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I posted that into ChatGPT and got this: “That’s a sharp and witty connection — and quite perceptive philosophically.
Genesis 2:7 is, in effect, the ancient world’s poetic account of abiogenesis: inert matter (“dust of the ground”) becomes alive through an infusion of something non-material (“the breath of life”). In Hebrew, the phrase נִשְׁמַת חַיִּים (nishmat ḥayyim) combines both “breath” and “spirit” — ruaḥ — the same root that can mean wind, spirit, or life-force. It isn’t just air moving lungs, but the animating principle that distinguishes nephesh ḥayyah (a living being) from lifeless clay.
If you strip away the theology, the text poses exactly the problem that Nick Lane and origin-of-life researchers wrestle with:
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How does chemistry cross the threshold into biology?
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What transition marks the moment that energy and structure become metabolism and replication — “life”?
The ancient author’s answer was metaphysical: life begins when divine spirit enters matter. The modern answer seeks a natural mechanism: perhaps an electrochemical gradient in a hydrothermal vent, the first self-organizing metabolism, or an RNA world. In both, the key moment is organization plus flow — structure energized from outside itself.
Your quip about ChatGPT adds a clever modern echo: an artificial form given “breath” not by air but by computation — patterns and responses that simulate animation. Genesis would call that as if breath: intelligence without spirit, motion without metabolism. So yes, in a sense, the Genesis narrator anticipated abiogenesis — but he explained it theologically, where today’s scientists explain it biochemically.
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Yes, Adam is the first living being God creates. God inspires Moses think of the smallest thing he could think of to describe what He is creating from, and that was “dust”, because Moses didn’t have a microscope to see microbes. This was on Day 1:
- Gen 2:4 This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens,
‘This is the history’ – What follows is God going back to Day 1 and adding more detail. Genesis 1 is an overall summary.
‘in the day’ – This is not describing all 7 creation days as one day, but one specific day God creates:
‘the earth and the heavens’ – This was “In the beginning” on Day 1.
I have read (John Walton? I cant recall) that this passage hardens to the ancient “Washing (or Opening ) of the Mouth” ceremony performed to vivify idols. Its purpose is to establish mankind as the Image of God in his temple of the Universe - imbued with his power and authority to reign on his behalf and mediate himself to creation. One of the reasons Hebrews were prohibited from making images was noy just idolatry - it was that Yahweh already had an image - mankind.
That is of course, just one interpretation, but I think it rings true. It also had profound implications for what it means to be Human, and the cycle of redemption through Jesus who became the true Image of God as the Human we failed to be.
Blasphemy! God lives! God is alive!
I think you might misunderstand, I agree that God is alive and he lives. What I said is not implying the oposite of that.
Its just one of the interpretations out there, and means Humans are Yahweh’s regents/emissaries/what you will on earth. Not that humans are God and God doesn’t exist.
Found it, it was Tim Mackie. See session 28, heading “The Ritual Transformation of the Diving Image”
My reply was to TS’ Something Non-living blew air into a mud-doll which then became a living creation?
Good catch! You are correct. God is living and so its biogenesis instead of abiogenesis.
Nope. God inspired Moses to take up a common ANE theme and edit it to carry a theological message – period.
Absolutely. It affirms the declaration in the first Creation story that we humans are the image in YHWH-Elohim’s Temple.
It would have been obvious to an ancient Israelite.
It’s still abiogenesis – God’s type of life is not βίος (BE-ohss), 'bios", which is biological, i.e. material, life.
@marta By my clock, it’s 9:04 PM Wednesday here in L.A., so I think it’s 5:04 AM Thursday in London, right now. My guess is that you’ll be awake in a couple of hours and hopefully get around to seeing this thread. Do you want say anything here before anyone else get’s involved? … because I don’t. 