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Author Topic:   Genesis 1 vs. Genesis 2
arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1343 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 24 of 149 (146336)
09-30-2004 9:25 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by dpardo
09-30-2004 12:28 PM


i first assumed the general to specific idea, but it doesn't work.
for starters, genesis 1 and 2 are about the same length, covering the same thing. first, let's get our stories straight. the christian numbering system messed up here.
the story we're calling "chapter one" here goes from 1:1 ("When Eloyhim began to create the heavens and the earth...") to the middle 2:4 ("...Such is the story of heaven and earth when they were created.") see how the two verse serve as bookends to the story?
the story we're calling "chapter two" goes from the middle of 2:4 ("When YHVH Eloyhim made earth and heaven...") and actually goes to the end of chapter four as almost one complete story, but we're gonna break it off at 2:24 ("Hence a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, so that they become one flesh").
so let's look at the obvious differences. the first account tells us the creation of everything, as made obvious by the end of the story. the second story tells the creation of the earth only, and only mentions that god made the heavens as well. we're not told how god made the earth, or the heavens, or anything but man -- out of dust. the first account has god creating man out of thin air, by speaking. the second has him physically making man with his own hands. both contain the idea that we have something of god in us: in two it's the breath, and in one it's the image.
as pointed out before, genesis 1 says that man and woman were created at one time, male and female just like god. but genesis 2 seeks to explain the origins of marriage, why man and woman are destined to become one flesh: woman was taken from man. this idea appears nowhere in chapter one.
the two stories even refer to god different. one by name, the other as god, informally.
ok, now check this out. i assume you know the order of creation in the first story. animals and plants come before man.
quote:
When the LORD God made earth and heaven (when no shrub of the field was yet on the earth and no grasses of the field had yet sprouted, because the LORD God had not sent rain upon the earth and there was no man to till the soil, but a flow of would well up from the ground and water the whole surface of the earth) the LORD God formed 'Adam from the dust of the earth. He blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being/
read that again. no grasses, no plants, only adam. adam is alone. at this point there is no garden, and certainly no animals. i know that because the next verse go on to describe the creation of eden, which is not mentioned at all in chapter one.
quote:
The LORD God said, "It is not good for man to be alone; I will make a fitting helper for him." And the LORD God formed out of the earth all the wild beasts and all the birds of the sky, and brought them to man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that would be its name.
then it says no animal was good company for adam, so god creates another human being (eve) from adam's own body, and he seems to be happy with that. but notice that animals were made for adam in this account, where in chapter one they were made in preparation for adam. same with plants.
so yes, there is a conflict.

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 Message 1 by dpardo, posted 09-30-2004 12:28 PM dpardo has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 28 by dpardo, posted 10-01-2004 3:03 PM arachnophilia has replied

arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1343 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 39 of 149 (146589)
10-01-2004 6:15 PM
Reply to: Message 28 by dpardo
10-01-2004 3:03 PM


It does work.
you seem to have failed to understand the idea, since my post was written in the general > specific form.
first was the general idea of the fact that it doesn't work, and then came the explanation of exactly why. answering the general statement simply, with little to no refutations of the actual points is not going to work.
27 "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."
The verse above simply states that he created them
yes. it does. at the same time. it says he created man and woman in the image of god. chapter two says that he created man, and then created woman in the image of man.
please do go back and read the rest of my post. i wrote it for a reason, and it does fit the text. i've been interested in this and studying this for quite some time. such a simple answer is almost insulting, especially when i stated that my original conclusion was the same and gave the reasons i had for changing it.

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 Message 28 by dpardo, posted 10-01-2004 3:03 PM dpardo has replied

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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1343 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 41 of 149 (146604)
10-01-2004 6:40 PM
Reply to: Message 40 by dpardo
10-01-2004 6:19 PM


thank you.

