How Many Authors Wrote Genesis 1 and 2?
Sometime ago I came across the following statement by liberal New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman: “The creation account in Genesis 1 is very different from the account in Genesis 2. Not only is the wording and writing style different, as is very obvious when you read the text in Hebrew, and not only do the chapters use different names for God, but the very content of the chapters differs in numerous respects” [1] This is not the first time I heard the assertion, but Ehrman has the knack of taking this idea from the scholarly ivory tower and repacking it for popular readership. Still the question remains: Are the first two chapters in Genesis two different creation accounts? I’d say that Genesis begins with looking at the creation from two different angles and chapters 1 and 2 are far from contradictory. It is true that in Genesis chapter 1, the word “God” is used to translate the Hebrew word elohim and in chapter 2 the same word elohim is used is coupled with YaHWeh , which is tran