A Search Question - How many Genesis Creation Accounts

I was teaching a Bible History history class last Wednesday night and someone asked when was it first proposed that Genesis contained 2 different creation accounts.

I have the Logos Platinum along with numerous additional resources. What search parameters would work with this question?

Thanks,

Ron

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Graham Criddle

Hi Ron

A Basic search across your whole library for "two NEAR accounts NEAR creation" will produce some interesting results which comment on this.

(There are some results which are not relevant but not too many to be able to focus in on what you are looking for)

Graham

MJ. Smith

I have the Logos Platinum along with numerous additional resources.

Do you mean among Christians or among Jews? I'd search for something that gave me the earliest Jewish hints of multi-source Torah.

T Gerold Castle

I was teaching a Bible History history class last Wednesday night and someone asked when was it first proposed that Genesis contained 2 different creation accounts.

I have the Logos Platinum along with numerous additional resources. What search parameters would work with this question?

Thanks,

Ron

What an interesting question!

Hi Ron

A Basic search across your whole library for "two NEAR accounts NEAR creation" will produce some interesting results which comment on this.

(There are some results which are not relevant but not too many to be able to focus in on what you are looking for)

Graham

And a very interesting search!!

Rosie Perera

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/181452#Comment_181452

You might want to search for "source criticism" with regard to the two creation accounts. For example, the very definition of "source criticism" in the Pocket Dictionary of Biblical Studies makes reference to them: "Source critics, for example, observe that Genesis 1–2:4a uses the name Elohim when referring to God, and is an orderly and tightly constructed account of creation, with the humans, male and female, being the climax of creation. In contrast, Genesis 2 uses Yahweh Elohim, is a story (not a day-by-day account) and has Adam being created first, then Eve. Thus source critics conclude that these two different accounts of creation derived from two different sources, the Priestly source (P) and the Yahwist source (J) respectively."

So a search for any of these might be frutiful:

"source criticism" NEAR creation
"source criticism" NEAR Genesis
Priestly NEAR Yahwist NEAR creation

A very relevant quote comes from The New Bible Commentary in its introductory article on The Composition of the Pentateuch:

"The ‘documentary hypothesis’ It all began with an interesting book written by a French doctor, J. Astruc in 1753. Astruc observed that in the early chapters of Genesis God is sometimes referred to as God and at others as ‘the Lord’. This suggested to him that at least two sources had been drawn on by Moses in the writing of Genesis. This was supported by the observation that there was duplication of material in Genesis (e.g. two accounts of creation in chs. 1 and 2)."

That pins the source criticism stream down in time pretty well. But that's not the first time anyone has tried to reconcile the two creation accounts.

There's an interesting tidbit in Bible Review 20:06 (Dec 2004) about "the medieval Jewish-Christian Lilith tradition, which tried to reconcile the two accounts of the creation of woman in Genesis 1 and 2. According to this legend, the woman created in Genesis 1:27 was Lilith, Adam’s first, rebellious wife; after Lilith left Adam, Eve was produced from his rib, as recounted in Genesis 2:21–22. Jealous, Lilith, with the help of the devil, shape-shifted into a serpent (albeit with her seductive face and hair intact and indistinguishable from Eve’s). She then returned to Eden to wreak her vengeance upon the new couple." More on this Lilith can be found in an article linked to from topics.logos.com: "What's the story on Lilith, Adam's 'first wife'?"

But even this medieval legend isn't the first time people have noticed the two creation accounts. In the entry on Adam and Eve in the Dictionary of New Testament Background, I found this:

"In Legum Allegoriae 1.31–42, 2.4, Philo addresses the crux interpretatum of two creation accounts (Gen 1:26–27; 2:7). He explains that the heavenly man of Genesis 1 represents both the superior mind (i.e., as an anthropological component) as well as the person who lives by reason (i.e., as an ethical category); the earthly man of Genesis 2 represents both the mortal mind, which may succumb to the flesh, and the person who has the capacity for either virtue or vice."

Philo dates from approximately the time of Christ; he was born ca. 20-25 BC, and died around 45-50 AD. (A "crux interpretatum" or more commonly "crux interpretum" is something difficult to interpret; the interpreters' torment. See http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/crux.)

Jeremy

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/181474#Comment_181474

Gen 2:5-6 in the New American Commentary has a nice little section on it. Do you have the Word Biblical Commentary? Or the Dictionary of the Old Testament Pentateuch? Or the IVP OT Bible Commentary?

Ronald Quick

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/181476#Comment_181476

Thanks for the help. This is exactly what I was looking for.

Ron