Serving Zion said:
I understand it to be a record of history containing information for philosophical purposes when understanding God's reason for creating humans.
Genesis 1:26 NIV:
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
In this verse, it mentions God making us to rule over the animals. In the KJV is often times mention the word "dominion" Not that that is our only purpose when we read it, but the phrase here, "and let them have dominion" if we look in the Hebrew is rāḏâ, which is defined in the concordance as:
râdâh, raw-daw'; a primitive root; to tread down, i.e. subjugate; specifically, to crumble off:—(come to, make to) have dominion, prevail against, reign, (bear, make to) rule,(-r, over), take.
Outlines of how it is used:
1. to rule, have dominion, dominate, tread down
A. (Qal) to have dominion, rule, subjugate
B. (Hiphil) to cause to dominate
2. to scrape out
A.(Qal) to scrape, scrape out
Dominion in the American Heritage dictionary is defined as:
n.
Control or the exercise of control; sovereignty.
n.
A territory or sphere of influence or control; a realm.
n.
A self-governing nation under the nominal rule of the British monarch.
This sounds that we have some deciding factors over animals, yes? Animals and humans are separate in this verse. It makes sense that animals would not be above or equal to human beings. God prepared everything before bringing us, humans, into being. God thought this through. After all, when a couple is expecting a baby - what do they tend to do? Decorate the nursery? Buy a crib/bassinet/sleeping space of some sort? Buy supplies like diapers, perhaps bottles/pacifiers, burp cloths, clothes, etc.? They are prepared for bringing baby home. God thought of us and made sure everything was ready before placing us into being.
We have Genesis 8:21 too: "And the Lord smelled a soothing aroma."
Just because the Lord smelled a pleasing aroma probably doesn't define why there were such changes after Noah. What information are you able to pull from Genesis 8:21?
It doesn't fit logically with the fact that He said "I now give them into your hand". That does directly say that they weren't given for food before that time.
What doesn't fit logically? That people could've eaten meat before then? God loving and listening people probably did pay attention to God's decrees, but there were other people between Adam and Eve and Noah. What about Cain? I mean, we don't know much about what happened to him after he was marked and cursed. Cain was not able to cultivate the land upon being cursed by God...could it be possible that maybe he resorted to eating meat? He was a rule breaker anyway, murdering his brother and all and it doesn't tell us much else about Cain's life after he was cursed. That's the kind of thing I think I'm thinking about - the people in between that might not have been listening to God at that time.
I was wanting to go back to the beginning, to the time before the humans. God had already made a complete world and He had seen all that He had made and He was very pleased. There were no humans in that time, so what is the purpose of the human?
I already mentioned before the purpose of people in previous posts, which I'll stick to:
From what I can gather for an in general type of statement here: The purpose of people as I mentioned before is to do God's will and spread His word. God didn't create us, though, because he needed us. He created us to share His creation with. God wanted to love us and share that with us, he wanted us to be part of His family. God wants us to choose to honor him with our lives and do what's right according to His word.