Genesis creation narrative
The creation myth of Judaism and Christianity is found in chapters 1 and 2 of the Book of Genesis. While both faith traditions have historically understood the account as a single unified story, modern scholars of biblical criticism have identified it as being a composite of two stories drawn from different sources expressing distinct views about the nature of God and creation.
According to the documentary hypothesis, the first accountwhich begins with Genesis 1:1 and ends with the first sentence of Genesis 2:4is from the later Priestly source, possibly composed during the 6th century BC. In this story, God creates the heavens and the Earth in six days, solely by issuing commands for it to be soand then rests on, blesses, and sanctifies the seventh day. The second account, which consists of the remainder of Genesis 2, is from an earlier non-Priestly source, traditionally the Jahwist source dated to the 10th or 9th century BC. In this story, God creates Adam, the first man, by "forming" him from dustand places him in the Garden of Eden where he is given dominion over the animals. The first woman, "built" from a rib taken from Adam's side, is created to be his matching companion; after the couple are expelled from the Garden in Genesis 3 for disobeying God, Adam names the woman Eve.
The first major comprehensive draft of the Torahthe series of five books which begins with Genesis and ends with Deuteronomytheorized as being the J source, is thought to have been composed in either the late 7th or the 6th century BC, and was later expanded by other authors into a work appreciably resembling the received text of Genesis. The authors of the text were influenced by Mesopotamian mythology and ancient Near Eastern cosmology, and borrowed several themes from them, adapting and integrating them with their unique belief in one God. The combined narrative is a critique of the Mesopotamian theology of creation: Genesis affirms monotheism and denies polytheism.
Composition
Genre
Scholars view Genesis as belonging to the literary genre of myth, a type of folklore consisting primarily of narrative that plays a fundamental role within a society. For scholars, this is in contrast to more vernacular usage of the term myth, which refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the veracity of a myth is not a defining criterion.Authorship and dating
Although Orthodox Jews and fundamentalist Christians attribute the authorship of the Book of Genesis to Moses "as a matter of faith", the hypothesis of Mosaic authorship has been questioned since the 11th century and rejected in scholarship since the 17th century. Scholars of Biblical criticism conclude that it, together with the following four books, is "a composite work, the product of many hands and periods".The creation narrative consists of two separate accounts drawn from different sources. The first account, which spans from Genesis 1:1 to the first sentence of Genesis 2:4, is from what scholars call the Priestly source, largely dated to the 6th century BC. The second account, which comprises the remainder of Genesis 2, is from an older non-Priestly sourcetraditionally the Jahwist source dated to the 10th or 9th century BC according to the documentary hypothesis.
The two stories were combined, but there is currently no scholarly consensus on when the narrative reached its final form. A common hypothesis among biblical scholars today is that the first major comprehensive narrative of the Pentateuch was composed in the 7th or 6th century BC. A sizeable minority of scholars believe that the first eleven chapters of Genesis, also known as the primeval history, can be dated to the 3rd century BC based on discontinuities between the contents of the work and other parts of the Hebrew Bible.
The "Persian imperial authorisation", which has gained considerable interest and controversy, proposes that the Persians, after their conquest of Babylon in 538 BC, agreed to grant Jerusalem a large measure of local autonomy within the empire, but required the local authorities to produce a single legal code accepted by the entire community. According to this theory, there were two powerful groups in the community: the priestly families who controlled the Temple and the landowning families who made up the "elders", which were in conflict over many issues. Each had its own "history of origins", but the Persian promise of greatly increased local autonomy for all provided a powerful incentive to cooperate in producing a single text.
Two stories
The creation narrative is made up of two stories, roughly equivalent to the first two chapters of the Book of Genesis. The first story refers to the creator deity using the title Elohim, a form of the generic Hebrew word for 'god'translated into English as "God". The second story refers to the creator deity using a composite name, which puts his personal name Yahweh together with Elohimtranslated into English as " God".Traditional Jewish and evangelical scholars such as Collins explain this as a single author's variation in style in order to, for example, emphasize the unity and transcendence of God, who created the heavens and Earth by himself in the first narrative. Critical scholars such as Richard Elliot Friedman, on the contrary, take this as evidence of multiple authorship. Friedman states that originally, the J source only used Yahweh, but a later editor added Elohim to form the composite name: "It therefore appears to be an effort by the Redactor to soften the transition from the P creation, which uses only 'God', to the coming J stories, which use only the name YHWH."
