lpetrich

This may be more suitable for Biblical Criticism & History; mods, feel free to move it if you think so.

It's well-known to many of us that there are not one, but two creation stories in the Book of Genesis. Here, I will lay them out so that their differences will become readily apparent.


The G1 story, of Genesis 1 and early Genesis 2, has a certain schematic quality:

Day 1: Celestial environments created
- Daytime
- Nighttime

Day 2: Far-terrestrial environments created
- Sea
- Sky

Day 3: Near-terrestrial environments created
- Land
- Plants

Day 4: Celestial inhabitants created
- Sun
- Moon, stars

Day 5: Far-terrestrial inhabitants created
- Sea animals
- Flying animals

Day 6: Near-terrestrial inhabitants created
- Land animals, humanity (both sexes at the same time)
- "You may eat these", God says

Day 7: The first Sabbath in the history of the Universe; God decided to take a day off from his labors

God is called Elohim, is rather cosmic and distant, and creates by commanding. He is very happy with what he had done.


The G2 story, of the rest of Genesis 2 and later, lacks that schematic quality, and is much more improvised:

God creates the first man, Adam
Adam is lonely and unhappy

God creates animals for Adam
Adami is still lonely and unhappy

God creates the first woman, Eve, for Adam
Adam is better off now

A certain mischievous snake convinces Adam and Eve to eat a certain fruit
God gets pissed off, and kicks them out of Paradise, ordering that snake to crawl on its belly

God ("the LORD God") is called YHWH Elohim, is very anthropomorphic and close-up, and creates in a much more physical way, by molding pre-existing material. He must be very exasperated by his creations.


In the JEDP decomposition of the Bible's first five books, G1 is from P (priestly) and G2 is from J (Yahwist; the J is from the German spelling).

Neither G1 or G2 is a good match for the Universe discovered by modern science -- that is not an intrinsic property of doing science, only of the Universe that has been discovered as a result of doing it. If we had discovered a different kind of Universe...

Interestingly, G1 gets one important thing right that G2 does not: both sexes of humanity coming into existence at the same time, even if by descent with modification from earlier species rather than miraculous special creation. Or at least miraculous special creation that had not been carefully set up to resemble descent with modification from earlier species (something like the Philip Gosse Omphalos hypothesis).

Though the G2 male-before-female conundrum had been resolved by certain medieval Rabbis by supposing that Adam had originally been hermaphroditic (both sexes at once), and that the "creation of Eve" was splitting this hermaphroditic Adam in two. This solution is mentioned in this Gates to Jewish Heritage page; I've found some other references to it.

xxthe_leewitxx

I do, so I will.

the Leewit

judge

There is a theory that ends the first account at genesis 2:4.

According to this theory each section of the book of genesis ends with the phrase "these are the generations of.....".
This phrase is like a "signing off", indicating the end of the account.

Dean Anderson

The sheep had their uses, but he never was able to teach them how to do the washing up...

Dean Anderson

That is an interesting apologetics page.

I'm not sure I agree with the first part (the part arguing against the Documentary Hypothesis). I'm certainly no expert, but it seems to be arguing against a vastly simplified strawman version of the DH - saying that the DH is solely concerned with the differences between 'Elohim' and 'Yahweh Elohim'. From what I have read of the DH (mainly Friedman's Who Wrote The Bible) it is much more complex than that and looks at other aspects of the literary style (and political/theological basis) of the books to differentiate them.

The 'Toledoth' section seems very sensible though, in principle. The splitting of sections by the 'These are the generations of...' phrase seems fairly intuitive.

However, this apologetics page then takes a a whole leap further into a literalist view - assuming that 'These are the generations of Noah...' means that the passage was written by the historical Noah. This even goes as far as saying that Genesis 1-4 was written by the historical Adam on the day that Yahweh created him!

Having said that, I see no reason why the DH and the minor version of the 'Toledoth' theory (saying only that passages should be split into sections by Toledoths, and not asserting that these passages were written by the actual people named in the Toledoth) cannot both be true. If the DH is true and there are multiple authors and a later editor, then there is no reason why some or all of them would not use the 'Toledoth' style if that style is the period's accepted standard for writing geneaologies, etc.

lpetrich

In fact, some medieval rabbis have claimed that Adam had indeed had sex with all those animals; see that "Gates to Jewish Heritage" page mentioned above for a brief mention.