TheBibleNet: Genesis 2:1-2:3

Surf The Site

Genesis: 1a 1b 1c 1d 2a 2b 2c 2d 3 4a 4b 4c/5 6a 6b 7 8 9 10 11a 11b 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25a 25b 26a 26b 27 28a 28b 29 30a 30b 31a 31b/32a 32b 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44a 44b 45 46 47a 47b 48 49 50

2:1 VA YECHULU HA SHAMAYIM VE HA ARETS VE CHOL TSEVA'AM

וַיְכֻלּוּ הַשָּׁמַיִם וְהָאָרֶץ וְכָל צְבָאָם

KJ (King James translation): Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

BN (BibleNet translation): And the heavens and the Earth were finished, and all that they contained.

VA YECHULU (ויכלו): Again the pun with LECHOL (לכל) and LE'ECHOL (לאכל), this time using the less common verb for "to finish".

TSEVA'AM (צבאם): TSEVA (צבא) = "to go forth to war" as a soldier, but it was also applied to the ministry of the Kohanim, the priests in the Temple, as well as to the mustering of soldiers; hence TSAVA (צבא) today = "army". TSEVA HA SHEMAYIM (צבא השמים) = "the Host of Heaven" as Christian mis-translations prefer, means the angels who attend the throne of Elohim, and is a form of ancient astrology, connected to the worship of the stars, the sun and the moon, the TSEVA'OT being an alternative to MAZAL for the constellations. In the middle period of proto-Judaism (1000 - 350 BCE), between the epoch of polytheism and the coup that established YHVH as the Omnideity, YHVH was known as YHVH Tseva'ot, "The Lord of the Hosts of the Heavens", the Prime Minsister at the head of the table of the constellations, where as Omnideity he became autocratic Life President. The mirroring of the heavens on Earth is why there were twelve tribes of the Beney Yisra-El (twelve Arthurian knights, twelve Jesuitic disciples, etc), each one named directly or indirectly for one of the twelve constellations, and with the king and his shegal (queen, consort, or First Lady) representing the sun and moon, and their "beloved son" (Yedid-Yah, for short David), the Earth.

TSEVA (צבא) as a verb can also have the meaning "to will, wish, be willing, desire", though that is not the intention here.

2:2 VA YECHAL ELOHIM BA YOM HA SHEVIY'I MELA'CHTO ASHER ASAH VA YISHBOT BA YOM HA SHEVIY'I MI KOL MELA'CHTO ASHER ASAH

וַיְכַל אֱלֹהִים בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי מְלַאכְתּוֹ אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה וַיִּשְׁבֹּת בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי מִכָּל מְלַאכְתּוֹ אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה

KJ: And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

BN: By the seventh day Elohim had completed the work which he had undertaken; and he rested on the seventh day from all the work which he had undertaken.

This verse is used in the traditional blessings on Friday evenings.

SHEVIY'I (שביעי): Connected to Saturn, Ninib, Cronus. SHAVA (שבע) = "to swear an oath", as in Be'er Sheva, the town linked closely with both Av-Raham and Yitschak. 7 became YHVH's sacred number, and we will witness its recurrence throughout the text (see Number Seven).

MELA'CHTO ASHER ASAH (מלאכתו אשר עשה): Another aural play on words here, distinguishing MAL'ACH (מלאך) = "messenger" or "angel" from MEL'ACHAH (מְלָאכָה) = "work", and especially the 39 areas of work that are specifically prohibited on the Sabbath; and somewhere in the distance behind these two, the sound of Malach (מלך) = "to reign, to be king, to possess". The difference is in the Aleph (א); the use here suggests "creative work", but in undertaking this creative work, Elohim forms his Kingdom, and Kingdom is Malchut (מלכות), another aural pun on the same letters, this time connected to MOLOCH (מולך), the Emorite idol worshipped in the valley of Hinnom with human sacrifices (also called Milkom and Malkam, and probably linked cultically to Avi-Melech and Melkart); his statue was made of brass with a human form but the head of an ox, hollow inside, heated from below, with children for sacrifice put in its arms (cf Diodorus 20:14 for the same description of Carthaginian Saturn, and my page on the Babylonian deities for several equivalents there). Various other idols mentioned in the Tanach bear the name, e.g. Malki-Ram (1 Chronicles 3:18), Malki-Shu'a (1 Samuel 14:49 and 31:2; 1 Chronicles 8:9, 8:33 and 10:2).

