I hope that this does not sound blasphemous, the two account of creation Genesis are rather different.
It seems to me that they are in figures of speech, parables or some form of comparison.
God does not walk in a Garden.
God does not work, move or change. Therefore He need not rest.
Are the first three chapters of Genesis literal?
If they are not literal but some form of comparison, what are the literal meanings?
Using the Bible to explain those chapters, as well as those chapters themselves, what is the literal meaning of God walking in the Garden?
Help!!!
Well, I see the “book” of Genesis as a theological, anti-mythical “book”.
Everybody asked themselves: Where did we come from? What are our origins? Who was the founder of our people? What is our destiny? Sometimes, these questions were formulated in situations of collective misfortune: What is the meaning of our failure and our suffering? What is the meaning of our hopeless death? Is there a Someone who can answer all the questions of mankind?
The people of Israel, in their internal reflection or in comparison with other peoples, religions and cultures, gather together these and several similar questions and give us their answers in this book. The Genesis is therefore the book of great questions and great answers, not only for the people of God, but for all mankind. Therefore it is said that this book is a kind of grand portico of the Bible’s Cathedral, because somehow it sums up the entirety of its beauty and content.
The Genesis also encompasses much of the history of Israel: from their “origins” to Jacob’s life in Egypt and subsequent formation of the twelve tribes. Intending to give us a historical, horizontal and dynamic conception of the Salvation History, this book makes the connection between “origins” of humanity (1.1) and the concrete history of the people of Israel. Therefore it presents - especially in the first 11 chapters, theology and catechesis in the form of history, or rather, stories and not historical facts in the scientific sense. We could sum up the content of the first 11 chapters of the Book of Genesis like this:
1.1 to 2.4: Creation of the universe and its inhabitants (according to the Priestly tradition: P).
2:4 b-3, 24: Formation of man and woman. Origin of sin (Yahwist tradition: J).
4.1 to 24 “Story of two brothers,” Cain and Abel. Offspring of the first.
4.25 to 5.32: Set and his descendants.
6.1 to 9.17: Corruption of humanity and the Flood (Anti-Establishment).
9.18 to 10.32: Re-creation, from Noah, of mankind.
11.1-9: Tower of Babel, mankind built a society without God.
11.10-32: Descendants of Shem to Abraham, and the promise of a new people.
The first and second creation narratives were written by two different people, the second source being older, and all these sources were later tied together.
Where did all the material that constitutes Genesis come from? The Hebrew people lived in a region where they had contact with many different peoples and civilizations. That led to an undeniable cultural exchange between them. The empires that dominated Mesopotamia and Egypt, as well as the civilizations of Phoenicia and Canaan are the literary and historical source of Genesis and the OT in general.
It is undeniable that in the first 11 chapters have abundant elements of these cultures, including allusions to certain myths of Sumer, Babylonia and Ugarit, especially the poems of Creation, Enuma Elish, and Atrahasis. The poem of Gilgamesh is also present in the story of the Flood. Often the authors of Genesis put themselves in open polemic against pagan myths, as in the case of 1.1 to 2.4.
Therefore, this book has varied literary genres:
The legend: the most common is to produce a report from a real fact, name of person or place. There are etiological legends that purport to explain the past, the “cause” of any phenomenon or event. A beautiful example of etiological legend is the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. There are still etiological legends to explain the origin of names of people (for Isaac, which means “laughing”, see 18.9 to 15, 21.2-7).
The genealogy: a list of names going back as far as possible to the past until the present, which attempts to justify the legal aspect of certain events, privileges of a social class or people (5.1 to 32, 10, 11.10 to 32). It intends to fill the huge gap between the creation and history of the Hebrew people.
The ancient sagas and stories of all kinds: the struggle for the wells, tribal wars, stories of families …
We can also find the mythical language. We know that the authors of Genesis strongly fought against pagan myths. But in order to explain the great problems of mankind, they used the mythical language and certain mythological elements that were in vogue, such as the creation of man from clay (2.7), the tree of life and the tree of knowledge (2 0.9 to 10, 3.1 to 6), the myth of the snake (Ch. 3). All of this material was tied together very slowly in a long period of time. First there were small clusters around a sanctuary, an event or a character, we call them traditions, and have been transmitted orally over many centuries. When the Hebrews learned how to write, these traditions are fixed in documents. The most commonly accepted theory is that after the Exile to Babylon (587-538), the Priestls tied together all the great traditions and existing documents. We can say that Genesis contains material collected between the V-XIII centuries. B.C.E.
