Snow Essay/Blog 1

Jordyn Snow

WGS 3463-995 Women and Religion

Essay/Blog 1

The two accounts of the origin of humankind in Genesis differ in their approach to the creation of the two sexes. In the first narrative, God spends five days creating the Earth, as we know it: the seas and the sky, the sun and the moon, and all the other necessary forces that make the planet hospitable to life (Gen 1:1-23). On the sixth day, God creates living creatures, animals of every kind, as well as the first humans. These humans, male and female, were made in God’s image and He granted them power over all the other creatures (Gen 1:26-27). In this case, man and woman were created at the same time, but the difference between the two was established. The first narrative has a theme of balance. Susan Niditch reflects this idea in her examination of the first narrative by stating that though two sexes were created there was no hierarchy between them and both were complementary to each other (30). From this standpoint, God creates elements in pairs that are made to work together harmoniously.    

The second narrative is very similar to the first in that God creates the Earth and all its inhabitants, but the order of creation is a little different. Instead of God creating humankind last, on the day that God made the Earth he created man, not man and woman, just man (Gen 2:4-7). Then to find a companion for man, God creates the animals, giving man dominion over the other living things. However, these animals were insufficient companions for the man so God removed one of the man’s ribs and used it to create woman (Gen 2:20-25). In this narrative, man is created first, and from him God creates woman to be the man’s helper. There was less separation between the two sexes presented in this narrative, woman emerges from man and in this way is connected to him. As Niditch explains from the perspective of this narrative, “man and woman are parts of a whole” (30). Unlike the first narrative, the second narrative focuses less on individual elements of creation and more on the ultimate value of the whole put together. However, neither narrative presents inequality between the two sexes, despite their differences. The sexes are perceived as equal, in the first narrative because they were created simultaneously and in the second narrative because they were created from essentially the same person.