The first two chapters of Genesis are regularly
bashed on the noggin for being contrary to modern notions of
science; but we won't be discussing that here. Instead, we're
going to look at the issue of internal inconsistencies in the two
so-called "creation accounts" -- which actually split at verse
2:4; but for brevity we'll refer to the accounts, respectively,
as G1 and G2.
This essay is an expansion upon some counters to objections
previously found on another part of this page, and is prompted in
part by some responses passed on to me from a Christian member of
a known Skeptical discussion board. And so, let's get down to
business. We will explore these areas:
Are there actually two creation accounts?
Do these two accounts contradict one another? In answer
to this question, we will pursue these replies:
G1? G2? G Whiz!
A key operational question for this subject may
come as a surprise: Are G1 and G2 actually creation accounts? G1
is undoubtedly so, but the classification of G2 is a bit more
subtle, and affects somewhat our overall presentation.
The book of Genesis contains several sections that begin with the
phrase which we sometimes render, "These are the generations
of..." The word "generations" is the Hebrew toledot and has the
connotation of a family history or succession. Toledot are given
for Adam's line (5:1-6:8), Noah (6:9-9:29), Noah's sons
(10:1-11:9), Shem (11:10-26), Terah and Abram (11:27-25:11), and
so on -- there are nearly a dozen recurrences of the toledot
introduction and method, and one of these, interestingly enough,
is Genesis 2:4-4:6. What does this mean? It means that G2 is not
actually a creation account as such, but a "family history" of
the first men in creation [Mat.Gen126, 12ff]. It is therefore a
point to begin our argument by noting that anyone who reads G2 as
a rehash of the creation accounted in G1 is missing the boat from
the start. It is quite unlikely, given the parallel toledot
structure, that the author of Genesis is repeating himself
(although we do have examples of dual creation accounts -- the
former told generally, the latter told more specifically -- in
Sumerian and Babylonian literature). Rather, the indication would
be that G2 is of an entirely different genre and approach than
G1, and that any supposed contradiction between them needs to be
understood in that light.
So G2 is not exactly a "creation account" to begin with; and this
leads to the next question, of whether a single author is
responsible for both. In that regard, the evidence indicates a
very close unity between G1 and G2, one that indicates either a
single redactor or, more likely, a single author. G1 and G2 are
indeed linked by a detectable and obvious pattern:
Points of Order
Typically, critics find two major points of
disagreement between G1 and G2. The first of these is rather easy
to dispose of:
Gen. 1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the
herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his
kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was
so.
Gen. 2:4-5 These are the generations of the heavens and of the
earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made
the earth and the heavens, And every plant of the field before it
was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for
the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there
was not a man to till the ground.
The allegation is that whereas G1 has plants made before man, G2
has man made before plants. But it is really rather simple to see
that G2 indicates no such thing as is claimed, for the latter
specifies that what did not exist yet were plants and herbs "of
the field" -- what field? The Hebrew word here is sadeh, and
where it is used of known geographic locations, refers to either
a quite limited area of land, and/or a flat place suitable for
agriculture, as opposed to the word used in 1:11, "earth", which
is 'erets -- a word which has much broader geographic
connotations. (See for example Gen. 23:12-13: "And he spake unto
Ephron in the audience of the people of the land ['erets],
saying, But if thou wilt give it, I pray thee, hear me: I will
give thee money for the field [sadeh]; take it of me, and I will
bury my dead there." ; Ex. 9:22 "And the LORD said unto Moses,
Stretch forth thine hand toward heaven, that there may be hail in
all the land ['erets] of Egypt, upon man, and upon beast, and
upon every herb of the field [sadeh], throughout the land
['erets] of Egypt."; Lev. 25:2-3, "Speak unto the children of
Israel, and say unto them, When ye come into the land ['erets]
which I give you, then shall the land ['erets] keep a sabbath
unto the LORD. Six years thou shalt sow thy field [sadeh], and
six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit
thereof...") A key to understanding what is being described here
is that verse 2:5 goes on to explain WHY there were no "plants of
the field" -- because a) there was no rain upon the earth, and b)
there was no man to work the earth -- the two key elements for
agriculture according to the ancient mindset. Thus, what this
passage indicates is that there was as yet no organized
agriculture, and that makes sense of the verses following, where
God specifically plants the garden of Eden and places man to tend
to it. G2 is not indicating that there were no plants created yet
at all, but that a special place was set aside for the foundation
of agriculture and for plants "of the field" to be developed.