To complicate matters, and to make the multiple pun even more effective, the female form drops the Aleph (א), as for example MELECHET HA SHAMAYIM (מלכת השמים) = "the Queen of Heaven", connected with Venus/Astarte, the goddess of the moon whom Yisra-Eli women worshipped, probably as Sarah rather than Asherah. This is because the root on this occasion is LALECHET = "to go", but in the Hiphil (causative) form, the idea of "making someone else go" as a figure of speech for "leadership". Probably MOLOCH, and MELECH for "king", derive from the same root.

And then, to add one more layer, though this is not in the Biblical text itself but coincidental to it, the Rabbinic instructions for the "kosher" observance of Shabbat are known as the Mela'chot; taken from this source-word, they define 37, or 39, acts that may not be performed; Reform and some other denominations do not accept them. There is an obvious contradiction anyway, in that Rabbinic Judaism regards "satisfying your wife's sexual needs" as obligatory on Friday evenings, when surely this is precisely the "TEHU U REVU" from which Elohim most rested in resting from his work (Genesis 1:28).

VA YISHBOT (וישבת): There is probably a very primitive connection between SHEVA (שבע = 7) and LASHEVET (לשבת) = "to rest, sit down, cease, desist" - through the original two letter root SHAV (שב).

But interestingly Exodus 20:10 has the deity (on this occasion YHVH) resting (VA YANACH) with the verb LANU'ACH, the same root that gives No'ach (Noah), whose Ark "came to rest" on Mount Ararat (Genesis 8:4) - VA TANACH HA TEVAH BA CHODESH HA SHEVIYI BE SHIV'AH ASAR YOM LA CHODESH AL HAREY ARARAT

Elohim was clearly no farmer, though he will send Adam out to be one in Genesis 3:17-19, or he would have known that animals which give milk and lay eggs do not let you rest on the 7th day!

The Babylonians had an institution which they called "the day of cessation"; it was commemorated on the 7th, 14th, 19th, 21th and 28th of the month of Elul and Marcheshvan (note that the Beney Yisra-Eli calendar uses these Babylonian names for its months). These were held to be unlucky days, on which kings did not perform sacrifices, oracles remained unconsulted, and cursing one's enemy was likely to backfire (as in the story of Bil'am/Balaam in Numbers 22). It wasn't a Sabbath, though Hertz, without actually naming it, states that its name was very similar to the Jewish Sabbath. Tantalizing! (šabattu, pronounced Shabattu, or possibly Shapattu is the answer).

2:3 VA YEVARECH ELOHIM ET YOM HA SHEVIY'I VA YEKADESH OTO KI VO SHAVAT MI KOL MELA'CHTO ASHER BARA ELOHIM LA'ASOT

וַיְבָרֶךְ אֱלֹהִים אֶת יוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי וַיְקַדֵּשׁ אֹתוֹ כִּי בוֹ שָׁבַת מִכָּל מְלַאכְתּוֹ אֲשֶׁר בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים לַעֲשׂוֹת

KJ: And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

BN: And Elohim blessed the seventh day, and declared it holy; because on that day he rested from all the work of Creation which he, Elohim, had undertaken.

HA SHEVIY'I (השביעי): Again note the use of HA = "the", as a prefix to the number. Only the 6th and 7th days have this.

VA YEVARECH: The 7th day was sacred to Elohim, in the same way that it was elsewhere in the ancient world, for example with Saturn, Cronus and Ninib. See Number Seven.

VA YEKADESH (ויקדש): "Sanctified" is an interesting word to use in translation here, especially as Christianity gives it the very precise and specific meaning of "being made into a saint". The Yehudit literally means "to set something apart", which is another form of division to add to the multiple bifurcations throughout this first version of Creation: the setting apart here, however, is the sacred from the profane. It comes from the root KADASH (קדש) = "to be pure, clean". Also KADESH (קדש) = "a hierophant", consecrated to Shet (Set) and a KADESHAH = "a hierodule" (which is not the same as a whore, prostitute or harlot) for the female partner, consecrated to Astarte or Venus; these were celebrants of the orgiastic rites in honour of Shet and Astarte, and the participation was regarded as a sacred duty.

