PENTATEUCH: A Recap

The Pentateuch (or the Jewish "Torah") refers to the first five books of the bible which primarily tell the story of Moses - the exception of which being the first book, the book of Genesis, which deals with the creation myth, the great flood myth, and sets the foundation for the story of Abraham and his descendants - primarily his grandson Jacob (later renamed Israel) and his twelve sons becoming the "Twelve Tribes of Israel". All five books are also generally accredited to be authored by Moses according to most Abrahamic faiths, despite Moses' death and burial being described within the last chapter of the last book, Deuteronomy.

The book of Genesis is filled with a lot of outlandish and seemingly ridiculous claims (such as "light", "daytime", and "nighttime" being created prior to the creation of the sun; a talking snake that tricks the world's first woman into eating the "forbidden fruit"; the life spans of many people being over 800 to 900 years old; and a 500 year old man who manages to track down and stuff at least one pair of each "kind" of animal onto a wooden boat to survive for nine months while a global flood kills all life upon the earth); lots of stories that are presented as either "good" or "moral" despite being blatantly appalling (such as God committing mass genocide upon the earth with a global flood; a man described as "righteous" who offers up his two virgin daughters to an angry mob for them to be raped; the same "righteous" man allows his daughters to get him drunk after which he proceeds to have sex with them, impregnating them both; and God telling Abraham to commit human sacrifice with his son Isaac, with God stopping him just short of Abe plunging the knife into the boy's chest - just so he could "test" Abraham's loyalty). However, the overall theme of the book is to establish a lineage for the people of Israel for whom the authors intended to appear noble and righteous, which in contrast to modern standards of decency and morality, fails miserably.

The next important theme of the book of Genesis is establishing God's promise to Abraham to build his family into a "great nation", by "promising" him a piece of land that sadly enough people are still fighting over today. The piece of land that God "gives" to Abraham happens to already be occupied by other "heathen nations", so in turn this will justify the forcible taking of this land from people that God doesn't show favor towards. What this actually does is justify stereotyping as well as cultural and ethnic elitism, where ethnicity and a person's culture defines their worth. Despite that the authors attempt to address this very problem with the story of Abraham questioning God's plan to destroy the city of Sodom should there any righteous people found within the city, the problem is that within the real world there aren't such cases of absolutes which are rampant throughout the bible - every enemy nation of the Israelites is treated as if it were "100% wicked" just like we're supposed to believe that the inhabitants of the city of Sodom were. This doesn't even begin to cover other aspects of the problem such as the slaughter of infants, and as we will later see, even animals and livestock belonging to "heathen nations" are to be destroyed for being "defiled".

The book of Exodus introduces us to the character Moses. While briefly telling the story of his birth where he avoids a law of infanticide placed upon male Hebrew infants and how he is then raised by Egyptian royalty, the story then picks up in his adult life where he is appalled by the treatment of Hebrew slaves by the Egyptian people. Upon witnessing an Egyptian soldier strike a Hebrew slave, Moses murders the soldier, hides his body in the sand, and then flees Egypt fearing prosecution for his crime. While he's on the run God appears to Moses in the form of a burning bush and tells him that he's been appointed to lead the Hebrew people out of their slavery in Egypt and into the "promised land". Arming Moses - as well as his brother Aaron, who's been chosen to speak for the Israelites - with a bunch of magic tricks, God guides them as they free the Hebrew people from their slavery in Egypt and then trek across the desert for the next forty years where most of the original generation die off - or are killed by the numerous plagues God thrusts upon them for mostly trivial things like whining about not having enough water to drink.

The underlying theme of the book of Exodus is to demoralize believers into believing that although they are God's chosen people, they are actually unworthy of being so; they are in fact stubborn, disobedient, and whiny and they need the church to lead them. It would be easy to develop an ego in conjunction with the cultural and ethnic elitism that the Pentateuch promotes, so therefore the solution is to crush the individual's self-worth. Beginning with Moses' brother Aaron - the head priest - constructing a golden calf for the Israelites to worship after Moses seemingly went missing atop Mount Sinai for forty days while chatting with God, we begin to see two issues emerge.

