The mythologies of all the world's people are designed to answer such questions as "Who are we as a people?" "How did we originate?" and Why do we die?"Created by Jews, adopted by Christians, the following creation stories have had an exceptionally long and complex history which can hardly be explored in this volume's necessarily brief notes. It was about a century and a half ago that scholars first noted that Genesis seemed to contain two distinct creation stories, using different names for the creator (translated here as "God" and "the Lord"), with different emphases (physical vs. moral issues), and even a different order of creation (plants before humans, plants after humans). Scholars whose religious faith does not require them to believe otherwise have since generally agreed that the grand but starkly simple poetic opening of Genesis was the product of a much later period than the story of what traditionally is called "the Fall." The first narrative states themes typical of mature Judaism: the creator is the sole ruler of the univese, and even in the process of creation he has provided the foundation for the Jewish sabbath. Although it rejects the typical polytheism of Mesopotomian creation stories like the Enuma Elish, it shares certain features with them: land emerging out of an original watery chaos and waters above and beneath the earth. Although the universe is not created by God dividing up a goddess like Tiamat, other passages in the Hebrew Bible suggest that the metaphor of the slaying of a primordial sea-serpent named Leviathan lurked in Hebrew thought about creation, to be linked in some passages with the miraculous division of waters which enabled the captives to leave Egypt. Note how this account is deeply embedded in the use of language: speech calls the world into being, and speech blesses it. The concept of the divine word of God was to be a central concept of Judaism, later adopted by both Christianity and Islam.
Why do you suppose plants were so important that they are depicted as being created even before the sun? What kind of plants does the narrative particularly focus on?