The purpose of this research is to compare and contrast the two creation stories that appear in the book of Genesis. The plan of the research will be to set forth the basic components of each of the stories and then discuss ways in which the pattern of ideas contained in each resonates with the other, with a view toward identifying reasons grounded in theology for which two disparate creation myths might be deliberately included in a single scripture source.
Anybody who does not have a religious background and who picks up the book of Genesis could be forgiven for being confused about the contradictions in it and for questioning how that text could be so seriously regarded as an article of religious faith. It is not enough to suggest that the creation stories of Genesis have a metaphorical and not literal character, although Mann comments (14) that the author of Genesis 1 "is interested in the artistry of the created order, not in paleontology." To be sure, that much may be discerned from the use of the word day to describe the span of time God used to accomplish the building of the cosmos. Furthermore, as Vawter notes, quoting a 1948 Biblical Commission, the purpose of Genesis was to:
relate in simple and figurative language, adapted to the understanding of a less developed people, the fundamental truths underlying the divine plan of salvation, as well as the popular description of the origin of the human race and of the chosen people (Vawter 32).
But on the other hand there is a vexed controversy surrounding the creation story. Vawter describes what he sees as the undue attention that scholars gave to how mere man could intuit what the Genesis text characterizes as thoughts of God. Unfortunately, trying to account for such a characterization seems to have contributed to an ethos of literalism, whereby religious adherents to the so-called "theological paradigm" (Kuhn 57) customarily (for example) take the word day literally a...