(This idea of Eden as a special place set aside shall come into
play as we progress.)
But now to the second alleged contradiction, and it is a little
tougher to deal with:
Gen. 1:24-5 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the
living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and
beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made
the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their
kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his
kind: and God saw that it was good.
Gen. 2:18-20 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man
should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of
the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and
every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he
would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living
creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all
cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the
field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for
him.
Problem? G1 says that animals were created before man; G2 says
that man came first, there was a need to designate a helpmeet,
then animals were created for the first time...or does it? For
quite some time now the classical solution to this problem has
been to do what the NIV (but no other version that I know of) has
done, and that is to render the verb in verse 2:19 not as simple
past tense, but as a pluperfect, so:
Now the LORD God had formed out of the
ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the
air.
Thus, it is asserted by various proponents, for example, from
Leupold's Exposition of Genesis:
Without any emphasis on the sequence of acts the account here
records the making of the various creatures and the bringing of
them to man. That in reality they had been made prior to the
creation of man is so entirely apparent from chapter one as not
to require explanation. But the reminder that God had "molded"
them makes obvious His power to bring them to man and so is quite
appropriately mentioned here. It would not, in our estimation, be
wrong to translate yatsar as a pluperfect in this instance: 'He
had molded.' The insistence of the critics upon a plain past is
partly the result of the attempt to make chapters one and two
clash at as many points as possible.
Likewise, others have noted that the very context of the passages
indicate that the pluperfect should be used, and this was the
simple solution which I offered in an initial analysis of this
verse, in reply to claims of contradiction by Jim Merritt.
However, in stepped at this point a member of the Skeptic X
school, who, having apparently found a copy in the street (it is
hard to imagine any of them going to a library to look this sort
of thing up) consulted the revered Gensenius' Hebrew
Grammar and asserted that "such a reading is NOT POSSIBLE in
the Hebrew since (starting after Gen. 2:4) the form of the
narrative consists of a number of temporally consecutive clauses,
linked by a special marker known as "WAW CONSECUTIVE". And what
is this item? Citing "section 49a, note 1, page 133" of that
grammar, they said:
"This name best expresses the prevailing syntactical
relation, for by WAW CONSECUTIVE an action is always represented
as the direct, or at least temporal CONSEQUENCE of a preceding
action."
Thus, they said, "the Genesis 2 narrative literally takes the
form of a series of clauses WHICH OCCUR IN A TEMPORALLY ORDERED
SEQUENCE" and because the "Hebrew syntax tells us that the
actions performed in such a clause are '...the direct, or at
least temporal consequence of a preceding action', the only
preceding action for which the creation of the beasts and birds
can reasonably be considered 'a direct consequence' is God's
declaration that He will make a helper for 'the man'. " And that
is that -- or is it?
In fact, our Skeptic has simply done no more than show us that
while complete ignorance is rather dangerous, a little knowledge
is even more so. They have certainly reported the text of the
grammar correctly, but the "waw consecutive" is rather a more
complicated beast than this person supposes, for it does not
ALWAYS indicate temporal sequence, as indeed the grammar
indicates. There are examples in the OT, NT, and in Egyptian and
Assyrian literature of "dischronologized" narratives where items
are arranged topically rather than chronologically, and this
would justify our own use of the pluperfect for the sake of
context; indeed, even commentators that prefer to keep the simple
past tense suppose not that these is a contradiction, but that G2
is reporting the order out of sequence purposely in order to
stress man's dominion over the created animals. An older
commentary by Keil and Delitsch made this point nicely:
The consecutive arrangement (in Gen. 2:19) may be explained
on the supposition that the writer, who was about to describe the
relation of man to the beast, went back to the creation, in the
simple method of the early Semitic historian, and placed this
first instead of making it subordinate; so that our modern style
of expressing the same would be "God brought to Adam the beast
which He had formed."
