Early Chapters of Genesis - Literature review Example

Two Accounts of Creation In Genesis – Genesis v1 – 2v3 and Genesis 2 v 4-25 Thesis ment - The two accounts of creation recorded in the early chapters of Genesis represent two strands of a very old story based upon long standing oral tradition Introduction For some these passages seem to, at first glance at least, to be contradictory, because they are obviously two somewhat different accounts of the same events. Don Batten in his article ‘Genesis Contradictions? Points out that Jewish scholars saw no contradiction because while it is plain that in Genesis 1 birds were created prior to man and in Genesis 2 they see the verb as meaning ‘had formed’ or ‘having formed’ which removes any apparent sense of contradiction. There are several instances in the scriptures of the same or very similar events being recorded by different writers, some of the most obvious being in the synoptic gospels where there are often two and sometimes three accounts of the same event such as the raising of Jairus’s daughter from the dead. This occurred because the writers used a common source – in that case Mark and in others the now lost Q document. In Genesis though we have rather an interweaving of two different accounts, in this cases creation stories – rather as in a court case two witnesses may describe the same events , but each uses their own version of events and their own styles as when events are described both in the books of Kings and in Chronicles. According to Jewish tradition the whole Pentateuch i.e. the first five books of the Bible , were written by Moses, despite the fact that his death is recorded within those pages ( Deuteronomy chapter 34.) Many scholars accept that these 5 books several authors referred to as J, E, P, and D, with some breaking J down into J (1) and J (2) P refers to a priestly strand and D to the Deuteronomic writer. Scholars claim that all of these writings were at some point collected together and combined in an editorial process. This theory, usually referred to as the Documentary Hypothesis, is one that attained popularity in the 19th century according to Wayne Jackson in his article ‘Are there two creation accounts in Genesis?’ when a French doctor, Jean Astruc, claimed to have isolated certain “source” authors within the texts of the Pentateuch. E refers to the passages where God is referred to as Elohim, a title that emphasizes strength and creative force according to Nathan Stone in his 1944 book ‘Names of God’ as quoted by Wayne Jackson, whereas Yahweh or Jehovah is the name used to express the basic spiritual nature of a moral God, especially when referring to His relationship to the people of Israel. Jackson also cites scholars as believing that Genesis 1 dates from the Babylonian captivity, a 70 year period dating from 598 B.C.E. or post-Babylonian period , whereas the second account is thought to date from the 9th century B.C.E. Not all Biblical scholars agree that perceived differences in style necessarily indicates a difference in authorship. To conclude that differences in style or vocabulary unmistakably indicate different authors is invalid for any body of literature. It is well known that a single author may vary his style and select vocabulary to fit the themes he is developing and the people he is addressing. So says John Davis in his 1975 work ‘Paradise to Prison – Studies in Genesis’. Creation myths from whatever culture share commonalities, because they are all seeking to answer the same questions. It is part of human nature to attempt to explain the unknown and to seek what seem to be rational answers. At the base of almost every culture are stories that explain how the world and its inhabitants, human and otherwise came into being. Just as in every other religion’s creation myths there is an attempt to give solutions to problems present to in that particular religious society – in this caser perhaps the problem is man’s relationship with his creator. Why Two Versions? The two strands of this Jewish story are both attempting in their own ways to answer the question ‘How was man created and in what way did he gain his knowledge?’ Both originate in oral tradition, as it was well into mankind’s history before writing in any form began to be used. People discussed such matters and came up with explanations, but it would only have been after many generations had passed before such tales took written form. The canon of Jewish scripture was fixed rather later than is sometimes supposed beginning in about 90 C.E. during the early years of the Christian era. This was after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E.. Realizing perhaps the jeopardy in which their religion was at that period as they had no longer any access to the temple and sacrificial rites which were at the centre of worship, a group of Jewish scholars collected at Jabneh or Jamnia, a village which lies about thirty miles west of Jerusalem, and during a ten year period from about A.D. 90 to A.D. 100, finally settled the Canon of Jewish scriptures according to the web page Theology: The canon of scriptures. By this time of course both versions of the story of creation were well known, having been extant for many years and the scriptures as they are now had been complete for several hundred years as is obvious from the fact that there is a complete Greek translation ( The Septuagint) dating from the third century B.C.E. Both versions are included in the final canon because both were felt to be of value. Today the stories are often criticised as unscientific, although in fact the order seems to many to be a logical progression despite the fact that light is present in the first account (1 v 3) before the creation of the sun and moon. (1 v 14,15). I t is only the time taken that does not seem to fit in with our scientific knowledge. On this point David Beck says in his article ‘The Bible: A True and Accurate Account of Creation ?’ :- The Bible is not a science text; the scientific method was unknown in biblical times. ...The purposes of religion and science are completely different. Science seeks to describe, explain, and predict. The Bible tries to tell the purpose of creation, and to point the way to morality, righteousness, and salvation. It should not be surprising that their methods are different and even incompatible. Differences between the two versions Biblical scholars categorize the first is version found in Genesis 1 v1 – 2v3 as the Priestly (P) account because of its historical association with the Jewish priestly caste of the Israelites , and the second is referred to as the Jahwist or J account because the writer consistently refers to God as Yahweh. (sometimes translated Jehovah). The P account is normally dated as being much earlier than the J account because of its mythological style There are possible links to the. Enuma Elish, a creation myth from ancient Babylonia written in cuneiform on clay in about the 12th century B.C.E. as described by Dennis Bratcher in 2006 on the web page Enuma Elish. A comparison of the two accounts can be found on the web page Old Testament Analysis, Genesis and Babylonian Creation Myths Compared. Some theologians claim that the Babylonian stories were written down many hundreds of years before the Genesis ones, and there are other scholars who hold the opposite view. The P account is somewhat less mythological in style. There is a double emphasis, on the Sabbath as the day of rest, and on the idea of man being created in the image of God, which seems to suggest that man is superior to the rest of creation. The J account though is less concerned with trying to timetable the act of creation in history and more in explaining what man is and why this makes him different to both the creator God and to the rest of created begins. The story reveals how, in an act of disobedience, man and woman try to become as knowledgeable as God by partaking of the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil ( Genesis 3 v 4) . This act emphasizes their inferiority to God, but also how they are different from the rest of creation in that they are then become ashamed of their sexual natures and their nakedness,.( Genesis 3 v 5) It gives too an account of why they must work hard in order to obtain their food,( Genesis 3 v 17 -19) as well as an explanation for why women experience so much pain in order to produce children.( Genesis 3 v 16). The major difference in the chronology of the two stories is that while the first covers the whole period of creation, including God’s rest on the final day, the second deals only with the final part of the creative process. ‘This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and heaven’ Genesis 2 v 4 , New American Standard Bible. There are two words in that verse which are of special interest. ‘Account’ translates the Hebrew word ‘toledot’ a word which occurs frequently in the Jewish scriptures and always relates to human lineage in some way e.g. Genesis 5 v 1 where the word ‘book’ in the New American Standard Bible is that same word ‘toledot’. The second word is the rendered as ‘day’. Hebrew has a rather limited number of words in comparison to some other languages and this one is best translated as ‘period of time’ rather than being thought of as merely a 24 hour division of time. It can be compared to the English usage of phrases such as ‘In the old days’ or ‘In my father’s day’. Those who would insist that this is one story have a difficulty in that it appears that Adam was created both on the sixth day (Genesis 1 v 26) and after the seventh day,( Genesis 2 v 7) but if one accepts that this is a literary device in which the second account expands on the first then there is no real problem. In Genesis 2 v 5 there is another point of interest with the word ‘field’. This refers specifically to cultivated land .The vegetation of Genesis 1 v 11 refers to flora in general, but by Genesis 2 the reference is to cultivation – farming. And for farming to take place man is needed and so there is a progression to the idea of man being created and he then being able to farm the land. In the first account God specifically blesses them and tells them :- Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth. (Genesis 1:28), In the J version however not until Adam and Eve are banished from the Garden of Eden in 3 v 23 is Adam sent out to cultivate the land, though in 2 v 19 we are told how Adam named the animals and bird s that God had created. In the Jewish mind to name something was to have power over it, to own it. These give different emphases to the role of man – first as ruler of creation and secondly as mere tiller of the soil. Commonalities Both