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Preaching on Genesis 1
Comparing the Two Creation Stories in Genesis

For us to understand the distinctive message of Genesis 1, it is important to see how that text differs from the Eden story in Genesis 2-3. What we think of as "the first story" was composed about 500 years after the Eden account. The Priestly story of creation has a different style and theological message from the earlier Yahwistic story. There are several elements of the Priestly story that can be read as explicit rejections of the earlier story.

Text	Genesis 2-3	Genesis 1
Date	1,000 BCE - the time of David	500 BCE - after the Exile
Author	Yahwist	Priestly
Style	Folksy storytelling	Highly structured hymn
God	Immanent	Transcendent
Setting	Localized	Cosmic
This story's relation to the biblical narrative	Begins an ongoing narrative	Comes to completion in Sabbath (but see the note below about the Flood)
Places where the later Priestly story seems to be explicit in contradicting or rejecting the earlier Yahwistic account.
Creation happens through	Resolving a series of problems ("it was not good …")	A series of days that are "good" at every step
Relationships within creation	Mutuality - especially before the "fall"	Separation of various domains & kinds
Humans created	Adam created from the earth	Humans not created from the earth (others animals are from the earth)
Gender	Gender comes later	Male and female created together
Plants	Some plants are off limits	All plants are available for food
Human's relation to Earth	Serve the Earth	Subdue the Earth
Animals	Animals are companions for humans	Animals' purpose is not related to humans
Emphasis on humanity's	Free will	Authority

Genesis 1 and the Flood
It is important to note that the Genesis 1 account describes a vision of cosmic perfection which is tempered with realism after the Flood. (The story of the Flood [Genesis 6:5 - 8:22] includes material from both the Yahwist and the Priestly source.) From the Priestly perspective, the flood was necessary because the earth had become corrupted by violence among all flesh. The sequence of the flood "undoes" the steps of creation from Genesis 1, and then rebuilds the whole creation. This new creation permits violence, although with significant constraints. It may be significant that in the covenant that God makes with all flesh and with the earth itself, the language about humanity having dominion is not included.

Mingling the Two Stories
The Yahwistic and the Priestly creation narratives have very different cosmologies, and define very different roles for humans within the creation.

• In the older story of the Garden of Eden, "the earthling" is created to serve the earth. (The Hebrew word that is usually translated as "till" in 2:5 and 2:15 is more accurately translated as "serve".) Animals are created as companions to the human, and mutuality characterizes most relationships. The story emphasizes humanity's free will, but puts boundaries on that freedom (not eating of the two trees). A message of the story, echoed in the Yahwistic story of the Tower of Babel, is that humans are not to strive to be like God.
• In the Priestly story, humans are told to "subdue" the earth, and to have dominion over all living things. The story stresses separations among various "kinds", and implies hierarchical and controlling relationships, as echoed in Psalm 8 (which is the only other passage in the Bible that speaks of humanity's dominion over creation). The story emphasizes the power and authority given to humans, but they are to use that authority only to accomplish God's purposes in preserving the creation.

When the two stories are combined, many Christians have picked parts of the message from each story, and lost the important constraints. The freedom of the Yahwistic story is mingled with the authority of the Priestly account, but the constraints of either story are lost. The unrestrained freedom and authority that come from mis-reading these two stories is what people (such as Lynn White) point to when they say that Christianity encourages the abuse and exploitation of nature.