The sublime simplicity of the opening of Genesis was polemical. Creation for the Hebrews was not a tangle of incest, conspiracy, and intergenerational bloodletting; it was the act of Yahweh and Yahweh alone. He did not grapple with a rival or impregnate a goddess. Indeed there was no one else in all the vastness at the beginning of things, no consort, no assistance, and no resistance. The humans were created in God’s image and likeness, animated not with the blood of a murdered rival but with his own breath. He did not produce these creatures in order to serve him and make his divine existence
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