passages describe the creation of mankind, but while the priestly version has man’s creation as the climax of the whole creative action in the J version this is the only part of the process described. In chapter 1 the writer does not go into detail about exactly how man was made, but does report that God created mankind “in God’s image.” In Genesis 2 on the other hand , there is no report as to why man is formed as he is. It says instead that man was formed from the dust of the ground, and that he came alive when God breathed into him, so in both versions he has something linked back to his creator God. In both sections of text mankind is treated equally as far as their authority over creation is concerned – both male and female – no distinction is made, Genesis 2 v 28:-‘God blessed them and told them ‘Multiply and fill all the earth and subdue it; you are the masters of the fish and birds and all the animals.’ in Genesis 2 v 19,20 there seems perhaps to be a break in sequence with God creating beasts right in front of Adam, but these are beasts of burden , domesticated animals rather than fauna in general, which had already been created, so the general order in which things occur is the same in both accounts. Both accounts mention mankind in relation to God, but the first account ends on a positive note – God looks out over his creation and it is all good. In Genesis 3 the J writer gives his account of the fall of man – the break in the relationship and the entry of sin into the world. The rest of the Bible is then an account of this broken relationship and the attempts to restore it - which according to Christian belief culminated in the sending of God’s son - John 3 v 16 , a passage which in the New American Standard Bible is headed ‘A new birth,.:-"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” Conclusion The conclusion must be that these were originally two accounts by different writers that represent slightly different explanations of God’s relationship with his creation as found in ancient Jewish oral tradition. By considering the two creation accounts both individually and as a whole we see that there is a description of the creation sequence in Genesis 1, which is then expanded upon in Genesis 2 and 3 stressing what seemed to the writer important the aspects and details, especially of the sixth day, in Genesis 2. The two versions are needed in order to get across the points considered important - these tend to be spiritual points rather than factual ones. According to Kenneth Kitchen in his 1966 book ‘ Ancient Orient and Old Testament’:- Failure to recognize the complementary nature of the subject-distinction between a skeleton outline of all creation on the one hand, and the concentration in detail on man and his immediate environment on the other, borders on obscurantism. The Bible was not written for scholars alone however, but to meet the spiritual needs of all people. These passages from Genesis are often seen just as a description, perhaps wrong, of the creation process. However if they are considered as being a consideration of the relationship between God and his creation and in particular with mankind, then a whole new dimension emerges. Whether or not one believes in a literal 6 day creation becomes almost irrelevant if one concentrates on this relationship which is so important that it is referred to throughout the remainder of the scriptures. These verses are not isolated from the whole of that account to believers , whether Jewish or Christian. References Living Bible, (1971) London, Hodder and Stoughton, London Electronic Sources Batten, D. Genesis Contradictions?, Answers in Genesis.org, retrieved 16th February 2009 from http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v18/i4/genesis.asp Beck, D. The Bible: A true and accurate account of creation? Summary, quoted on the Religious Tolerance .Org web page, The creation stories in Genesis retrieved 13th February 2009 from http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_bibl.htm Bratcher,D. Enuma Elish, The Voice retrieved 13th February 2008 from http://www.cresourcei.org/enumaelish.html Davis, J. ,Paradise to Prison- Studies in Genesis, (1975), Grand Rapids, Baker, quoted by Wayne Jackson in his article ‘Are there two creation accounts in Genesis?’ ApologeticsPress.Org, retrieved 16th February 2009 from http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2194 New American Standard Bible, Bible Gateway.com retrieved 14th February 2009 from http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=1&chapter=2&version=49 Genesis and Babylonian Creation Myths Compared retrieved 16th February 2009 from http://www.skeptically.org/oldtestament/id14.html Kitchen, K. Ancient Orient and Old Testament, (1966) London , Tyndale quoted by Wayne Jackson in his article ‘Are there two creation accounts in Genesis?’ ApologeticsPress.Org, retrieved 16th February 2009 from http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2194 Stone, N. Names of God, (1944) Chicago, Moody quoted by Wayne Jackson in his article ‘Are there two creation accounts in Genesis?’ ApologeticsPress.Org, retrieved 16th February 2009 from http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2194 The canon of Scripture: Theology, retrieved 16th February 2008 from http://missionstraining.org/Theology/CanonOfScripture.html Read More