In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth. The earth was
without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the spirit of God was hovering over the
face of the waters. And God said "Let there be light," and there
was light. And, five days
later, after some heavy-duty creating, God said,
"Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds
of the air, and over the cattle, over all the
earth and over every creeping thing that creeps
on the earth. God then
created Eden, and said, "It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him."
Out of the ground the Lord God formed
every beast of the field and bird of the air, and
brought them to Adam to see what he would call
them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So
Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not
found a helper comparable to him.
And the Lord God caused a deep sleep
to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and He took one
of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its
place. And when Adam awoke, he
saw his helper, and said, "You are now bone of my
bones and flesh of my flesh", and together, they went hand in hand through the Garden of Eden. And Adam turned to his helper and said, "My
name is Adam." And his
helper smiled coyly and replied, "My name is Raoul."
* * * God's next
attempt to populate the world was with tap- dancing
giant sloths. It didn't work out a hell of a lot better.