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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1343 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 44 of 149 (146690)
10-02-2004 2:38 AM
Reply to: Message 43 by Amlodhi
10-02-2004 12:35 AM


i'm not sure i understand the midrash at end. it simply does not follow from the text at all. i recognize that rabbi soloveitchik has a need to preserve the holiness of the text, but i think in this case the religious opinion outweighs the actual textual evidence.
if he is speaking of two distinct adams, it simply makes no sense. which do the hebrew people trace their origin to? and why two accounts?
the general-to-specific framework works better here: the first story never refers to adam by name, and is much more general in the details, so it could be read that god creates all man (plural?) and then the second account tells the specifics of just adam and eve. this would fit with the apparent existance of other human beings not related to adam (genesis 4).
however, as i pointed out before, there are a number of problems with that view two. genesis two does say there's nothing on the whole earth when adam is made.
the evidence is very strong that these are two completely independent accounts, and the person(s) who complied genesis saw reason to include both, but did not care about their contradictions. it's possible both came be viewed as sacred accounts independently, thus their inclusion, or both convey different but important messages.
i'm certain midrashim can be found that support this and other views. but the rabbi is right here: it only seems to be modern peoples that have a problem with this.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 43 by Amlodhi, posted 10-02-2004 12:35 AM Amlodhi has replied

Replies to this message:
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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1343 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 46 of 149 (146704)
10-02-2004 6:33 AM
Reply to: Message 45 by Amlodhi
10-02-2004 3:12 AM


I'm quite sure that I don't understand it.
lol.
It was, rather, to drive home the point that with such powerful tools of rationalization available to them, the Jewish compilers and redactors would likely not even blink at such a trivial matter as conflicting accounts.
well, yes, i knew that. like i said, it was not really problem to people who chose to include both, obviously. consistency was not their goal, so we shouldn't pay attention to it in a consistency-checking manner. they included both stories each for some other purpose and we should pay attention to that. but it does tell us that they did't care about accuracy or detail, and so we should sort of take it with a grain of salt. there are other forms of truth to be found in these passages.
P.S. Though I know some will disagree, I second your opinion (message 112, Origin of God's word) on the earlier origin of most of the Genesis text.
from reading the text, i think it fits pretty well. the problem is that we can only really date the text in its present form. unless we can reasonably show which bits were added. but i think it's fairly obvious from the structure, and differences in passages, that genesis is made up of a number of different sources, and i don't think it's wrong to assume that they weren't all written at once.

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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1343 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 65 of 149 (146938)
10-03-2004 4:36 AM
Reply to: Message 54 by dpardo
10-02-2004 7:53 PM


It does not state that he created them at the same time. You are interpreting that.
let's break it down, in simple english.
god created man in his own image. god made man male and female.
how does this say they were created seperately? it doesn't say woman was made from man, it says god created man: male AND female.
it's not an interpretation.

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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1343 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 66 of 149 (146939)
10-03-2004 4:39 AM
Reply to: Message 64 by Cold Foreign Object
10-03-2004 1:10 AM


but he will flood you with rhetoric/misuse of logic to support his evolutionary rendering.
how is it evolutionary in the slightest?
and look up what an emendation is, they're been doing it for thousands of years. it's why "YHVH" is read "adonai" for instance.

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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1343 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 69 of 149 (146944)
10-03-2004 5:12 AM
Reply to: Message 50 by doctrbill
10-02-2004 3:34 PM


The Hebrew word adam (man) appears in both accounts but is untranslated in the second.
i guess this is a point of debate, and i'll let you and amlodhi duke it out. he knows a lot better than i do.
but it wasn't especially important to my point, seeing as how most of my post was arguing against that very point.
Some say that the word itself, which comes from a term denoting red-colored earth, is utilized as a pun in the second chapter, and might be interpreted, tongue-in-cheek, as - Earth Man.
it's bits like this that make the bible interesting.
The Bible never refers to planet earth, so this 'earth' should be taken to mean land, and the Hebrew term is frequently translated that way. Then again, even in the first chapter, we cannot assume that the writers imagined the 'earth' as a
planet. Notice that the water under the firmament is gathered into one place" and "dry land" appears (vs. 9). "God called the dry land Earth;" and he called the water "Seas." Thus: Seas are not a part of Earth. Clearly not a vision of planet earth.
will it help is i describe the traditional understand of the hebrew world?
the major difference is that it's flat. curved over the top is the sky (the firmament keeping out the waters of heaven), and underneath is a great well. the whole land is supported by four pillars, and surrounded by seas.
but no, they were clearly not thinking globe, and the water is not included. however, i do not think it wrong to say that they mean ALL the land when they say earth.
In order to understand the creation story, we must dumb down to the level of Bronze Age 'science.'
i wouldn't call it science, but i agree. it's good to take it in context. however, i think it can still be read as meaningul (if inaccurate) with modern sensibilities.
I believe the first chapter is about the origin of the universe (as the ancients imagined it to be), while the second chapter is about the origin of Hebrew ancestors.
i suppose that is an agreeable conclusion, at least in terms of what each story is concerned with.
Think about it. I believe you will find that it explains discrepancies and obviates the need to correlate these two clearly different accounts of creation.
well, no it doesn't explain the discrepancies at all. but i don't especially have a need to correlate the stories. one tells us one thing, the other something completely separate.
yes, they do bear similarity in some regards to other mesopotamian myths. i've even heard that adam may be a mangled version of a sumerian king's name. there's other similarities like the lengths of lives compared the records of king's rules: both lengthened beyond reason to appeal to greatness. no one is arguing that genesis is no distinctly mesopotamian. (although some argue that parts are quite babylonian)

