The Three Creation Stories: Genesis 1, Genesis 2, Science
Rabbi David Aaron
The unimaginable has occurred. Despite compulsory education in the United States, better than forty percent of the American public believes the biblical account of creation carries more truth than any “theory” science has to offer. We’ve seen these sentiments emerge in numerous forums concerned with public policy, whether among school boards seeking to slip Genesis-based “Creationism” based on Genesis into public school curricula, or legislatures (e.g., Kansas, Mississippi, etc.) proclaiming that the privilege of “theory” in science does not trump religiously derived forms of “knowledge.” The people supporting biblical creationism have learned to manipulate the language and methodology of science to parade faux proofs of the Hebrew Bible’s creation account. In Boone County, Kentucky, there will soon be a New Natural History Museum, which will explain all natural phenomena on the basis of verses in the Bible. On the one hand, these are the people chastising (secular) science for providing what they believe are nothing other than unverifiable theories about cosmology and evolution, while on the other hand they engage pseudo-scientific methods and terminology to demonstrate the veracity of the biblical account of the world’s origins—a bizarre fusion of mindsets.
Why is any of this important? For Liberal Jews, the understanding that our religion and our grasp of the world through science are not antagonistic dates back to the early 19th century. Our faith, our engagement with ritual, ethics, and our remarkable literature, all function to enrich our lives immeasurably. We have no reason to confuse the wisdom and life-meanings our Judaism offers us with a sense of reality grounded in scientific research. Since this clash between science and religion repeatedly emerges in debates on public policy and school curricula, liberal Jews need to be able to articulate confidently how religion and science have distinct purpose and deliver distinct forms of value in life, never requiring harmonization.
Science is about theory, and theories are born and toppled on the basis of a publicly transparent method of verifiability. Biblical literature reflects the imaginative creativity of its authors, people who could not have conceived of the effects of a ground lens before the eye, never mind the photographs of billions of galaxies now transmitted to earth daily by orbiting telescopes. Our literature reflects a view of the world commensurate to the author’s vision thereof—an altogether unscientific vision at that. We should never permit one generation’s myopia to limit another’s enhanced gaze.
The Bible, when it comes to all things related to origins, is fictional literature. Just because someone believes a story to represent a reasonable account of events past does not make it true. On this point, liberal Jews should feel confident and hold firm. There is every reason to believe that the biblical authors themselves understood their own creation accounts as distinct literary attempts to represent the unknown. The first two chapters of Genesis contain two discrete accounts of the world’s origins. One (ch.1) is systematically detailed as a six day creation process; the other is less concerned with time than with the climax of creation—humankind. Do the stories contradict one another? “Contradict” is too strong a de????ion. They are simply two distinct visions of the same “event.” The first chapter is very focused on the order—both in terms of sequence and in terms of creating order out of chaos. The second chapter is focused on situating humans within the natural domain so as to facilitate the inclusion of the Garden of Eden narrative.
Among the many goals of the editors who collated the stories in our Hebrew Bible was the preservation of stories and images that had cultural resonances for their readers. They did this without meaning to assert that one set of literary images captured truth better than some other set. On the other hand, the creation narrative in chapter one may be understood as a polemic against more mythologically charged creation stories, such as that related in Psalm 104—an account rich in visceral imagery that shares more in common with other ancient Near Eastern literatures than Genesis 1 or 2. While Psalm 104 does not contradict Genesis 1 in any formal sense, one might surmise the authors of Genesis 1 sought to distance the Jewish reader of their day from what they considered more controversial images. Genesis 1’s author did not know that Psalm 104 would eventually turn up in the anthology we know as the Hebrew Bible. He might have been astounded by the liberal attitudes toward creation myths that typified the literary choices of the masterminds behind the canonization process.
