The Coming Schism among Creationists

Edmond H. Weiss, Ph.D.

Now that Creationism seems to be in the ascendancy, it wont be long before some of
its enthusiasts actually read the Bible and discover that there are two accounts of
Creation in the Book of Genesis and that, moreover, they clearly contradict each other.
This is no problem for enlightened people who read the Bible as ancient literature.
But for those who take it literallywell, its the stuff that schisms are made of.

Creation: Version 1
The first creation story, the famous Seven Days, is in Genesis 1. (Actually, the first six
days. Genesis 2 begins with the first Sabbath.) The sequence is famous:
Day One:

earth, light, darkness

Day Two:

firmament with water above (heaven) and water below (earth

Day Three:

dry land, defined seas, grass and vegetation

Day Four:

sun, moon, stars (NOTE: Creationists believe the earth predates

the sun.)

Day Five:

sea creatures, birds

Day Six:

earth creatures, then, finally man and woman

Day Seven:

rest

Most surprising to those whose Bible study is limited to Sunday school is that there is
no mention of Eve being extracted from Adams rib. Indeed, there is no mention of Eve
at all. What the text says is:
Genesis 1:26 27 (King James Translation)
Then God said, Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our
likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds

of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping
thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in His own image; in
the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
Notice that God creates a male and a female, simultaneously, both of them in his
image, and on the sixth day of creation.

Creation: Version 2
The contradiction between Chapter 1 and 2 is noticeable only to those who read
carefullybecause the second creation account does not number the days. But what
most astonishes the careful reader is that, in this version, man is created first:
Genesis 2:4-7 (King James Translation)
This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created,
in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, before
any plant of the field was in the earth and before any herb of the field
had grown. For the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the earth,
and there was no man to till the ground; but a mist went up from the
earth and watered the whole face of the ground. And the LORD God
formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life; and man became a living being.

Its in Genesis 2 that we encounter the story of Adams rib:

Genesis 2:21-22 (King James Translation)

And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept;
and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the
rib which the LORD God had taken from man He made into a woman,
and He brought her to the man.

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Readers with limited Bible knowledge usually conflate these two stories (the
way they tend to conflate the conflicting nativity stories in the gospels),
imagining that the whole drama was acted out on the sixth day. But, in fact,
the two versions are irreconcilable:

Sequence in Genesis 1

Sequence in Genesis 2

Vegetation

Man

Animals

Vegetation

Man and Woman

Animals

Woman

(By the way, there is no Eve in Genesis 2, either. Adam gives the woman that name
toward the end of Genesis 3, after they have been expelled from paradise for
disobedience. Also, theres no Satan in Genesis anywhere.)

Contradictions?
Since these versions contradict each other, at least one must be inaccurate. Those
who subscribe to the literal truth and inerrancy of the Bible, especially those who
want the Biblical account of creation to be taught as hard truth, must decide which
chapter of Genesis to reject!
Of course, orthodox and fundamentalist readers of scripture tend not be bothered by
the hundreds of contradictions and inconsistencies in the text. Often, they
characterize them as paradoxes, beyond the mere understanding of humans. At other
times, they construct elaborate, convoluted theories to harmonize the plainly
contradictory passages.
As a student of the Jewish texts, I especially enjoy the rabbinical invention that God,
in fact, made two wives for Adam. The first wife, Genesis 1, was called Lilith and was
removed or destroyed somehow because, according to legend, she insisted on being on

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top during sex. Lilith persists in Jewish folklore and superstition as an evil demon
given to, among other things, preying on newborns. Even today, Liliths name is
sometimes used as a symbol of either female independence or shrewishness (recall
Frasiers first wife).

The Scholarly Solution

Those who approach the Bible as a compendium of stories and texts have no problem
with the contradictory versions of creation. Version 1 is the so-called P-text (because
the Priestly authors of the 7th Century B.C.E. referred to God as Elohim a plural
word, by the way.) The Genesis 2 version is the J-text (because the creator is called by
the unpronounceable Hebrew code YHVH, rendered by Europeans as Jehova, thus
J).
If the Creationists will dig deeper into the Hebrew text, theyll find that most of Genesis
is a patch quilt of P and J texts, frequently contradictory. (They plainly disagree on
how many animals came aboard Noahs ark, for example.) More interesting still is that
P and J are really different kinds of God; Elohim, the more abstract, tends to be a
deistic creator, establishing laws of nature and leaving things to run along; Elohim did
not make the rule about forbidden fruit, for example. J, in contrast, is a hands-on
God, more in the pagan traditionconversing with his creatures, making demands,
composing rules, even arranging pregnancies for old and barren women.

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The Coming Schism

But fundamentalists wont hear of this P and J talk. Some will insist that the first
version is true, because it represents creation as taking one week (a notion pleasing to
the so-called young earth creationists who believe, despite all evidence, that the
world is less than 10,000 years old). Others will be drawn to the second version,
because it subordinates women to men, an idea dear to many religious extremists.
Inevitably, the sides will clash. Inevitably, rustic Boards of Education will bitterly
contest the version to be canonized; the minority factions, sure that God is on their
side, will break away to form provisional school boards in exile.
And, since the commitment to creationism is probably greatest in those states with the
highest per capita rates of gun ownership, let us pray that the whole thing does not
devolve into a shooting holy war.

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