If one is asked to envision the Biblical creation story and the dawn of man, it is likely the tale of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden that comes to mind. It is undoubtedly one of the most famous, recognizable, and popular Biblical tales that has infiltrated pop culture. The story has had a wide-reaching social impact on the lands and societies shaped by Biblical teachings, for ancient and medieval minded readers would argue that the account of Adam and Eve implies a social hierarchy, where Man was made first and Woman was created last, only for the female sex to become the original source of human sin and temptation. This tale has been used to explain, defend and excuse the human tendency for men to dominate leadership positions in society. But what if I told you that there was another Genesis creation story in the Bible, one in which man and woman were made equally, on the same day, and without prejudice based on the anatomy of the human being. That tale exists. In fact, it is in the very first passages of Genesis and precedes the contrasting story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
Before we discuss the actual creation stories, a brief discussion on the Biblical texts and their authors and editors would be enlightening. The Bible is a complicated book, to say the least. Written, compiled, expanded, emended, and edited over many hundreds of years, the Bible presents an interestingly woven collection of beliefs and interpretations from different authors and editors who hailed from vastly different time periods and traditions. One major cultural shift was the name of God, as early stories in the Bible often refer to God as El Shaddai or Elohim, whereas later stories usually use the title of Yahweh or YHWH, translated to LORD. The Bible, itself, claims that the name change occurred around the time of Moses, stating, “God also spoke to Moses and said to him, ‘I am the LORD. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty [El Shaddai in Hebrew], but by my name ‘The LORD’ [YHWH; aka Yahweh] I did not make myself known to them” (Exodus 6.2, NRSV translation). This is an important feature of Biblical scholarship, as different authors, scribes and editors used different designations for God. Notably, the account of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden uses the Yahweh (or YHWH) title of LORD, whereas the preceding account of Man and Woman being made equal uses the title of Elohim for God.
Along with the changing name of God, the culture and traditions of the people were also altered with time. In the era of the Hebrew prophets and the early monarchy, Biblical writers began lambasting a preexisting cultural affinity for spirit mediums, spiritualists, and necromancers who communed with ghosts. Think of King Saul (dated to the 11th century BC) consulting with the Witch of Endor, a practitioner of necromancy. In contrast, King Josiah (r. 640–609 BCE), and other later kings, embraced the reforms that the prophets began, placing great emphasis on Yahweh, alone, and cracking down with an iron fist against elaborate beliefs in ghosts, angels, and spirits, while also violently oppressing the priests, shrines and religious communities of other gods that existed at that time within the bounds of the kingdom. Interestingly, writers and editors from all of these time periods—including the pre- and post-reform eras, and later traditions sparked by the Babylonian Exile and an eventual influx of Greek spiritual ideas—all contributed to the scriptures and their differing views can be found loosely bound together, even in the same books of the Bible. Genesis’ origin story about God’s creation of Heaven, Earth, and mankind is a prime example of how the Bible can present differing names for God, contrasting story traditions, and differing theological interpretations of Biblical events.
Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden
In the story of Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden, the tale begins around three to four days into Lord God’s construction of the material world. By that time, light and the domed sky had already been created, and dry continents had been formed in the oceans. As for the sun and moon, it is up for debate if they would have been created at this point in the biblical narrative, but that important detail will be discussed later. Whatever the case, the ancient author specified that no plant life had yet grown on the Earth at the time when the Lord decided to form the first man, Adam. The text states:
“These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created. In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no vegetation of the field had yet sprung up—for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground, but a stream would rise from the earth and water the whole face of the ground—then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed” (Genesis, 2.4-8).
After the garden was planted and cultivated by the Lord for Adam, Lord God then pivoted to populate paradise with wildlife. Fish, birds, cattle, and all sorts of other animals were crafted by the Lord and released into the wild. On the sixth day, when it was apparent that these winged, gilled, and cloven-hoofed beings were insufficient company for Adam, the Lord had an epiphany of what to create next—the first woman, Eve. On this, the text states, “The man gave names to all cattle and to the birds of the air and to every animal of the field, but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man” (Genesis, 2.20-22). Following Eve’s creation, she ate the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and she convinced Adam to join in her sacrilegious enlightenment. Knowledge changed the couple, and for their transgressions and new awareness, they were exiled by the Lord from the Garden of Eden.
