The first, most obvious, feature of Genesis 1 & 2 has to be that it is a celebration of God’s creation – all of it. Before we get to the “male and female” bit, let’s consider the rest.

On the first day, “God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness night.” Does this imply that there is nothing in between? Of course not. There is twilight, there is gloaming. Night can be well lit by a full moon, day can be dull and cloudy. But still, there is night and day, darkness and light – which do not deny the existence of intermediate states.

On the second day, God “made a dome that separated the waters under the dome from the waters above the dome…and called the dome Sky”. We know from science that there is not a “dome” above, as a fixed object, but we accept the existence of something we call “sky”, even though we cannot say where precisely it begins or ends.

On the third day, God separated the land from the waters. “God called the dry land Earth, and the waters he called Seas.” Again, we know from simple observation that this simplifies the picture. On the land there are also rivers and lakes, as well as marshes, swamps and deltas that are not clearly either wet or dry, or may vary in state with the seasons. At the coast, there are intertidal zones, which are land at low tide, and sea at high. On the oceans, there are arctic zones where frozen sea creates ice shelves, a form of “dry” land. Yet none of this negates the concept of a difference between dry land and sea – and the use of the concept does not deny the existence of intermediate states. Also on the third day, God created the plants:

Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with their seed in it.” And so it was.

Continue reading Queering Genesis: Male and Female (And Others) He Created Them →