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We have the Power to Reflect the Image of the Creator or an Image of Wild Predatory Animal!


In the first story in Genesis, the Earth is a dry thing located inside a solid dome called “The Heavens” – but that’s not all “she” is. She is actively involved with the Creator in creating several very important things and she is one of the seven sacred spaces in story.

● The Creator spoke to the waters inside the solid dome and told them to “gather into one place.” The waters did it and the place they had previously covered became the first “dry thing” to exist. The Creator named it “Earth.”

● The Creator spoke to the Earth and told her to cause grasses, plants and trees to sprout. She did it.

● The Creator placed the sun and moon in the solid dome “to give light to the Earth.”

● The Creator spoke to the Earth again and told her to bring forth and an “Earth soul” for animals. She did it and then the Creator made the animals. The Earth soul gave them appetites, desires and longings linked to the Earth – the sacred space in which they must live. They ate the grasses and plants the Earth caused to sprout and grow; and that the sun and moon provide light for.

● The Creator spoke to the Earth again and told her to bring forth an “Earth soul” for humans. She did it and the Creator created the human. The Earth soul gave humans appetites, desires and longings linked to the Earth – the sacred space in which they must live. Human also ate food the Earth caused to sprout and grow; and that the sun and moon provided light for.

● The Creator also created humans “in his image.” This linked humans to the Creator and empowered them to do things like him – create new things by changing things that exist, speak and do things that are TOV (good for life) -- and he gave humans freewill. This empowered humans with the capacity “to speak and do things that are RA (bad for life).

● The Creator also endowed humans with a godlike function -- serve the creation by functioning as the Creator’s vice regents. In other words, function together as the representatives of the Creator to the rest of creation.

The rabbis developed methods for reading, studying and discussing the Hebrew text of the Bible -- halakhah and aggadah.

● Halakhah consists of laws, commandments, personals morals and spiritual discipline. 

● Aggadah uses narratives to reveal meaning, values, and ideas that affect lives. 

The first stories in the Bible are examples of aggadah. Let’s review some of the meanings, values, and ideas revealed above about humans:

● We have earthly appetites, desires and longings (like animals) that must be satisfied in order for us to survive as individuals and a specie.

● We have instincts (like animals), but we can exercise impulse control and self-discipline.

● We have freewill to plan and do things that protect and preserve lives, make lives more functional and increase the quality of life – reveal the image of the Creator.

● We have freewill to plan and do things that destroy and threaten lives, make lives less functional and decrease the quality of life -- reveal the image of a wild predatory animal.

You will get much more from reading stories in the Hebrew Bible, if you can find the meanings, values and ideas that are embedded in them.  

For those of us with Christian biblical heritages,
doing this literally transforms our understanding of
what Jesus taught and the purpose of his movement.

Thank you for reading this and please share and discuss it with others.

May your be blessed with, and bless others with, an abundance of TOV,
Jim Myers

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* SOURCES & RECOMMENDED READING
● https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/aggadah-or-haggadah-jewish-virtual-library
● BHC Bible Study Text of Genesis

● The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate by John W. Walton.

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