According to the biblical story, which most believers on earth adhere to, our world was created by God, a powerful spirit that controls the universe on the planet.
The Creator lit the sun, and on the planet, which he decided to decorate with forests, mountains, waters and heavens, a plant and animal world arose. In the garden, which He called Eden, God perfected his act of creation. A man was born. Why did God create man? For what purpose? Why did humanity go the path of sin, and not joy?
Tour of World Religions
Before proceeding to an analysis of the origin of man from a biblical point of view, let us see what other world religions say about this event. Why did God create man?
Islam describes only the creation of a man, Adam. The creation of a woman is not mentioned. According to the Qur'an, the Creator made the first man of clay. The Creator placed the created man as his viceroy on earth, and the angels bowed to Adam, except for one rebellious spirit.
In ancient times, Indians believed that purusha lives in the heart of a person, which inhabits the entire universe. From this creature a man was born who carries in himself not only the material, but also the spiritual world.
Kabbalah says that in the first man, Adam, God laid the spiritual and material principles. Adam became the first prophet and author of the book of Raziel. This fact is unlikely, it is unlikely that in those days writing already existed.
In Judaism, Adam and Eve were created in unity, and then separated. Therefore, a person has both male and female signs in his essence. But there is another position in Judaism, according to which Eve is a new creation of God.
The idea of a man
The Bible tells us why God created man in Genesis, which opens the Pentateuch of Moses. For six days God created the world, and on the seventh he rested from labors. He managed to do a lot over these days: he separated the light from the darkness, divided the firmament and the water, according to His word he gave the existence of vegetation and the animal kingdom.
But something was missing for the God-created world - the keeper. Therefore, the Creator also intended to create man in His own image. Why did God create man? To take care of the beautiful world, cultivate the earth and protect all that the Almighty created. Genesis 1, verse 26, says:
And God said: let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and may they rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over cattle, and over all the earth, and over all the creeping things that creep on the earth.
The human body
In Genesis chapter 2, we read these words:
And the Lord God created man from the dust of the earth, and breathed in his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.
Let us examine this Bible verse in more detail. God created man from the dust of the earth. The following associations arise in the head of a modern person with the word “dust”: dust, something dirty and barely perceptible to the eye. There is a lot of dust on the earth. Volcanoes, desert, for example, are sources of dust. Dust is found in animals (bacteria) and in the plant world (pollen, mold).
In the Bible in the meaning of “dust”, “dust” the word of Jewish origin is used “afar”. This word has several meanings and can be translated as “earth” or “clay”.
It can be concluded that God made the human body out of the earth. If you again turn to the Hebrew language, you can find the word "yatsar", which is used in Scripture as "create." In the direct meaning of "yatsar" means "sculpt." God has shaped the human body with clay. The Creator fashioned the kidneys, liver, heart, and breathed his breath into this vessel.
Human soul
First, God created the human body, and the next step, or stage of creation, was to revive this clay vessel. The Creator breathed into the first person a spirit, or soul. Thus, man is conceived by God as a material shell and a spiritual one. The source of life in man is the soul that the Creator gave us, and we have become the image and likeness of God.
Many confuse and misinterpret the following verses from Genesis 1:26:
And God said: Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.
How did God create man? God made Adam, and after him the whole of humanity, not outwardly similar to himself, but inwardly. God is not material; He is the spirit. To be created in the likeness and image of God means the presence of a person’s mind, intellect (for example, to compose music, paint pictures or create masterpieces of world literature and architecture), will and freedom of choice. Thanks to these qualities, the creature has the opportunity to communicate with its Creator and be responsible for the moral choice that it takes upon itself.
Man and animals
God created man differently than animals. He created animals with the word (Genesis 1:24):
And God said: Let the earth produce a living soul after its kind, cattle, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth according to their kind. And so it was.
He molded the first person from clay, directly participated in his "birth". Man is the main creation of God, a masterpiece. Just as people admire the works of Leonardo, Michelangelo or Gaudi, so did God admire his creation - beautiful and incomparable. The creator personally participated in the birth of man. By creating the body, and then breathing the soul into the body, God intended us both for the material and spiritual worlds. To be a representative of the creator on earth, a mediator between heaven and earth.
There is a hypothesis that the Creator put on the skin of a monkey on a man when Adam and Eve sinned and expelled people from Eden. He changed their bodies and made them mortal with the help of the skin of an animal. In Genesis 3:21, we read the following verses:
And the Lord God made Adam and his wife leather clothes and clothed them.
