What doctrines are found in Genesis 1-3?

Answer 1

Genesis 1 -3 contains the basis of all other biblical doctrine. It records the creation of the world and mankind as well as the explanation of the origin of sin and the fall, without which much of the rest of The Bible would be incomprehensible.

Answer 2

A common belief held by many Christians is that the first creation story (Genesis 1:!-2:4a) contains the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, creation from nothing, as stated in the KJV English translation (Genesis 1:1): "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Scholars disagree with this translation. The influential eleventh-century Jewish scholar, Rashi, said that Genesis should really be read, "When God began to create" or "In the beginning of God's creation," which makes no suggestion of God creating the world. Instead of using the the KJV English translation, Robert Alter (Genesis Translation and Commentary) translates the first sentence as "When God began to create heaven and earth, and the water was welter and waste and darkness over the deep and God's breath hovering over the waters ..."

Even if the first creation story is held to support the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, there is nothing in the second creation story (Genesis 2:4b-2:20) to support this: the earth already existed but God had to make it rain before plants would grow. Leon R. Kass (The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis ) says that once we recognise the independence of the two creation stories, we are compelled to adopt a critical principle of reading if we mean to understand each story on its own terms. We must scrupulously avoid reading into the second story any facts or notions taken from the first, and vice versa.

In the first story, the animals come first and man is to be their ruler, man is to be the master of life on earth (1:28), and man is made directly in the image of God (1:27). In the second story, the beasts come after, as man's possible companions and Adam is to be the servant of the earth (2:5, 15); man only achieves a god-like status after he eats the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

The first creation account, written by the Priestly source during the sixth-century BCE Babylonian Exile, mentions only one God - it is clearly written from a monotheistic point of view. The much older account in chapters 2 and 3 does not mention any gods other than the Lord God, but they are clearly there in 3:22, when the Lord God says, "And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: " then sent Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden lest they eat of the Tree of Life and becoming immortal, become truly like gods. Even the serpent, which modern Christians perceive as Satan personified, is actually a remnant of more ancient animistic worship.

Leon R. Kass (The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis) says that we can learn most from the story of the Garden of Eden by regarding it as a mythical yet realistic portrait of permanent truths about our humanity, rather than as a historical yet idealised portrait of a blissful existence we once enjoyed but lost.

For more information, please visit: http://christianity.answers.com/theology/the-story-of-creation

Answer 3

1) God is the Creator 2) The world is purposeful, as is life

3) Humans are responsible to God

4) The Creation is good

5) God is omnipotent, as He created the universe from nothing.

Jewish tradition is that God created the universe out of nothing (Exodus 20:11, Isaiah 40:28; Rashi commentary to Genesis 1:14; Maimonides' "Guide," 2:30). Nachmanides on Gen. 1:1 states emphatically that this is a fundamental tradition.Note that the Torah, in describing the Creation, deliberately employs brevity and ellipsis, just as it does in many other topics. See the Talmud, Hagigah 11b.

Note further that according to tradition, there is only one Genesis creation-narrative, with ch.2 serving as an expansion of the brevity of ch.1, not a separate set of events (Rashi commentary, Gen.2:8).

http://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=6&article=1131(a Christian author)

http://www.whoreallywrotethebible.com/excerpts/chapter4-1.php

http://www.pearlmancta.com/BiblicalcriticswrongRShlomoCohen.htm