Genesis 1 & 2

[srd44]

However, the assertion that Genesis 1 was written after Genesis 2 which you seem to be claiming here has been challenged.

The Old Testament: A Literary History by Konrad Schmid http://www.amazon.com/Old-Testament-Lit ... rad+schmid

Non-Priestly components of Genesis 1-11...

are likewise among the most difficult to place. The reason for the present uncertainty among scholars, who are at odds regarding nearly all the non-Priestly texts as to whether they should be placed before or after the Priestly document, is associated above all with the crisis of the Yahwist hypothesis, which remains so severe that the assumption of a Yahwist historical work can not longer be taken as a starting point for the analysis.

Anything that pushes dates back, creates confusion, and bothers theologians is ok in my book. Personally, I don't know a date that the Yahwist stuff could have been written earlier than the exile.

I'm not familiar with Schmid's work, nor when it was published, but even looking at his quote, I can see he has misconstrued the problem. Even granting a "Yahwist crisis" this is now way affects our understanding of the Priestly source. In other words, this is Scmid's faulty premise. Even when scholars date P to pre-exilic times, which is now raw, but see Milgrom's Anchor Bible commentary, it is still acknowledged as post J. David Carr's Reading the Fractures of Genesis is the most thorough textual analysis of Genesis. And he convincingly demonstrates, as do countless other scholars, that the Priestly writer rewrote such stories as Jacob's departure, Abrahamic covenant, the blessing of Joseph's sons, etc. with conscious knowledge of J. He was rewriting or subverting J. I highly recommend Carr's work. It is top-notch scholarship. He lets the text speak.

[semiopen]

Thanks for the feedback srd.

Schmid's book was published in 2011. David Carr praises the book and Dr Schmid on the cover -

This book offers a much needed synthesis of historical scholarship on the Hebrew Bible by one of Europe's leading Old Testament scholars. Schmid possesses remarkable knowledge of both European and North American biblical scholarship, and he guides the reader through each period of literary history with balance and an eye for the whole.

Perhaps the part where he says -

unfortunately his claim that J was written after P is just totally stupid because I've already proved that is bullshit.

was left out.

Actually I think I might have been right about Genesis 9 being the Priest -

Genesis_flood_narrative

God makes a pledge of commitment to Noah in Genesis 9:1–17. The priestly (Elohim) version takes the form of a covenant arrangement. This is the first explicit act of a covenant in the Hebrew Bible and is used seven times in this episode. God commits to continue both human and animal life and vows to never again use a second deluge against humanity. The covenant is sealed with the sign of a rainbow, after a storm, as a reminder.[29]

My simple minded comment about nephesh chaya being found relatively many times in P but only once in J might make more sense. Apparently, this is such a cool phrase that nobody thought of using it until Ezekiel or the Priest during the exile.

Other than personal preference, I'd be inclined to call the debate about even.

Interview with David M. Carr- Current state of Bible Scholarship http://kavvanah.wordpress.com/2012/01/0 ... holarship/

No editorial comments, just seemed interesting.

These things usually seem to resolve on the more radical side. The normal DH Yahwist side seems to attract theological people. For example -

Reflections on the Composition of Genesis - http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/genesis.shtml

Although some believe the Yahwist lived and worked in the exilic or post-exilic periods of Israel’s history, I assume the more traditional position that the Yahwist was a historian of the southern kingdom, writing during the eighth or ninth centuries BCE, or before. Indeed, a strong case can be made for a tenth-century origin for Israel’s national epic, and some even assume it may be precisely fixed to the reign of David. (Reprinted by permission of Cambridge University Press, © Bill T. Arnold 2009)

Dr Arnold seems to be saying anytime before the 7th century, even the 10th century is fine. True, compared to Dr. Flatulence this is the model of rationality... just seems a little rigid and old fashioned in this day and age. Why couldn't this have been written after the exile, why does all of it have to have been written at the same time? Even Dr. Arnold acknowledges it is just a guess - he "assumes the more traditional position..."

Note that footnote 20 mentions Konrad Schmid. -

20 As I have stated, these are my “assumptions,” based on the exegesis I have done in the commentary proper. At this moment in the discipline, another view is gaining favor, which takes P as the first overarching history of early Israel, assuming a postexilic Priestly author used a collection of “non-P” materials (those formerly attributed to J) to create the master narrative of the Pentateuch; see the editors’ introduction in Thomas B. Dozeman and Konrad Schmid, eds., A Farewell to the Yahwist? The Composition of the Pentateuch in Recent European Interpretation (SBLSymS 34; Boston: Brill, 2006), 1-7, and the other essays there. These scholars are establishing a new series of questions for investigation, but so far their solutions lack explanatory power. Others have argued for an exilic Yahwistic editor of the whole Pentateuch, a theory that raises more difficulties than it settles; Christoph Levin, “The Yahwist: The Earliest Editor in the Pentateuch,” Journal of Biblical Literature 126/2 (2007): 209-30.