The first issue we see is that "holy men" aren't held to the same standards as others. Aaron breaks the second commandment while 3,000 other Israelites are slaughtered; Moses, breaks the eighth commandment ("thou shalt not kill (murder)") without any repercussions; both of Moses' siblings (Aaron and Miriam) complain about Moses breaking one of God's laws, yet God only punishes Miriam (who is stricken with leprosy), absolving Aaron, possibly either because he was a priest, male, or both.

The second issue however is probably the most touted "sin" in the Pentateuch, as well as the first two of the "ten commandments", that a person is not to worship other gods, nor create a "religious idol". These commandments are reinforced more so than any of the other eight (including the commandment to observe the sabbath, which is also repeated many times throughout the Pentateuch) with the punishments being excessively violent and extreme - where in cases where an entire city worships other gods, God commands that every living breathing thing, including livestock, are to be killed and the city is to be burnt to the ground, never to be rebuilt. Why such an excessively violent response, and why is it so overstressed the importance of never seeking after other gods? The most likely explanation is that the supernatural events as depicted in the bible simply either did not happen as the bible depicts them, or that they were not widely witnessed as the bible suggests.

Think about it carefully. If the Israelites did in fact witness all of these spectacular "miracles", plagues, and had seen various masses of people die believing that they were smote by God's wrath, what real motivation would they have to worship "false gods" or idols, which apparently wouldn't display any such supernatural ability? Why was it such a rampant problem of people constantly worshiping "false gods" when there were all these "miraculous" supernatural events caused by God occurring all around them? The simplest explanation is obviously that they either did not witness anything supernatural, or that the story of the exodus was heavily embellished, if not completely fictitious, to begin with. If the Israelites didn't actually witness any supernatural occurrences, or "miracles", then it would put their god belief on a level playing field with any other - simply being a matter of faith, not reason.

When you're dealing with faith based beliefs rather than beliefs based upon evidence, reason, or even personal experience, it is then easy to see why there would be so much concern about the exposure to other faith based belief systems. Both religions would be on an equal footing in regards to what reasoning (or lack thereof) there was to believe. One of the key components to controlling the thoughts of others is to limit their information to the outside world. Even today groups like Amway, Alcoholics Anonymous, and various political groups discourage their members from exposure to any mainstream media that is critical toward the group.

Often times in conjunction with limiting the exposure to the outside world, another tactic of controlling the thoughts of others is to undermine the credibility of or to silence those outside of or those who oppose the group. In the book of Exodus, Moses gives blessings to those who showed no mercy toward their siblings, children, and neighbors by slaughtering them by the thousands, simply because they had worshiped Aaron's golden calf. Later on, after the Israelites sacrificed to other gods at Baal Peor, Moses ordered the leaders of the tribes who worshiped the other gods killed, and their corpses hung up "against the sun". In the same chapter, Moses orders the genocide of the Midianites for tempting the Israelites into worshiping other gods, and when the Israelites slaughter the Midianite men, Moses becomes enraged when he discovers that the women and children were captured and spared. He orders that they should all be killed - except for any girls who are still virgins, whom the soldiers may "keep for themselves".

Although there are several scattered narrative stories in the books of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, overall the main objective of these last three books are to detail the various laws and commandments that the Israelites are to follow - and the deadly punishments that accompany them.

The most common punishment for breaking God's commandments is death by stoning - a brutal method of capital punishment where the condemned is repeatedly hit with stones until they die. Among the "sins" God deems worthy of such a brutal death:

• worshiping other gods, or enticing others to do so
• cursing your mother and/or father
• homosexuality
• bestiality (both the offender and the animal)
• any man who sleeps with a married or engaged woman
• any married or engaged woman who sleeps with a man who is not her husband, or husband to be
• any woman who is raped in a city if she doesn't scream loud enough
• practicing magic or witchcraft, or being a spiritual medium
• doing any work on the sabbath
• blasphemy. or cursing the name of God
• a man who has sex with his either his mother, his daughter in law, or his father's wife
• being a rebellious child
• a wife who's virginity prior to marriage is questioned and whose father cannot provide bloody bedsheets as evidence
• false prophets

