Genesis 1 declares the existence of God. It doesn’t try to argue the point. God existed before creation because He created all things. Therefore, God pre-exists time because creation is also the beginning of time. From there we can conclude that nothing pre-exists God. If God had a beginning, then time would have to exist in order to measure when God began. Infinity cannot be measured, so God was not created. He always was and is. He told Moses He is the I AM. There is no past or future in I AM. It is always in the present. It’s kind of like the saying that tomorrow never comes. Because when tomorrow comes, from our perspective it will be today. God is the I AM because He is always present. He exists outside of time so there is no past or future to Him. All things exist together in time.
Mark 12:26-27a “And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? 27 He is not God of the dead, but of the living.”
From our perspective, they were all born and died at different times, and they are currently in the grave awaiting the resurrection. From God’s perspective, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all exist at the same time and are with Him now.
Now, let’s compare this to other creation stories. Skeptics like to point out that other religions have creation stories, so Moses probably just borrowed from them. The Genesis creation account is just a retelling of the story from a monotheist perspective. On the Contradictions in the Bible website, there’s an article that compares the Genesis creation account with a Babylonian creation account. They are very similar with the exception of Genesis being monotheistic and the Babylonian account having many gods. Their conclusion is that the writers of Genesis borrowed from the Babylonians to make their creation account after they returned from the Exile in the 6th century BC. Did you catch that? Their conclusion is that the Genesis creation account was written some 700-800 years after Moses. The article calls the writer of Genesis the Priestly writer. Ezra was a priest in the 5th century BC.
We know that Ezra and some scribes rewrote the Tanakh from Paleo-Hebrew to Aramaic-Hebrew so the exilic Jews could understand it. Though, that was about 100+ years after the Contradictions in the Bible article says that the creation story was written. Who do they think wrote the Genesis account? Do they believe that Moses wrote something, but after the exile, it was replaced with a monotheistic version of the Babylonian account? Or do they even take Moses into account at all? The answers to those questions are irrelevant. It seems that the Contradictions guys are grasping at straws anyway. The thing to notice is that the two creation accounts are similar, and that’s more important than the differences.
If God wanted to reveal Himself to man but still be a mystery, then it would make sense that He would reveal Himself to those who would record what He said and did. God communed with Adam in the Garden. Surely Adam would have passed those stories on to his children and so forth. As they became fruitful and multiplied, and spread out upon the earth, it would make sense that something like the game of telephone would be the result. The further removed from Adam the story became, it would take on different characteristics based on the storyteller that passed it down. Those who rejected God would naturally remove Him from the story and replace Him with other gods, maybe many. The same is true with the flood narrative. Many nationalities, or ethnicities, have a version of the flood story where one man, or family, is saved from a great flood. Does that mean the flood or creation stories are just myths because they don’t all agree? No. It provides evidence that those things did happen. Our job is to figure out which one is true. The Genesis account provides a perspective, unlike the others that show it to be the most likely candidate for the true creation story. That perspective is monotheism.
As was mentioned above, God pre-exists time. If there were other gods, then God would have to make those gods and put them in charge of things. This would include any humans that are created later. Humans would always be servants of the gods. But Genesis says that God created the world and gave dominion over the earth to Adam and Eve. Humans were made caretakers and rulers of the earth while only being subservient to God. All polytheistic religions have men as servants or slaves to the gods. But if God truly wanted to have a relationship with His creation, He wouldn’t allow anything or anyone to stand in between that relationship.
The first of the ten commandments says we are to have no other gods before Him. Does that mean there are other gods? No. It means that we are not to have anything that comes in between our relationship with Him. He didn’t create any other gods. But we as humans tend to make gods or our own. And that’s the difference between the Genesis creation account and all others. In the Beginning, God…one God created all things.
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