User:PiCo/sandbox
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Suggestions for Creation in Genesis
I'll paste the Authorship section in here (again!) in italics, and add my comments on why I think it's inadequate. This should serve as a basis for general discussion.
AUTHORSHIP
According to Jewish tradition the first 5 books of the Bible, including Genesis, were written by Moses. This Mosaic authorship tradition was adopted by the earliest Christians and is still held as dogma by some Jews and many evangelical Christians[1].
This is true, but it's a view with no support whatsoever among mainstream biblical scholars. I want this section to be based on scholarly works, not popular ones - we need to let readers know the most likely ideas on authorship, not the most popular. On the other hand, I want to keep a reference to Mosaic authorship, but in the later sections where we'll discuss the theology of Genesis Creation - Creationism is a popular belief, and depends very much on Mosaic authorship (God is supposed to have revealed the authenticity of Creation to Moses, hence the validity of a literal approach to Genesis 1-11). Incidentally, "dogma" is a Catholic term - Jews and Evangelicals don't have dogmas.
By the late 18th century higher criticism led biblical scholars to hypothesize that the entire Pentateuch was composed in the 5th century BC by an author using four source documents. Modern Biblical scholars, reflecting this source criticism, frequently speak of Genesis 1 as the Priestly (or "P") creation story and Genesis 2 as the Yahwist ("J" or "Y", the J reflecting the German spelling of the name Yahweh). The remaining two sources, not represented in the Genesis creation account, are called the Elohist ("E") and Deuteronomist ("D"), and the 5th-century creator of the final work is known as the Redactor ("R"), meaning editor. The most influential version of the documentary hypothesis was put forward by Julius Wellhausen in a series of books in the last decades of the 19th century. Wellhausen's dates for the creation stories in Genesis were: Genesis 1 (the Priestly story), c.950 BC; and Genesis 2 (the Yahwist), c. 550 BC.[2]
This is probably a bit too long-winded - I should know, I wrote it. It's also thoroughly misleading - the documentary hypothesis isn't terribly widely held these days. That's why I want to talk about Van Seters, Rendtorff, and others - we need to avoid misleading people about this. (Incidentally, the fall of the DH hasn't meant the rise of Mosaic authorship - not even Gordon Wenham is arguing for Moses).
Single vs. dual account Some scholars believe that the Genesis account is a single report of creation, which is divided into two parts, written from different perspectives: the first part, from Genesis 1:1–2:3, describes the creation of the Earth from God's perspective; the second part, from Genesis 2:4-24, describes the creation of the Garden of Eden from Humanity's perspective. One such scholar wrote, "[T]he strictly complementary nature of the accounts is plain enough: Genesis 1 mentions the creation of man as the last of a series, and without any details, whereas in Genesis 2 man is the center of interest and more specific details are given about him and his setting" (Kitchen 116-117).
I cringe every time I see Kitchen cited as an authority. He'd popular among fundamentalists and Evangelicals, but he's regarded with distaste by mainstream scholars, because he "cooks the books" (uses arguments he must know to be dishonest, such as ignoring scholarship that doesn't suit his views), and is incredibly vituperative and intemperate in print. Apart from that, this one-account/two-account argument simply isn't entered into by scholars - it's accepted that Genesis1-2 is both one and two accounts, simultaneously. We need to reflect the subtleties of modern scholarship.
Other scholars, particularly those ascribing to textual criticism and the Documentary hypothesis, believe that the first two chapters of Genesis are two separate accounts of the creation. (They agree that the "first chapter" should include the first three verses and the first half of the fourth verse of chapter 2.) One such scholar wrote: "The book of Genesis, like the other books of the Hexateuch, was not the production of one author. A definite plan may be traced in the book, but the structure of the work forbids us to consider it as the production of one writer." (Spurell xv). For some religious writers, such as Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, the existence of two separate creation stories is beyond doubt, and thus needs to be interpreted as having divine importance.[citation needed]
This reads very oddly. All scholars subscribe to textual criticism - which is the comparison of texts to determine correct readings. Whoever wrote this has confused textual criticism with higher criticism. Not that it matters, since all scholars "subscribe" to higher criticism as well. And as I've pointed out above, not all scholars subscribe to the documentary hypothesis, by a long chalk.
Order of events The earlier version appears in (Genesis 1:1—2:3} and key items follow this order of creation: # plants; # marine animals, birds; # land animals; # humans (man and woman together) (Genesis 1:20—27).
The second account begins with (Genesis 2:4} wherein key items of creation appear in this order: # man (not woman); # plants; # land animals and birds (marine animals are omitted but omission is not a contradiction and the order of birds and beasts is not stated as being on separate days unlike chapter 1); # and, when no "help meet for [fit for, corresponding to] him" is found, woman (Genesis 2:7, 9, 18 – 22).[3]
This goes into too much detail - the same thing can be said in a single line. Incidentally, I wouldn't quote Isaac Asimov as an authority - he's not a biblical scholar.
Names of God The first section exclusively refers to God as Elohim, whereas the second exclusively uses the composite name Yahweh Elohim (the former word is often translated "LORD").
Single account advocates assert that Hebrew scriptures use different names for God throughout, depending on the characteristics of God which the author wished to emphasize. They argue that across the Hebrew scriptures, the use of Elohim in the first segment suggests "strength," focusing on God as the mighty Creator of the universe, while the use of Yahweh in the second segment suggested moral and spiritual natures of deity, particularly in relationship to the man.[4]
Dual account advocates assert that the two segments using different words for God indicates different authorship and two distinct narratives, in accord with the Documentary hypothesis.
Again, this takes far too many words to make a simple point.
Writing style Though not so obvious in translation, the Hebrew text of the two sections differ both in the type of words used and in stylistic qualities. The first section flows smoothly, whereas the second is more interested in pointing out side details, and does so in a more point of fact style.[citation needed] One of the principles of textual criticism is that large differences in the type of words used, and in the stylistic qualities of the text, should be taken as support for the existence of two different authors. Proponents of the two-account hypothesis point to the attempts (e.g., The Book of J, by Harold Bloom, translated by David Rosenberg) to separate the various authors of the Torah claimed by the Documentary Hypothesis into distinct and sometimes contradictory accounts.[citation needed]
I have no idea what this paragraph is trying to say - the DH does take "style" as a marker of different sources, but this isn't what's meant by the word.
Proponents of the single account argue that style differences need not be indicative of multiple authors, but may simply indicate the purpose of different passages. For example, Kenneth Kitchen, a retired Archaeology Professor of the University of Liverpool, has argued (1966) that stylistic differences are meaningless, and reflect different subject matter. He supports this with the evidence of a biographical inscription of an Egyptian official in 2400 B.C., which reflects at least four different styles, but which is uniformly supposed to possess unity of authorship.[citation needed] Kitchen is quite right, but he's not the authority to quote - R.N. Whybray wrote the definitive book on this subject. But again, this is taking far too long to say something really quite simple.
And above all, we need to deal with more than authorship. We need to deal with structure - the structure of Genesis 1 is quite amazing, and it continues all the way through the primeval history (Genesis 1-11), one of the most highly structured pieces of prose I know of. And we need to get away from this obsession with whether Genesis is the work of one author or two (or four, or whatever). For scholars, that argument is settled - the Torah had multiple authors. We need to make this clear. We also need to make clear that the documentary hypothesis is yesterday's theory. And we need to move the discussion of Mosaic authorship to a new section on theology, because Genesis is, above all else, a work about God, not geology.
