The creation was finished and on the seventh day God rested from the efforts of his creative work. To think we know which of the seven days of the week is the actual seventh day of the week is hubris and/or folly. We have no written records or even oral traditions that survive back to the creation of mankind on the sixth day of creation (who would’ve been the only ones around to record the day and it’s not very likely that the first created humans would have even known that there were days of the week yet). If we do not know the exact age of the earth in years, we can hardly claim to know which of the seven days of the week is the actual seventh day.
Of the modern-day English names for the days of the week, all were of Roman or Germanic/Norse/Anglo-Saxon derivation. Saturday for the Roman God Saturn (sometimes seen as Father Time, The Old Man, and sometimes associated with Satan), Sunday for the Sun, Monday for the moon, and Tuesday through Friday of non-Roman origin after the names of northern European deities (Tiw for Tuesday, Odin for Wednesday, Thor for Thursday, and Frigga for Friday). As English-speakers, we do not call the days of the week by their proper names (all pagan names), and we do not know which truly was the seventh.
Some Judeo-Christian faiths put heavy emphasis on observing The Sabbath on Friday night through Saturday night or Saturday all on its own. Due to Roman influences, many Christian denominations observe The Sabbath on Sunday. There are New Testament discussions of The Sabbath that I will review much later (hopefully, I will get that far). I also will skip the directives to observe The Sabbath for now as that comes later in the Bible also.
There is a slightly curious phrase placed at the end of verse 1 of chapter 2 of Genesis, “and all the host of them” which is in reference to both the earth and the heaven. I don’t know if this use of the word heaven is in reference to the skies of the earth or the heavens above that. Humans do not live in the sky, we did not have airplanes, and we also did not live outside the atmosphere of the earth. It’s with some skepticism that I accept that this would have been in reference to the creatures of the earth. I believe that there is another explanation for this later in Genesis also.
The very beginning of chapter 2 of Genesis sounds as though it should have been part of the first chapter of the book of Genesis, and read for the completion of the prior narrative, it likely should have been. The books of the Bible had the divisions of chapter and verse enforced upon them much later than the date of the writing of the books themselves so we should take these artificial separations of the text with a grain of salt.
Starting with verse 4 of chapter 2 of Genesis, many theologians have argued that this is a re-telling of what had come before it in Genesis. I see it a little bit differently. I believe that this is a separate story because the creation of Adam and Eve has little to do with the Day 6 narrative of the creation of mankind over the entirety of the face of the earth.
I believe that Adam and Eve were a separate and more special creation by the hand of God. There is no creation story in the Bible for all the beings of the spiritual realm (angels and demons), and it doesn’t seem to be too far-fetched to believe that God could have continued to create new things, including Adam, Eve, and The Garden of Eden separate from the rest of the creation story, especially within certain parameters.
I believe that God created The Garden of Eden as a place of nexus between the physical world and the spiritual world. It was a place of perfection upon the earth, on the earth, but still separate and distinct from the rest of the earth.
All the plants of the earth existed, but there was not a man to till it. This reference indicates that this was the pre-agrarian and pre-civilization era of mankind. Man was not yet farming. There was no rain in these days, and indeed, there was never rain upon the earth until the deluge of the flood narrative. In those days, all plant life was watered from the mists that rose up from the lands.
God created Adam and placed him in The Garden of Eden. He caused Adam to sleep and created Eve from one of his ribs as a companion to him. The garden was populated with all the good plants of the earth for eating as well as the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Only of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was Adam and Eve forbidden to eat from.
From here, we can see that God only allowed Adam and Eve to eat of the plants of the garden. They did not eat meat. Because they did not eat meat, there was no need for reproduction of the animals that lived in the garden. Adam and Eve also did not procreate. In the creation narrative for Adam, it states, “and man became a living soul.” This was not said about any other creation accounts before this in the Bible for mankind. Spiritual beings have no need for physical reproduction because they face no physical death and therefore do not need children.
When the prohibition was laid down that Adam and Eve should not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, it explicitly states “thou shalt surely die.”
All of this evidence seems to point to Adam and Eve in The Garden of Eden being either wholly spiritual beings or quasi-physical and quasi-spiritual beings. This also means that The Garden of Eden itself was likewise, physical and spiritual at the same time. The death referred to was likely spiritual death. Knowing good from evil would suddenly come upon a person that defied a direct order of our God and Creator.
There is later evidence of the spiritual state of the garden. God walked with and talked with Adam. The serpent very easily being represented in physical form tempting Eve is a sign. The guardians at the gate of The Garden of Eden later also show a closer tie to the spiritual. There’s a lot in the Bible that makes The Garden of Eden a less physical place than the rest of the earth.
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