There are two creation accounts. But the approach to this is not a "literal interpretation" as you are placing as a demand. This is not a "fundamentalists only" club debate. Where I see you running into problems is at the outset with a literalist presupposition that the stories MUST be creating a "big picture" that God wants us to figure out. I reject that presumption. There is no "big picture" hidden in there, and you are trying to take the two stories and "harmonize" them in some meta-narrative of sorts.
My response to this is simple. Modern scholarship. I accept the
Documentary Hypothesis to be largely valid. If you are unfamiliar with it, here's a brief explanation of how this pertains to these two creation stories:
The Torah (or Pentateuch) is the collective name for the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. According to tradition they were dictated by God to Moses, but when modern critical scholarship began to be applied to the Bible it was discovered that the Pentateuch was not the unified text one would expect from a single author. As a result, the Mosaic authorship of the Torah had been largely rejected by leading scholars by the 17th century, and the modern consensus is that it is the product of a long evolutionary process.
In the mid-18th century, some authors started a critical study of doublets (parallel accounts of the same incidents), inconsistencies, and changes in style and vocabulary. In 1780 Johann Eichhorn, building on the work of the French doctor and exeget Jean Astruc's "Conjectures" and others, formulated the "older documentary hypothesis": the idea that Genesis was composed by combining two identifiable sources, the Jehovist ("J"; also called the Yahwist) and the Elohist ("E"). These sources were subsequently found to run through the first four books of the Torah, and the number was later expanded to three when Wilhelm de Wette identified the Deuteronomist as an additional source found only in Deuteronomy ("D").Later still the Elohist was split into Elohist and Priestly ("P") sources, increasing the number to four.
<snip>
The supplementary approach was dominant by the early 1860s, but it was challenged by an important book published by Hermann Hupfeld in 1853, who argued that the Pentateuch was made up of four documentary sources, the Priestly, Yahwist, and Elohist intertwined in Genesis-Exodus-Leviticus-Numbers, and the stand-alone source of Deuteronomy. At around the same period Karl Heinrich Graf argued that the Yahwist and Elohist were the earliest sources and the Priestly source the latest, while Wilhelm Vatke linked the four to an evolutionary framework, the Yahwist and Elohist to a time of primitive nature and fertility cults, the Deuteronomist to the ethical religion of the Hebrew prophets, and the Priestly source to a form of religion dominated by ritual, sacrifice and law.
The two creation accounts were written by the Priestly and Yahwist sources. There are scholarly works out there which go into detail in the texts showing the different authors. Here's one I found in a simple Google search (once I got past all the apologist site drivel whining about it)
Link. That both were spliced into the scripture does not mean there is some grand picture from above you are supposed to figure out how to fit together like puzzle pieces. I don't think it concerned the original readers too terribly much, because it's not about historical facts and science. It's about the message of the various stories and the cultural significance and relevance they provide. Reading it literally destroys that message, and hence why I say, you invalidate scripture.
My responses are noted below.
1. There are two creation accounts. But the approach to this is not a "literal interpretation" as you are placing as a demand.
(Please explain why this cannot be the? You can take a literal approach when you realize that the authors at that time conveyed what they thought in a different way than we do now, also translational errors, and degradation of manuscripts over time really have yielded a different document. This still doesn’t change their literal perception and how they recorded it. There are many differences from the original to deal with, people often assume by abstraction or symbolism a different message than the original literal intention.)
2. This is not a "fundamentalists only" club debate. (Agreed.) Where I see you running into problems is at the outset with a literalist presupposition that the stories MUST be creating a "big picture" that God wants us to figure out.
(How do you know that this is not the case?) I reject that presumption.
(Ok.) There is no "big picture" hidden in there and you are trying to take the two stories and "harmonize" them in some meta-narrative of sorts.
(You assume this to be the case with little basis, however I feel different as it is single story that is typically perceived as two.)
My response to this is simple. Modern scholarship. I adhere to the
Documentary Hypothesis to be largely valid. If you are unfamiliar with it, here's a brief explanation of how this pertains to these two creation stories:
The Torah (or Pentateuch) is the collective name for the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. According to tradition they were dictated by God to Moses, but when modern critical scholarship began to be applied to the Bible it was discovered that the Pentateuch was not the unified text one would expect from a single author. As a result, the Mosaic authorship of the Torah had been largely rejected by leading scholars by the 17th century, and the modern consensus is that it is the product of a long evolutionary process.
In the mid-18th century, some authors started a critical study of doublets (parallel accounts of the same incidents), inconsistencies, and changes in style and vocabulary. In 1780 Johann Eichhorn, building on the work of the French doctor and exeget Jean Astruc's "Conjectures" and others, formulated the "older documentary hypothesis": the idea that Genesis was composed by combining two identifiable sources, the Jehovist ("J"; also called the Yahwist) and the Elohist ("E"). These sources were subsequently found to run through the first four books of the Torah, and the number was later expanded to three when Wilhelm de Wette identified the Deuteronomist as an additional source found only in Deuteronomy ("D").Later still the Elohist was split into Elohist and Priestly ("P") sources, increasing the number to four.
< snip>
The supplementary approach was dominant by the early 1860s, but it was challenged by an important book published by Hermann Hupfeld in 1853, who argued that the Pentateuch was made up of four documentary sources, the Priestly, Yahwist, and Elohist intertwined in Genesis-Exodus-Leviticus-Numbers, and the stand-alone source of Deuteronomy. At around the same period Karl Heinrich Graf argued that the Yahwist and Elohist were the earliest sources and the Priestly source the latest, while Wilhelm Vatke linked the four to an evolutionary framework, the Yahwist and Elohist to a time of primitive nature and fertility cults, the Deuteronomist to the ethical religion of the Hebrew prophets, and the Priestly source to a form of religion dominated by ritual, sacrifice and law.
The two creation accounts were written by the Priestly and Yahwist sources. There are scholarly works out there which go into detail in the texts showing the different authors. Here's one I found in a simple Google search (once I got past all the apologist site drivel whining about it)
Link. That both were spliced into the scripture does not mean there is some grand picture from above you are supposed to figure out how to fit together like puzzle pieces.
(That doesn’t necessarily mean they are not. Even if they were separate authors, it doesn’t mean they wasn’t trying to convey the same message.).
I don't think it concerned the original readers too terribly much, because it's not about historical facts and science. It's about the message of the various stories and the cultural significance and relevance they provide.
(This is an assumption made on your part; how did you come to this conclusion? Again, the message is literal however, many choose to assume an abstraction or a symbolic interpretation due to the documents changes over time.) Reading it literally destroys that message, and hence why I say, you invalidate scripture.
I agree to some extent as certain other books outside of Genesis do have a specific tone and utilize a similar language (specific terms) as the content of the first 10 chapters of Genesis. I have found differences, however these in the first few contain certain similarities that show their relations.
On a side note, I am very seriously considering running some text analysis to isolate specific authors work based on certain word frequencies and patterns. This is something I have debating on and really now see a real need. If I survive the course of this thread I will post my results.