Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Irene Riegner <iriegner AT concentric.net>]

Dear John
 I would like to respond to your statement
 
"I would rather follow the canonical order and see Genesis 2 narrowing
the focus of Genesis 1."

That's the usual interpretation of the relationship.  But if we consider other texts, we would find that later interpretations or reinterpretations or new editorial material is frequently added around the older material---as a frame:   Thus,  the historical introductions to the Deuteronomic Code;  the slight, narrative frame placed around the laws and customs of Leviticus which make these laws appear as if the the deity gave them to Moses and as if they were given at Sinai;  and the satan / god frame around the beginning and end of Job.  The Deuteronomic frame around Judges interprets and "unifies" these individual stories in terms of a deuteronomic worldview.

Thus it is not impossible---and probably more than likely---that Gen1 was added by later editors as a frame around Gen 2 in response to the more cosmic perspective of the Babylonian creation myths.  That Gen 1 is an add-on with a different perspective, different concerns and different purposes is suggested by the disjunction between Gen 1 and 2.  Gen 2 flows into Gen 3 and 4 but Gen 1 ends abruptly.  Where does  the story continue?  The questions and concerns of the two creation myths are different.

  (This is not the only method of reinterpretaion but one of the major ones.)
 

> Genesis 2 provides a nice commentary on the repeated Genesis 1
> statements "God saw that it was good," for in Genesis 2 God says there
> is something that is "not good" (that Adam should be alone).  In light
> of Genesis 1, the statement that it is "not good" for Adam to be alone
> implies that the whole universe (sun, moon, stars, the vast expanse of
> land and seas and all that is in them) cannot be pronounced "very good"
> because there is one lack - there is no woman.
 
If we understand Gen 1 as the creation of categories of things, things
in the water, things in the air, fruit trees, grasses/herbage, etc., rather
than specific species, then a slot for human creation, male and female,
is already postulated.  Since creation in Gen 2 wasn't finished after
the creation of the man---the animals and the woman were yet uncreated---it's
too early to label creation as not good.  With the creation of the
animals and the woman, all the slots of Gen 1 are filled.

irene