From Dust to Glory The plan
Illustration · First light over still water, and a clay bowl of earth on the shore. Not drawn from a photograph.

Day 1 · Genesis 1–3

Formed from the Dust

Two tellings of creation side by side, a garden lost, and the line this site is named for.

Day 1 of 365Beginnings

Today’s reading · about 11 minutes

Genesis 1–3

Creation, the garden, the fall

Read it

Psalm 1

Today’s psalm

Read it

A new book starts today. Watch BibleProject’s overview of Genesis 1–11 before you read.

Themes and asks

  1. Order out of the deep

    Genesis 1 has its own shape: the earth starts formless and dark under deep waters, and over six days God separates and fills it, calling the work good. On the seventh day he rests.

    • What in your life feels formless right now, and what would a first act of order look like?
    • What would a real seventh day look like for you this week?

  2. Made in the image

    Genesis 1 says humans, male and female, are made in God’s image and put in charge of the earth. Many scholars read that phrase against a world where a king was called a god’s image (more below).

    • Who do you find it hardest to see as carrying God’s image?
    • What has been put in your charge, and how are you tending it?

  3. Dust and breath

    Genesis 2 tells it from the ground up: God shapes the first human from the dust of the ground, the adamah, and breathes life into him. By Genesis 3:19 it comes back to the dust: from it you came, and to it you return. This site is named for that line.

    • Where are you most aware of your limits?
    • Can you hold both at once: made from dust, and made in God’s image?

  4. “Where are you?”

    After the fruit, the man and woman hide among the trees. The first question God asks in the Bible is put to the man: “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9, NLT).

    • What do you hide behind when you’ve done wrong?
    • Who has come looking for you when you were hiding?

Behind the words

Two tellings

Genesis opens with two accounts of creation, not one. The first (1:1–2:3) counts out seven days and calls God Elohim. The second (2:4–25) begins on bare ground, before rain or any plant, shapes a man from the dust, and only then plants a garden and forms the animals. It calls God YHWH Elohim, “the LORD God.”

Most critical scholars since the late 1800s have read the two as separate sources woven together. In the form Julius Wellhausen made classic in the 1870s and 1880s, Genesis 1 comes from a Priestly source written during or after the exile, and Genesis 2–3 from an older source often called J. Many have since revised or dropped the four-source model, but most still give the two accounts different origins.

The traditional view, held by Jewish and Christian readers for most of history and by many today, credits the Torah to Moses. It reads the second account as a close-up of the sixth day: one creation, told first from above and then from the ground.

Many scholars hear the first account talking back to its neighbors. “The deep” in verse 2, tehom in Hebrew, shares a root with Tiamat, the sea goddess the god Marduk splits in two to make the sky and the earth in the Babylonian Enuma Elish. In Genesis there is no battle: the deep is only water, and God orders it by speaking. How directly Genesis answers Babylon is debated.

Image and likeness. A ninth-century BC statue of a ruler, found at Tell Fekheriyeh in Syria in 1979, calls itself his “image” and “likeness” in Aramaic, the same pair of words Genesis 1:26 uses. Many scholars read Genesis as giving every person the role a king’s statue played: standing in for the one it represents.

Two tellings, side by side

What each account says, in its own order.

Genesis 1:1–2:3Genesis 2:4–25
Name for GodGod (Elohim)The LORD God (YHWH Elohim)
Starts withDark water, the deepBare ground, no rain, no plants
OrderLight, sky, land and plants, sun and moon, sea creatures and birds, land animals, humansA man, a garden and its trees, the animals, a woman
HumansMale and female together, in God’s imageA man from the dust, a woman from his rib (Hebrew tsela, also “side”)
TimeSeven daysNo days counted
Ends withGod resting on the seventh dayThe man and woman together, unashamed

You are here

Day 1 of 365, the start of Beginnings (Days 1–3). Job comes next, on Day 4.

Euphrates Tigris Persian Gulf
Schematic, not to scale. Genesis 2:10–14 names four rivers flowing from Eden: the Tigris and Euphrates, and the Pishon and Gihon, which no one has firmly identified. Where Eden lay is unknown.

Threads

Each one opens the plan to the days on that thread.

My notes · Day 1

Sources
  • Genesis 1–3 and Psalm 1, Holy Bible, New Living Translation · BibleGateway
  • BibleProject, overview of Genesis 1–11 (video)
  • Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel, 1883; English translation 1885.
  • W. G. Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths. Eisenbrauns, 2013. On the Enuma Elish.
  • Ali Abou-Assaf, Pierre Bordreuil and Alan R. Millard, La statue de Tell Fekherye et son inscription bilingue assyro-araméenne, 1982.
  • J. Richard Middleton, The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1. Brazos, 2005.

Something wrong here? A date, a name, a quotation? Let me know

From Dust to Glory reads the whole Bible in the order its story happened, one day at a time, at your own pace. Each day gives questions to sit with, the history behind the words, and where it sits in the story. The plan lists all 365 days.