Everyone who has actually read them and not deliberately ignored it knows that the first two chapters of Genesis do not tell the same creation story.
Or seem not to.
I think that they do deliver together a consistent account of creation, once one accepts that the writers were polytheistic heathen just like their neighbours.
The first chapter talks about how "the spirits" (elohim) created the world, and the races of men in it. Each elohim created people "in their own image and likeness". The second chapter "zooms in" on one particular one of the elohim - Jehovah - and the man and woman he created.
Understood this way, it makes perfect sense. Where did Cain's wife come from? He went to "the land of Nod", Nod being one of the other gods, with his own people.
In Australia, we have something similar among the aboriginal tribes. They share a basic mythology (the Dreamtime, the Rainbow Serpent), but each tribe adds its own stories that fit in with the basic cosmology.
Of course, this knocks the whole "original sin" idea for a loop, but whatever.
Or seem not to.
I think that they do deliver together a consistent account of creation, once one accepts that the writers were polytheistic heathen just like their neighbours.
The first chapter talks about how "the spirits" (elohim) created the world, and the races of men in it. Each elohim created people "in their own image and likeness". The second chapter "zooms in" on one particular one of the elohim - Jehovah - and the man and woman he created.
Understood this way, it makes perfect sense. Where did Cain's wife come from? He went to "the land of Nod", Nod being one of the other gods, with his own people.
In Australia, we have something similar among the aboriginal tribes. They share a basic mythology (the Dreamtime, the Rainbow Serpent), but each tribe adds its own stories that fit in with the basic cosmology.
Of course, this knocks the whole "original sin" idea for a loop, but whatever.