Differing Conceptions of the Divine Creator

The very beginning of the Bible presents one of the clearest pieces of evidence that the Torah is composed of various sources, more or less complete, written documents that have been woven together to comprise the text that we now have. Some readers know this theory well, and may have accepted it, perhaps incorporating one of the many models that this site has outlined about how such ideas might be integrated into Judaism. For others, this theory is more novel, or its basis is unclear.

The Sources of the Creation Stories

I begin with a simple question: According to Genesis, in what order were the land animals, man, and women created? This “simple” question has two different answers. According to Genesis 1:24-27, God creates the land animals (vv. 24-25), and then man and woman (vv. 26-27). However, in Genesis 2:7, God creates man, and then in v. 19 creates animals, and in v. 22 creates woman. Thus, the commonly heard idea that Genesis 2 is an elaboration upon Genesis 1, filling in various details, does not work—the two accounts tell different stories.

This initial observation raises two other questions: Where is the dividing line between the two stories, and are there other pieces of evidence that suggest that these initial chapters are composed of two separate accounts? I will deal with these questions in order.

Literary Closure

Literary studies uses the term “closure” to express the feeling that readers get when they are done with a piece of literature; writers attempt to offer a sense of closure at the end of a book or a unit, such as a chapter or a poem. Some simple ways to express closure are by writing “the end,” by using lots of white space (already found in the Dead Sea Scrolls), or by killing off a main character (see e.g. the end of Genesis or of the Torah or Joshua).

Another way is to enclose the unit through an inclusio (also called an inclusion or envelope structure), where the beginning and end repeat or mirror each other. In traditional Jewish commentary, this is called chatimah me’ein petichah. For example, Psalm 8 (after the superscription of title) opens and closes with identical words:

^{תהלים ח:ב/י} יְ־הֹוָה אֲדֹנֵינוּ מָה אַדִּיר שִׁמְךָ בְּכׇל הָאָרֶץ...

^{Ps 8:2/10} O YHWH, our Lord, How majestic is Your name throughout the earth...

The identical wording frames the composition and marks it is a unit. The tower of Babel story is similar: It opens with the words “the whole land was” וַיְהִי כׇל הָאָרֶץ (Gen 11:1) and closes with “upon the whole land was” עַל פְּנֵי כׇּל הָאָרֶץ (v. 9), delimiting a literary unit; this is confirmed by the content of vv. 1-9.

Similarly, the first half of Genesis 2:4 reads:

^{בראשית ב:ד} אֵלֶּה תוֹלְדוֹת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְהָאָרֶץ בְּהִבָּרְאָם...

^{Gen 2:4} Such is the story of heaven and earth when they were created...

This hearkens back to Genesis 1:1:

^א:א בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ.

^1:1 When God began to create heaven and earth,

The boundaries of the story are marked through the verbal repletion, the inclusio.

Once this is established, several significant differences between the stories emerge. God in the first story is consistently called elohim, while in the second God is called YHWH elohim. The first story is highly structured, full of repeated phrases (e.g. “God saw that this was good”; “there was evening, there was morning, day x”) while the second has a more meandering structure. Indeed, the second story does not even recognize “days” of creation.

The word bara’ ב.ר.א, usually translated “to create,” characterizes the first story, but is absent from the second. For example, in 1:27, the first human couple (or perhaps humanity as a whole, depending on how ’adam should be translated^[1]) is “created” ב.ר.א, while in 2:7 the first male is “formed” י.צ.ר. The first story assumes that people are ready to procreate as soon as they were created (1:28, “be fruitful and multiply”), while in the second story, they only gain sexual knowledge after eating of the tree. The first story is really about the creation of the world; the second about the creation of humanity.

If you look further, you will see other vocabulary and stylistic differences between the stories, and will understand better why scholars refer to Genesis 1:1-2:4a as “the first creation story,” and to the account that begins in 2:4b as “the second creation story.” Once these stories have been separated and delimited, it is possible to examine each story on its own terms. (Of course, such an examination does not preclude the possibility of also looking at the text as we now have it, with both stories edited, redacted or compiled together.)