But the intention here is to "make Sunday special", or Saturday anyway; to set one day of the week aside from all others, as a break in the annual round, and the counting system for days in the calendar of the Beney Yisra-El (Sunday = Yom Rishon = Day 1, et cetera) is understood as a counting towards the next Shabbat. It became a day of prayer and study only in Rabbinic times. As previously, we can reassert that it was not a farmer's concept, but perhaps a shop-keeper's. The term "holy" is best understood in this sense of "something set apart to be treated differently" rather than as meaning it has a particularly sacred value in itself; that requires "sacrifice", which is the process of "making (fice) sacred (sacre)". Similarly the concept of the Jews as "a chosen people", which is Yehudit is AM KADOSH, does not infer "superior" but only "separate".

BARA... LA'ASOT (ברא אלהים לעשות): Repetition with variation on this occasion is not so much a matter of poetic style (the phrasing is actually both awkward and convoluted) as a need to include the several different modes and methods of Creation, so that it is clear that Elohim rested from all of them.

In the Hindu world, the Creator deity was Brahma; and when Brahma rested from Creation, he did not get up from his rest the following day, nor any day after that, because Creation was satisfactorily complete and there was nothing to add. Vishnu was there to sustain it, but always working at odds with Shiva, who was there to destroy it: birth and death, birth and death, endless, but never adding anything to original creation. There is a strong sense at the end of the seventh day that Elohim should be identified with Brahma alone, though the deity of Judaism later on will incorporate all three parts of what was known as the Trimurti.

Pey break; end of fragment four; end of the Elohim version of Creation.

THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE BY ELOHIM

(Genesis 1:1-2:3)

A final version of the myth, based on this commentary, might then read as follows:

ONE

At the origin of the universe, when Time and Space first came into being, Elohim formed the sky and the Earth. The Earth was ruled by Tohu, the power of barrenness, and by her twin brother Bohu, the power of infertility; and Choshech, the power of darkness, ruled over the abyss in the name of Tahama, the serpent-goddess, in whose womb lay the potential for future generation and regeneration; while the Shechinah, the divine radiance, the female spirit of Elohim, sat brooding upon the elements, awaiting the time when her waters would break and parturition would give birth to the Universe. Then Elohim said "It shall be light", and it became light. And Elohim, the seven gods and goddesses who ruled the week, saw that the light was good, and distinguished the light from the darkness. So they named the light "Day" and the darkness "Night". So it became evening, and then morning, one day.

Then the seven deities said "There shall be a division of the elements, distinguishing between elements and elements". So they made the ark of the sky, dividing the elements beneath it from those above it. And thus it was. And the seven deities named the ark "Sky". So it became evening, and then morning, a second day.

Then the seven deities said "The waters of the Earth shall be gathered together in one place, so that dry land may appear". And so it was. And they named the dry land "Earth", and the places where the waters gathered together they named "Seas". And they saw that it was good. Then the seven deities said "The Earth shall sprout herbs and grasses capable of scattering their own seeds on the earth, and fruit trees of every kind, capable of reproducing themselves from their own seeds." And thus it was. The earth indeed sprouted herbs and grasses capable of scattering their own seeds on the earth, and fruit trees of every kind, all of them capable of reproducing themselves from their own seeds. And the seven deities saw that it was good. So it became evening, and then morning, a third day.

TWO

Then the seven deities said "There shall be sources of light in the ark of the sky, to distinguish day from night, and to serve as signs and symbols, and to denote the holy days and festivals, and to regulate the calendar of days and years, and to provide light for the Earth." And thus it was. So they made the two major sources of light, the great light that governs the day, the small light that governs the night, and the stars. And they fixed them to the ark of the sky, to provide light for the Earth and to regulate the day and the night, and to distinguish between light and darkness. And the seven deities saw that it was good. So it became evening, and then morning, a fourth day.

Then the seven deities said "Living creatures shall emerge from the seas, all manner of reptiles and quadrupeds, birds and foul, and every winged creature under the sun." So they formed the giant sea mammals, and every species of living creature that creeps and crawls, whose origins are in the sea, and all the birds of the air as well. And they saw that it was good; and the seven deities saluted them saying, "Bear fruit and increase your numbers, populate the seas and the Earth and the sky." So it became evening, and then morning, a fifth day.