From this point of view, the theory of the origin of species and evolution of Charles Darwin has a right to exist. The genetic relationship with the monkey can be explained by divine intervention in the human body, which initially had a different look. Many scientists do not want to consider such an option for human development or purposefully close their eyes to it. It all depends on what angle to look at a particular issue.
Adam and Eve
The first man created by God was called Adam. God from the very beginning cared for his creation. To make him feel good and joyful, the Creator planted a garden - Eden, where God created man, where man first saw the light and felt the aromas of herbs and flowers.
God made Adam king over all creatures on earth in Eden. Paradise, or Eden, was fed by one large river, which was divided into four rivers. One of them was called the Euphrates. Using this information, archaeologists and historians say that heaven on earth really was and was on the territory of modern North Africa.
Initially, a person did not eat meat, but ate plants and fruits from trees. The functions of the first person included caring for the garden and its protection. The man named the animals and gave them the first names (Genesis, 2nd chapter):
The Lord God formed from the earth all the animals of the field and all the birds of the air, and brought him to a man to see what he would call them, and so that, as a man calls every living soul, so was his name.
God saw that it is hard for man alone. He put Adam to sleep, and out of his ribs he created a woman, which he brought to him when Adam woke up. God called the woman Eve. In the Kabbalah, the mystical direction of Judaism, it is written that the name of the wife was not Eve, but Lilith, but the Bible is a more significant and authoritative source than the mysterious course of Judaism.
When Adam saw Eve, he exclaimed (Genesis 2: 24, 25):
Behold, it is bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh; she will be called a wife, for taken from her husband.
Man and woman became one flesh. Eve was made from part of Adam's body. The wife and husband are one, whose name is man.
Adam and Eve walked along Eden naked and did not hide their nudity, since they had not yet tasted the forbidden fruit, and the feeling of shame was not peculiar to man.
Human creation goals
Why did God create man? What goals did he pursue? These questions occupy the minds of many people. The Bible clearly indicates for what purpose man was created:
- to guide God’s material things;
- to care for the world and the garden in Eden;
- for communication with God (the Creator was interested in communicating with a person);
- to enjoy looking at a person;
- God created man for happiness.
God is a spirit, He does not live in a body like us, and cannot completely control life on the planet. For this, the Creator must become a man. Here is another hypothetical goal of creating a person - to get a body thanks to a created person (the birth of Jesus Christ from Mary, the Immaculate Conception).
Hard questions
God created man in such a way that he could rejoice at every moment lived on earth, in the happiness of communication with the Creator of this world.
Skeptics often ask why God created man if he knew that he could sin and many souls would go to hell? The thing is that man was created in the image and likeness of God and was endowed with freedom of choice, that is, he could decide which way to go and not be a puppet.
God warned Adam that in Eden he could eat fruit from any tree, but not touch the fruits of the knowledge of good and evil. The first people did not obey God. The man himself decided which way to go.
The Bible book of Ecclesiastes says:
It was only this that I found that God created man to be right, and people went into many thoughts.
In these lines, the wise Solomon says that God created man to be right, pure, and sinless. These people chose a different path, and then, having received abilities from God, applied them as they saw fit. Often human decisions are aimed at not approaching God, but purposefully proving His absence. People endowed with God's gifts use them for other purposes, inventing and fantasizing, passing off these theories as undeniable facts. But in the first epistle of the apostle Paul to the Corinthians (1: 19-20) God answers humanity that the wisdom of the age He will humiliate and show its stupidity:
I will destroy the wisdom of the sages and the rational mind I will reject. Where is the sage? Where is the scribe? Where is the co-questioner of this world? Has not God turned the wisdom of this world into madness?
Afterword
Man did not obey God and ate the fruit from the forbidden tree. We all know the scene of Eve's temptation by the treacherous serpent, whose image Satan took on. Eve obeyed the seductive speeches of the devil that, having bitten off the fetus, people will know good and evil, will become immortal. Eve tasted the fruit and gave it to her husband. Adam trusted his wife, silence hung in the air - the world became different. God drove people out of Eden, dressed them in leather clothes, and ordered the woman to suffer a difficult birth, and the man through exhausted labor until the end of his days. The man made a choice.
The first people had an amazing opportunity to communicate directly with God, look after the garden, and have light and weightless bodies. All of this they flowed at one moment, including the opportunity to live in the presence of the Creator. And only after many years, God had to incarnate in the human body, be born of a woman, suffer, be beaten by the crowd, die and resurrect in order to restore relations with man.