God's PJ's

I can't say I was shocked to learn that the bible most likely had several different authors, partially because I had heard that before, and partially because when I started reading it there were definate shifts in the narrative. What we did end up talking about in class was essentially the conclusion I had come to at home (though in class it was much more thouroughly thought out, and said with much more grace). I like the first story, from a moral stand point, and also, as i said in an earlier blog, I like the idea of God sifting through some kind of etheral goop to seperate its parts out to make the world. I like some of the inagery as well, "the Earth was a formless void, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters." The first creation story also seems to have a more ancient feel to it, especially when it comes to the creation of humans, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness" (italics added). This passage seems to suggest an author that lived in a time when heaven was still full of Gods, not one God but many. A google search containing the items "P" "J" "sources" and "bible" will reveal that many scholars do in fact feel that the Bible had several authors, working in different places, at very different times. The first creation story in Genesis was most likely written by the "J" source, a source the the world wide web tells me is much more interested in narrative and paints God in a very human like way. The P source, we are told, is much more worried about geneologies, covenants, numbers, etc and its God is much more distant and unmerciful. The P version of creation starts in Genesis 2.4.
This second version of creation, though not as "cool" in my opinion, seems more coherant, and most importantly, it sets our story up for some conflict, especially write at the end of the passage when it says "And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed." This seems to be setting up a story where the are naked and they are, in fact, ashamed by it. Also in the story is a quick reference to the trees in the garden, especially the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There's no way that a tree containing all the knowledge of good and evil is not going to be a key factor in the plot of a story. No way. The second version also has its own very different imagery, setting it even more apart from the first. Here, God is the sculptor, as we see in, "then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground." Here, He is making men by forming everything with his hands, where in the J version God is seperating out component parts and simply issuing commands into the darkness. Also of note, youcan feel the shift in narrative just by the way that some things have been translated, in the J story God is God, yet in the P one, well He's the Lord God. Another thing about the second story that seems to make it more coherent, and just better as a device for the set up of conflict, is that the reader is told where the garden of Eden is, in a sense. It puts the plot and narrative of the story into a place that ancient and new readers alike could literally envision, and also sets up for conflicts with the peoples of the surrounding area. The second story seems to lead up to the "fall" much more than does the first one, thus I would have to deem it the "better" story, even though the first has some healthy offerings of its own in the form of imagery. Also, for anyone interested there is a NOVA program online at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bible/program.html that will allow to watch a show about the "secrets" of the Bible for free.