continued from the last Science and Scripture post
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8.2 Situating Genesis 2-3
1. How then should we understand the genre of Genesis 2-3 and situate it within Genesis, the Pentateuch, and the Bible? We might start with the fact that the creation story of Genesis 1 and the creation story of Genesis 2 seem distinct from each other. A number of possibilities have been offered for how they might relate to each other, but which one is most likely?
First, what are the main differences between the accounts? The most obvious difference is the apparent order of creation. Plants are created on Day 5 in Genesis 1. Then animals first on Day 6. Finally, humans -- male and female -- are created later on Day 6.
By contrast, in Genesis 2:4, "on the day when Yahweh God made land and skies," God first creates "the man" or "the human" (אָדָם -- 'adam). At that point "there was no plant of the field on the land nor herb of the field" (2:5). Here we immediately note three differences. First, Yahweh, the name of God, is used throughout Genesis 2-3. His proper name was absent from Genesis 1, where only the generic reference of God ('elohim) was used.
Second, the impression of 2:4 is that creation of humans, plants, and animals took place altogether on the same "day" as the creation of the land and skies. Finally -- and perhaps most striking -- the man is created before there were any plants in the land. It is not until 2:9 that Yahweh Elohim makes all the plants of the land.
The animals then are not created until Genesis 2:19. Like the man (ha'adam), God creates all the animals out of the ground and brings them to the man to name them. Interestingly, the creation of the animals was preceded by God's observation that the man should have a helper. So finally after the animals are created, God creates a "woman" ('ishshah).
Thus we see two other differences between Genesis 1 and 2. The animals are created after the man, and the woman is created last. To this point, the man and woman are not named Adam and Eve. 'adam so far would seem to be generic for a man, and the woman is simply the generic 'ishshah.
There are other differences that are perhaps less important for our purposes. Creation in Genesis 2 seems more personal and relational. Creation in Genesis 1 is by divine command and seems more formal. In Genesis 1, there is a plural used in the creation of humanity -- "Let us make." Genesis 2 only speaks of Yahweh God.
Textbox: Differences between Genesis 1 and 2
1. Creation in six "days" versus one "day"
2. Different name/reference to God
3. Man created before plants and animals
4. Creation of woman separated from creation of man
2. What are we to make of these differences? If we take both accounts "literally" in relation to the same event of creation, they do not objectively seem to cohere together. That fact would leave us with three basic options: 1) they refer to different events, 2) they are different perspectives on the same event (e.g., different genres), or 3) one or both of them is incorrect in some way.
Let us assume that both of them are correct in some way. They do not seem to refer to different events, for 2:4 indicates that Genesis 2 took place on the day that God created the skies and the land (i.e., the heavens and the earth). And are we to think that God created other men and women before the man and the woman of Genesis 2? While that idea would fit well with the perspective of evolutionary creation, it seems like a doubtful (anachronistic) meaning for the biblical text.
That leaves us with the second option, namely, that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 both relate to the creation of humanity but in some different way. Chiefly, it leads us back to the question of genre. Presumably one or both of the accounts functioned as more than mere literal history. It would be fully in keeping with the genres of the Ancient Near East (ANE) if the stories are much more "archetypal," as John Walton has put it, rather than fully literal." [1]
3. At this point it is fitting to ask the question of sources. Most Old Testament scholars agree that Genesis reflects the integration of multiple sources, though there remains substantial debate about their exact number, nature, and dating. Nevertheless, it would not be deeply controversial to suggest that Genesis 2-3 come from an epic of Israel's story that goes back at least to the time of the early monarchy (e.g., the tenth century BC). Similarly, it would not be greatly controversial to consider Genesis 1 as an introduction to the entire Pentateuch written in the late exilic or post-exilic period (sixth or fifth centuries BC).
The origins of this consensus began in the 1700s with the observation not only that a number of stories in the Pentateuch are very similar to each other. But they have one key difference -- the name of God. For example, there are two very similar stories of Abraham telling a powerful figure that Sarah is his sister. In Genesis 12:10-20, Abram tells this to Pharaoh. In Genesis 20:1-18 (when Sarah is 90 years old in the flow of Genesis, incidentally), Abraham tells this to Abimelech. In the first instance, God is referred to as Yahweh. In the second, God is referred to as Elohim.
This pattern is so pervasive in Genesis that, in 1753, Jean Astruc suggested that perhaps Moses had synthesized two different sources together in the creation of Genesis, one of which used Yahweh in reference to God (later called the "J" source, since Yahweh begins with a J in German) and the other of which used Elohim (later called the "E" source). The details of such a theory have been debated back and forth for over 250 years. For our purposes, it is enough to note the consensus that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2-3 come from different sources. [2]
Given that consensus, it is easy to conclude that Genesis 1 and 2 had distinct purposes. In chapter 4, we argued that Genesis 1 was ancient cosmology. It amazingly seems to give man and woman an equal status as created in the image of God with dominion over the rest of the land with its creatures. Genesis 2-3 had its own distinct purposes. It does not fit precisely with Genesis 1 on the level of detail, suggesting that the truths we are to take from these chapters is more theological than precisely historical.
4. What were those truths? We have been developing an approach to Scripture in the preceding chapters that takes fully into account this truth: revelation always starts with the language and categories of those to whom God reveals himself and then moves them from there. God does not expect us to climb the mountain to him or we would never understand what he wishes to reveal. Rather, he stoops to our weakness and elevates our understanding.
We thus should think of biblical revelation as "incarnated" truth. We collectively have to use discernment, guided by the Holy Spirit, to distinguish between the "that time" and the "all time," so to speak. There is always "that time" in revelation because that is the nature of all meaning. It is always contextual.
A second prong in our appropriation of Scripture recognizes that the same words can be given different emphases and even different meanings in different times and places. Thus, even within the Bible itself, the same passage may be taken differently by different authors -- with each different meaning inspired of the Holy Spirit. Thus, the original meaning of Genesis 2-3 may be different from the way various New Testament authors take various elements of these chapters. And yet each different meaning can be inspired!
What was the original point? ...
[1] John H. Walton, The Lost World of Adam and Eve (IVP Academic, 2015) -- especially his proposition 9. It is important to note that Walton considers Adam and Eve to have been historical individuals. Perhaps I should also note that he sees Genesis 1 and 2 as sequential rather than two different presentations of the same creation (see his proposition 7).
[2] It is hard to underemphasize the significance of an editor intentionally integrating sources together that were not fully harmonizable on a literal historical level. It reveals that our modern sensibilities and default expectations of the text were apparently not those of the original authors and editors. It was wrong of an earlier generation of scholars to demean the biblical authors for practices that were fully appropriate for them. Similarly, it is inappropriate for modern scholars to preclude such possibilities -- operating on the same modern assumptions as the liberal scholars of an earlier generation.
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