This article is from 2008, I'm not aware of any recent crushing defeats suffered by the European interpretation in the last 6 years or so.

I found this blog which discusses Carr -http://jamesbradfordpate.blogspot.com/2 ... ource.html - again just seemed interesting

After reading Schmid's comments, I bought The Composition of the Pentateuch: Renewing the Documentary Hypothesis by Joel Baden - http://www.amazon.com/Composition-Penta ... hypothesis

However, it doesn't seem to deal with dating very much.

[semiopen]

Some of stuff I read yesterday reminded me of the orality issues we discussed in the Early Writing Errors thread.

This is a totally new concept to me (like rabbinic orality was a few months ago).

Revelation Restored: Divine Writ and Critical Responses by David Weiss Halivni http://www.amazon.com/Revelation-Restor ... ss+halivni

might be an example of this line of thought by the guy mainly responsible for the application of this to the Talmud. The book is available on questia.

Modern critical scholars divide the Pentateuch into distinct components, identifying areas of unevenness in the scriptural tradition, which point to several interwoven documents rather than one immaculate whole. While the conclusions reached by such critical scholarship are still matters of dispute, the inconsistencies which it has identified stand clearly before us and pose a serious challenge to the believer in divine revelation. How can a text marred by contradiction be the legacy of Sinai? How can there be reverence for holy scriptures that show signs of human intervention? David Weiss Halivni explores these questions, not by disputing the evidence itself or by defending the absolute integrity of the Pentateuchal words at all costs, but rather by accepting the inconsistencies of the text as such and asking how this text might yet be a divine legacy.Inconsistencies and unevenness in the Pentateuchal scriptures are not the discovery of modern textual science alone. Halivni demonstrates that the earliest stewards of the Torah, including some of those represented in the Bible itself, were aware of discrepancies within the tradition. From the Book of Chronicles through the commentaries of the Rabbis, sensitive readers have perceived maculations, which mitigate against the notion of an unblemished, divine document, and have responded to these maculations in different ways.Revelation Restored asserts that acknowledging and accounting for human intervention in the Pentateuchal text is not alien to the Biblical or Rabbinic tradition and need not belie the tradition of revelation. Moreover, it argues that through recognizing textual problems in the scriptures, as well as efforts to resolve them in tradition, we may learn not only about the nature of the Pentateuch itself but also about the ongoing relationship between its people and its source.

I think part of the idea srd is expressing is that even though Genesis 1-3 is written by at least two different guys at approximately the same time (during or after the exile) there was some kind of oral tradition before hand that makes the actual dates of writing somewhat beside the point.

At first sight I have to be skeptical of this, but obviously it deserves looking at. My initial glance suggests that this might be a position favored by rational theologians (if that's not a Non sequitor like military intelligence).

Anyway, I don't want to hijack srd's thread (not that it is in a very pristine state anyway), just wanted to mention that the order that these works appeared is not entirely clear.

[lpetrich]

Getting back to the main subject, let us consider broader issues. I'd written about this in detail in Genesis creation stories - Atheism, but I hope it's OK to repeat it here.

The two creation stories have a *lot* of differences. Not just in the order of creation, but in various stylistic features.

Feature	#1	#2
God's name	God (elohim)	The Lord God (yhwh elohim)
God's mood	Happy	Pissed off at the end
Scope	Cosmic	Localized
Creation method	Commanding, separating	Physically forming
Creation organization	Systematic	Improvised
JEDP identification	P (priestly)	J (Yahwist)

The first one is very systematic:

Environments	Inhabitants
Celestial
Day 1	Day 4
Day	Sun
Night	Moon, stars
Far Terrestrial
Day 2	Day 5
Sea	Aquatic animals
Sky	Flying animals
Near Terrestrial
Day 3	Day 6
Land	Land animals, humanity
Plants	"You may eat these"

On Day 7, God feels so happy with what he has done that he takes the first day off in the history of the Universe, the first Sabbath.