Moses attempts to justify these extreme, brutal, violent, and fatal punishments for these predominately non-violent offenses by insisting that such excessive punishments will instill fear into the Israelites, thereby discouraging them from committing such "crimes" in the first place. This is further compounded by some of the ridiculous methods of determining guilt for such "crimes" (such as bloody bedsheets being a "proof" of virginity; or defending your home against an intruder being considered a murder, determined by whether it occurred during the daytime or not).

Again, it begs the question as to why such a seemingly trivial "crime" of worshiping other gods requires such a violent and fatal punishment, and why was it apparently such a widespread concern during an age when God supposedly displayed his supernatural powers regularly.

If the supernatural events described in the Pentateuch didn't actually occur as described the answer becomes simple and obvious - since belief in a god couldn't be backed with reason or evidence, the next best course of action would be to coerce belief and obedience using fear, intimidation, violence, and brutal public execution. Once obedience is secured to a god who apparently only speaks through a select few people, and only "directly" to one person, it begins to make sense why "ordinary people" are also threatened with death for approaching the mountain where Moses apparently communicated with God and prevented from touching or entering the tabernacle to begin with, while those who are in the "inner circle" (the ruling priests and the tribe of Levi) become the sole beneficiaries of the various mandatory animal sacrifices and tithes (religious taxes) imposed upon the "ordinary people".

When the Pentateuch is read without the blinders of automatically believing in its veracity just "because it's the bible", it's quite easy to see that quite simply these books serve as a justification for the Israelites sense of elitism and entitlement over other cultures, and as a set of laws to prevent critical thought which would crumble the foundation of faith-based government. The Pentateuch basically says that their god told them that they're the best, that they're descended from a righteous lineage, and therefore they have every right to kill and slaughter any nation who stands in their way in their quest to conquer the land of Canaan - because their god said so.

GENESIS: A Recap

The book of Genesis may in fact be one of the most crucial and hotly debated books in the entire bible. The entire "creationist" and "intelligent design" movements hinge on the events portrayed here as the core of their thinking. To them, not only are the first two chapters of God's actual creation of prime importance, but so are the ridiculously long life spans of the characters in the book, as well as the Noah's Ark story in Chapter 6 through Chapter 9.

In their views the events in the book of Genesis took place only 6,000 years ago (making that the age of the earth) while clinging to ridiculous theories, such as mankind and dinosaurs living side by side (as in "The Flintstones"). They come up with absurd theories that the levels of solar radiation were so vastly different 6,000 years ago, which accounts for human beings living well into the 800 to 900 year old life spans.

The danger in these modes of thinking is that these people believe that the book of Genesis is infallibly true and contradicts natural science including the Big Bang Theory and the Theory of Evolution; hence the attempt at hijacking our education system to teach their religious doctrine. Now regardless of where you stand on religious belief, the bible is *not* by any means a science book, and "creationism" and/or "intelligent design" is *not* a scientific theory and therefore does not belong in our public school systems - which are not meant for the promotion of religion.

Science is based on the study of the world around us and the gathering of information that supports claims that can be demonstrated and tested to produce results. While it is certainly true that science can sometimes be wrong, and has been wrong in the past, scientific theories have been disproved and overwritten by better research and investigation not dogmatic interpretations that refuse to budge from one group's interpretation of the bible's creation myth.

The difference is clear compared to the attitudes of religious theorists of the past, such as those in the 17th century who finally had to admit that the Earth was not the center of our universe, and that the sun does not revolve around our planet. They realized that they were not having to admit that the bible was wrong, only that the human interpretation of it was flawed.

Regardless of your personal views on religion, it has no place in our classrooms. If it is your choice to teach and supplement your children's education with and about religion, then there are plenty of options for you with Sunday Schools and Private Religious schooling.

