It was probably intended as an origin myth just for Semitic peoples as to why they’re holier than the pagan rabble around them and it just lost its way a bit and ended up confused
Then the NT comes and doubles down on the whole human race explicitly coming from Adam. Now that I think about it, I can’t think of an OT reference explicitly saying everyone’s from Adam? Maybe the ancient Jews just always knew genesis wasn’t supposed to explain everything?
People say there are two genesis creation myths “mashed” together. I think this is true, but not really giving enough credit to the people doing the mashing who I think - as the rest of the literature pans out - not generally in the habit of writing directly contradictory things (usually you have to dig deeper for mistakes, but blatant surface level ones are not so common). They didn’t have science, but they knew how stories worked. I think it’s possible the original editor, when joining the myths together, intended the “man” created in myth 1 (the sixth day) to be understood as humanity in general. And myth two following on immediately is the specific creation of Adam on the eighth day. That would at least explain why Cain’s wife is referred to so casually (as well as the implied peoples Cain is afraid of)
That’s what I mean, ChatGPT recombines existing stuff without knowing and caring about a larger context. It seems the same thing happened with the Bible, I guess other “holy books” as well. It’s not really a dig at the Bible, more like an interesting parallel between the mechanisms.
Yes! Surprised I’ve not seen that brought up more often. Even if it was an editor working with two origin myths and joining them together, reading it that way at least gives them some credit…
It was probably intended as an origin myth just for Semitic peoples as to why they’re holier than the pagan rabble around them and it just lost its way a bit and ended up confused
Then the NT comes and doubles down on the whole human race explicitly coming from Adam. Now that I think about it, I can’t think of an OT reference explicitly saying everyone’s from Adam? Maybe the ancient Jews just always knew genesis wasn’t supposed to explain everything?
Just realized the Bible is kinda like ChatGPT drivel
People say there are two genesis creation myths “mashed” together. I think this is true, but not really giving enough credit to the people doing the mashing who I think - as the rest of the literature pans out - not generally in the habit of writing directly contradictory things (usually you have to dig deeper for mistakes, but blatant surface level ones are not so common). They didn’t have science, but they knew how stories worked. I think it’s possible the original editor, when joining the myths together, intended the “man” created in myth 1 (the sixth day) to be understood as humanity in general. And myth two following on immediately is the specific creation of Adam on the eighth day. That would at least explain why Cain’s wife is referred to so casually (as well as the implied peoples Cain is afraid of)
That’s what I mean, ChatGPT recombines existing stuff without knowing and caring about a larger context. It seems the same thing happened with the Bible, I guess other “holy books” as well. It’s not really a dig at the Bible, more like an interesting parallel between the mechanisms.
One interpretation is that 6th day creation is non adam people, and adam was created on the 8th day
Yes! Surprised I’ve not seen that brought up more often. Even if it was an editor working with two origin myths and joining them together, reading it that way at least gives them some credit…