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This response is really for all readers, not just Polybius, whose name came up in the computer program :-) There are two separate creation stories on the first page of Genesis. The first refers to a creation by 'God, in Hebrew, Elohim, which is a Plural noun. This allegorical, metaphorical, mythological,'God' (Elohim) says: "Let US make man(-kind) in OUR own image", then proceeds to: "male and female created Elohim, them", creates females and males in the same moment, as equal but obviously different :-). Elohim also gives them the fruit of EVERY TREE to eat: there are no exceptions!

There is clear evidence of later redaction (tampering) in verse 27, where Plural Elohim, of verse 26, suddenly and myteriously becomes a "He", but more about that below. What does this really tell us about Elohim? It unequivically states and portrays Elohim is Plural, Female and Male. Now as it turns out, the supreme male deity of the Canaanites (an affiliation of tribal groups living in several 'cities')was named EL and his female equal consort was named Asherah. EL and Ashera also 'pro-created' a daughter goddess named Astarte (or Anat or Anath)and a son god named Baal. This story concludes with verse 3 of chapter 2 and when all references to "He" are removed from Genesis 1:27 through 2:3 and replaced with "They or "Them" and chapter 2 begins with the present verse 4 as verse one, the proper original Plural-Male-Female deified pair are restored.

Clearly at some time in the past, someone ran the two stories together in an attempt to make them appear to be one. Who had an interest in doing that? Only priests who were redacting (tampering) to install the completely masculine and anti-female diety, 'LORD God', who makes his first named appearance in chapter 2, verse 4, which is a completely separate myth with a completely separate philosophical viewpoint. In Hebrew, Lord God is YHWH Elohim,the masculine god (YHWH) of one specific tribe, the tribe of Levi, the Levites, who where usurping supreme divine authority in their own tribal name and installing themselves as the only legitimate source for priests forever after. They also excluded their tribe from participating in warfare and enforced a 10% income tax (tythe) on all other surrounding tribes in Canaan. Pretty good deal if you happened to be a Levite priest and were successful in pulling off this scheme :-).

Note: YHWH [Elohim] makes a man from dust (and presumably water), without having anyplace to put him, then "creates" a garden in a world which already exists, then tells about where gold and bdellium (a sticky resin) and onyx can be found. This sounds more like something of interest to the fable writer and has nothing to do with creating. Then as a belated afterthought YHWH concocts a rib-woman out of the dustman and she causes all that tree-fruit and serpent business trouble in the world before she even has a name!

NOTE: Yahweh, the mudman and the rib-woman are all completely masculine! Here is the most preposterous part of the entire Judeo-Christian Old Testament which was written between approximately 550 BCE and 200 CE (A.D. for Christians).Hebrew men, even up into the time of historical Jesus, Simon-Peter, Saul-Paul (et cetera) believed that babies came entirely out of their testicles and that women's wombs were nothing more than flower pots for their man-seeds. I suspect that most people who read this will be unaware of that preposterous historical absurdity. Nevertheless, that is what pre-Christian Jewish and Jesus era Jewish men believed as part of their culture. I have one question: Why didn't the talkative Levite deity smarten up his chosen men about this basic biological error? The answer is that the priestly Levite YHWH fiction writers lived in a world that was pre-scientific. They were scientifically illiterate.

Nevertheless, on the other hand, those priests reserved the right and power unto themselves to stone to death anyone who challenged their religious authority. You better believe if you know what's good for you! This same technique was later employed by Christian priests during the age of the Inquisition, although by that time, stoning to death was replaced by burning at the stake as the favored method of dispatching impudent heretical fools.

The facts are that authorship of the Torah (first five books of the Tanach (OT), much like the four NT Evangels (Gospels) Mark, Matthew, Luke and John, is uncertain at best and impossible to discover, with any certainly in reality.

NASA announced that the Universe is 13.7 billion years old, in March, 2003. During the recently passed 20th Century, our science reliably dated the Sun as 4.56 billion years old. In 1974 Doctors William K. Hartman and Donald R. Davies, of the Planetary Science Institute, using dust and rock samples brought back from the Moon by 12 American astronauts between 1969 and 1972, confirmed that a smaller proto-earth and an impactor planetary body formed in a similar, though nor identical orbit, collided to from our present Earth and Moon 4.42 billion years ago. Although, we cannot be certain whether Life on this planet originated here, or arrived from comet, asteriod and meteor collisons with Earth or both origins, we now know that Life began on Earth, approximately 3.8 billion years ago. Genesis myth writers, were unaware of these facts.

Universe (Everything~Plural~Totality)Evolves Itself and Life within Itself, with infinite, eternal patience: Men create gods! Would you go to a medical doctor for treatment,
if you knew she or he had learned everything she or he knows about medicine from textbooks written by an anonymous shaman (or shaMEN :-) between 550 BCE and 367 CE (AD)? I would not!

In conclusion please consider the following, refreshing signed, quotation.

"A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge."
~ Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994.