarnate were undoubtedly complete men.Thus, this popular explanation actually denies the passages given in Genesis chapter six and in the New Testament concerning the fallen angels. More seriously, by denying the activities of the fallen angels, this explanation denies God’s judgment on all men except Noah who was perfect in his generations i.e.genetically untainted. In turn, this denies the purpose of the Ark and permits the Genesis Flood to be merely local.
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