A striking example of this style of narrative is in 1 Kings 7:13.
The building and completion of the temple we noticed several
times in chapter 6, and the last time in connection with the year
and month, chapter 6:9,14,37,38. After that, the fact is stated
that the royal palace was 13 years in building; and then it is
related that Solomon fetched Hiram from Tyre, to make 2 pillars.
If we are to understand the (WAW/VAV) consecutive here, Solomon
would be made to send for the artist 13 years after the temple
was finished. It only expresses the thought, "Hiram, whom Solomon
fetched from Tyre. -Also note Judges 2:6.
More than this, there are also various "exceptions" which crop up
in Hebrew grammar where the waw consecutive is used. Greenberg,
citing the grammar of Jouon, notes [Gree.UE, 37, 168n] that the
waw consecutive "sometimes occurs when there is no idea of
succession" and that there are places where a pluperfect can be
rendered in accordance with a summarizing or recapitulating use
of the waw consecutive. Collins [Coll.WAP] points out that there
are cases of unmarked pluperfects in the OT, and that the
specific verb in question in this verse itself often warrants a
pluperfect translation. Furthermore, another contributor to this
debate observed:
Gen. 2:19 begins with VaYYiTSeR; the verb "YaTSaR" in the
imperfect with a WAW consecutive. Waltke and O'Connor
("Introduction to the Syntax of Biblical Hebrew", pp. 544-546)
say that "It (imperfect with a WAW consecutive) shows in Hebrew
meanings equivalent to those of the suffix (perfect)
conjugation." Earlier, on p. 490, they had already shown that the
suffix conjugation can have a pluperfect meaning; later, on p.
552, they show that the imperfect with a WAW consecutive can also
have a pluperfect meaning, giving as examples "The Lord *had
said* (Hebrew: VaYeDaBBeR) to Moses" (Num. 1:47-49) and "The Lord
*had said* (Hebrew: VaYYoMeR) to Moses" (Ex. 4:18-19).
I have not been able to check the accuracy of this cite, but
assuming it is true, we have now as many as four indications that
the use of the waw consecutive in no way diminishes the argument
for the use of the pluperfect. It remains untouched by the
critic's argument.
In Case You Want to Argue
So the pluperfect is a more than acceptable
reading; but since we are facing the sorts who believe that
merely quoting versions is a way to prove that one is correct,
and since most versions do use the simple past tense (although as
we have noted, even commentators who use it do not necessarily
agree that it constitutes actual contradiction!), we had better
have another line of defense for them to gnaw on -- and indeed,
there is another, one that relates back to our indication of the
garden as a special sort of "domestic creation" for man to do his
service in.
The naming of the animals was not simply a pre-Linnean
classification exercise; it was a demonstration of Adam's
dominion over the entirety of nature. The giving of names, in
ancient oriental thought, was an exercise of sovereignty and
command. One may compare here the idea of bringing subjects
before a sovereign, and this will come into play as we develop
our argument that assumes reading "formed" as a simple past
tense.
Now for recollection and rhetorical purposes, let's once again
quote the key passage:
Gen. 2:18-20 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the
man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And
out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the
field, and every fowl of the air; and
brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and
whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name
thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and
to the fowl of the air, and to every
beast of the field; but for Adam there was not
found an help meet for him.