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Replies to this message:
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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1343 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 83 of 149 (147113)
10-04-2004 3:04 AM
Reply to: Message 73 by doctrbill
10-03-2004 12:34 PM


But then, of course, Babylonian is Mesopotamian.
yes, i meant in particular, beyond the notion of common cultural background.
This is not an opinion which I am prepared to argue further but if you explore the uses of "foundation" in the old King James Bible you may begin to understand why, as much as I like the graphic representations of it, I am increasingly skeptical of that old interpretation. It is, I believe, a matter of physical versus spiritual interpretation.
agreed, good points.
but the rest of the model stands. i see no reason to assume that "earth" refers to anything other than all of the land in genesis 1. the case may well be different for genesis 2, since the story seems more concerned with hebrew origins in particular.
Doesn't that explain the discrepancies then? The explanation being: as you say, that they are telling us two completely separate stories.
well, yes, but we can't possibly look on it and claim that genesis provides an accurate and complete picture of what actually happened. the authors and redactors didn't seem overly concerned with the details.

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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1343 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 99 of 149 (148952)
10-10-2004 5:59 PM
Reply to: Message 98 by crashfrog
10-10-2004 1:12 PM


this what i love about literalists: they're only literal when it supports their opinions. i don't believe the bible literally, but i seem to read it more literally than they do.
yes, there's a contradiction there. personally, i don't have any problems with it, because i could care less about the details. both stories are trying to tell us something, and both have a sightly different focus. if i'm forced to side with one story over the other, it'll be genesis 2.

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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1343 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 100 of 149 (148953)
10-10-2004 6:02 PM
Reply to: Message 97 by BobAliceEve
10-10-2004 11:51 AM


Re: No contradiction
It seems to me that Genesis 1 is speaking of the design phase of a project and Genesis 2 is speaking of the implementation phase of the same project. If so, then this is one consistent project.
if that's a good reading, which it's not, then god didn't follow through on his plan. it's not one consistent project.
it's NOT a good reading because the first story actually says that god creates, not plans to create. the creation of man is described twice within two chapter, and it's done two completely different ways. why is it such a jump to think that they're to unrelated stories?
especially knowing that first nearly duplicates a babylonian creation myth, and textually dates much later because of its style and the way it refers to god.

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 Message 97 by BobAliceEve, posted 10-10-2004 11:51 AM BobAliceEve has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 101 by BobAliceEve, posted 10-10-2004 7:55 PM arachnophilia has replied

arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1343 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 107 of 149 (148994)
10-11-2004 2:51 AM
Reply to: Message 101 by BobAliceEve
10-10-2004 7:55 PM