As we have read together over the fifty chapters of the book of Genesis, here is my summary and interpretation of this book of the Old Testament:

• God creates the earth, in the darkness, out of a shapeless mass in the sky. God creates:
  • Light, before the creation of the sun, hereby necessitating some other source of light that he worked by. For the sake of simplicity and modern understanding, I had dubbed this "God's Flashlight". He also defines "daytime" and "nighttime" without yet creating the sun which provides us with the amounts of these times, from the span of time it takes the Earth to revolve and face towards or away from the light of the sun.
  • God separates the water vapors to create the skies and the waters, hereby requiring "God's Flashlight" (or perhaps some other source?) to also provide enough heat for the waters to remain in liquid form and not to be a massive ice block.
  • God makes land masses emerge from the seas, and creates a bunch of plant life, once again necessitating "God's Flashlight" to provide similar qualities of the sun, needed to sustain this form of life.
  • Now God finally creates the sun - as well as the moon - and defines them as big lights in the sky. The stars, which are obviously much bigger than the moon, and some even larger than the sun are created almost as an after thought.
  • God creates the fish and the birds and lets them procreate.
  • God creates the rest of the animals, and finally man (and later woman).
• God creates a garden for man to tend and places a magical tree with magical fruit in the center. Telling Adam (the first man) and his wife Eve, not to eat the magical fruit, telling them that they will die if they do so.
• A talking snake tells Eve that God is pulling their leg about the whole bit about dying from eating the magical fruit, and explains that eating the fruit will make her and her husband more "Godlike", allowing them to discern right from wrong. Eve eats the magical fruit and then gives a bite to Adam, and they immediately become shameful of their nudity, trying to cover themselves with fig leaves.
• God finds out about them eating the fruit and being tricked by the talking snake and kicks them out of the garden. He curses the woman most severely bestowing upon her the curse of menstruation and painful child birth, curses the snake to crawl around on his belly and become the enemy of all human females, and finally curses the man to have to struggle to grow food from the land. However, due to the fact that they are now allowed to feel shame for their nudity, God throws them a couple animal skins as a parting gift, and puts some angels on duty to guard the entrance to the garden with a big flaming sword.
• Adam and Eve's children Cain and Abel grow up to become a farmer and a shepherd, respectively. When the boys share their spoils with God, God shows favoritism towards Abel's lamb chops, which makes Cain envious. In retaliation, Cain murders his brother.
• God makes Cain an outcast, but puts a mark upon him to ensure that nobody tries to kill him in retaliation. Eve has another "good son" that she names Seth.
• Cain and Seth live to ripe old ages of over 900 years old and spawn a slew of children and descendants.
• God deems Seth's great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson Noah at the age of 500 to be the only righteous human being on the planet. He sees everyone else as evil and wicked and decides to see if anything will change over the next 120 years.
• When nothing changes, he tells Noah of his great plan to kill everyone and everything with a mass genocidal flood, and tells him to get started on building a giant boat.
• When Noah finishes building his boat, God tells him to scour the Earth and grab a pair of every animal on the planet - along with a few more to use in animal sacrifices - and load them all up in the boat with him. He lets him take his wife, his sons, and his daughter-in-laws on the boat ride with him.
• God gives Noah a seven day heads up before the genocidal flood to make his final preparations. When they all board the boat with a pair of every animal in the world, he makes it rain for 40 days straight, lets the water cover the Earth for roughly five months and effectively kills every animal, plant, child, infant, and adult human save for Noah and his crew and the animals aboard.
• After 9 and a half months aboard the boat, God tells Noah and his crew to let the animals loose, leave the boat, and start populating the world again. Noah's first act when he hits dry land is animal sacrifice.
• Noah, gets hammered one night passing out naked in his tent and gets mad at his son Ham for seeing him naked. He curses Ham's son Canaan, hoping that the kid will serve the rest of his life as slaves to his uncles - thus identifying the Canaanites as terrible evil people.
• A while later a bunch of people who settled near Babylon started getting pretty smart and crafty and start building a giant tower reaching to the heavens. God gets ticked off about this and gives all of these people a slew of different languages so that they won't be able to communicate with each other and stop doing things like building silly towers to heaven and progressing their knowledge.
• Noah's son Shem spawns a great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson named Abram, whom God now tells that he's been selected as his chosen one.
