rejected the ex nihilo interpretation. They have done so on the grounds that this account was a later addition made by post-Exilic Jewish priests (following Ezra's legislative proclamations in Jerusalem), sometime after 397 B.C (Campbell 102), and a considerably long time after the Book of Genesis had already been granted canonical status. These post-Exilic rabbis are determined by their zeal to codify the Biblical books. And probably not too little influenced by the creation legends of their Levantine predecessors - Sumer-ians and Akkadians - introduced a number of new interpretations to the already extant versions of the Pentateuch, and reworked and amplified these to suit their needs. The older versions of
creation, however, are unanimous in declaring that God did not create from "nothing," but, on the contrary, formed the world (universe) from the disorganized matter already existing in chaos. In other words, God is not credited with having created matter, but to have developed it and used it to fabricate the universe. This does not necessarily imply, however, that He did not also create the chaos, or primal matter; but, this inference cannot, with certainty, be drawn, except from the highly disputed Priestly Text mentioned earlier. These accounts clearly indicate the
fashioning of the world from already existing materials, and that God imposed upon these materials that order and regularity which we are now privileged to observe. From this, then, humanity emerged.
In Genesis, there are conflicting narratives of the creation of Man: "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;..." (Genesis 2,7). "And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh thereof; And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, "This is now bone of my...