Two Versions of the Story

Reading through the story of creation

We have just four more (Hebrew) words to go before we finish version 1 of the story of creation:

אֲשֶׁר־בָּרָ֥א אֱלֹהִ֖ים לַעֲשֽׂוֹת׃ פ

But because this is a free Sunday post, I want to pause our close reading for a moment and look at some larger topics as we finish Gen 2:3 and move on to v. 4 and then v. 5. Since I like to start with the small building blocks in order to put together a large discussion with a solid base of support, I’ll do that now by skipping past those last four words to the letter that appears above at the end of them:

פ

That Hebrew letter is marking the end of a paragraph. I’ve described the Masoretic system of marking such paragraphs in a post on my WordPress blog, so I won’t repeat it here. But I want to point out what that system has been telling us about the story so far, and what it tells us about the story as it continues. I’ve been hinting that this discussion would have to come along sooner or later, and now is the time.

Each of the first six days of Creation Week has ended with the words: “There was an evening and there was a morning,” followed by an indication of which day it was. The beginning of Genesis 2 does not have that phrase, but it does identify the seventh day, three (count ‘em, 3) times.

And there is one more indicator separating each of the days: a פ, marking the preceding lines as a paragraph, at the end of each day, including our seventh day here at the beginning of Genesis 2. At that point, at the end of Gen 2:3, the seven days of Creation Week are over, the text moves in a different direction, and there are no “days” marked in what follows. The biblical paragraphing changes, too.

I used to teach an adult ed course called “The First Page,” which consisted of reading the first page (on a photocopied handout), in English, of (1) the Bible, (2) the Mishnah, (3) the Talmud, (4) the Midrash, and (5) Rashi’s commentary. With the Bible, I pointed out that the story of creation was told twice, and asked the members of the class to identify:

• where Version 1 started (at Gen 1:1, obviously)

• where Version 1 ended

• where Version 2 started

• where Version 2 ended

I also asked them how they would describe the voices in which the two different versions of creation are told; that’s something we’ll discuss here on the blog in later posts. For today, my point is that there was a disagreement, but only a very small one, about where Version 1 ended and Version 2 started. It was clear to everyone that Version 1 ended and Version 2 began — not necessarily at the same place — somewhere around 2:3, 2:4, or 2:5. But where does Version 2 end? There was no agreement on that.

The Masoretic Text, as we’ve said, leaves a פ (an open space, indicating what we would call in English a paragraph) after each of the seven days of Version 1 of the creation story, marking the end of this version after Gen 2:3, and then no פ, no full paragraph, until after Gen 3:21. There is only one interruption in this next whole long section, and that is marked by a ס — a space not extending all the way to the end of the line — before and after Gen 3:16, marking it off as a separate semi-paragraph.

We’ll have much more to say about the differences, even contradictions between the two versions in later posts. The most noticeable difference, which we’ll go into at greater length when we discuss v. 4, what I’m calling the hinge verse between the two stories, is that we will learn the name of the elohim, the God, who has been doing all the heavy lifting in Version 1 of the creation story.

I’ve pointed out several times, starting here, that Version 1 of the story cares about separation and distinction, a concept that in the rest of the Torah is noticeably important to the priests. In scholarly shorthand, Version 1 of the creation story is referred to as the P version. (Warning: there is more than one Priestly voice in the Torah!) Version 2 is called the J version, for reasons we’ll get into another time.

Those who think the Pentateuch was complete when Moses died (with, some think, the possible exception of the last 8 verses) tend to call the scholarly view “the Documentary Hypothesis.” When they argue against it, they are often arguing against a particular, 19^th-century academic argument. In fact, how exactly these two different biblical voices found their way into the beginning of Genesis is something that there is very little scholarly agreement on nowadays. (Those who want a more 21^st-century perspective on it can look at this post. For longer if somewhat older discussions, see Umberto Cassuto, The Documentary Hypothesis, and Richard Elliott Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible?. But that's not what I want to talk about today.)

The purpose of this Substack, though, is not to convince anyone that the Bible has, or doesn’t have, some particular metaphysical nature. Still, I ought to lay my cards on the table. To me, reading the Bible itself makes clear that the Israelites did not have the Pentateuch in the form we have it today until at least the year 622 BCE, as described in 2 Kings 22. As a reader to whom the writer’s voice is the most important stylistic feature, it’s clear to me that there are multiple different authorial voices in the Pentateuch. (One of them is that of the book of Deuteronomy, which we’ll be talking about sooner than you might think, but certainly not for a while yet.)

I also believe that the voices come from different original sources. Num 21:14 tells us explicitly of one such source, The Wars of YHWH, and quotes from it. My own perspective is that a still later writer composed the Torah, and that this writer did not put the earlier materials together mechanically, but with purpose. (That’s not to deny that errors subsequently crept into the text or even that this “composer” may sometimes have worked in a way that no longer makes sense to us.)

Here at the beginning of the Bible, there’s actually an interesting model, itself biblical, that I think goes a long way toward explaining not only the differences between the two versions of the creation story, but why the two versions are here side by side. I’m talking about the first two chapters of the book of Job. These are clearly written by a single author, but just as clearly this author shifts the scene from the earthly perspective (e.g., 1:1–5) to the heavenly one (1:6–12) and back again.

Our story, unlike that of Job, begins with the heavenly perspective and carries it through to the end of Gen 2:3. Then there is a hinge, visible in v. 4, and then the earthly version of the story begins to be told. The heavenly version, which we’ve almost finished reading together, does indeed seem to be told in a priestly voice, and the earthly version, which we’ll begin shortly, in a non-priestly voice. Another way to look at it — the way I think our composer looked at it, the Job way — is that one version of the story is cosmic and the other comic.

By “comic” I don’t mean hilarious, meant to raise a laugh. I’m talking about the human comedy — our lives down here on planet Earth. Those who study “The First Page” with me see exactly this same contrast played out, in a somewhat more complicated way, at the beginning of the Talmud. On that page (Berakhot 2 and following), some rabbis try to define the end of day and beginning of night in a cosmic way, asking when the sun sets or when the stars begin to shine. Others ask when people come home or eat their evening meal. The biblical verses they deploy in their arguments are, I think, shorthand for what the Bible itself is doing here in retelling the story of creation two different ways.

We can see this distinction again in the two different biblical rationales for the sabbath commandment, which you see here (in the NJPS translation) first in the Exodus 20 version and then in the Deuteronomy 5 version:

• Ex. 20:8    Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy … ¹¹ For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth and sea, and all that is in them, and He rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it.

• Deut. 5:12    Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the LORD your God has commanded you … ¹⁵ Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the LORD your God freed you from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God has commanded you to observe the sabbath day.

The traditional Friday night blessing invokes both remembrance of the (cosmic) work of creation and remembrance of the (human, historic) exodus from Egypt.

[Update: Read more about the distinction between “remember” (Exodus) and “observe” (Deuteronomy) in my Torah Talk column.]

In Tuesday’s post for paid subscribers, we’ll finish — at last! — reading the first version of the story of creation.