THREE

Then the seven deities said, "The Earth shall produce living creatures, species by species - beasts of burden, reptiles, animals of every kind." And thus it was. So the seven deities made all the many species of animals, the beasts of burden and every kind of animal that creeps or crawls along the ground. And they saw that it was good. Then the seven deities said, "We shall make Humankind from the same elements that all of Creation is composed, and they shall bear responsibility for all the fish in the sea, and for the birds of the air, and for the beasts of burden, and for the Earth itself, and for every kind of animal that creeps or crawls upon the Earth."

So the seven deities created Humankind, using the same divine elements of which all creation had been made, (and truly these elements were indeed divine) - male and female equally. And the seven deities saluted them, and said to them "Bear fruit and increase your numbers; populate the Earth and rule her; bear responsibility for all the fish in the sea, and for the birds of the air, and for every kind of animal that creeps or crawls upon the Earth." Then the seven deities said "Look! - we have provided for you all manner of herbs and grasses capable of scattering their own seeds on the earth, and fruit-trees of every kind, all of them capable of reproducing themselves from their own seeds, so that you may always have food to eat. And likewise all the animals of the Earth, and all the birds of the air, and all the many kinds of animal that creep or crawl along the Earth - for them too the green herbs and grasses shall be food to eat." And thus it was. And the seven deities looked at everything that they had created - and truly, it was very good. So it became evening, and then morning, the sixth day.

So the skies and the Earth and all that inhabit them were completed. On the seventh day the seven deities finished the construction of their kingdom; and they rested from their labours. And the seven deities blessed the seventh day, and set it apart as a holy day, for it was on that day that they rested from the construction of their kingdom, the object of which was the Creation of the Universe.

Other Creation stories, or references to the Creation, that appear in the Tanach (most require the full chapter, so please use the hyperlinks):

Psalm 104: "YHVH my god (יְהוָה אֱלֹהַי) you are very great, you are clothed with glory and majesty... who covers yourself with light as with a garment, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain...who makes the clouds your chariots, who walks upon the wings of the wind, who makes winds your messengers..."

Psalm 18; Psalm 33:6; Psalm 44; Psalm 65; Psalm 74; Psalm 89

Isaiah 40, 44, 50 and 51

Nahum 1

The sayings of Agur in Proverbs 30

Jeremiah 5 and 31

Job 9: vv 8-13; Job 26; Job 38

Habakkuk 3

From the above, Robert Graves and Raphael Patai have constructed a third version of the Creation story, which may be narrated as follows (the opening sentence alone is enough to know that such a version cannot date earlier than the exile, and is probably as much as two hundred years post-exile; this does not discount it from Jewish theology, but does prevent us from making claims as to its historical place within the Tanachic chronology):

"In the beginning Elohim created the heavens, complete with the sun moon and stars, by means of a single word of command, the Logos. Then, clad in a glorious garment of light, He stretched out the heavens like a round tent-cloth, exactly the size to cover the face of the Deep. Having confined the Upper Waters in a fold of his garment, he established his secret Pavillion above the heavens, walling it in with a darkness as thick as sackcloth, carpeting it with the same material, and resting its beams upon the Upper Waters. And there he set up his divine Throne.

"Sometimes, while performing this great deed of Creation, Elohim would ride across the face of the Deep upon clouds, or cherubs, or the wings of the storm; or he would catch at passing winds and make them his messengers. So he set the Earth upon immoveable foundations: by carefully weighing the mountains, by sinking some as pillars in the waters of the Deep, by arching the Earth over them and locking the arch with a keystone of other mountains.

"Then the roaring waters of the Deep rose up and Tehom, or Tiamat, their Queen, threatened to flood the handwork of Elohim. But, in his fiery chariot, he rode the waves and flung at her great volleys of hail, lightning and thunderbolts. He dispatched her monstrous ally Leviathan with a blow on its skull; and the monster Rahab with a sword thrust through its heart. Awed by his voice, Tehom's waters subsided. The rivers fled backwards up the hills and down into the valleys beyond. Tehom, trembling, acknowledged defeat. Elohim uttered a shout of victory, and dried the flood waters until Earth's foundations could be seen. Then he measured in the hollow of his hand what water was left, poured it into the Sea Bed, and set sand dunes as its perpetual boundary; at the same time he made a decree which Tehom could never break, however violently her salt waves might rage: the decree that she be as if locked behind the shore's gates forever.

