From a paper a wrote on this,
The differences between the versions of the Biblical creation story lay with the people who wrote them. The everyday Israelite (Judean if you’re going to be technical) composed the “J” or Yawist version while priests were responsible for the “P” version.
One of the duties of priests was to act as scribes and keep lists. Their version of genesis is not unlike a list, first God made this, then God made that. They were educated, technical, solemn, (and in my opinion boring). They placed emphasis on events, dates, and genealogy. Their version is hymn-like and stresses sacrifice and blessings. Things undoubtedly done at religious ceremonies that a Priest would be presiding over.
In contrast, the J’s version focused on message and meaning of it all. On the special relationship God had with man.
OK, now YOUR explanation I understand.
Thx
I took a Genesis class in college. For every passage wwe had to note whether it was P - Priestly, J- Yawist and an occaisiional R-Redactor. Very interesting. I agree the Priestly writings are very dry, The J were the ones I liked the best.
However, it's quite obvious that both stories have Sumerian and Egyptian origins and were written down in hieroglyphics and syllabries many centuries before any such thing as a Semitic alphabet existed.
No doubt there was a priestly or shamanistic oral tradition that ran alongside the texts, but you can pick out those commentaries even in English translations.
If it were otherwise we'd have to ask why Abram and Moses figure so prominantly.
I have always viewed the different creation stories as emphasizing different moments of the total picture. Any aspect of the world could be the focus. For example, one might be the origin of the external world, another of the internal world, another of language.
God certainly wouldn't go into detailed metaphysics, geology, biology or chemistry to explain to the hunter-gatherer nomad how He created all that exists.
The JEPD theory has been totally debunked for years. It was crap when you wrote your paper and its still crap.
So which version is right?
I once reviewed a paper I wrote in school on Existentialism. I then reviewed a paper I wrote a year later on Jean-Paul Sartre, and then a paper on the failure of secularism to provide a meaningful axiology. An interesting set of observations are evident: The style of writing is clearly different. The word choices are different, The emphases are different. The argumentation is logically different, and sentence structure is different.
Now, these are three papers, on the same basic subjects, written within 18 months of each other, in the same geographical setting.
Based on the same crap that literary criticism uses to analyze biblical passages, one can only conclude that I am mistakened and that three different people with three different agendas wrote these papers.
Literary criticism is without a doubt one of the most asinine disciplines in ancient documentary review. It is basically a license to bring your own ignorant prejudices to the text and find a way to justify them.