I'm excited for you to read this article. I'm aware how I've already blown-up your theology regarding Genesis 2 in the previous two articles (Five reasons Genesis 2 is a sequel and The untranslated word in Genesis 2). But this one. Oh man. This one makes all your discomfort worthwhile. Trust me.
The struggle to imagine a new way to read God's creative activity in Genesis 1 was worth it for the revelation that arrived on day seven about God and us and our world and how they all fit together. God moves in. And you suddenly get it. Your jaw hits the floor as you see the implications of day seven (rather than humans) being The pinnacle of creation.
There's a similar jaw-dropping moment coming at the end of Genesis 2 (and, conveniently, at the end of this article) that will help convince you a functional understanding of Genesis 2 is a better way to read the story.
But to get there, we need to take the most physically real material yet mentioned in our two Genesis creation stories—a man's rib bone—and show how it's not what we think it is. Not even remotely.
