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Chapter Two Creation before Eve
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The Omnipotent Deity

The first nine scenes concern the story of God and Creation prior to the making of Adam. The central questions posed here concern the nature of the Deity himself and the origin of evil. Discussion regarding God's nature arose from chapters 1–3 in the Genesis text itself, particularly because of the inconsistencies in the P and J versions. The P text (Gen. 1:1–2:3) characterizes an ideal and clearly benevolent Creator, omnipotent and omniscient, who generously forms a creature in his own image. This is the God who but speaks in order to create, confirms "that it was good," and blesses the creatures he makes. There exists also in the P text a sense of hierarchy in the world order, established by the formulaic movement from Day One through Day Seven, and by the command that the final creature made on Day Six will "have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth" (Gen. 1:26). Yet this being seems irreconcilable with the J-text Deity who appears in the second, nonhierarchical account of Creation that begins in Genesis 2:4: a more human and inept God, whose inability to control his creatures challenges his omnipotence, and whose need to search among the animals for a proper helper for Adam and to call into the bushes after the hiding Adam and Eve seems to confirm his lack of omniscience. A further complication arises from the juxtaposition of the P and J deities: how could the all-controlling and benevolent Creator of the P text deny Adam and Eve access to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, if that knowledge were good for them? And if the knowledge were not good, but evil, why would he have created it? The Cotton Genesis, the profusely illustrated and unabridged manuscript that was used as a model by the mosaicists, offers illuminations of both the P and the J versions. The artists of the San Marco mosaics, however, revised and eliminated parts of its narrative in favor of a more consistent and unified interpretation of the story. Their cycle depicts the powerful God of the P text yet offers a plausible explanation for the origins of evil from the J narrative.


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Chapter Two Creation before Eve
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