so, as someone's probably brought up in this thread by now (i've only skimmed it), genesis 1 and genesis 2 are different stories, by different authors. this explanation is a little... inadequate, so i'd like detail how they relate, and where the incompatibility comes from. the short of it is that we're probably not supposed to still have genesis 2-4.
to begin with, it's important to understand the
documentary hypothesis. i'm not particularly interested in trying to defend it in this thread, but suffice to say it's fairly well supported that there several different authors (or rather
schools of authors) who had a hand in composing the torah. these determinations are made based on literary criticism, supported by differences in style, vocabulary, voice, etc, and the precise details of it are somewhat up for debate. in general, there seems to have been primarily five sources that contributed to the torah, only four of which are found in genesis (let's ignore the deuteronomist for now). one of those is a redactor who helped stitch the sources together. so we are dealing with three major sources:
- J, or the yahwist, whose tale begins with the creation of man, and ends with moses gazing into the promised land. i happen to think J was female (more on this later), so i'm going to use feminine gender pronouns to describe her work. J is easily distinguished before moses because her theology holds that people knew and spoke the name "yahweh" from the beginning.
- E or the elohist, whose tale begins with abraham, the primary of the patriarchs. his works is easily distinguished prior to moses because his theology holds that people did not know the name "yahweh" until it was revealed to moses. most scholars think that E wrote in the northern kingdom of israel, but i find that kind of unlikely. E probably wrote after J.
- P or the priestly author, the latest source of any found in the torah, who seems to have been mostly concerned with religious and academic aspects, such as using genealogies to connect earlier mythology to contemporary peoples, and refining certain religious concerns, that we're going to get back to in a minute. P is the most monotheist of any of the authors, and his work is easily distinguished because it's incredibly dull reading. seriously, it's just boring stuff; those parts you always skip? those are P.
now, i mentioned above that J starts with the creation of man. that's how it exists in the
present bible, but J's account of creation (beginning in genesis 2:4) starts kind of in the middle of events. this isn't particularly out of character for J, but there's some good reason to think that there's a missing section. one of those reasons is that authors who wrote after J told of events pertaining to creation that are simply not in J's myth, or any of the others that followed. they definitely had access to J, and there's no evidence for any other source. for instance, psalm 74 reads:
quote:
אַתָּה פוֹרַרְתָּ בְעָזְּךָ יָם
שִׁבַּרְתָּ רָאשֵׁי תַנִּינִים, עַל-הַמָּיִם
אַתָּה רִצַּצְתָּ, רָאשֵׁי לִוְיָתָן
תִּתְּנֶנּוּ מַאֲכָל, לְעָם לְצִיִּים
אַתָּה בָקַעְתָּ, מַעְיָן וָנָחַל
אַתָּה הוֹבַשְׁתָּ, נַהֲרוֹת אֵיתָן
לְךָ יוֹם, אַף-לְךָ לָיְלָה
אַתָּה הֲכִינוֹתָ, מָאוֹר וָשָׁמֶשׁ
אַתָּה הִצַּבְתָּ, כָּל-גְּבוּלוֹת אָרֶץ
קַיִץ וָחֹרֶף, אַתָּה יְצַרְתָּם |
| it was You who drove back the sea with Your might,
who smashed the heads of the monsters in the waters,
it was You who crushed the heads of Leviathan,
who left him as food for the denizens of the desert
it was You who released springs and torrents,
who made mighty rivers run dry;
the day is Yours, the night also;
it was You who set in place the orb of the sun;
You fixed all the boundaries of the earth;
summer and winter -- You made them. |
(Psalm 74:13-17, masoretic and nJPS)
this section is essentially about creation. these are events that happen in the context of genesis 1, except for one detail in the middle: leviathan. where does that come from? the answer is that these are all
also found in the
enuma elish, the babylonian creation epic, and similar canaanite creation epics. in those stories, though there are multiple gods who play different roles, one god tends to assert dominance by battling the chaos/water dragon. in babylonian myth, marduk slays tiamat, and makes the rivers from her blood. in canaan, it's (baal) hadad slaying yam (the semitic word for "sea") or later lotan (a cognate of leviathan).
this story was evidently in ancient jewish mythology, too, as evidence by the psalms. the connection is unmistakable... except that it's likely that the psalmist was reading J. there are other events hinted at being present in J's missing creation myth, told when job expounds of the glories of yahweh's creation, towards the end of that book: morning stars (the sons of god?), the leviathan, the behemot, etc.
