Fundamentalists do not like it when Biblical scholars and theologians point out Biblical truths which contradict their conservative readings of biblical texts. As a theologian who grew up fundamentalist, and now recognizes the intellectual bankruptcy that under-girds American fundamentalism, on social media, I often point out passages that refute those conservative readings of the Bible. Invariably, a fundamentalist will chime in and often go straight to ad hominem attacks against me for having the temerity to do so. This kind of exchange happened a couple of times recently on social media and both were in response to me talking about the well established scholarship that shows that Genesis has two different creation stories. In both instances, I was told that I was wrong and attacked verbally. Why? Because if there are two different creation narratives, then the Bible cannot possibly inerrant, nor can certain patriarchal readings of the text be maintained. So, with that in mind, let’s examine some of the evidence of the two very different creation myths from the primeval history in Genesis.

The first creation narrative starts in Genesis 1:1 and goes until Genesis 2:3 The second narrative begins in Genesis 2:4 and continues through until the end of the chapter. The first narrative culminates in God verbally creating human beings in God’s image simultaneously after a listing of the previous day’s creation activities. A lot of people seemingly forget, or never knew that in Genesis 1 human beings were created simultaneously, rather than the male human first, followed by the female human being made from the rib of the male. The latter is how the second creation narrative is often interpreted. When one reads the narratives starting with Genesis 1:1 all the way through to the end of chapter two the differences are quite obvious. That Genesis 1:27 has humanity simultaneously created in God’s image has important theological implications for God and gender as I wrote in a refutation of the Nashville Statement in Theological Musings Volume 1.

While the first creation account ends with humans being created at God’s command, the second has God creating humanity first, though not simultaneously, before creating plants, animals, and the garden. Why is that the case and why are there so many other differences in the two stories? As biblical scholar John Collins notes in his textbook on the Hebrew Bible, the stories “are composites and incorporate different layers from different eras. The biblical text is not a systematic treatise. Rather it is a collection of traditional materials that places different viewpoints in dialogue with another and offers the reader a range of points of view.” (Collins, A Short Introduction to the Hebrew Bible: 2nd ed., p. 39.)

Interestingly, the second creation narrative in chapter 2 is actually the older of the two creation stories, though it appears after the priestly material in Genesis 1. Chapter one’s narrative has been identified as being from the Priestly (P) source material as scholars have stated since the 19th century. As Robert Alter notes in his translation of the Hebrew Bible, scholars of Genesis, Exodus, and Leviticus, are “woven together from three different literary sources or ‘documents’ – the Yahwistic document (spelled with an initial capital J in German and hence designated J), the Elohistic document (E), and the Priestly document (P).” (Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary: Three Volume Set, Kindle ed., p77.) Not only do the different source material “documents” use different names for God, there are linguistic, literary style, and theological differences that can be discerned within the texts — sometimes in the same chapter of the book.

Marc Z. Brettler writes in his essay on the Pentateuch in the NOAB 4, NRSV ed., that one such theological difference can be seen in how God is described in the two creation stories. In the P source (Genesis 1:1 – 2:3) God is shown as a “very powerful deity” who creates a “highly symmetrical world” and who creates through “the word.” In other words, God simply spoke creation into being. The account beginning with Genesis 2:4 is from the J source material. Brettler states that the focus here is on “the creation of humanity, not the entire world, and God experiments and anthropomorphically ‘forms’ various beings, rather than creating them with the word. Thus, these are two distinct accounts, written by two authors, representing different worldviews about the nature of creation, humanity, and God.” (Brettler, “Introduction to the Pentateuch, in NOAB 4, NRSV, 4th ed., p 4.)

The above paragraphs give a brief overview of the two distinct creation stories in Genesis. They are theologically different. Collins notes that in the P source material God is more exalted than in the J source material (Collins, p. 46) as another example of theological difference. Why then were both stories included in what became the final form of Genesis? Dr. Konrad Schmid explains it this way: ” Neither of the creation accounts—Genesis 1:1–2:4a, usually attributed to the Priestly source (P), and Genesis 2:4b–3:24, regarded as the Yahwist source (J) or as non-P—seems to be an updating (Fortschreibung) of the other one. Rather, they likely originated independently and were only secondarily juxtaposed, probably mainly because the composers of the Pentateuch did not want or did not dare to omit one of them.” In other words, both were seen as traditionally important and were kept for that reason.

As Dr. Julia O’Brien said one day in a Biblical Interpretation class, “if you are reading the creation stories literally, you’re missing the point completely.” These are Israelite origin stories, not scientific texts about the cosmos, the Earth, and its human inhabitants. They are inconsistent stylistically, theologically, and in their details. Some of those details appear to have been influenced, if not borrowed, from other Ancient Near Eastern traditions. This does not render them worthless. They have much to say from a theological standpoint about how human beings have wrestled with their ancient understanding God. For a deeper dive into Genesis, see the aforementioned commentary by Bill T. Arnold, or Iain Provan’s Discovering Genesis: Content, Interpretation, Reception. We used both of these texts during my time at Lancaster Theological Seminary.

Peace be with you.