Re: No contradiction
Would you agree that the first five verses of chapter two refer to the verses in chapter one?
no. you'd have to see a previous post i think i made in this thread. when i refer to "chapter one" i mean genesis 1:1-2:4 (halfway through the verse). by "chapter two" i mean genesis 2:4-2:24, although the story actually continues on until the end of the chapter four.
the dividing point is here:
quote:
Genesis 2:4:
Such is the story of heaven and earth when they were created.
***
When the LORD God made the earth and heaven --
would you agree that verse five says "...every plant of the field before it was in the earth..."
i think i posted my translation above somewhere. i'll refrain from doign it again, but the message is a little more clear than king james english. it says that when god made man, there were no plants of the field.
We agree that they were created in chapter one so they must have been "created" somewhere else since they were not yet created "in the earth"? And, logically, if there were no plants then there were probably no animals yet in the earth? So they also were created somewhere else before they were created "in the earth"?
no, i would not agree at all. to be fair, there is a far better way of reconciling the two texts. genesis 2 says "of the field" and is probably concerned with agriculture ("no man to till the soil"). genesis 1 is concerned with everything.
however, this is still a naive way of reading the bible. the two stories are clearly in opposition, stylistically, chronologically, and theologically.
Knowing God as a powerful being, I would argue that it is reasonable that God's design process would be like an engineer's making a mock-up but it would be different in that God simply created the real thing somewhere else then recreated it "in the earth".
so there's a mock-up earth somewhere?
listen, you're reading it wrong. "earth" does not mean the planet earth. this is a bad english reading of it. a better translation would be "land" since it is only concerned with the land and not the water.
and besides, genesis 1 talks about the earth sprouting the vegetation, so you're still wrong.

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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1343 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 114 of 149 (149015)
10-11-2004 3:48 AM
Reply to: Message 108 by JasonChin
10-11-2004 3:11 AM


actually, i know several people on this board that might make that claim.>>
Unless you count God as an individual, I've never heard anyone claim this.
thus the joke. it clearly doesn't hold up to analysis, does it?
no, the two running examples we've used, homer and shakespeare, are questioned ALL the time. and shakespeare's hardly ancient.>>
There's minor speculation, but never the HELLBENT attempt to disprove traditional authorship.
um, actually. yes. and it's well accepted in the academic community that shakespeare plaigarized. turns out he just wrote great poetry and prose in his plays, not the plots themselves. the plot he borrowed from other sources. i cited one above, "hamlet" by kyd.
similarly, "the lion king" is great animation, but the plot was lifted from shakespeare's version of hamlet.
You said earlier that most flood myths involve a man told by the dvine to build an ark, take life aboard with him and repopulate the Earth. That's clearly based on the same story.
a good portion of them, yes. some involve the equivalent of submarines, some involve fleeing to the mountains that don't get covered. and some, well, some just destory everything and start again.
the idea of them being based on some real event is not absurd. the idea of it actually being a global flood is.
wow. every culture has a creation myth too, where a god or gods creates almost everything.>>
Which I claim as a real event too, so you only hurt your own argument by bringing this up.
well, yes, presumably we came into existance at some point. how do you know which account is true?
there's a sort of collective conciousness thing that goes on with mankind. at one time, people all over the world were making fat little women idols, with somethign covering their heads and usually more than two breasts. did anyone like this really exist?
If the story's comedic, it's clearly not intended to be taken literally.
clearly. i find it funny. don't you? i think you're missing a lot if you fail to see the humor in it.

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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1343 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 115 of 149 (149020)
10-11-2004 3:55 AM
Reply to: Message 112 by JasonChin
10-11-2004 3:32 AM


Re: Minor?
Let me get this straight..........he thought himself worthy to WRITE sacred texts which CONTRADICT other sacred texts.........but not to DELETE sacred texts?
no. for the thousanth time.
genesis is a compilation, not originally a sacred text in and of itself. the "author" of genesis had at least 2, probably 3 sources which were merged into a single text during some unifying period of hebrew history, in order to preserve existing tradition. the best candidate for this time would be during or slightly after the babylonian exile. this explains the babylonian influences.
genesis is the work of an editor or redactor. essentially a scribe who compiled texts. this person did not write any of the texts which he compiled, merely copied them.
also, according to jewish tradition, hashem, the name of the lord, may not be erased once written. so, no, he couldn't have deleted any of it.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 112 by JasonChin, posted 10-11-2004 3:32 AM JasonChin has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 119 by JasonChin, posted 10-11-2004 4:38 AM arachnophilia has replied

arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1343 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 116 of 149 (149021)
10-11-2004 3:57 AM
Reply to: Message 111 by JasonChin
10-11-2004 3:27 AM


Re: Minor?
Shakespeare's work was artistic, not ancient and venerated like Homer, Aristotle and the Bible.
been to an english department at a university lately?
also, i've heard thoughts that shakespeare himself might have been responsible for the english wordings in the king james version of the psalms.

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