"Elohim then measured out dry earth, fixing its limits. He allowed Tehom's fresh waters to rise as valley springs, and rain to fall gently on the mountaintops from his upper chambers. Thus he made grass grow as fodder for cattle; also corn and grapes for the nourishment of man; and the great cedars of Lebanon for shade. He ordered the Moon to mark the seasons; and the Sun to divide day from night and summer from winter; and the stars to limit the blackness of night. He filled the Earth with beasts and birds and creeping things; and the sea with fishes, sea-beasts and monsters. He let wild beasts roam about after dark; but once the Sun arose they had to return to their lairs.

"The Morning Stars, as they watched, burst into a song of praise, and all the sons of god shouted for joy.

"Having thus completed the work of Creation, Elohim withdrew to his sanctuary, to Mount Paran in the Land of Teman (Arabia). Whenever he leaves this dwelling place, Earth trembles and mountains smoke."

Particularly interesting is the last paragraph. Why Mount Paran in Teman? Clearly the seat of a god, but how do they know it is Elohim?

ADDITIONAL NOTES AND DISCUSSION ITEMS

Roughly speaking, the ancients envisaged Creation like the birth of a child from the absolute darkness in the womb, through the breaking of the uterine waters. The Earth is encompassed by the World Snake who, as umbilicus, holds back the waters, and who, as phallus, inseminates the earth. The Creative Urge/Sun-god hacks the snake in two, allowing the inseminating waters to break, forming two firmaments. As the lower waters dry up, life as an egg is hatched by the Creative Urge/Sun (snake eggs are indeed hatched by the sun; the Behemoth are the serpent's earthly equivalents, born from the eggs). The expulsion of the serpent from the garden reflects the overthrow of the sea-beast god, now hacked and therefore defunct. The moon/sea/fertility goddess takes over, with a male consort representing the sun/creative urge as her consort. Adam and Chavah (Eve) retells this story as a mythological/dramatic parable.

At some point long after the beginning there was a realisation, which was destined to change the course of History more than any previous realisation. At the time the world was full of gods, a plethora of gods by thousands of different names (gods understood as life forces). And then it became perfectly obvious that, in reality, all gods were the same god, bifurcated and rebifurcated into a thousand stems and branches. But only One Life Force. This realisation took place somewhere between Egypt and China, probably in the 6th century BCE; any hint of monotheism before that date, with the single exception of the sun-disc cult of Akhenaten in Egypt, is wishful thinking.

According to the Tanach, there are two possible versions of Creation (not including the Mesopotamian story of No'ach, probably introduced by the Samaritans when they were re-settled in northern Kena'an by Esarhaddon, the king of Ashur (Assyria), after its conquest by his father in 722 BCE; probably around 670 BCE). In one the god is named YHVH, or YHVH Elohim, or simply Elohim; in the other the gods are named Chavah and Adam.

In the first story Creation was not simply the beginning but the very beginning, the beginning of all beginnings, the fountainhead of all Creation. Elohim, the Omnideity, who was both male and female, singular and plural, came into existence, and that existence is Creation, including the Creation of the world of appearances, the visible universe, for which Elohim the Omnideity serves as a metaphor. This god created existence out of nothingness, by coming into existence - perhaps even by process of a big bang such as happens when the waters of the placenta break. But he was only gas, that amalgam of oxygen and hydrogen from which water is compounded. And immediately he bifurcated himself, some of the gaseous waters forming the male heavens, the rest coagulating to form the female Earth.

But the Earth was not the domain of Elohim. The Earth was ruled by two other gods, who had not yet come into the world of appearances. The name of one was Tohu, Desolation, the other Bohu, the Void of Uncreation. And each of these gods possessed a form as monster, Tohu being Tahamat the sea-monster, and Bohu Behemot the land-monster. And it was because these monsters had roamed the universe since Time began that the world of appearances had not yet come into being.

And also because a third god, Choshech, the Prince of Darkness, ruled the waters in which Tahamat swam.

But the invisible world continued to be, for the spirit of Elohim blew as a cool wind blows through the inert and the kinetic gases, so the darkness and desolation and the void could not finally destroy the Invisible as well.

Then (Marduk) took his axe and sliced the sea-monster Tahamat in two, signalling the start of Creation. And Elohim used the power of language to transform the Invisible into the Visible. And whatever Elohim named, that object came into existence in the Visible world.

