Thus the two accounts of the creation of man, that in which he appears in his chronological position in the general development, and that in which he takes a first place, as introductory to his special history, are not contradictory, but complementary to each other; and the latter refers wholly to man and the creatures contemporary with him in the palanthropic age. It is in accordance with this, and no doubt intended by the editor to mark this distinction, that the name Elohim is used in the general narrative, and Jehovah Elohim in the special one. The failure of so many critics to notice this distinction, which must have been so plain to the primitive historian himself, is a marked illustration of the blindness of certain nineteenth-century savants, so full of their own special knowledge, yet so careless of science and common sense.
It would even seem that this distinction appeared in the Chaldean Genesis as well; for fragments of what has been called a second Chaldean Genesis have been found which seem to correspond with the statements of the second chapter of Genesis.
The following is an extract from this second Chaldean or Akkadian Genesis as translated by Pinches:[33]
1 The glorious house, the house of the gods, in a glorious place had not been made;
2 A plant had not been brought forth, a tree had not been created;
3 A brick had not been laid, a beam had not been shaped;
4 A house had not been built, a city had not been constructed;
5 A city had not been made, a foundation had not been made glorious;
6 Niffer had not been built, Ê-kura had not been constructed;
7 Erech had not been built, Ê-ana had not been constructed;
8 The Abyss had not been made, Ê-ridu had not been constructed;
9 (As for) the glorious house, the house of the gods, its seat had not been made--
This may be supposed to correspond with the Hebrew verses following:
And no plant of the field was yet in the earth.
And no herb of the field had yet sprung up.
For Jahveh Elohim had not caused it to rain on the earth.
And there was not a man to till (irrigate) the ground.
And there went up a vapour from the earth, and watered the surface of the ground.
This is the Hebrew idea of the condition of the great Mesopotamian plain after the pleistocene submergence, and before the appearance of man. The Chaldean version refers to the same region, but is more elaborate and artificial, and brings in the historic cities of a later time. This difference alone would induce us to suppose that the Hebrew record may be a better guide for our present comparison.