Sacred Texts: Second Creation Story

The second account of creation, which begins in Genesis 2:4, includes the familiar depiction of the planting of the garden of Eden and the forming of the first humans.

Pete Enns looks at the discrepancies between the creation stories of Genesis 1 and 2 and argues that there are four good reasons to carefully consider these differences.

oday, there is a significant paradigm shift taking place within the evangelical academy in its approach to understanding the identity of Adam. Due to a mixture of biblical and secular reasons, an increasing number of evangelical scholars are beginning to deny the supernatural creation of Adam. Genesis 2:4–25 clearly identifies Adam as the first man who was supernaturally created with no direct animal forbearers. The following paper offers an answer to the biblical and textual objections given by prominent theologians who reject this view of Adam.

When we turn to the second creation story in Gen 2:4b-25, the portrait of God is somewhat different. God gets “down and dirty” with creation, forming the human (adam) from the land or clay (adamah). God performs CPR on the newly formed lump of clay, breathing into the dirt-creature’s nostrils “the breath of life.” Like the crazed doctor who brings to life the lifeless Frankenstein in the film Young Frankenstein, we can imagine God exclaiming, “He’s alive! He’s alive!”

enesis is the first book of the Torah, which is in turn the first portion of the Jewish sacred texts known collectively as the Tanakh. Genesis has also been incorporated into the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. It tells of the origins of the universe and the earth and its plant and animal inhabitants. Genesis also carries the story of the ancient Hebrew people up to the time of Joseph. It is a central creation story for the religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This section focuses on the account of creation offered in the first few chapters of Genesis

God created a garden paradise on Earth and placed man in the midst of it. But what was life like in the center of God's abundant blessing? In this section of scripture, we learn about God's grace, His provision, His expectation for obedience, and we are introduced to His eternal promise to maintain relationship with His beloved creation.

If there are, in fact, two different perspectives narrating the creation story in Genesis 1-2, then it would strongly imply that there were two different authors or two different sources at play when the entire book of Genesis was being formally redacted into what we have today. If true, that would prove to be not only significant for the scholarly community, but would also significantly cast doubt over the religious community, who has believed in the traditional view of Mosaic authorship since it was penned.

Genesis 2: 4b-9, 15-25 - the second creation story

Genesis 2: The Second Story of Creation
By Mary Jane Chaignot

Scholars have debated for eons whether there is a connection between the first two chapters of Genesis. Regardless of the arguments, the fact is, these stories have been read together since the beginning of the Bible. The first one tells of the creation of the heavens and earth and focuses on God. The second part of verse 2:4 states that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, and put earth before the heavens. The next two chapters, then, will talk about the earth and focus on mankind.

When we put this story together with the story from chapter 1, we see that God is both transcendent and immanent. God is both big and out there and far away and creating with just a word, and God is in the dirt, working with God’s hands (with their hands?), like a potter, to form an earthling from the earth and breathing God’s own breath Spirit wind into the earthling so that they live. God is both transcendent and immanent.

In showing that the Universe had a beginning, science has come closer to the teachings of the Bible than ever before. Nevertheless, there is still a considerable distance between current scientific thought and the details of the biblical account of creation.

In the first story of Man’s creation (see below), God declares: “Let us (?) make Man in our (?) Image” (B’resheet 1:26). Besides the theological problems raised by the use of the plural (for instance, the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Tanakh generated in the Alexandrian community in the first century BCE, renders this in the singular due to the significant problems raised by “our Image”; see also Rashi ibid; note also the fascinating comment of Ramban here), there is a more “anthropological” issue here – what does it mean to be created in the Image of God? Indeed, not only in Chapter 1, but again at the beginning of the “begats” (Chapter 5), the Torah declares that God created Man in His Image. How do we understand this description?