• Abram marries his half-sister, but isn't able to have children with her, so she allows him to sleep with her slave.
• The slave girl gets pregnant and becomes arrogant, so Abram's wife Sarai beats the hell out of her. God tells the slave girl to go back home and behave, apparently condoning the beating she received. She gives birth to a son named Ismael.
• Meanwhile, Abram's nephew Lot is across town is living in Sin-City in a city called Sodom. God sends a bunch of angels down there to check out the town. Lot invites them to stay with him for the night, but when the townspeople find out they surround Lot's house, demanding that they bring out his house guests as they were in the mood for raping them. When Lot tries to offer up his nice young virgin daughters for them to rape instead, the towns people refuse and start busting down the doors to get at the guests inside. The angels help Lot, his wife, and two daughters escape, but tells them to run and not look back at the destruction. When Lot's wife does just that, God turns her into a pillar of salt.
• Meanwhile Lot's daughters decide that if their dad won't let them get married, that they'll get him drunk and force him to have sex with them instead. They both manage to somehow get pregnant with their father's kids after two nights of boozing their dad up.
• God renames Abram to Abraham in his old age, and tells him that him and his half-sister Sarah (also renamed from Sarai) will finally have a child together at their ages of 100 and 90 respectively
• Sarah catches Ishmael teasing her son Isaac and tells Abraham to throw both Ishmael and his mother out on the street. Although reluctant, Abraham does so when God tells him that his wife is right.
• God decides to try a little test out on Abraham, and asks him to instead of performing an animal sacrifice, to try doing a human sacrifice with Abraham's son Isaac. When Abraham goes through with it, God tells him that he was only kidding and just wanted to see how loyal Abraham was to him.
• When Sarah dies, Abraham buys a family plot in the land of Canaan, complete with a cave, to be used as a cemetery for all of his descendants.
• Abraham now hooks up his son Isaac with Isaac's cousin Rebekah, sending one of his slaves to travel out to Iraq to go pick her up and bring her back to Canaan.
• Isaac has twin sons named Esau (the older one) and Jacob (the younger). Esau grows up to be a hunter, and Jacob is more of a homebody.
• While coming home from an unsuccessful hunt, Esau, feeling starved trades away his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of soup.
• With Isaac on his death bed, Jacob and his mom come up with a scheme to trick Isaac into giving his death bed blessing to Jacob instead of Esau. Somehow it works, and Esau swears revenge. Jacob's mother sends him away via the guise of finding a wife back in her hometown.
• Jacob goes to stay with his Uncle Laban and falls in love with his cousin Rachel. He works out a deal with his Uncle Laban to work for seven years on his farm in order to pay the dowry for her hand in marriage. However on the wedding night Uncle Laban swaps out Rachel for his older daughter Leah. Jacob sleeps with her and gets stuck with being her husband. He works for another seven years in another attempt to get to marry Rachel, which works this time.
• A rivalry and baby-making competition arises between the sisters Leah and Rachel, which also involves throwing their slaves in the mix for Jacob to sleep with as well.
• When one of Jacob's daughters gets raped, her brothers decide that the best way to deal with it is to slaughter the entire town, taking the women and children as slaves.
• The youngest son, Joseph is a tattle-tale and becomes hated by his brothers. He has a penchant for interpreting dreams and his brothers hate him for that too. They hatch a plot to kill Joseph, but instead sell him into slavery where he winds up in Egypt.
• Jacob manages to have another child with Rachel, but she dies during child birth and he buries her on the side of the road leading to Bethlehem.
• Joseph meanwhile manages to win the good favor of the Egyptian Pharaoh by interpreting his dreams and predicts a seven year famine ahead. When he comes up with a plan to survive the famine, the Pharaoh makes him the governor of Egypt and a wealthy celebrity in town.
• Affected by the famine, Jacob sends his sons to Egypt to buy some food. They are unaware that it is their brother Joseph who's selling the food there - as he is dressed as an Egyptian and speaks the language, but Joseph recognizes his brothers. He messes with their heads, insisting that they are spies, and demands to meet their youngest brother - who didn't travel with them to buy the food.
• When Joseph finally sees the brothers return with his youngest brother Benjamin, he reveals who he is and insists that his family all moves to Egypt to live.
• When the family moves to Egypt, Jacob dies not long after, but angers Joseph by giving his better blessings to Joseph's younger son instead of the older son.
• When Jacob dies, his family brings his body back to Canaan to bury him in the cave that Abraham bought long ago for the family.
• Before Joseph dies he makes his brothers promise that their descendants are to take his body with them when they leave Egypt and return to Canaan. His body is put into a coffin in Egypt in the meantime

