How was the world made according to the Genesis account?

Answer 1

There are actually two different creation accounts in the Book of Genesis, the first in Genesis 1:1-2:4a and the second in Genesis 2:4b-25, and each one tells us something different about how the world was made. Leon R. Kass (The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis) says the second creation story departs from the first not only in content but also in tone, mood and orientation, and the two stories, which had two different authors, are entirely unrelated. This means that to understand Genesis we must scrupulously avoid reading into either story any facts or notions taken from the other.

Since the early centuries of the Common Era, tradition has held that Genesis 1:1 says "In the beginning God created heaven and earth," which seems a straight forward explanation of how the world was created. But as long ago as the eleventh century, the influential Jewish scholar, Rashi, said that Genesis 1:1 should be read, "When God began to create" or "In the beginning of God's creation ". E.A. Speiser (Genesis in the Anchor Bible series) goes further and translates the sentence as: "When God set about to create heaven and earth - the world being a formless waste, with darkness over the seas... God said, 'Let there be light.' And there was light." Although both Rashi and Speiser probably believed that God created the earth, neither could find evidence of this in the text. There was a pre-existing watery chaos, the ocean was already present and a wind moved across the surface. The seas rested on the dry land, which appeared on day 3 when God gathered the waters together. The sun, moon and stars were created on day 4.

In the second account, which is more primitive and much older in Judaism, there is certainly no suggestion that God created the world. Even the plants (or their seeds) were in the ground waiting for it to rain. A mist came up from the earth and watered the whole face of the earth, after which God performed his first act of creation - creating Adam.

For more information, please visit: http://christianity.answers.com/theology/the-story-of-creation

Answer 2

God created the universe from nothing (Exodus 20:11, Isaiah 40:28; Maimonides' "Guide," 2:30; Targum and Nachmanides on Gen. 1:1; Rashi commentary, Gen.1:14), and then brought forth specific things in this Earth over the next few days, as described in Genesis.

According to tradition, there is only one Genesis creation-narrative, with ch.2 serving as an expansion of the brevity of ch.1, not a separate set of events (Rashi commentary, Gen.2:8).

While Judaism has always seen the Torah as an intricate tapestry that nonetheless had one Divine source, some modern authors such as Wellhausen (the father of modern Biblical-criticism, 1844-1918) have suggested artificially chopping up the narrative and attributing it to various authors, despite the Torah's explicit statement as to its provenance (Exodus 24:12, Deuteronomy 31:24). This need not concern believers, since his claims have been debunked one by one, as Archaeology and other disciplines have demonstrated the integrity of the Torah. No fragments have ever been found that would support his Documentary Hypothesis, which remains nothing more than an arbitrary claim:http://religion.answers.com/theory/debunking-the-jepd-documentary-hypothesis

http://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=6&article=1131(a Christian author)

http://www.WhoReallyWroteTheBible.com/excerpts/chapter4-1.php