Patricia Keith-Spiegel wrote:
> 
> Steve--Sorry that I didn't get back to you faster with the Biblical citations, but I 
>am still unpacking after moving and cannot locate my Bible.  Anyway, your will find 
>the two versions  right near the beginning of Genesis.  They are right together, so 
>you have to notice that you go through one path leading up towards humans, and then 
>the story recycles with another story leading up to humans.   Let me know if this 
>doesn't help.  The Bible is around here somewhere!
> 

In fact most of the stories in Genesis have two versions including
Adam/Eve (first version God creates male and female at the same time;
second version God takes a rib from Adam and creates a female "helper")
and the big flood story (a male and female pair of every kind of animal
on the ark vs. 7 pairs of almost all kinds of animals but only one pair
of the unclean animals).  There are Talmudic explanations which attempt
to reconcile the two versions. It seems other groups tend to emphasize
the version that best fits their world view. I'm sure that we could
relate several psychological concepts to this tendency.

It is likely that at least two versions of Genesis with two different
authors were written and these were interwoven together to form Genesis.
The five books of Moses altogether were probably written by four authors
and then a fifth pulled the works together as we currently know them.  
The first author is usually referred to as J and used the Hebrew letters
yod, he, vav, he (often translated into the letters JHWH) to refer to
the unpronounceable name of God (often translated as Jehovah or Yahweh).
 The second author, E, is the one who uses the name Elohim to refer to
God, the author P is thought to have added material related to the
priesthood, and the author D is thought to have penned Deuteronomy.  R
is the individual who is thought to have pulled all of the material
together into the first five book of the Torah.  For more information
read Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliott Friedman.

Linda

-- 
Linda M. Woolf, Ph.D.
Book Review Editor, H-Genocide
Associate Professor - Psychology 
Coordinator - Holocaust & Genocide Studies,
Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights
Webster University
470 East Lockwood
St. Louis, MO  63119

Main Webpage:  http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/  
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

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