The standard Documentary Source arguments that governed most of the last century – that the Pentateuch is the sum of four strands of source material: the Jahwist, the Elhoist, the Priestly, and the Deuteronomist (JEPD), has largely given way to a more organic approach, one that brings the redactor of materials into a more significant player position, editing and fusing the sources together somewhat, but with strands still evident.
Scholars have long acknowledged the two creation accounts: the one being Genesis 1:1-2:4a is seen as a Priestly narrative, whereas the one from Genesis 2:4b-3:24 is nominally a Jahwist narrative, although now considered Jahwist-Elhoist in its final form, the one we now possess.
What is curious here is the JE streams are dated to the 10th century BCE, whereas the P stream is identified with the 5th century BCE, with the pre-exilic and exile, and the reconstitution of a Jewish narrative after the return, with its focus on the cosmos as temple, humanity as created "in the image and likeness of God" (1:26-28), and the institution of the Sabbath as a pointer to the concerns of the Priestly.
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The interpretation of these texts, in the Christian Tradition, owes much to Philo of Alexandria’s allegorical reading of Genesis.
In the older but now secondary creation story, (the Yahwist Genesis 2:4b-3:24), God creates the world by molding it (Heb: yatzar; Grk: plassein). The narrative begins from the human (adam, 'dirt-man', from adamah, 'dirt') and proceeds outward to encompass plants and animals. Our proto-parents disobey the Divione command and, being cursed, are expelled from the sacred garden and denied immortality.
The younger but now first creation story, (the Priestly Genesis 1:1-2:4a), uses creation language of "separation" (Heb: bara) or "making" (Gk: poiesis), and the Deity (no personal name) creates the world in six days. The hexaemeron is split into three days of erecting the fundamental spaces of the world – Day and Night, Sky and Sea, Sea and Land, with flora appearing last on the third day – and then the following three days the 'inhabitants' of those spaces: the 'lights' in the sky – Sun, Moon and Stars; creatures from the sea, and then on the sixth day creatures from the land, culminating in humanity.
Philo understood this as detailing two creations, or creation in two aspects. Philo's metaphor is a royal architect planning to build a city: the city exists in two forms, the city which exists in the mind of the architect, and that which exists in actuality as a built city. How well the latter reflects the former may well vary.
Between the pure idea and its physical realisation, evil, although not substantially real – it did not exist in the mind of the architect – is accidentally possible in the contingent world, which is how and why things like sin and death occur.
From the pure Mind of God, spoken into the darkness of the void, the cosmos is one informed (Platonically), by the archetypes that reside as thoughts in the Divine Mind but where the substrate of their material receptacle threatens to dissolve the purity of their imprint. Philo is a good Middle Platonist in this regard.
But do these two – the eternal and incorporeal and the ephemeral and corporeal – ever achieve complete unification? For Philo, this occurs in the life of Moses, whose deification constitutes his utter metamorphosis into nous. For Christians, of course, this is the new creation, of which Jesus' resurrected body is the 'first fruits'.
This can be parsed in one of two ways: via Philo, in the ontological sublimation of the lower into the higher; pneuma or God, such that God becomes, to use a Christian phrase, "all in all" (1 Corinthians 15:28), or in a raising of that first Adam, a soma psychikos restored as soma pneumatikos, the Adam that is in the Divine Mind, in accord with the eternal will for the eternal well-being of creation.
Scholars have long acknowledged the two creation accounts: the one being Genesis 1:1-2:4a is seen as a Priestly narrative, whereas the one from Genesis 2:4b-3:24 is nominally a Jahwist narrative, although now considered Jahwist-Elhoist in its final form, the one we now possess.
What is curious here is the JE streams are dated to the 10th century BCE, whereas the P stream is identified with the 5th century BCE, with the pre-exilic and exile, and the reconstitution of a Jewish narrative after the return, with its focus on the cosmos as temple, humanity as created "in the image and likeness of God" (1:26-28), and the institution of the Sabbath as a pointer to the concerns of the Priestly.
+++
The interpretation of these texts, in the Christian Tradition, owes much to Philo of Alexandria’s allegorical reading of Genesis.
In the older but now secondary creation story, (the Yahwist Genesis 2:4b-3:24), God creates the world by molding it (Heb: yatzar; Grk: plassein). The narrative begins from the human (adam, 'dirt-man', from adamah, 'dirt') and proceeds outward to encompass plants and animals. Our proto-parents disobey the Divione command and, being cursed, are expelled from the sacred garden and denied immortality.
The younger but now first creation story, (the Priestly Genesis 1:1-2:4a), uses creation language of "separation" (Heb: bara) or "making" (Gk: poiesis), and the Deity (no personal name) creates the world in six days. The hexaemeron is split into three days of erecting the fundamental spaces of the world – Day and Night, Sky and Sea, Sea and Land, with flora appearing last on the third day – and then the following three days the 'inhabitants' of those spaces: the 'lights' in the sky – Sun, Moon and Stars; creatures from the sea, and then on the sixth day creatures from the land, culminating in humanity.
Philo understood this as detailing two creations, or creation in two aspects. Philo's metaphor is a royal architect planning to build a city: the city exists in two forms, the city which exists in the mind of the architect, and that which exists in actuality as a built city. How well the latter reflects the former may well vary.
Between the pure idea and its physical realisation, evil, although not substantially real – it did not exist in the mind of the architect – is accidentally possible in the contingent world, which is how and why things like sin and death occur.
From the pure Mind of God, spoken into the darkness of the void, the cosmos is one informed (Platonically), by the archetypes that reside as thoughts in the Divine Mind but where the substrate of their material receptacle threatens to dissolve the purity of their imprint. Philo is a good Middle Platonist in this regard.
But do these two – the eternal and incorporeal and the ephemeral and corporeal – ever achieve complete unification? For Philo, this occurs in the life of Moses, whose deification constitutes his utter metamorphosis into nous. For Christians, of course, this is the new creation, of which Jesus' resurrected body is the 'first fruits'.
This can be parsed in one of two ways: via Philo, in the ontological sublimation of the lower into the higher; pneuma or God, such that God becomes, to use a Christian phrase, "all in all" (1 Corinthians 15:28), or in a raising of that first Adam, a soma psychikos restored as soma pneumatikos, the Adam that is in the Divine Mind, in accord with the eternal will for the eternal well-being of creation.
I think you're letting your imagination run away with you ... it hardly does justice to the process.