The first account employs a repetitious structure of divine fiat and fulfillment, then the statement "And there was evening and there was morning, the day", for each of the six days of creation. In each of the first three days, there is an act of division: day one divides the darkness from light, day two the "waters above" from the "waters below", and day three the sea from the land. In each of the next three days, these divisions are populated: day four populates the darkness and light with the Sun, Moon, and stars; day five populates seas and skies with fish and fowl; and finally, land-based creatures and humanity populate the land.
In the second story, Yahweh creates Adam, the first man, from dust and places him in the Garden of Eden. There, he is given dominion over the animals. Eve, the first woman, is created from Adam's rib as his companion.
A literary bridge joins the primary accounts in each chapter in Genesis 2:4, reading, "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created." This echoes the first line of Genesis 1, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth", and is reversed in the next phrase, "... in the day that the God made the earth and the heavens". This verse is one of ten "generations" phrases used throughout Genesis, which provide a literary structure to the book. They normally function as headings to what comes after, but the position of this, the first of the series, has been the subject of much debate.
The overlapping stories of Genesis 1 and 2 are usually regarded as contradictory but also complementary, with the first concerned with the creation of the entire cosmos while the second focuses on man as moral agent and cultivator of his environment.
Mesopotamian influence
provides historical and cross-cultural perspectives for Jewish mythology. Both sources behind the Genesis creation narrative were influenced by Mesopotamian mythology, borrowing several themes from them but adapting them to Israelite religion and establishing a monotheistic creation in opposition to the polytheistic creation myth of ancient Israel's neighbors.Genesis 1 bears striking similarities and differences with Enuma Elish, a Babylonian creation myth. The myth begins with two primeval entities: Apsu, the male freshwater deity, and Tiamat, the female saltwater deity. The first gods were born from their sexual union. The younger gods killed both Apsu and Tiamat. Marduk, the leader of the gods, builds the world with Tiamat's body, which he splits in two. With one half, he creates a dome-shaped firmament in the sky to hold back Tiamat's upper waters. With the other half, Marduk forms dry land to hold back her lower waters. Marduk then organises the heavenly bodies and assigns tasks to the gods in maintaining the cosmos. When the gods complain about their work, Marduk creates humans out of the blood of the god Kingu. The grateful gods build a temple for Marduk in Babylon. This is similar to the Baal Cycle, in which the Canaanite god Baal builds himself a cosmic temple over seven days.
In both Genesis 1 and Enuma Elish, creation consists of bringing order out of chaos. Before creation, there was nothing but a cosmic ocean. During creation, a dome-shaped firmament is put in place to hold back the water and make Earth habitable. Both conclude with the creation of a human called "man" and the building of a temple for the god. In contrast to Enuma Elish, Genesis 1 is monotheistic. There is no theogony, and there is no trace of the resistance to the reduction of chaos to order, all of which mark the Mesopotamian creation accounts. The gods in Enuma Elish are amoral, they have limited powers, and they create humans to be their slaves. In Genesis 1, however, God is all-powerful. He creates humans in the divine image and cares for their wellbeing, and gives them dominion over every living thing.
Enuma Elish has also left traces on Genesis 2. Both begin with a series of statements of what did not exist at the moment when creation began; Enuma Elish has a spring as the point where creation begins, paralleling the spring in Genesis 2:6 that "watered the whole face of the ground"; in both myths, the respective deities first create a man to serve them, then animals and vegetation. At the same time, and as with Genesis 1, the Jewish version has drastically changed its Babylonian model: Eve, for example, seems to fill the role of a mother goddess when, in Genesis 4:1, she says that she has "created a man with Yahweh", but she is not a divine being like her Babylonian counterpart.
Genesis 2 has close parallels with a second Mesopotamian myth, the Atra-Hasis epicparallels that, in fact, extend throughout, from the Creation to the Flood and its aftermath. The two share numerous plot details, and have a similar overall theme: the gradual clarification of man's relationship with God and animals.