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2nd Creation Story: Man and Woman ...

Monday, Aug 19, 2013. We are in the middle of the second creation story, as it can be found in Chapter 2 of the book of Genesis, the first book of the bible. We have noted that the perspective of the second creation story is focussed on the creation of humans, and on their relationship to God, the Lord. Today, we hear about the creation of genders, men and women:

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Men in the Garden Eden …

18 Then the Lord God said,

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“It is not good that the man should be alone;

I will make him a helper fit for him.” 19 Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. 21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. (Gen 2, 9-15) It is the grand old story of men and women, we are reading here. It has been passed on for many centuries - and led to a lot of discussion about the relationship between men and women. Human in Man and Woman …**

The basic starting point here is community! God is searching for a way to create adequate community for the human he is creating. He has made all the animals, all the living creatures. They are all good. But they are not the right community for the newly created human.

So God starts to create something else, another human, one, who is the same as the human he is creating/he has created. Here, this is told as the story of the rib of the man, i.e. something from his core body, which is the starting point of the second type of human. It is bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh (saying it cannot be the rib alone!). It is men and wo-men, two types of humans fit to establish the community God is looking for.

The community between man and woman is described in comparison to the community which parents have to their kids. It is made clear, that this community between man and woman is stronger even than the elementary cell from which life springs.

There are even more things in this little passage. “They shall become one flesh” points to a community, which is more than what we usually think of when we look at partnerships. It is a union which links the two in a way as if they had one body only, with their minds and souls being one. (Roland Potthast) ... more texts

jn_en_2013_08_19.txt · Last modified: 2017/06/18 16:48 by 127.0.0.1