On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 2:31 AM, "A" wrote:

Thank you for this opportunity.

Can you please explained to me in Genesis 1: 27 YAHWEH made men and woman. Was that just
spirit filled people or was that living beings? Then in Genisis 2; 7 He made Adam. Was he then the first man?
Who was the people in Genisis 1;27 then?

Regards
"A"

"A,"

I cover the first question in the The Chay chapter of the Genesis volume. Here it is in context:


Scripturally, six is the number of man, so we should not be surprised that on the sixth day of creation, we are the last thing formed. But before He got to us, the Creator offered this spiritual and scientific insight. "And God/Elohiym said, 'Earth, proceed to bring forth (yatsa' - deliver) living (chay) souls (nepesh) after their kind and species (miyn), wild animals and livestock (bahemah), gliding, creeping, and swimming creatures (remes - moving organisms); life forms (chayah - that which is alive, conceiving, nurturing, restoring, and sustaining life) on earth after its kind or species, eternally existing, upright, and established (hayah ken)." (Genesis 1:24) Yes, all animals have souls.

Cosmologically the sixth day begins 450 million years ago and it, unlike the others has yet to end. I say this because the seventh day, the Millennial Sabbath or day of rest, doesn't commence until the Miqra' of Tabernacles in the fall of 2033. So we are still living in this era.

Scientifically we know that this was indeed when mammals were first conceived - around 200,000,000 years ago. The first Homo Sapiens walked the earth a scant 600,000 years before us.

Throughout this process, Yahuweh used language to create, compel, communicate, and control. It is the medium of thought and creativity. Language is the means to enlightenment and to relationship. It is how God communes with us. In that light I'd like to examine what comes next word by word.

"And God said ('amar - spoke, thought, commanded, and promised), Let us..." We have already been introduced to the manifestations of Yahuweh's nature that require "us" rather than "me." Yahuweh is our Heavenly Father, the Re'shith or Head of the Family. The Ruach/Spirit is our Spiritual Mother. She is responsible for us being born anew unto eternal life. She accomplishes this by washing and purifying us, and then adorning us in a Garment of Light. The gadowl/enormous in magnitude and intensity, the mighty, important and distinguished memshalah/Luminary who has dominion, the one to be magnified who is great and powerful, and able to make and do great things, is the Son. The Spirit and the Son are manifestations of the one God, set-apart from Him to serve us.

"...produce ('asah - make, effect, bring about, fashion, ordain, observe, and celebrate)..." All other life forms were described either "dasha - sprouting, shooting forth greenery, being productive, living and growing," "bara' - being created and shaped, causing something new to happen through transformation," or "yatsa'chay nepesh - proceeding to come forth via the delivery a living soul," but not this time. Yahuweh used 'asah, which while similar to bara', adds the important connotations of "ordination, observation, and celebration." Ordain means "to officially invest in and to establish with authority." That is consistent with the extended meaning of 'asah," to assign a particular function or task and with it an assumption of responsibility so as to profit from it." In a word, we were designed to be special. Our life was designed to be a celebration - to please God by returning His love.

"...'Adam/man ('adam - the first man conceived in God's image and the name of the first man)..." 'Adam is also the Hebrew word for "ground, as in the surface of the earth" and for the color "red." 'Adam can even be "a precious red stone" - a humbling thought when you consider the blood shed by the Rock of our Salvation. Hebrew has two primary words for "man." "'Ysh is by far the most common and most generic. 'Adam is always specific, and is thus most always preceded by the definite article, carrying spiritual connotations with each use.

"...in our image (tselem - resemblance, pattern, and model; from an unused root meaning shade), after our likeness (damuwth - similitude and manner; from damah, meaning comparable, resembling, and with imagination and thinking)...." (Genesis 1:26)

Tselem is most often used "to represent a two or three dimensional painted or sculptured representation of something." "Shade" is, after all, a two dimensional representation of the three dimensional object between it and the source of the light. Damuwth is "a comparison or likeness in the form of an image." It is "a builder's draft or sketch, a graphic representation for a future building or other construct." The evidence is pervasive. Just as a mirror reflects our image and a shadow represents our shape in one less dimension, we were fashioned to be fewer dimensions than God. He is eternal in time, the fourth dimension. We are not. But we can be. And that is the purpose of this message. We were fashioned from the Builder's sketch as a representation of the Tabernacle of God that we are designed to become.

But there is so much more: for Yahuweh to profit from us, for Him to celebrate and commune with us, we have to be similar and comparable. Let me share an example. We cannot have a relationship with an ant - as worthy, productive, strong, and industrious as ants seem to be. Their nature and intellect are too far beneath us. We have no means to communicate, much less love, ants. And since these are God's primary objectives related to the conception of 'Adam, we must resemble Yahuweh more closely than humans do ants. Most every aspect of our nature must be a diminished version of Yahuweh's nature. God is like us because we are like God.

Yahuweh does not want us to put Him on a pedestal. He wants us to sit down beside Him, to walk with Him, to be at ease and converse with Him, to love Him; not fear Him. While He is our God, He wants to be our Father.

That said, man is not God, no matter how desperately some men want to be. God is greater than we are in every way. We are simply His shadow - diminished in dimensions, light, life and power.

Genesis reminds us twice more that we were "created in God's image, resemblance, likeness, pattern, and model - His shadow" if you will. Either Yahuweh is forgetful and verbose - which is unlikely in the context of His creative testimony, salvation story, and prophetic human history - or this point is so important He wanted to make certain we wouldn't miss it. We are like God. God is like us. If it weren't true, He wouldn't have said it once, much less thrice.

