Genesis: Chapters One, Two and Three

In the Beginning
I hand copied the first three chapters of Genesis Sunday December 11th. Over the course of almost six hours, with frequent, short breaks, I sat cross legged on the floor with a pad of paper on the low table and used a fine tip pen. I used ear plugs to help me focus.
It requires careful attention to detail. I am attempting to replicate the columns exactly as they are in the copy from which I am copying. (I make exception for words that have been split with a hyphen. My copy will not include any words continued on the next line.) If I lose focus and my thoughts drift from what I am copying, I find I make a mistake almost immediately.
The first three chapters fit on three notebook pages, front and back. These are the first three pages of nearly two thousand that will compose the finished copy. It is satisfying for me to look at these pages of marks from my hand.

About the story ...
It begins with a poem. "In the beginning God created ..." It describes the earth being formed using visual imagery, repetition, sequence and allusion. As I copied it down, I grew a bit tired of the repetition, until I read over it all together. I am certain it is more beautiful in the original, but even in the English, the mystery and vastness of the very concept of a world being formed struck me. This is the beginning of everything.
As I copied the first chapter, I imagined being one of the first people to actually write that down. They must have heard this poem or song all of their life. Everyone knew the story of those first six days. I imagined why they must have been writing it down, for whom they were crafting a written copy. A father wrote it down for his son. A holy man wrote it down for his community. A teacher wrote it down for a student.
The second chapter begins with a few connecting sentences. It continues on the list of days and explains that on the seventh, God rested. But the poem seems to stop then. The editor/ compiler of Genesis is blending these different tales of creation to form the ultimate story. The flow of the story is redirected after the explanation of the seventh day. The second chapter looks specifically at the day God made man.
The poem may seem to end at the beginning of chapter two, but the poetry remains. There is striking imagery. It is full of magic and mystery. God breathes into the nostrils of a clay form and man is made. God brings all the animals to the man "to see what he would call them." God takes a rib from the man and forms a woman from it. The man bursts into song when he meets the woman. This story had to have been acted out as a musical for years before it was ever written down.

What I think ...
The story is an explanation. Partly, it explains how our existence was formed. That part is simple and mentioned multiple times. "God made it." That is how.
The main explanation the story is trying to communicate is why the world is the way it is now. One of the huge themes of this explanation is "because God set it up that way." God ordered the sun, moon and stars to measure time. God made the sky to be separate from the water and the water to be separate from the land. God made plants with seeds, so they could continue for generations. God made woman to help man. God gave the whole world for man to rule. That is why.
It explains so much doesn't it?
Like all good stories, this one uses the beliefs of the audience. None of the meaning or its intention was lost at the time. No one heard this story and said, "But why did God put a beautiful, forbidden tree in the middle of the garden of Eden?" They saw the story for what it was saying, not what it was leaving out.
Because what this story is not trying to do is explain God.
An open reader or listener of this story will hear a deep look at the state of humankind and humankind's relationship to the world.

Science
These first three chapters are very famous. Everyone knows that "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Many millions of people know this as a truth. In the last few hundred years, truth has become something different than it used to be. Now, we have empiricism, which is a way of proving something. Science has changed the way we see truth.
This story was first told many thousands of years ago. It was not written as scientific truth.
To be clear, variety of interpretation is one of the things I love about human art. The meaning that different perspectives can offer is almost always valuable. Outsider observations are some of the most revealing.
But reading Genesis (or any of the Bible) with our current lens of scientific thought (which anyone reading the Bible today has) brings up more questions than answers. The story becomes about something different and the whole intent can be lost.
It is not intended to be God's journal of what happened that first week.
It is impossible that it was intended as a scientific document. The moon is described as a light independent of the sun. A snake talks. Adam names all the animals as God parades them before him (I wonder if he used Latin.) God walks in the garden and Adam can hear it.

Key Ideas
Everything is man's.
God clearly gives it all to man to "rule," including the woman. This has given humankind justification for all sorts of irresponsibility, though it is surely an exhortation to be more responsible.
Man is never full.
Even after being given the whole earth, they have to also have the one tree they were commanded against taking. This is happening constantly today. We consume everything in our path, not as individuals but as a species. We really have taken over the entire world.
We have only ourselves to blame.
Adam and Eve only did what they did because they are just like us. All of us eat from that tree. The punishment for eating from the forbidden tree is banishment from that garden into an existence that sounds like normal life. So, the way things are now is a punishment.
We have only ourselves to blame for the way things are. Our own choices perpetuate our punishment. But explaining the state of things as a punishment has given many of us a prisoner mentality. No one wants to live in a cursed world. So we need religious leaders who teach us to overcome the punishment of our existence and get back to paradise.
Religion can ruin any good story.

The Art
I am being very intentional with my lettering, trying to be as uniform as possible with letter sizes. I want it to be very readable and also attractive. The longer the writing session, the more relaxed the letters become, so I write in short, focused bursts. Then I read over what I copied and compare it to the text.
Accuracy is as important as the aesthetics. So, I focus on both and that forces me to balance my attention carefully. This is tedious and painstaking. Of course that is one of the main points.
As I write, some of the letters come out much differently than I prefer them to look. My capital letters, particularly "L," "T" and "N" tend to be shaky and crooked. I have decided that each page will be completely full of odd looking letters which I don't completely approve. I have decided to let go of that and write on.
The only major diversion from the text I am copying will be a lack of verse numbers. I will probably include chapter identification in some form, but those verse numbers are ugly and misguiding.

to be continued