To defeat darkness, and to create the possibility of seeing in this new world of appearances, it was necessary to create light. And so Elohim named the light, and it became visible. And Elohim was pleased. And having created the Entity Light, he then created the Name of the Entity - so that in fact the very first entity created in the universe was not Space, nor Time, but Language. And having created it within Time as well as within Appearance, he named the Time of the Entity as well, by calling it Day. But Choshech refused to be intimidated or cast aside, for Choshech was a mighty god. So Elohim and Choshech agreed to divide the period of Time in two, as all things in the Created world divide in two. And the period in which Choshech ruled they called Night. And it was further agreed that Elohim would rule the Day and Choshech the Night, and that from now on Elohim would enact creation only by Day, but at night all created entities would retreat beyond visibility and the world of appearances into the darkness, void and desolation of the invisible world of Night, with its Tseva'ot, its hosts of stars, and with its triple-queen, the three-phased Moon: Virgin, Madonna, Hag, and known as the Underworld.

And so a day came into being, and was as quickly passed.

And to symbolise the rule of Elohim by Day the Sun was placed in the heavens; and to symbolise the rule of Choshech by Night the Moon.

Icelandic Edda: The First man Ymir slept and sweated and under his left hand a man and woman grew up, and one of his feet begat a son with the other; hence the races of Man were made. Then Ymir's body was cut up to form the world.

In one of the Indian myths he is called Purusha, which means Humankind. He is cut up as the primordial sacrifice, so that the visible world might be fashioned out of the invisible.

In Babylon he was a she, the monstrous goddess-mother of the world abyss Tiamat.

To the Australian aboriginals the bandicoot ancestor Karora lay at the bottom of the soak of Ilbalintja where there wasn't yet any water. Above him there was a great pole, reaching to the heavens, and around it red soil and flowering grasses; his desires and wishes begin to seed the ground, and from his body they manifested themselves.

Likewise in the Chinese and Hindu versions the god is not cut up but naturally bifurcates and thereby multiplies. In the same way Adam and Chavah (Eve) are originally one but become two, she created from his rib. The process is similar to cell division.

Then is the Tree of Life a totem pole of the Karora sort? Are church spires too, and the pointed minarets of mosques? The circumcision rite has much to do with this process: clipping the vine that the fruit of the cosmic tree may run to fruit. Joseph Campbell suggests a universal myth as:

"the circumcised boy initiate, embracing the living tree that rises from the head of the first ancestor, before being lanced and therewith identified with the father! Who is he? In this science we must have the courage to compare, so let us not be afraid to draw the obvious parallel with Jesus on the cross that rises on this hill of the skull of the first ancestor, whose side is to be opened by a lance in the awesome rite of his at-one-ment with the Father."

As part of the circumcision rite, aboriginal males spend a period separated from the community, before undergoing ritual transformation. Like Jesus the Nazirite, and Mosheh in the wilderness.

In the Aztec creation myth, there is a kind of female Tahamat: Tlaltecuhtli the maiden (as in Koré-Persephone the maiden?) was walking alone on the primordial waters when Quetzlcoatl and Tezcatlipoca turned themselves into serpents and tore her apart; from her they fashioned the cosmos, transforming her hair into trees flowers and grass, her eyes into springs and fountains, her mouth into rivers and caves, her nose into valleys and her shoulders into mountains. But she refused to bear fruit until it was drenched with human blood.

Finally there is this genealogical table, condensed by Hertz from the pages of Haeckel, one of the leading modern biologists. It summarises Creation according to the Darwinian Mythology, and perhaps a surprising find in the commentary of an orthodox Rabbi:

"Monera begat Amoeba, who begat Synamoeba, who begat Ciliated Larva, who begat Primaeval Stomach Animals, who begat Gliding Worms, who begat Skull-less Animals, who begat Single-Nostrilled Animals, who begat primaeval Fish, who begat Mud-fish, who begat Gilled Amphibians, who begat Tailed Amphibians, who begat Primary Mammals, who begat Pouched Animals, who begat Semi-Apes, who begat Tailed Apes, who begat Man-like Apes, who begat Man."

All of which takes us back to where we started, in the essay "The Ancestry of the Patriarch".

continue to Genesis 2:4-25 introductory notes
continue to Genesis 2:4-25 text and commentary
continue to Genesis 2:4-25 "the original play"

Surf The Site