P's version, beginning in genesis 1:1 and ending in genesis 2:3 or 2:4a, glosses over all of this. but it, oddly,
contains most of it. for instance, the leviathan is strangely
found in verse 21's הַתַּנִּינִם הַגְּדֹלִים "great serpents" in the water. P is kind of a cliffnotes summary of J's myth, which was in my opinion largely intended to
replace J's account. the important points here are how P
differs from J. for instance, instead of fighting chaos/dragons, god simply creates those dragons, because who could oppose god? it's much less polytheistic. you've actually touched on several of the important differences, in your opening post: P revised J because J's version of yahweh became essentially herretical. so let's discuss those changes:
J's god yahweh is an entirely different character that P's more reserved, unnamed (but definitely yahweh) elohim. yahweh, in J, is much more like the canaanite and sumerian deities that gave rise to his mythology, and takes cues directly from events in those myths, playing the roles of those gods. yahweh, to J, is everything, and so he functions as her baal, her anat, her mot, her yam, and her el. he had all the passion, zeal, power and
flaws of all those gods combined. he was, like those gods, very anthropomorphic, very human. and yet something totally different at the same time. the key difference between J's yahweh and these myths seems to be that yahweh
lived in the same world as her protagonists, and interacted with them, and mattered in their lives. perhaps this is because her patriarchs are themselves taking the roles of gods, or even usurping god, and we should understand her story to be written and read as fiction. P was dealing with a much more reserved impersonal abstract and universal god, completely foreign to humanity, because that was simply a better tool to control religious masses. J wasn't interested in religion (and i would argue wrote
against it as frequently as she favored it).
so where J's yahweh literally shapes the man (ha-adam) from the dirt (adamah) (as marduk does in the
enuma elish) and breathes his own soul into his nostrils, P's simply creates mankind, ordering him into existence. where J's yahweh gives up a part of his own life to make man, P's elohim simply makes man look like himself. In J, man is made alone, as yahweh was alone before him. it is with profound sadness that yahweh comments on man's loneliness, for
not even god is a suitable companion for man. yahweh then tries and fails to make him a mate. these ideas would have been
heresy for P, so you can see why he skips over all that, and just has woman created simultaneously. but in J, yahweh creates by trial and error, refining as he goes. as the man is
better than yahweh, because he has been made out of him, so the woman is
better than the man. her role in the story bears that out; she's the smarter one. as man sometimes tries to trick god (and fails horribly), the woman tricks the man and is similarly punished for it with her ironic punishment of subservience to man. this, along with similar treatment of the other heroines in J, is the reason i think J was a woman. in a society that trades women like property, i don't expect that a man would have written something so shrewd about the female condition.
in J, it is with great struggle that the man and woman procreate. they literally steal the knowledge from yahweh, and become "like god" in their ability to create life. the "knowledge" here is the same word as the "knew" describing sexual relations; it's probably not a mistake they discover their genitals in the process. and yahweh punishes them for it; perhaps because they're not ready for the responsibility -- as yahweh himself was not ready for the responsibility, as born out by his actions over the entire section of pre-covenant J. in P, we're simply given the command to procreate, with none of this hostility and betrayal between man and god.
this whole section contains quite a few symbols co-opted from polytheistic myths, such as the trees, life and knowledge, probably cribbing from asherah worship. asherah was a fertility goddess, whose "groves" or "trees" or "poles" were placed next to altars to yahweh in historical judah. the serpent is a common symbol for both evil and wisdom in surrounding cultures, here deprived of spiritual significance, except that he tells the truth when yahweh lies. combined with notions that woman>man>god, that yahweh was a liar, that yahweh could fail in being good enough for man, that man was essentially and fundamentally made of god, and that yahweh would actively try to keep man away from life ("the blessing"), J's account is biting heresy. i suspect that it was for the time, as some of this seems aimed specifically at the priesthood (perhaps the cherubim protecting the etz-chayim, the tree of life). P picks up again in genesis 5, and goes from adam to noah. it's likely that P meant to replace the narrative of cain and abel as well. so... why do we still have this part, alongside the more religiously proper revision, and not the other part?
i think because it's just such good writing, and so historically important as allegory and symbolism that it was hard to discard things we recognize as true: that our relationship with religion (and god) is troubled and doesn't satisfy us, that the genders are equal in some ways, and unequal in others. that knowledge comes with a cost, that there is pain in love, and that truth and comfort are frequently opposites. and, in the next chapter, the symbol of the second child being favored by yahweh is an important one historically. it's a common theme in J, and almost certainly relates to the second kingdom, judah, being favored over israel. it might also stem from child sacrifice. sacrificing the first child (as they sacrificed the first offspring of cattle in israel) in service of anath (asherah?), relating to yearly fertility rituals, brings us the baal cycle, where anath resurrects hadad after his fatal battle with mot (death)... and between killing your own firstborn son, and death and resurrection of a god who conquers death, celebrated every year around april... yeah, these symbols are still pretty relevant.
Edited by arachnophilia, : grammars
אָרַח
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