Page:Genesis I-II- (IA genesisiii00grot).pdf/43

language used. The different arrangements of the two accounts need hardly be pointed out. In the first account we have an orderly progression, a subdivision of the whole drama into acts. After each act, occupying a day, the curtain drops; the work must have been done in the night, as the day begins with the evening, although we are somewhat puzzled to understand how the author could have imagined "evening and morning" before the creation of the sun. The author by the term "yom" meant a "day," in the common acceptance of the word and all attempts to give the term a wider significance are futile. The term "yom" is never used otherwise than to designate the 24 hours, except where it is sued in contrast with "la'ylay" night, then it means the period of daylight. The plural "Yamin" is occasionally used for "times," but even in the Talmud it is laid down as a rule of interpretation, that the figurative employment of a word, does not deprive it of its natural and literal meaning. Besides we find in Ch. I., 14, the word "n'lyamin," "and for days," in contrast with the following term "v'shanim," "and years." And lastly we have that unanswerable, though almost threadbare reference to Ch. II., 3, where Elohim blessed the "seventh day," because he rested on that day from his labor. The second account, on the other hand, beginning Ch. II., 4, has no division of time at all, nor is there any orderly subdivision of events; all events are only told with reference to one central fact, that creation of man. A comparison of the facts narrated in each shows the following differences. The first account begins with Chaos, as in the Greek Cosmogony, the first differentiation being between light and darkness on the first day. The second day brings about the division between heaven and earth. On the third, land appears. The second account opens with the earth as a dry arid plain without vegetation and animal life. In the first account the earth is made to produce the herbs bearing seed and the trees bearing fruit with seed, independently of rain and