Don

I see part of the reason for differences is that the origins narratives do not say everything we might wish them to say, so people fill in the gaps in different ways. And also that someone reads them in A way but thinks it is the ONLY way, but it turns out that this is in turn build on their unstated assumptions. It is similar to the egal/non-egal debate in some ways, many simply do not see how the others get to where they get.

On the Gen 1-2:3 pericope, I see this as primarily an a(poly)theistic polemic which was SO SUCCESSFUL that it is hard for us today to see it as such, but this can be seen when contrasted with the historical pagan origins stories. It attacked the existing pagan worldviews in repeated ways, claiming all their “gods” were bogus, that Elohim did it all. That is, the very idea of polytheism was wrong, which was an astounding claim at the time, as it seemed so “obvious”. It further claimed humans were the pinnacle of creation and the 7th day was a day of rest for Elohim, serving as an example for Jews to do so later in the Torah. It packs quite a bit into a few words, that is, it is highly compressed.

I also see the Gen 1 pericope as saying a lot LESS than others think it says. In this I go along with the ideas in “Paradigms on Pilgrimage”. It is giving a word picture that is being sketched in over the creation days like the script of a movie, but the word picture is for an early Israelite, not a modern like us with questions that would never have been asked by an Israelite.

The Bible uses phenomenological language to describe things, that is, it describes things by appearances and not necessarily (scientific) realities. This allows the Bible to speak to ALL times, as everyone knows how to use phenomenological language as it is so convenient. We know this caused some problems between church and some early scientists, and essentially everyone agrees NOW that the church a few 100s of years ago misunderstood some texts as describing physical reality when actually the texts did not.