The second one is very improvised:

• God creates Adam, the first man, to be his gardener in the Garden of Eden / a garden in Eden
• Adam is lonely
• God creates animals for him
• Adam names them, but he is still lonely
• God creates Eve, the first woman, for him
• Adam is less lonely now
• A certain mischievous snake convinces Adam and Eve to eat the very enlightening fruit of a certain tree
• God gets pissed off at all three of them, kicks them out of that garden, and sentences them to various unhappy fates

Those are:

• Men will have to do backbreaking labor to get their food
• Women will have to give birth painfully and be ruled by their menfolk
• Snakes will have to crawl on their bellies

The orders of creation of the two sexes differ. The first one has the two sexes at the same time, after the animals, while the second one has man (male), animals, woman.

The two stories are sometimes retconned as the second one being what happened when God created humanity in the first one, but I don't find that very convincing.

[ficino]

As I recall, Philo said that the account in Genesis 1 describes the events in the order in which God did them, and that in Genesis 2 describes creation according to the priority that each creature holds in the ideal creation in God's mind. I don't remember the work/s in which Philo expressed these views.

[beowulf]

The two Adams
The original Adam of Gen 1:27 was a heavenly creation and unmixed with material things. He is the rational pre-existing soul. The original Adam , Adam Harishon or Adam Kadman, was thought of as having been a perfect person who would return to the world at the time of redemption.
Man and woman were originally undivided.

The soul of the original Adam becomes mixed with clay from the earth when God fashions the earthly Adam of Gen 2:7. This earthly second Adam is no longer entirely soul and he is called 'mind'.
Man (mind) is very different in his individual earthy state from the pure first Adam.

The Torah
Union for Reform Judaism

[outhouse]

While very old work, it is still the foundation for many studies on the topic.


http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/log/log06.htm

[semiopen]

This is also an interesting article that will help you understand how biblically the age of creation is calaculated by ancient rabbi's http://www.aish.com/ci/sam/48951136.html

From

The world may be young and old simultaneously.

We can derive

The explanation may be idiotic and absurd simultaneously.

First of all you have a series of events in Genesis that is incorrect on almost every level.

Other than earth not clearly being created at all (at least before light, the sun and stars); the living creatures thing might be even worse. Genesis gives us plants and fruit bearing trees two days before animals (not to mention one day before stars). That's ridiculous. Schroeder doesn't even mention trees (and plants) in his rap... I guess it would be too much to expect that he keep up his song and dance for the whole six days. Once it gets to the living creatures, Schroeder shuts up. I can imagine his seven year old daughter asking -

But Abba, what the fuck does this shit have to do with the dinosaurs?

I guess life sciences aren't exactly his department.

There are actually a few issues with his specialty though. He claims -

When you add up the Six Days, you get the age of the universe at 15 and 3/4 billion years. The same as modern cosmology. Is it by chance?

Actually the age of the universe according to physical cosmology is 13.8 billion years, so this is 2 billion years off. Nickels and dimes? Isn't arithmetic still a requirement for nuclear physicists?

The guy wants to fit the age of the universe into six days so he develops a little model that attempts to do this - not very scientific. We see alot of people here with the same problem. True this is more interesting than the usual Christian idiocy we see here, but that doesn't mean it is not outrageous.

[theophilus]

Just came across this site. Am looking forward to reading and commenting here. I feel that I will be adding a distinctive flavor to the discussion.

Comments on Gen 1:
Gen 1.1 God creates the entire universe. The heaven(s) is plural. Between vs. 1 and verse 2: what happens is not mentioned, but some people feel that at some point during this time was when the angels/extraterrestrial beings, and at some point the large animals (dinasaurs) were created. Verse 2: The earth was void. Waters from a previous creation remained. There was darkness (possibly some sort of calamity before we get to vs. 3). Beginning at vs.3, a new creation is developed. This was a systematic and chronological process. We know that light can be created without the sun. In this early period, the first light appeared from the very person of the creator. Later, we see in Philo and also in the gospel that the God/Word was light. In Revelation we read also that God is the light. In vs.9, the waters come together as the seas and the dry land appears. Plants are formed. The stars, moon, and sun are moved into visibility (into the firmament) to tell time and to give natural light to the earth. Every living thing is created in this order: sea creatures, birds, land creatures, and finally human beings. Next time I will discuss chapter 2 and attempt to explain any appearance of differences in chapter 1 and 2. Until then, think on this: Jehovah Jirah. God provides. Behold, in the beginning everything was very good.

[Japhethite]

Where did humans get 7 days week from?

Where did pluralis majesticus "us"/"we"/"our" that sovereigns etc use come from?