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Louis, it is troubling that you talk about "plain English" and then ignore it in the text of scripture. Genesis 1:1-2:3 and Genesis 2:4-25 certainly tell the same story of the creation, from two different perspectives, with different emphases. The account in chapter two emphasizes the special creation of man and his relationship with God. When you deny that Adam was the first man, you quarrel with Jesus and with Paul. As previously mentioned in response to some of your other posts, Jesus in Matthew 19:1-9 says that man was created at the beginning (there is no gap between the beginning in Genesis 1:1 and the creation of man in Genesis 1:27, it is a single narrative of six days of creation). Jesus also quoted from both Genesis 1:27 (Matthew 19:4) and Genesis 2:24 (Matthew 19:5) and treated them as a single story. Do not dispute with Jesus. You say that Adam was not the first man. Not only does Genesis say he was, Paul specifically restates it when he contrasts Adam with Jesus. 1 Cor 15:45-47 So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven (NIV) Do not dispute with Paul, and claim that it is Bible. Adam was indeed the first man. Why do you make a distinction between the Hebrew for "the man" in Genesis 2:7 and that of Genesis 1:26-27, when in fact the same Hebrew expression that you call "the specific man" is used in Genesis 1:27? Why do you take the direct statement of scripture, that Eve is the mother of all the living (Genesis 3:20) and deny the plain meaning of it? Why do you wrench the word "host" out of Genesis 2:1 and try to make it a mass of mankind, contrary to the scriptures, when the context and other usage of the word show that it means a vast array, and can describe the multitude of the stars in the sky just as readily as a multitude of men (as in Psalm 33:6, Isaiah 34:4, and Jeremiah 8:2). The word means "what goes forth." Why do you claim that God created anything whatsoever on the eighth day when the Bible says and restates that God made everything is six days and rested on the seventh "from all his work which he had made" (Genesis 2:2-3, Exodus 20:11). Heb 4:3b-4 ...And yet his work has been finished since the creation of the world. For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day in these words: "And on the seventh day God rested from all his work." NIV
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