Well, maybe circumstances got God out of the Box...

Here I am, dealing with the fact that my husband is now an evolutionist, not an intelligent design proponent, but a theistic evolutionist, whatever that means, and I am wondering what to do with most of Genesis chapter one.  Allegory?  about what? Made up story to appease ancient people - wouldn't; "I created the Heavens and the Earth." do?  Why add more detail?  Like the six days then a rest?  If it was an old earth, but his original audience believed in an insta-earth, why did he need to play it up and add that on the seventh day he rested (very tiring making a world in six days, eh?).

I had, in another lifetime (life before marriage and kids), gone off on missions and travel in India and Nepal - another story for another blog.  India (the part I lived in, and the home I lived in) and Nepal were Hindu.  I had a lot of book knowledge about Hinduism, but book knowledge is a sanitized arms-length look at something.  Try living in a Hindu household, in a Hindu town, in a Hindu country and you will begin to feel as though you are traveling back in time (or perhaps out of time).  Hinduism's roots lie in agriculture, more than Jesus' parables to his followers do.  Everything in Hinduism has its place and time.  The moon cycles, the constellations cycle, the season's cycle, the mother Ganga (Ganges river) cycles too, as do people from young to adult to old, occasionally to pilgrims, then re-birthed anew.  These cycles .  High on the rooftop at night, we could see houses lit up by 'Christmas' lights.  They were houses having/ hosting a wedding - a huge multi-day affair, some nights we could hear music playing, other nights we just sat on our high rooftop (we had the highest) and enjoyed the sights and sounds of wedding season, every 2nd or 3rd month, more lights, more music.  Why?  It was an auspicious time to get married, the astrologists said so.  Wednesdays were an unauspicous day to begin a journey (they became very auspicious for me, I could get train tickets more easily on Wednesdays -and accordingly planned my trip).  On Tuesdays the shops closed.  Why? It was their god's day - they had to fast, go pray, they needed luck, wealth, good fortune.  Each caste, each profession, each person prayed to a variety of gods, according to their needs - career or personal needs.  The god they were praying for dictated which day of the week they prayed, fasted and visited the temple - on their way to work.  Sundays were a day off, a vestige of the British era.  No one could pick a holy day of the week for Hindus, all days had their gods to worship, auspicious days were dictated by the ever changing constellations as much as by the calendar saying it was Wednesday.

Back to this lifetime - if God isn't saying he literally created the world in six days, then rested, what exactly is the point of Genesis 1?  My husband had told me that it was actually a hardship for the Jews to take a day off work in an agricultural society, crops needed harvesting whether or not it was the Sabbath.  It was a hardship for most in India too, the servants were too poor to take a day off a week, so they looked after the children in the home 24/7.  There was no law mandating a day off, agriculturally based cultures don't do that, they work - hard.  If each day of the week belonged to different gods and goddesses in Hinduism, it would be impossible to choose one day to dedicate to all the god/desses, it might anger the other gods - that would be bad, then you would need the rest of the week off to appease the rest, work would cease.

It just clicked for me.  If God was talking to a polytheistic culture, he would have to show them how each day belonged to only one God, and, since he created everything, all they needed to do was to have one day of the week dedicated to Him, the rest they could save for working.  I suspect, although I can't find any evidence, that the first day (where God creates Darkness and Light) belonged to gods who were considered controllers of darkness and light, and each day following would be dedicated to another god credited with creating that thing(s) the bible says is created on that particular day of the week.

I did find an interesting parallel between the ancient babylonian creation myth Enuma Elish and Genesis chapter one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enuma_Elish

I figured if Genesis one was a myth, so be it, but Genesis two must be the start of the literal Bible.  It didn't seem to be that connected to Genesis one, it wasn't debunking any gods or creation myths that I could remember.  The setting was a little strange (Eden has a river that waters the headwaters of four rivers, on three continents, that don't begin anywhere near each other), but I really didn't think much about it, wasn't it alluding to something that the original audience knew that was lost on us now?  Adam hadn't been made, so there was no farmer to plant and harvest the farm fields, but obviously all the wild plants God created were there.  I didn't get the animals coming along after Adam, but maybe those were special garden animals.  The rest just sort of wafted by, I didn't get it, but I figured we must all be descended from Adam and Eve, that much was clear.

So, how did circumstances get God out of my literal box?  Living in India gave me a different perspective for Genesis chapter 1 (realized many years later), I just needed to be honest with chapter 2, so I got honest.  Really, if I quit fearing my faith would crumble knowing God didn't create Adam and Eve, at least not in the way the story states, then I could accept it as myth, and trust that their was a point to Genesis chapter 2, as well as chapter 1.