GENESIS: Chapters 1 & 2

Chapter 1
Summary:	Genesis begins by telling us how God* begins to create both heaven and earth from a shapeless mass in the dark in seven days. Day One: God creates light* by simply exclaiming "Let there be light". He lets the light shine for a while and calls it "daytime", and when the light stops he calls it "nighttime". Together they form the first day. Day Two: God "separates the vapors" to create the sky and the oceans. Day Three: God has a much busier day: he commands the water on the earth to gather into oceans so that dry land will emerge and calls the land "earth" and the water "seas" (it's then noted that he's apparently pleased with this work); next he creates every grass, seed-bearing plants, and fruit trees. (It is again noted his pleasure with his work). Day Four: Now here's where things start to get a bit weird. 1:16 "And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also." Despite spending day one creating "daytime" and "nighttime", it takes until day four to create "bright lights in the sky" to identify the night and the day (which he also did on day one) in order to create seasons and to mark days and years. He makes two "huge lights", the sun and the moon(!) to shine down on the earth and reading almost as an afterthough "he also made stars"*. He sets them both (the sun and the moon) in the sky to divide the light from the darkness. Day Five: God creates fish and sea creatures in the water and birds* of all kinds in the sky. He blesses them and tells them to procreate and fill the earth. Day Six: God creates every other kind of animal - including cattle, reptiles, and wildlife (again it's noted his pleasure in doing so). Then God decides to make a human in "his own image", someone like himself, to be the master over all life on earth, the sky, and the sea. He makes the man and later a woman (which we get to in the next chapter) and tells them to procreate, makes them masters over the other animals, and tells them that he made the fruit trees and seeded plant for them, and has given the grass and plants to the animals and birds for their food. God looks over his creations and declared it excellent in every way.
Notes:	1.) "God" is not defined, other than we are to assume he is a creator of some sort. 2.) The source of light, how long it is allowed to shine, why and what causes it to stop, are all not specified 3.) The moon is not a light, or a source of light. It simply reflects light from the sun. 3.) The sun as we now know is a star itself, and is not the largest of them. The moon is quite smaller than a star, yet both the sun and moon are referred to as "huge lights". 4.) Although the bible often misclassifies winged mammals as "birds" (e.g. the bat) and that we can probably chalk this up to the Hebrew language (meaning that the Hebrew word for "bird" may simply mean "flying animal" which would include bats, etc.) - the bible is making it clear here that animals of the sea and the air were created first, whereas science and fossil records show that in addition to sea life, reptiles (which have yet to be created) predate birds and are the earliest known forms of life.
Thoughts:	Already in the first chapter we come at odds with modern science and archaeological evidence. The earliest fossils that we have found tell us that life most probably began in the sea, and evolved into reptilian life, contrary to Genesis claiming that birds predate reptiles - discarding the time frame of a "day". Now while it is simply *possible* that we just may not have found fossils to support that birds predate reptiles, the problem is that there is no evidence outside of the written word of the bible to support that claim. Lack of evidence is certainly cause for skepticism. Secondly, we have an obvious paradox with the creation of light, "daytime", and "nighttime" three days before the creation of the sun (and stars). Perhaps God created a simple mythical flashlight and modeled the sun after it, but the bible doesn't explain this and guessing is subjective at best. Also, without the heat of the sun, the waters would be frozen by the lack of heat and would prove a hindrance in "separating the vapors" to make the sky. The plants, grass, and fruit trees made on day three would also die without the sun, making "God's flashlight" pretty much a necessary substitution for this story to hold true. It could be possible that God is holding this all together in some sort by his boundless supernatural powers, but this is not explained or mentioned and is again subjective. Another problem with the story versus modern science is the creation of reptiles on the same day as human beings, as once again our fossil records don't support this. Again, while it could be *possible* that we simply have not found human fossils dating as far back as our reptilian fossils, we lack that evidence to support the claim as made here in Genesis.
