Monday, September 6, 2010
J vs P the showdown
A week ago if someone had asked me 'hey what is the difference between P and J?' I would have promptly replied that the had left out the b and that one was a sticky condiment made from a legume while the other is a condiment l that can be made from any number of fruits, mostly berries. But that all changed after doing the assignment that Guru Sexson assigned us, now I know that P and J are in fact the writers of Genesis one and two. If no one had told me that there was two different writers I doubt I would have picked up on it, but having been enlightened to the fact that there are if fact conflicting styles at play in these first back to back passages, I started to notice some subtle differences. the first thing I noticed was that in both one and two man is created but in very different ways. In the J version man is simply created as a small part of a greater six days of creation. On the other hand the P version goes into much greater detail about our creation making it seem like god put a lot of thought into our creation, baked with love and all that. there are also several minor differences like how god is referred to and the like all giving glimpses into how the author thought we should feel about creation. But the most stark contrast in my mind was the general view of god himself. In Genesis one he is all mighty, his smallest whim is made true by now more then his wanting it to be so. and then comes a near one eighty in Genesis two when he becomes almost human, he walks and he has breath where as before he seemed almost immaterial. then if you go on to read Genesis three, which seems very similar in style to the priestly writer, you will find god not even able to find Adam and Eve when he wants to, showing he is neither omniscient or omnipotent.
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