Todd Wysong
Due Date: 9/8/15
Rel 250: Tues.-Thurs.
Conversation Starter #1
The First thing I noticed After reading Genesis Chapter 1 through 3 is that in the first creation God Creates the heavens before the earth. “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1-2). In the second chapter God says he creates earth then heaven. “In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens” (Gen. 2:4-5). It might be a small comparison, but it caught my eye. Then, the last Creation in Genesis chapter 1 was humankind, “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image according to likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish in the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth’” (Gen. 1:26). Which was the last thing created on the 6 days of creation. In Chapter 2, God creates man before everything else. “In the Day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up-for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground- then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground” (Gen. 2:4-8). In this same paragraph, I noticed that the writers refer to God as “LORD God”, but in chapter 1 God is called, “God.” Also, in the first one God creates everything in 6 days and rests on the 7th, but in the second account there is nothing about how many days it took the LORD God to create everything. In the book, The Old Testement A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures, Coogan states, “ Finally, in the second account no mention is made of seven days, heavenly bodies, or divine rest, just as in the first no mention is made of the garden of Eden, the tree of life, the tree of knowledge, disobedience, or divine punishment” (Coogan 41). When reading both creation stories I noticed differences in writing styles as well. The first creation story seemed more poetic and structured. It seemed very predictable and repetitive like a poem would be. The second creation story seemed more narrative. It told a story and almost gave background to the first story that was told. Coogan said, “The second is less repetitious, is more dramatic and spontaneous, and employs frequent plays on words” (Coogan 40). Not only were the writing style different, but also the vocabulary. In the first creation story the writers used “the heavens and the earth, male and female, and to create” in the second creation story they used “earth and the heavens, the man and his wife, to make and to form.” The deity is also portrayed different in each story. “In the first, God is remote, even transcendent, and he creates effortlessly, by his word alone. In the second by contrast, the LORD God is down to earth, immanent, and described in vividly anthropomorphic language, as if he were human” (Coogan 40).
After reading these two creation stories and really trying to see differences, it almost seemed as if the second story was a more in depth version of the first. Since the first one didn’t go into detail much, the second one came in and explained things more. It almost seemed as if the second one complimented the first.

Works cited

Hays, Christopher B. Hidden Riches: A Sourcebook for the Comparative Study of the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.

Coogan, Michael David., Marc Zvi. Brettler, Carol A. Newsom, and Pheme Perkins. The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version: With the Apocrypha: An Ecumenical Study Bible. New York: Oxford UP, 2010. Print.