Genesis 1-7

The List (Chapter number: Verse)

1:27 - God creates man and woman at same time on the 6th day.

2:18 - God wants to make Adam a helper and partner
2:21-25 - After it is decided that the animals are not a good partner or helper for Adam, God makes Woman from Adam's rib. Adam names her Woman, as he named all the animals previously, because she came out of man. Both are naked and unashamed.
2:24 - Verse about how a man will leave his father and mother to cling to his wife.

Genesis 3 (general synopsis) - Woman told by snake that Tree of Knowledge will not kill her, just give her the knowledge of right and wrong (good and evil). Woman eats fruit and gives some to Adam to eat. Both make clothes because they realize they are naked. God asks Adam if he ate from the Tree of Knowledge, and Adam says that the woman that God gave him told him to eat it. Woman explains to God, when asked, that the snake tricked her into eating the fruit.
3:15 - The snake's punishment is to crawl on it's belly and that Woman will always hate and mistrust them.
3:16 - Woman's punishment is great pain in childbirth and also to be ruled over by her husband.
3:17 - Adam is punished because he listened to the voice of the Woman and ate from the forbidden tree.
3:20 - Adam again names Woman, this time he names her Eve.

4:1-2 - Eve has sex with Adam. Cain is born. "Produced a man with the help of the Lord." Abel is born second.
4:17 - Cain has sex with wife (no name) and she bore Enoch.
4:19-22 - Lamech has 2 wives Adah, who has Jabal, and Zillah, who has Tubal-cain. Sister of Tubal-cain was Naamah.
4:23 - Lamech tells wives he killed a man for attacking him.
4:25 - Adam has sex with Eve, has son Seth. Eve glad God gave her another son to replace Abel.

5:2 - Reference to first creation story, though alternate translation seems to imply that the original text for this passage only refers to Adam, even though my version says "humankind."
Genesis 5 (general synopsis): Geneology. Only women mentioned in the whole thing are generic daughters, always mentioned after sons ("sons and daughters").

6:2 - Sons see daughters and decide they are attractive and took wives of all the chose.
6:4 - Men cum into the women and the women bear children to the men.
6:18 - God commands Noah to take his son's, his wife and his sons' wives onto the Ark.
6:19 - Must bring two of each animal, male and female.

7:3 - Again, one male and one female animal.
7:7 - Wives join Noah and sons on the Ark.
7:9 - Another mention of one male and one female animal.
7:13 - Wives mentioned again, they still have no names.
7:16 - Again, one male and one female animal.

My Thoughts

My first question was why are there two creation stories that vary so much from each other. Especially in the order of creation, you'd think that would be something that would be consistent. Also, I noticed that in the first story when God created two things, they were always total opposites (land v. sea, sky v. earth, light v. dark) and the first almost always seems to rule over the second. Does this have an effect on the relationship of man v. woman, since the woman is created second to the man, which based on the earlier passages implies that both are total opposites and that one will rule over the other. Also, it seems to me that God had already created a male and female version of all the animals (there is no extra passage about him doing this, anyways, so I assume he'd already taken care of it) so why didn't God automatically create a female human to go with Adam? Of course, this seems to be the case in the first creation story, just not in the second. Seriously, the difference between the two creations are mind boggling.

And random side note I need to get off my chest: God references to multiple hims often enough in the creation story that I do believe the beginning story implies there is more than one god involved here. For the God who calls himself I Am, it just seems really weird for him to say something about how he didn't want Adam and Eve becoming immortal and being like "one of us." Who is this "us?"

And seriously, Adam is punished because he listened to the Woman. This is punishable by exile and basically a shitty and tortuous existence for all people (women included, so Eve gets a double punishment) forever. I mean, wow. Just, wow. Edit: Reading that passage again, Adam is in fact punished for eating the apple, but still, the fact that listening to the woman is listed first in the offenses is still amazing to me.

And such an emphasis on the importance of sons. Such as Eve praising God because she got Seth to replace Abel. And only one daughter is mentioned by name in these chapters, which I found kind of weird seeing as they aren't mentioned in the genealogy at all, except for the random shout out to generic sons and daughters.

And Gen 6:2 just kills me. The sons TOOK wives of the daughters and apparently just took as many as they want. I mean, when the basic argument against gay marriage is that polygamy may become a valid form of marriage, how do they not understand that where the Bible is against gay marriage (I guess) it is very much FOR polygamy? If we're using the Bible as the end all be all of ethics and marriage laws here then shouldn't polygamy be encouraged by the crowd, or at the very least not vilified?

And yeah, women don't do much here aside from Eve. Pretty much after Eden woman turn into crazy baby making machines that need no names. I would have at least thought that Noah's wife would get a name since Noah is such a big character in the Bible but I seem to have been wrong about that. And his three sons get names but their wives remain nameless as well. I guess welcome to the nameless world of women, if they happen to be mentioned at all.

Tomorrow: Genesis 8-15