"So God created (bara') 'Adam ('adam ­ - man) in His image (tselem - resemblance, pattern, and model; from an unused root meaning shade), in the image (tselem) of God He created (bara') him. Male and female He created them." (Genesis 1:27)

I have never met anyone who made the connection. But it is there for all to see: "God created man in His image...male and female He created them." Yahuweh, by His own testimony, has male and female characteristics. He has told us that He is our Heavenly Father. We know that He manifest Himself as the Son when He became flesh and tabernacled with us. And that means that the Ruach Qodesh, the Set-Apart Spirit, is our Spiritual Mother - the source of our rebirth.

This all serves to complete Yahuweh's familial metaphor. We humans were made like God, male and female so that we would come to understand the concepts of family and marriage: of affection, birth, growth, nurturing, protecting, relationship, communion, trust, and especially sacrificial love. We have the capacity to understand the kind of relationship Yahuweh wants to develop with us and the means to it because He created that very nature within us. We replenish life and live within the loving, protecting, and nurturing covenant of marriage and family because we were created to become part of Yahuweh's family by way of the beriyth/covenant, reborn of Spirit and wed to the Messiah, becoming Yahuweh's sons and daughters.


I cover your second question in many places. One such example is in the same chapter. It is as follows:


There are three additional concepts presented in Genesis that cry out to be known. First, there was death and dying on earth during Adam's stay in Eden. We know this because Noah's ark was covered in pitch and Jerusalem is dressed in limestone - both of which are conceived in death. Further, the word for food, 'akalah, used in the 29th verse, is often translated "meat, the flesh of animals." And when Adam and Chavah sinned, Yahuweh wrapped them in "coats of skins," indicative of blood atonement and its victory over death. The Garden of Eden was walled for a reason, and that was to keep the predators at bay. These things also tell us what Scripture later confirms: our nepesh/soul is mortal.

Second, according to Yahuweh in Genesis 2:6, the earth was enveloped in mist at this time, creating a greenhouse effect in which every portion of the planet was lush and productive. Shielded as animals were from the sun's most harmful radiation, things lived longer and were healthier. This explains why we are finding mammoths in the Artic with tropical fauna frozen in their mouths. It also explains how the flood might have occurred.

Third, 'Adam and Chavah were not the first Homo sapiens. They were the first humans created in God's image, that is to say that they were the first animals to receive a nesamah/conscience. On two occasions Scripture tells us that "the daughters of men roamed the earth" outside the Garden - hunting and gathering. It was only with the gift of conscience and language that man settled down and became "civilized."

Yahuweh gave 'Adam something He did not give other animals. He called it a nesamah. In Genesis 2:7 we read: "And Yahuweh Elohiym formed (yasar - fashioned, created, and conceived) 'Adam of the dust ('aphar - ground, earth, small particles of loose matter) and breathed (naphach - blew) into his nostrils ('aph) the nesamah of living/existence (chayah/hayah); and 'Adam existed as (hayah) a living (chay) soul (nepesh)."

Before we tackle the meaning of neshamah, let's deal with whether the word following it is hayah or chayah. There is some dispute because the only difference between them is whether the left upright leg of the first letter touches the horizontal line or stops just short of it. Hayah, the root of Yahuweh's name, meaning "to exist, I was, I am, and I will be" is rendered with the Hebrew consonants: He, or "h," Yodh, or "y," and He, or "h." Chayah begins with a Cheth, or "h," but conveys the harder "ch" sound when pronounced. Chayah means "to live, to have life, to remain alive, to sustain life, to live prosperously, to be restored to life and to live forever." With one exception, chayah is synonymous with hayah, "to exist in the past, present, and future." The difference is that God does not need to be restored to life; we do.

Clearly, chayah is based upon hayah, just as restoration and eternal life are based upon Yahuweh. This is further confirmed when we examine chayah more closely. The verb means: "to revive from sickness, discouragement, and death." To chayah is "to preserve and restore to life." Chayah "implies nurturing and affection." To be chayah is "to be healed, to flourish, and to rise." These are all things Yahuweh enables, comprising His gifts of salvation and eternal life. And this means that Yahuweh breathed into us the potential to receive His grace - the potential to know Him, to choose Him, and to love Him. We were given the breath of chayah so that we might choose hayah - to exist eternally with Yahuweh.

Based upon this context and understanding, I therefore believe that nesamah represents the inherent ability to make that choice - to know right from wrong, to differentiate good from bad, to distinguish that which is true from that which is not. The nesamah endows us with the potential to know God and thus to receive His gifts of salvation and eternal life. The nesamah provides us with an awareness of them and Him.

For confirmation of this we can turn to the book of Job. Written hundreds of years before the Torah, the discussions in Job are foundational to our understanding. "Indeed ('aken - truly and surely) the Spirit (ruach), She (huw') in mortal man ('enowsh - in the weak and frail, in humankind) and even the nasamah of the Almighty (shaday) provide understanding (biyn - the ability to perceive and discern so as to apprehend information)." (Job 32:8)

So Scripture defines nesamah as "the part of mortal man that can know and respond to Yahuweh." The nesamah makes the connection between facts and understanding, between the soul and the Spirit. While it does not make us immortal, it provides us with the ability to know, commune with, love, and trust the source of immortality. It is the thing that connects us to the source of life with is why nesamah is based upon nasham, meaning "the process of childbirth."

The nepesh makes animals conscious while the nesamah makes us human, providing us with our conscience. It is that unique human element that seeks to yada Yahweh.

As for other people at the time of Eden, I go into great detail exploring what we know and can deduce in the Eden, Nesamah, and Noah chapters or Yada Yahweh.



While these excepts answer your questions, you'd be better served to read the first volume from beginning to end.

Yada