According to the biblical story, which is followed by most believers on earth, 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 skies, the flora and fauna arose. In the garden that He called Eden, God perfected His act of creation. A man was born. Why did God create man? For what purpose? Why did mankind follow the path of sin and not joy?
Tour of World Religions
Before we turn to the analysis of the origin of man from a biblical point of view, let's see what other world religions say about this event. Why did God create man?
In Islam, only the creation of a man, Adam, is described. There is no mention of the creation of a woman. According to the Koran, the Creator made the first man from clay. The Creator appointed created man as his vicegerent on earth, and the angels bowed down to Adam, except for one rebellious spirit.
In ancient times, Hindus believed that a person lives in the heartthe purusha who inhabits the entire universe. From this creation, a person was born who carries not only the material, but also the spiritual world.
Kabbalah says that in the first man, Adam, God laid spiritual and material beginnings. Adam became the first prophet and author of the Book of Raziel. This fact is unlikely, it is unlikely that writing already existed at that time.
In Judaism, Adam and Eve were created in unity and then separated. Therefore, a person has both male and female characteristics in his essence. But there is another position in Judaism, according to which Eve is a new creation of God.
The idea of a person
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 his labors. He managed to do a lot during these days: he separated the light from the darkness, separated the firmament and the waters, according to His word gave the existence of vegetation and the animal world.
But something was missing for the world created by God - the guardian. Therefore, the Creator intended to create man in His own image and likeness. Why did God create man? So that he takes care of the beautiful world, cultivates the land and protects everything that the Almighty created. Genesis 1 verse 26 says:
And God said: Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
Human body
In the 2nd chapter of the book of Genesis we read suchwords:
And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.
Let's take a closer look at this verse from the Bible. 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 ground. Volcanoes, the desert, for example, are sources of dust. Dust is found in both the animal world (bacteria) and the plant world (pollen, mold).
In the Bible, in the meaning of "ashes", "dust" the word of Jewish origin "afar" is used. This word has several meanings and can be translated as "earth" or "clay".
It can be concluded that God made the human body from the earth. If we turn again to the Hebrew language, we can find the word "yatsar", which is used in Scripture as "to create." In the literal sense, “yatsar” means “to mold”. God shaped the human body with clay. The Creator molded the kidneys, liver, heart and breathed His breath into this vessel.
The human soul
First God created the human body, and the next step, or stage of creation, was to bring this earthen vessel to life. The Creator breathed into the first man a spirit, or soul. Thus, man is conceived by God as a material and spiritual shell. The source of life in man is the soul that the Creator gave us, and we became the image and likeness of God.
Many confuse and misinterpret the following versesfrom Genesis 1:26:
And God said: Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness.
How did God create man? God made Adam, and after him all mankind, not outwardly similar to himself, but inwardly. God is immaterial, He is spirit. To be created in the likeness and image of God means that a person has a 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 ability to communicate with its Creator and be responsible for the moral choice that it makes.
Man and animals
God created man differently from animals. Animals He created with a word (Genesis 1:24):
And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind, cattle, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth after their kind. And so it was.
He fashioned the first man 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 God admired his creation - beautiful and incomparable. The Creator personally participated in the birth of man. By creating the body, and then breathing into the body - the soul, God intended us for both the material and the spiritual world. To be the representative of the creator on earth, the mediator between heaven and earth.
There is a hypothesis that the Creator put a monkey skin 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 animal skin. In Genesis 3:21 we read the following verses:
And the Lord God made garments of leather for Adam and his wife and clothed them.
From this point of view, Charles Darwin's theory of the origin of species and evolution has the right to exist. The genetic relationship with the monkey may be due to divine intervention in the human body, which originally had a different appearance. Many scientists do not want to consider such a variant of human development or purposefully turn a blind eye to it. It all depends on what angle to look at this or that question.
Adam and Eve
The first man created by God was named Adam. God has taken care of his creation from the very beginning. 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 every creature 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 claim that heaven on earth really was and was located on the territory of modern North Africa.
Initially, man did not eat meat, but ate plants and fruits from trees. The functions of the first person included taking care of the garden and its protection. Man named animals and gave them first names (Genesis 2nd chapter):
The Lord God formed from the earth all the animals of the field and all the birdsheavenly, and brought them to a man to see what he would call them, and that whatever a man called every living soul, that was its name.
God saw that it is hard for a man to be alone. He put Adam to sleep, and from his rib he created a woman, whom he brought to him when Adam woke up. God named the woman Eve. In Kabbalah, the mystical branch of Judaism, it is written that the wife's name was not Eve, but Lilith, but the Bible is a more weighty and authoritative source than the mysterious branch of Judaism.
When Adam saw Eve, he exclaimed (Genesis 2: 24, 25):
Behold, this is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she will be called wife, for she was taken from her husband.
Man and woman become one flesh. Eve was created from a part of Adam's body. Wife and husband are one entity, whose name is man.
Adam and Eve walked around Eden naked and did not hide their nakedness, as they had not yet tasted the forbidden fruit, and the feeling of shame was not yet characteristic of a person.
The Purposes of Man's Creation
Why did God create man? What goals did he pursue? These questions occupy the minds of many people. The Bible clearly states the purpose for which man was created:
- to guide material things created by God;
- for the care of the world and the garden in Eden;
- to communicate with God (It was interesting for the Creator to communicate with man);
- to enjoy looking at a person;
- God created man for happiness.
God is a spirit, He does not live in a body like we do, and cannot fully control life on the planet. To do this, the Creator must become a man. Here is another hypothetical purpose of the creation of man - to receive a body, thanks to the created man (the birth of Jesus Christ from Mary, virgin birth).
Tough questions
God created man in such a way that he could enjoy 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 the soul of many 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 the fruit of 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:
Only this I found that God created man right, and people set off in many thoughts.
In these lines, the wise Solomon says that God created man right, pure, sinless. It was people who chose a different path, and then, having received abilities from God, they applied them as they saw fit. Often human decisions are directed not to get closer to God, but to purposefully prove His absence. People endowed with God's gifts misuse them, inventing and fantasizing, presenting these theories as indisputable facts. But in the first letter of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians (1:19-20), God answers mankind that He will degrade the wisdom of the age andwill show her stupidity:
I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and I will reject the mind of the prudent. Where is the sage? Where is the scribe? Where is the questioner of this world? Has God turned the wisdom of this world into folly?
Afterword
The man disobeyed God and ate the fruit from the forbidden tree. We all know the scene of the temptation of Eve by the treacherous serpent, whose image Satan assumed. Eve obeyed the seductive speeches of the devil, that, having bitten off the fruit, people will know good and evil, 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 expelled people from Eden, dressed them in leather clothes and punished the woman to suffer difficult childbirth, and the man - exhausted labor until the end of days. The man has made a choice.
The first people had an amazing opportunity to communicate directly with God, take care of the garden, have light and weightless bodies. They lost all this in one moment, including the opportunity to live in the presence of the Creator. And only after many years God had to incarnate in a human body, be born from a woman, suffer, be beaten by the crowd, die and rise again in order to restore relations with man.
