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Genesis is the first book of the Old Testament. Chapter 1 tells the Judeo-Christian creation myth. Below is a modernized version. In my modernized version, the first book of the bible is written to appeal to a solipsistic viewpoint. Solipsism is the philosophical belief that you’re the only conscious being in the universe, or, more succinctly, that “Life is a dream”. Although they may seem a bit heretical, the radical changes I’ve made are actually completely justified by the scripture, as I’ll demonstrate in the commentary at the end.

GENESIS, CHAPTER 1

¹In the beginning, you dreamed of the heavens and the earth. ²And your dream was dark and without form, but within the darkness, your mind was stirring. ³You took thought of light: and there was light. ⁴You reveled in the beauty of the light, distinguishing it from the darkness. ⁵The light was like day, and the dark like night, though day nor night had yet occurred. This concluded the first stage of your dream.

^6,7You conjured up in your mind the oceans and the clouds, and the yawning atmosphere between them. ⁸Thus within the heavenly void you dreamed a second heaven, shining with air. This concluded the second stage of your dream.

⁹And then the oceans writhed and twisted as your mind conceived dry land. ¹⁰That land was the Earth, and those waters were the Sea: and it was good. ^11,12From your fertile mind, the Earth was shrouded in grass, and in the diverse colors of nature, pregnant with fruit and seed. ¹³Thus concluded the third stage of your dream.

¹⁴Then the light of heaven swirled into wondrous shapes and patterns, animating the heavens. ¹⁵The dancing lights shone on the earth, setting the land ablaze with intense beauty. ¹⁶And slowly the whirling patterns of light converged and coalesced into the stars, and one bright star was much closer to the earth; and there were other heavenly bodies, planets and moons. ¹⁷These dreamy lights shone upon the earth as the earth spun amidst them. ¹⁸Standing still upon the spinning earth, you witnessed day and night, light and darkness, and it was good. ¹⁹Thus concluded the fourth stage of your dream.

²⁰For time immeasurable you marveled at your dream, and gradually a great host of animals and birds evolved from the ocean. ^21,24,25Life evolved in greatest abundance, large and small, and the earth teemed with vitality, and it was good. ²²The creatures were blessed, and they multiplied, inhabiting every corner of your world, and you loved them. ²³Thus concluded the fifth stage of your dream.

²⁶And then from ‘midst the blessed creatures a new creature came forth, man, whose eyes shone with intelligence; and in your reverie you imagined that man, too, could dream, even like you yourself, so that every man could conceive his very own dreamscapes. ²⁷And each man dreamed his own world, and each woman too, so that your own dream, where all this began, became fractal, amazing beyond description. ²⁸And man and woman were blessed, and each had dominion over his or her own reality, his or her own dreamworld. ^29,30As deeply as you loved these men and women, you bestowed upon them the deepest abundance, so that their lives should be rich and full and delightful. ³¹You gazed upon this reality which you had dreamt, and behold, it was very good. You perceived that, sleeping, every man and woman created their own reality, in the same manner as yourself; and you marveled that even this reality was itself a dream, and that you yourself were a human being, slumbering and dreaming in some higher reality. And thus concluded the sixth stage of your dream.

NEXT: Genesis Chapter 2 (Not online yet!)

COMMENTARY

In writing this chapter, I pondered what would be the best way to modernize it, while keeping true to the original version. Then I realized that the original author gave me the perfect foothold: the original verse 27 reads, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” Traditionally, this has been interpreted as saying that God is a humanoid being, having (say) two arms and two legs and so on, and that’s why we are humanoid, because we’re made to look like God. This interpretation always struck me as a little shallow– why does God need arms and legs? The alternate interpretation is that the verse isn’t talking about physical appearance but about deep fundamental essence and creative potential. Thus, in the Bible’s own words, every man is a God, and God is a man. Thus, if God is a world-creator, then so is man. All well and good except for one minor flaw, which is that you and I don’t seem to be Gods at all. But then I realized, we are Gods when we sleep, for we create and control our dreamworlds omnipotently. Therefore, based on the original verse 27, God himself must be dreaming the world. Once I’d received these revelations (and if this is God’s dreamworld, then technically everything I write is divinely inspired), it was easy to modernize the creation myth.

Since verse 27 establishes that you and God are interchangeable, my decision to axe God from the myth and replace him with you was justified. Besides that, I made some other changes which basically just reflect a more modern understanding of science. The earth spins amidst the heavens, the sun is just another star, and life evolves. Also, the creation isn’t measured in “days”, to avoid confusion: in the original version, the “days” were obviously symbolic of stages, since the whole notion of a day doesn’t make sense before the sun is created (originally on the fourth “day”). This also allows me to explicitly state that the evolution of the birds and animals takes “time immeasurable” (my verse 20), since I’m no longer constrained to write the whole creation as if it took place in literally six days.

While I don’t have access to the original book, at least the King James Version suggests that the original author was trying to tell us something deep which we missed all along. Note again the structure of the KJV Verse 27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” Why the extremely awkward English, which seems to defy the natural English subject-verb-object ordering? The phrase “created he him” is ambiguous because without context we don’t know who the pronouns are. The classic Western assumption was always that “created he him” means God created man, but it could equally well mean that man created God, a subtle winking confession from Genesis’ original authors that “God” is just a convenient symbolism that they made up.

FURTHER READING

A Modern Version of Psalm 23
A Modern Version of the Lord’s Prayer
How to be a Solipsist
Intelligent Design and Video Games