It’s time again for drunk bible story time. That time when all the uber Christians pretend not to be offended that I’m drunk and all the atheists pretend to not be offended that I’m talking about the Bible, and everyone in between pretends to look the other away for this one.
So without further ado… The Creation Myth of Genesis.
Ok so there are actually two creation myths in the old testament. And before all you uber Christians get angry I’m using the term “myth” to describe your religious stories you should look up the term myth because it refers to any story that has been passed down through history and involves deities or a phenomenon of nature, all of which this involves, so just chill the fuck out because I’m not using the term as an insult.
The first creation myth is from what’s called the Priestly source and it’s a really specific story talking about the seven literal days and God did this, that and the other thing on the first day, second day, third day, etc. It uses a super abstract term god God, it uses a gender specific term for God, that goes through most of Genesis 1st and onward.
Then there’s Genesis 2:4ish and onward… don’t quote me on the exact verse because remember, I’ve been drinking. So that’s called the Yawhist source and it’s generally believed to be written by a totally different author, one that uses a really familial term for God which is interesting, uses a non-gender non-specific term for her/him and is abstract thing talking about how God created all the shit. (S)he created all the things, did all the amazing shit, and all that jazz… and it’s really exciting because the Yahwist source (commonly abbreviated the J source) is all abstract and just focuses on how God is the creator of everything. That’s all in Genesis 2:4 and it’s great. It also doesn’t use a male form for the term “mankind”… just a generic “humankind” form of the word which is pretty cool too. Also, it’s fun to think about how in the P source god creates the “heavens and the earth” and in the J souce God creates the “earth and the heavens”… it doesn’t specific based on a literal historical timeline (because J doesn’t ascribe to that nonsense) but it’s interesting because it shows what that writer is focusing on which is neat.
So God makes all the thing and then tells the people, “Hey y’all don’t eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (which more or less translates to “knowledge of everything”… so basically God said “don’t look all this shit up on wikipedia because that’s how you know everything. Just kidding. Sort of. Just kidding. Only partly kidding.” No really that’s mostly what it means.
I feel like I could ramble about all this jazz all night long… in fact I know I could… the creation myth is interesting as fuck… and it has so many interesing random did-you-know tid bits. But I’ll save that for another drunk night. Have a good one y’all!
The Foul-Mouthed Mennonite 