Cosmic God and Good Words of Creation
Although the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden is one of the most famous Biblical stories, the other Creation tale is the one that actually opens up the Bible. Instead of the previous description of a Lord walking the earth and hand-crafting beings into existence, this creation story presents a cosmic God (Elohim) speaking reality into existence. The tale begins with the famous lines of: “When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Genesis 1.1-3). The tale goes on to present six days of creation, listing what God spoke into existence each day, and concluding that each creation was good.
Day one, already quoted, was when light was created and Day and Night were defined. On the second day, God designed and created the dome-shaped Sky. During the third day, God parted seas or summoned up lands, creating dry continents where plant life grew. Day Four, God made the Sun and Moon to better illuminate the Earth in day and night, and to provide solar and lunar cycles. On day five, God began creating living beings, starting with sea creatures and birds. Finally, on day six—the final day of work before rest—God completed his task of speaking lifeforms into being. During that final day, he created cattle and other land animals, and saving best for last, he made Man and Woman, together, in the image of the divine. On this version of the creation of humans, the Bible stated:
“Then God said, ‘Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’ So God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’ God said, ‘See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the air and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good” (Genesis 1.26-31).
God rested on the seventh day, after making man and woman together, on the same day, in the image and likeness of their creator. In this version of events, there is no implicit hierarchy of man and woman, no Garden of Eden, no tree of knowledge, and no implication of woman being made from a rib of man, or that woman was the origin of original sin. One may try to argue that the Garden of Eden story is a continuation or in-depth elaboration of the “Let there be light” story, but there are many differences that point to the two accounts actually being separate traditions, not two chapters of the same story.
Comparison and Conclusion
Many inconsistencies occur in the two side-by-side stories. For one, you have the difference in the name of God—the Elohim (God) usage in one vs. the Yahweh (LORD) designation in the other. There are also interesting key chronological differences in the two portrayals of creation. First and foremost is the timeline discrepancy of which day mankind was formed. The “Let there be light” story states definitively that God made man and woman on the sixth day, after all other lifeforms were already brought into being for their use. The Adam and Eve tale, however, states that Adam was made after Heaven and Earth, but before vegetation began to grow. The Adam and Eve phrasing makes things complicated, because according to the timeline of the “Let there be light” version, the heavens were still incomplete when Earth was made. Only light, dark, and the dome of the sky were finished when the earth was formed; the Sun and the Moon came the day after. On day three and four of creation, the Bible stated:
“‘Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.’ And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, ‘Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.’ And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day. And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.” (Genesis 1.9-19).
Therefore, if the chronology of heaven and earth between the two stories could be reconciled, Adam would have predated the Sun and Moon, and he would have also witnessed God create the heavenly bodies, as well as fish, birds, cattle, and finally, woman, on days four, five and six. Even if one accepts that humans could have been created on a day other than day six, the contradiction still remains that the Adam and Eve story claims that man and woman were made on separate days, whereas the “Let there be light” story states that God created both sexes in a single day, the sixth day. Furthermore, the Adam and Eve story insinuates that man and woman were made by different methods; man was made of earth and woman was made from man. Contrastingly, the “Let there be light” story tells that man and woman were both similarly made in God’s image and likeness: “So God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1.27). In a sense, you have two different traditions. One emphasizes Adam, for whom plants, fish, birds, cattle and women were made by the Lord. The “Let there be light” story, conversely, infers that man and woman, who were both made in the image and likeness of God, are equal inheritors and stewards of the Earth and its lifeforms. Unfortunately for women, despite the opening passages of the Bible that state that man and woman were made equally in the image and likeness of God, many churches and civilizations have long clung to the version where everything is said to be made for Man’s use and pleasure.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Picture Attribution: (Cropped sections from Adam and Eve, by Harald Slott-Møller (1864 – 1937), [Public Domain] via the SMK.jpg).
Sources:
- The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version With The Apocrypha (Fifth Edition, Fully Revised), edited by Michael D. Coogan and associates. Oxford University Press, 2018.
- The Oxford Companion to the Bible, edited by Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan. Oxford University Press, 1993.
- https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%201&version=NRSVUE