Two Different Conceptions of the Divine Creator

The nature of the God of the first creation story is well-expressed in Psalm 148:

^{תהלים קמח:ה} יְהַלְלוּ אֶת שֵׁם יְ־הֹוָה כִּי הוּא צִוָּה וְנִבְרָאוּ.

^{Ps 148:5} Let them praise the name of YHWH, for it was He who commanded that they be created.

God is extremely powerful, and His (yes—this God is masculine) words cause the primordial chaos (see 1:1-2) to restructure itself into the well-organized world that we know, where everything occupies its proper place. Although powerful, He has a divine council with whom He sometimes deliberates, as made clear in the plural “let us make” נַעֲשֶׂה in 1:26.^[2] This suggests that God is king—it is kings who have such advisors, and engage in massive building projects.

“Good” טוֹב is a theme word of this account—a good God creates a good world; the story, for example, narrates how God first creates foodstuffs, and then the animals who will eat them (vv. 29-30). Creation is highly symmetrical and well organized. This God also looks far ahead and thinks about Israel, creating the Shabbat already as part of creation, even though its full meaning will not become evident until it is assigned as a “sign” (אות) and “covenant” (ברית) between God and Israel in Exodus.

Genesis 2:4b depicts a very different God. He is not king, but much more parent-like and personal. He walks the garden (3:8) and talks to people (3:9-19)—this is unimaginable for the royal, distant, powerful God of the first story. He makes mistakes. First He thinks that land animals or birds might be suitable mates for the man (2:19). Then He makes the same error of all young-parents—He does not know how to define limits, and says “You can do everything but this,” not realizing that all children will of course gravitate to “this,” here, eating of the tree. But God remains parental, for example, replacing the primordial couple’s fig-leaf with a more permanent, leather garment, dressing them Himself (3:21). Kings never do that to their subjects!

Focus on the term “image of God” צֶלֶם אֱלֹהִים brings out an irony and a further difference between the two stories. Although there is much debate in classical commentary about the meaning of this term, in the Bible, “image” צֶלֶם is always used to mean a physical, three-dimensional, “plastic” representation. Thus, this phrase in Genesis 1 suggests that people look like God, a notion also found in Ezekiel’s heavenly vision in 1:26. Nevertheless, the rest of the Genesis 1 depicts God as most un-human like.

This is clearest in the use of the verb “create” ב.ר.א for divine creation. The second creation story uses verbs like “made” ע.שׂ.ה and “made” י.צ.ר, which are also used of humans, suggesting that in some way God’s creation is analogous to, or contiguous with, human acts of creation and building and forming and making. In contrast, the verb “create” only has God as its subject, and is a way of expressing that the creation by God is completely different than any human building endeavor (and that is why many commentators understand the term as referring to creation ex nihilo יש מאין, which humans can certainly not do—this is possible, but not certain).

This presents a wonderful irony concerning the first creation story, which depicts a God who has a human form, but acts in a way that is most unlike humans—an image which strongly contrasts with the anthropomorphic God of the second creation story.

Where from Here?

The two creation stories that introduce the Bible introduce two long narratives that continue throughout much of the Torah. The different conceptions developed in the initial story continue—a rather human-like God versus a majestic and distant deity. Still other sources introduce other depictions of the divine, making the Torah, and the Bible as a whole, a polyphonic text—a work that speaks in many voices.^[3]

I think that this is the strength of the Bible rather than a weakness. Different people relate to one or another of these divine portraits—some of us are drawn to an approachable God, and being that is more be like us, while for others, a majestic, distant deity is more “Godlike.” Sometimes this can even shift with time and need—the very same person may sometimes need to connect to a God who walks about the Garden at the breezy time of the day (Gen 3:8), while at other times they may need to connect to a God who insists that all is ordered and in its place, good, indeed very good.

Post-biblical Judaism used interpretation to discover different images for God in the Bible—no two commentators or philosophers shared identical images of what God was like. But this inability to pin God down, to create one single, uniform, univocal image of God already has strong roots in the biblical text itself.