The Womans Bible | Page 6

three chapters" (there was no such division until
about five centuries ago), contains two entirely separate, and very contradictory, stories
of creation, written by two different, but equally anonymous, authors. No Christian
theologian of to-day, with any pretensions to scholarship, claims that Genesis was written
by Moses. As was long ago pointed out, the Bible itself declares that all the books the
Jews originally possessed were burned in the destruction of Jerusalem, about 588 B. C.,
at the time the people were taken to Babylonia as slaves too the Assyrians, (see II Esdras,
ch. xiv, V. 21, Apocrypha). Not until about 247 B. C. (some theologians say 226 and
others; 169 B. C.) is there any record of a collection of literature in the re-built Jerusalem,
and, then, the anonymous writer of II Maccabees briefly mentions that some Nehemiah
"gathered together the acts of the kings and the prophets and those of David" when
"founding a library" for use in Jerusalem. But the earliest mention anywhere in the Bible
of a book that might have corresponded to Genesis is made by an apocryphal writer, who
says that Ezra wrote "all that hath been done in the world since the beginning," after the
Jews returned from Babylon, under his leadership, about 450 B. C. (see II Esdras, ch. xiv,
v. 22, of the Apocrypha).
When it is remembered that the Jewish books were written on rolls of leather, without
much attention to vowel points and with no division into verses or chapters, by uncritical
copyists, who altered passages greatly, and did not always even pretend to understand
what they were copying, then the reader of Genesis begins to put herself in position to
understand how it can be contradictory. Great as were the liberties which the Jews took
with Genesis, those of the English translators, however, greatly surpassed them.
The first chapter of Genesis, for instance, in Hebrew, tells us, in verses one and two, "As
to origin, created the gods (Elohim) these skies (or air or clouds) and this earth. . . And a
wind moved upon the face of the waters." Here we have the opening of a polytheistic
fable of creation, but, so strongly convinced were the English translators that the ancient
Hebrews must have been originally monotheistic that they rendered the above, as follows:
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. . . . And the spirit of God (!)
moved upon the face of the waters."
It is now generally conceded that some one (nobody pretends to know who) at some time
(nobody pretends to know exactly when), copied two creation myths on the same leather
roll, one immediately following the other. About one hundred years ago, it was

discovered by Dr. Astruc, of France, that from Genesis ch. i, v. 1 to Genesis ch. ii, v. 4, is
given one complete account of creation, by an author who always used the term "the
gods" (Elohim), in speaking of the fashioning of the universe, mentioning it altogether
thirty-four times, while, in Genesis ch. ii, v. 4, to the end of chapter iii, we have a totally
different narrative, by an author of unmistakably different style, who uses the term
"Iahveh of the gods" twenty times, but "Elohim" only three times. The first author,
evidently, attributes creation to a council of gods, acting in concert, and seems never to
have heard of Iahveh. The second attributes creation to Iahveh, a tribal god of ancient
Israel, but represents Iahveh as one of two or more gods, conferring with them (in
Genesis ch. xiii, V. 22) as to the danger of man's acquiring immortality.
Modern theologians have, for convenience sake, entitled these two fables, respectively,
the Elohistic and the Iahoistic stories. They differ, not only in the point I have mentioned
above, but in the order of the "creative acts;" in regard to the mutual attitude of man and
woman, and in regard to human freedom from prohibitions imposed by deity. In order to
exhibit their striking contradictions, I will place them in parallel columns:
ELOHISTIC. --- IAHOISTIC.
Order of Creation: --- Order of Creation: First--Water. --- First--Land. Second--Land. ---
Second--Water. Third--Vegetation. --- Third--Male Man, only. Fourth--Animals. ---
Fourth--Vegetation. Fifth--Mankind; male and female. --- Fifth--Animals. ---
Sixth--Woman.
In this story male and female man are created simultaneously, both alike, in the image of
the gods, after animals have been called into existence. --- In this story male man is
sculptured out of clay, before any animals are created, and before female man has been
constructed.
Here, joint dominion over the earth is given to woman and man, without limit or
prohibition. --- Here, woman is punished with subjection to man for breaking a
prohibitory law.
Everything, without exception, is pronounced "very good." --- There is a tree