1. Genesis:b’reishit

God created the world and the creatures and the plants then created man/woman twice.  Seriously.  The first time God created man and woman.  In a voice that was clear and concise.  Then God went back and created man again in a flowery poetic voice and several verses later created woman from man’s rib.  Two very different voices.

So I’ve considered getting hung up on the fact that there are two voices and the same story is told differently twice.  I don’t have any illusion that the Torah was written by God.  Or Moses.  Or anyone who was channeling either of them.  But I do wonder why whoever did write the words decided to write the same story twice.  In a row.  And differently.  But it doesn’t really interest me in the least to know  or not know that the Torah might have been written by God or any other divine being.

I’ve done some things twice.  Gotten married.  Had two children.  I turned 25 twice.  Maybe twice is important.  “If at first you don’t succeed….”  Maybe God didn’t like the first pair of humans created so needed to create a new pair.  Maybe equality didn’t work for him.  And I’m using the pronoun deliberately.  It’s taken an awfully long time for humanity to begin to think that equality is important.  Maybe we need to look at the definition.  I’ll be back……

Here’s the definition by encarta:  rights, treatment, quantity, or value equal to all others in a specific group

Equality isn’t the right word.  Men and women are not equal.  Humans are all different with different needs, we each bring different value to our world, to ourselves, we are large and small and deserve different treatment based on who we are and how we connect and contribute.  No one is equal.  We are all unique.  As far as I’m concerned this is good.

So no, I don’t buy the equality or lack of equality argument for the second telling of the creation story.  There must be another reason, or maybe no reason at all.  Wouldn’t it be funny if the whole thing was written by various people with their own ideas of how the world should be who contributed their own best wisdom in the form of stories with morals specific to their own authors.  Hmmmmmm.