Have you ever heard that Genesis has two creation accounts and not just one? I had never heard that claim until my Intro to Old Testament class in college.
I mean, I had read Genesis many times… especially the creation account (emphasis on account *singular and not accounts plural); how could I have possibly missed that there were two accounts and not one?
However, after looking at the text of Genesis 1-2 more closely, I began to see the fainter outlines of seemingly two creation accounts, not one. I was shocked. Genesis 1 begins with the traditional narrative of the creation story, but then Genesis 2 seems to pick back up with yet another narration of the same creation story. Why? Ultimately, it appears that there are two different creation stories—two different perspectives—recounting the same story, just in slightly different ways.
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.
The notion that there are two creation accounts—and not one—is a view that ultimately sparked what scholars now call the Documentary Hypothesis, which Julius Wellhausen popularized in the twentieth century. In a nutshell, the Documentary Hypothesis purports that the Pentateuch of the Hebrew Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) was not written by Moses in 1405 BC—as has been traditionally believed—but rather, was formally pieced together in the late 500s BC by combining the writings of different authors, from different places, from different periods of time.
As such, Wellhausen believed the Pentateuch does not stand as a reliable documentation of history, and he points specifically to the opening chapters of Genesis as a proof text for how there were, indeed, two authors and two different accounts that became represented in the final edition of the book.
That’s what I want to briefly explore in this post. Are there two authors represented in these two different creation accounts, or is there one author?
In the following post, I want to present the compelling arguments as to why there is one author of Genesis, not two, and why Wellhausen’s proposition, though insightful, ultimately falls short. Here are a few of the arguments:
Genesis 2 is not a cosmology.
First, I think it is helpful to look at both creation accounts in Genesis 1-2 and see where they relate and also where they differ. Genesis 1 gives a full cosmology of the sun, moon, stars, and earth; however, Genesis 2 does not. It should be noted that no genuine creation account would ever omit the mention of the creation of the sun, moon, and star, earth and sea, as Gen 2 does.
Furthermore, if you compare the creation account of Genesis 2 to other creation accounts of Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) culture, you will hardly any similarities. This is because every known creation account from ANE literature includes a full scope of cosmology like Genesis 1. Therefore, it is only reasonable to conclude that Genesis 2 is not a real cosmology, nor did it ever purport to be either.[1]
Genesis 1 is zoomed-out; Genesis 2 is zoomed-in.
Second, Genesis 1 gives its readers a ‘zoomed-out’ perspective of creation while Genesis 2 provides its readers with a more ‘zoomed-in’ perspective. Genesis 1 opens with the creation of the heavens and the earth and then methodically moves closer in towards the earth. Genesis 2, however, begins with a brief recap of everything that happened in Genesis 1 and then dives right into the situation of Adam in the Garden of Eden. In other words, Genesis 2 does not concern itself as being a cosmological account, but only an account of Adam and his relative environment in the broader context of a newly created cosmos.
Recapitulation in Storytelling
Third, Genesis 2 gets unfairly viewed as a second creation account because it does not seem to seamlessly flow out of Genesis 1. As mentioned above, Genesis 2 almost ‘starts over’ and gives a brief synopsis of all that happened in Genesis 1, even though the reader just read it. Why? That seems pretty redundant.
Scholars such as Albright and Archer have noted that this appears like a break in Scripture, but it is actually nothing more than the style of storytelling in ANE contexts.
In western cultures, we read and process everything in a linear fashion, but in ancient near eastern cultures, stories were told in a more cyclical fashion, where recapitulation was often employed before new shifts in narrative. What appears like a rift in storytelling and in authorship to us westerners is nothing more than a shift in storytelling by one author to ancient near easterners.
Genesis 1 and 2 tell of creation differently.
While there are two creation accounts, they are not different accounts. Rather, they convey the same creation account, just differently. Many theologians believe that Genesis 1 is a poetic telling of creation while Genesis 2 is a historical telling of creation because of the way each chapter reads in the Hebrew.
Tim Keller thoughtfully speaks into the issue, saying, “It’s easy to read the Bible and know where it is historical prose narrative and where it is poetry. There are few places in the Bible, however, that we are not sure what we’ve got. Genesis 1 is one of them. Genesis 1 is very strophic, patterned, paralleled. But when you get to Genesis 2, interestingly, it reads just like historic prose narrative.”[2]
Therefore, even where scholars might argue for a different style between Genesis 1 and 2, it does not necessarily mean a change in authorship, but a change in one author’s style.
The poetry and prose represented in Genesis 1 and 2 are very complex and artfully written—it would have taken an extremely skilled and educated author to have written something as beautifully renowned as the Judeo-Christian creation narrative. It would have required someone who was not slaving away in the mines of Egypt, but someone who was learning in the palace of Egypt… someone like Moses.
Names of God
Lastly, one of the strongest arguments for why Genesis 1-2 represents two different authors—and not one—is the fact that there are two different names used for God. Elohim is the name assigned to God in Genesis 1 while Yahweh is the name assigned to God in Genesis 2.
A modern reader might look at the disparity and reasonably conclude either of two things: 1) the author is schizophrenic 2) there are two different authors.
If Genesis 1-2 was written by one author, then why use two different names for God? That’s a great question, but it isn’t without a compelling—and even beautiful—answer.
Old Testament scholar, Gleason Archer, points out that the author significantly used different names for God in each creation account according to who God displayed himself to be in each account.
For example, the author uses Elohim in Genesis 1 because Elohim is the name of God that refers to his unparalleled power, might, and all-pervasiveness. Genesis 1 speaks most to God as Creator of all things; therefore, using Elohim is certainly appropriate.
But the author uses Yahweh in Genesis 2, which is the name that refers to God as being a covenant-maker. The author utilizes this name because it is the first place where God deals personally with Adam and Eve. Accordingly, Genesis 2 speaks most to God as a Covenant-Maker; therefore, using Yahweh is entirely appropriate.
Within the first chapters of the Bible, the author is displaying something incredibly unique about God that no other creation epic tells: that this God is not just all-powerful, but most-personal.
In the two accounts, the author is highlighting the two attributes of God that are key to knowing His nature. They are attributes that we so easily try to tear apart, but nevertheless, attributes that the Bible continues to keep together as the most perfect picture of who God is: powerful and personal.
There’s no better way to open the Bible and to understand the nature of God. If you want to know about the God of the Bible, read Genesis 1 and 2. He is the maker of all things, but he is not detached, like a Deist might like to think. He is the covenant-making God who has made himself near to us, and even bound himself to us in covenant. A type of covenant we’d later see the full glories of in the cross of Calvary, where he himself would bear the penalties of our sin so that we could be reconciled to him for eternity.
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Overall, the argument of dual authorship in Genesis 1-2 is unfounded and not without reasonable refutation.
In fact, it should be noted that the Documentary Hypothesis does not hold much weight in the European universities any longer because of its academic inadequacy. American universities still teach Wellhausen’s outdated proposition simply because it is a way to explain the text from a more secularized standpoint.
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Footnotes
[1] Archer, Gleason, A Survey of the Old Testament Introduction (Chicago, IL: Moody, 2007), 187.
[2] Keller, Timothy. The First Word, “Creation” series. Sermon given on November 23, 2008. http://www.gospelinlife.com/the-first-word-5989