Chapter 2
Summary:	Day Seven: God declares his work finished, blesses this seventh day, declares it holy and rests. The chapter continues on to give a summary of the past 7 days of creations, which in actuality is more of an elaboration. It claims: That there weren't any plants or grain sprouting across the earth initially, as God hadn't sent any rain, nor was man yet created to farm the soil*. God created man using dust from the ground and breathed life into the body made of earth. God plants a garden in a place he called Eden and placed the man in the garden. He creates a bunch of exotic fruit trees and also a tree called the "Tree of Life" in the middle of the garden. 2:17 "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." God gives the man his first set of rules telling him he's got full reign to eat whatever fruits he wants from any of the trees, except from the "Tree of Life". He goes on to tell the man that if he eats fruit from the "Tree of Life"* he will become aware of his conscience and know right from wrong - and he makes his first threat to the man, that he will be doomed to die if he eats the said fruit. In variation from the order in chapter one*, God creates animals from the dust of the earth and brings them to the man to see what he'd name them. God then wants to create a "helper" for the man, but instead of creating from the dust on the ground*, he elects instead to put the man into a deep sleep and yanks out one of his ribs and makes a woman from the rib The chapter finishes off by explaining that a woman is "taken out of a man" and therefore future generations of men are "incomplete" until they leave home and become married to a woman to become "one flesh" again. The man (who is inexplicably named Adam) and his new wife are explained to be naked, yet unashamed(?) or embarrassed(?)
Notes:	1.) It's also worth noting again that the sun (which has yet to be created) isn't mentioned as a factor. 2.) The problem here is that man yet to grasp the concept of "right or wrong" and has only God's threat of being "doomed to die" as reasoning to avoid the fruit from the tree. God seems to be tempting and/or coaxing the man to disobey him by explaining what knowledge will be gained (a conscience of right and wrong) and by placing this tree in the garden to begin with. 3.) In chapter one, it seems clear that God had made the animals first, then man (and woman) to be masters over the animals. In this chapter God makes man from the dust, and then makes the animals from the dust to bring to the man to see what he would name them. 4.) Why God resorts to creating the woman from the man's rib and not the dust from the ground is not specifically explained - unless we assume that it was God's intention to make marriage seem like the man is "complete" again. 5.) Here we have to infer that there would be some reason for the man and his wife to be ashamed and embarrassed of their nudity. In the context of the story there is no reason for this other than to imply that nudity is simply "wrong" in the first place.
Thoughts:	Already we have a contradiction with the first chapter (the order of the creation of man versus animals), we have God placing Adam (and his wife) in a tempting and unnecessary situation and threatening him with death as a way to coerce him into obeying, and already (unbeknownst to the man and his wife) making nudity a shameful idea - despite man (and presumably woman) being modeled after God's own image. To me, even so far, it seems quite apparent that this story was concocted by men of a later age where nudity was shameful and who were ignorant of the actual roles and characteristics of the sun, the moon, and stars - rather than divinely inspired, or divinely written. It's also hard to think of God's characteristics as being all loving and compassionate when he's already threatening Adam with death for disobeying him (and basically entrapping him to do so) instead of simply giving him the ability to discern right from wrong. With Adam's lack of experience and young age (yet presumably an adult) it is natural that we should probably think of him more on terms with a child, and threatening a child with death for disobeying something he does not fully comprehend or understand is not compassionate but cruel and excessive punishment.