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Savor the Story Series

Appreciating the stories in the Bible involves more than critical study. In this series of occasional posts, Gordon Raynal engages Bible stories as works of literature to enjoy. He invites a playful and imaginative approach to the stories. Not assuming that the Bible is literal fact can free creativity in hearing and interacting with its stories. Rev. Raynal is a religious leader well-read in critical scholarship with a lifelong engagement with Bible stories. This series will offer examples of how we can allow biblical stories to engage our imaginations in a deeper appreciation of biblical texts. Links will be provided in the future for critical scholarship that relates to the passages mentioned.

For more about the series, check out the interview with Gordon Raynal, Podcast 5 on the Podcast page.

A previous post engaged our imaginations with the creation story of Genesis 1 as an experience of appreciating the natural world. (See Creation Stories as Creativity Stories: At Play with the First Origin Story.)

Here we turn to Genesis 2:4b–25 as a second story of creation.

Second Creation Story in Genesis: Looking for Love, Not Rules

A second very different creation story follows in Genesis. Critical biblical scholars analyze these stories as two origin stories from two of the sources of the narratives in the first books in the Bible. They note the major differences. In the second story, the world is created in one day instead of seven. Creation starts as a vast expanse of dry land where water is scarce, not the vast expanse of water of the first story. Many more differences are noted.

Other interpreters often read these stories as origin stories that impose rules for all time. They look for norms for things like gender and human relationships with other creatures. For some interpreters, origin stories define how the world is supposed to be. We should always be careful about reading the Bible as support for our own views of how the world should be. (See the comment on Matthew 19:3–10 and Mark 10:2–12 in this post.)

What if we try something different? What if we read for the story, not the rules? Have you heard that all the great stories are ultimately love stories? What if we try reading the story and looking for love! Can we hear the love story?

Being Created Human: Genesis 2:4b–25

Let’s start by reading the second story in Genesis from the point of view of the human person being created. Water has emerged in a dry expanse of earth. Creator God messes about with the mud. Can you feel yourself being formed by playful loving hands from the earthy clay? A breath comes into your nostrils, and you are alive! What kind of divine experience of creation is this?

You feel yourself being picked up, and you find yourself in a green and lovely place. Plants and fruits are all around. The Creator God brings you new creatures made from the clay. You name each one God presents you, animals and birds of many shapes and sizes and colors. You see the soft brown eyes of deer and cows. You note that the lizards are unimpressed with you. Birds fly away quickly. As you name these creatures, your mind is coming to life! Yet none of them are like you. None of them can name you.

Another Human!

Then something strange is happening to you. You sleep. You dream. You feel the divine hands. This time something is being taken from your side. You wake up. Who is this? You recognize someone like you! Someone is recognizing you!

Listen to the tenderest of words coming from your own mouth:

This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
this one shall be called Woman,
for out of Man was this one taken. (Genesis 2:23, NRSV)

The Creator has made you a partner! You experience a unity with one another. Romantic love! You are two and you are one. You are different and you are the same. Your experience explains why humans form new relationships in each generation,

Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. (Genesis 2:24, NRSV)

You appreciate one another intimately without shame.

And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed. (Genesis 2:25, NRSV)

Recognition, Love, and Beginnings

Your words express delicately and poetically what should be the genesis of everyone, beginning in romantic love! Yours is the human story that tells the beginning of each of us, the beginnings of us all in a moment of recognition:

Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh… both naked and not ashamed.

Love and Passion in the Bible

The Bible includes some great love stories. The stories of love in the Bible are no less complicated by the lovers’ circumstances than today’s stories. Jacob and Rachel, Ruth and Boaz, and other couples are mentioned in the narratives. David and Jonathan shared a powerful love story although no one knows whether their love was romantic.

One biblical book is dedicated to the power of romantic love, The Song of Songs or The Song of Solomon. Some of the closing words of that great song give expression to the power of romantic love with great beauty and power:

Set me as a seal upon your heart,
   as a seal upon your arm;
for love is strong as death,
   passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
   a raging flame.
Many waters cannot quench love,
   neither can floods drown it.
If one offered for love
   all the wealth of one’s house,
   it would be utterly scorned. (Song of Solomon 8:6–7, NRSV)

The Bible tells stories of the passionate love that is a dear part of either everyone’s life, or everyone’s hopes.

Looking for Love in the Garden of Creation