What are four religious truths revealed in the two creation stories of Genesis?

Answer 1

1. In the first creation story, God is all-powerful and can simply speak things into existence.
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   In the second creation story, God's powers are limited, and he can not make living things out of nothing. He makes Adam and the animals out of dirt, Eve out of a rib taken from Adam.
2. In the first creation story, man is made in the image of God.
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   In the second creation story, man is not made in the image of God but becomes god-like after eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 3:22, "And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us...").
3. In the first creation story, man is to have dominion over the earth.
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   In the second creation story, man is to be the servant of the earth.
4. In the first creation story, man is to go forth and multiply, and replenish or cover the earth.
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   In the second creation story, God had no apparent interest in this, since he only created Eve after Adam found no animal that would be company for his loneliness.

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Answer 2

1) God created the universe and everything in it, including living things. 2) We are answerable to God.

3) We possess a God-given soul.

4) God isn't the distant "first cause" of the philosophers. He is interested and involved in this world.

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). In ch.1, God created the universe from nothing (Exodus 20:11, Rashi commentary, Gen.1:14), and in ch.2, God performed specific acts within the broader picture.
The same literary devices which the Torah employs to enrich its text, have been used by Bible-critics in an attempt to reassign its authorship.

The Jewish sages, based on ancient tradition, identified many of these devices, which include:

recapping earlier brief passages to elucidate,

employing different names of God to signify His various attributes,

using apparent changes or redundancies to allude to additional unstated details,

speaking in the vernacular that was current during each era,

and many more. 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:

Debunking the JEPD Documentary Hypothesis

Genesis chapters 1 and 2 (a Christian author)

The authorship of the Hebrew Bible