Many religionsts endeavor to harmonize Genesis 1 and 2 and other biblical creation imagery. This is akin to harmonizing a Shakespearean sonnet with a Walt Whitman poem, both of which tell of love’s origins. We all recognize the subject is the same; why would anyone seek to ruin the unique vision had by each? Our religious heritage is most rich and satisfying because it has preserved diverse images of what brings us wonder and fascination in nature. Our goal should be to let each voice from the past speak in its own unique vocabulary and cadence, as we celebrate each generation’s attempt to place in words the sublime mystery of the universe. As we gaze now and again through our telescopes and study the computer generated images of the universe on our LCD screens, we’ll gladly marvel at the glory of the heavens and shout out before the dark abyss, halleluyah—the very word our tradition gave us for such awe inspiring moments.

A Midrashic Reading
Professor Judith Baskin
Most modern readers agree that the first two chapters of Genesis contain divergent versions of human creation. In Genesis 1-2:4, an unspecified number of unnamed human creatures, male and female, are simultaneously created by God's word, in the divine image and likeness (Gen 1:26-27). In this sophisticated monotheistic narrative, credited to the Priestly source of Torah traditions, human beings constitute the ultimate act of God's creation of “Heaven and earth and all their array (2:1).
The second narrative, attributed to the Yahwist writer, describes how the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the earth and animated him with the breath of life (Gen 2:7). Noticing the man's solitary state and proposing to make a companion for him, the Lord God formed all the beasts and birds. Although the man named these creatures, he found no appropriate partner among them. Only after the Lord God formed a woman from the sleeping man’s rib, did Adam proclaim this female being to be “Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh/ This one shall be called woman, for from man was she taken” (Gen. 2:23). Here the biblical redactor editorializes, “Hence a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, so that they become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). Only after the episode of human disobedience, which led to the expulsion from the primordial garden, did the man name his “fitting helper” Eve. In a folk etymology, the biblical editor connects the name Eve (Havah) with the word for life (hai), explaining, The man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all the living (Gen. 3:20).
Modern scholarship has debated the origins and purposes of these two Genesis cosmologies which biblical redactors conflated at some point into one continuous narrative. The stories were clearly seen as complementary rather than contradictory, since each account provided information about the deity, the relationship between men and women, and the nature of the human condition which is absent in the other. The effort to merge these contrary texts into one seamless whole is evident in Genesis 5:1-2: “This is the record of Adam's line./ When God created humanity He made it in the likeness of God; male and female He created them. And when they were created, He blessed them and called them adam.”
Rabbinic midrash also understood these separate creation stories as one continuous narrative. Most rabbinic interpreters assumed that the male and female created in the divine image in Genesis 1 were the Adam and Eve of Genesis 2:4-3. Nevertheless, questions concerning the Torah’s contradictory details about human creation remained: Were both men and women created simultaneously in the divine image? Was woman a later and essentially lesser creation? What was the first human creature like? Are two different women being referred to in these juxtaposed narratives?
Most of the rabbis doubted that men and women were created simultaneously in the Divine image. Almost all insisted that the first woman was formed later, as described in Genesis 2:4 ff. The midrash collection Genesis Rabbah preserves the compromise position that initially God created one androgynous entity with both male and female characteristics (8:1). Only afterwards, when God separated the female “side,” from the essentially male body, was the first woman formed. This midrash stresses male primacy but also makes the powerful point that man and woman were initially created as a united being. They only revert to full humanity when they become “One flesh” (Gen. 2:24) in marriage.
Several rabbinic passages resolve the difficulties in the biblical text by suggesting that there were two female creations: a “first Eve” of Genesis 1, who rejected Adam, and a replacement, the woman formed from Adam’s body in Genesis 2 (Genesis Rabbah 17:7, 18:4, 22:7). This legend was later combined with ancient popular traditions about the night spirit Lilith. In the Alphabet of Ben Sira (eighth century CE), a collection of Jewish folk tales, Lilith's rebelliousness is attributed to her equal creation with Adam. This powerful woman preferred to become a demon rather than endure Adam’s domination. In response, God created the second Eve from Adam’s rib to ensure women’s acceptance of a subservient role.

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