Does anyone notice something? God "formed" beasts and fowl here
-- but he brings before Adam beasts, fowl, and cattle -- the
domestic creatures! Where did they come from? The answer, under
this proposition, is that they were already in Eden (a place of
domestic specialty set aside!), and that the "forming" of the
beasts and fowl is an act of special creation, giving Adam
"samples" of these beasts and fowls from outside Eden for the
sake of presenting them to the earth's appointed sovereign. (For
after all, why should a king have to wait for his subjects to
wander in when he can have them brought to him at once?) In this
passage the author clearly shows awareness of the cattle having
already been created in G1, for he does not indicate their
creation here, but rather assumes that they don't need to be
created. Even without the pluperfect rendering, G1 and G2
demonstrate a perfect consistency. (This explanation is also
supported by the chiastic structure of the report of the animals:
They are cited in the order,
"beasts...fowl...cattle...fowl...beasts" -- suggesting that the
report is done by design, not because the writer was a
knucklehead who couldn't see contradiction so plainly in front of
him.)
Conclusion
The attempts by the Skeptics to upset the
traditional arguments for the harmony of G1 and G2 have failed.
Once again it is obvious that they are hiking into our territory
without so much as a map or directions -- and little wonder that
they end up lost!
We now offer consideration of a few objections from Ch. 18 of
the Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy, which repeats the
objections noted above, and adds others:
Now we look at a few comments from the Ebon
website:
"Though I haven't studied the beliefs of other Ancient Near
East cultures in detail, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the
Bible wasn't the only book of mythology from around that time
that had this structure. After all, I would be the first to agree
that it, like every other holy text mankind has ever produced, is
merely a reflection of its time and place of origin."
So to start, Ebon "refutes" us by conceding the ancient literary
genre issue and changing the subject. But no one other than Chick
fundamentalists and fundamentalist atheists has ever argued that
the Bible had to be in a unique genre or form not reflective of
its times. In fact it would only be appropriate for a message to
be in a form that would clearly be understood and recognized by
its intended readers.
"'Dischronologized narratives' is just a more complicated way
of saying that sometimes the Bible does not relate events in the
order they happened, generally because the writers wanted to
rearrange their timelines in order to make some sort of point. I
have no problem at all with this idea - for obvious reasons - and
if Mr. Holding accepts it as well, then I suspect we're closer to
agreement than he realizes."
So Ebon continues to "refute" us by conceding the potential lack
of chronological emphasis in ancient narratives. But credit where
due -- another Skeptic we know would just call it "flapdoodle"
and leave. Re using CARM:
"As stated previously, if I had chosen only one apologist
website to draw responses to these contradictions from, I have no
doubt I would have been accused of using only the weakest site
out there. I prefer to show that I can deal with Christian
arguments from a broad variety of sources."
No, we wouldn't say that; we would raise the charge of inadequate
data retrieval, but to suggest that the response was purposely
drawn from the weakest source would be absurd, for who in the
world could, or has, ranked websites and sources in terms of
weakest to strongest? Not that we expect someone who responds to
explanations about complexities of Hebrew grammar by referring to
them as "linguistic and logical gymnastics" to know any better.
Ebon finally asserts that the plain facts blow the "carefully
constructed houses of cards apart." What "plain facts" allegedly
accomplish this Skeptical feat of derring-do? After noting that
the Hebrew permits the Genesis 2:19 passage to indicate that Adam
was naming animals which had been created prior, Ebon tries to
argue that Genesis 2:18 makes it plain that the animals had not
been created yet since Adam is described as being alone. He
doesn't bother to argue against the possibility that "alone"
simply means without a suitable helpmate, which is somewhat
curious given that we have no textual justification for assuming
that God had left the scene. I suggest that Ebon renew his
commitment to viewing the texts outside of his modern Western
expectations of chronological progression to consider that the
verse where no helpmate is found takes into consideration the
unsuitability of the heretofore members of the animal kingdom -
those mentioned in the literarily subsequent passage. Thus, God's
intention to find a helpmate for Adam points to the creation of
Eve, not to the naming of the animals as a sort of antediluvian
"Dating Game".
"I will not deny that Mr. Holding is not alone in suggesting
this harmonization, but he quotes from another commentator whose
perspective on the matter is unintentionally revealing:
Without any emphasis on the sequence of acts the account here
records the making of the various creatures and the bringing of
them to man. That in reality they had been made prior to the
creation of man is so entirely apparent from chapter one as not
to require explanation. But the reminder that God had "molded"
them makes obvious His power to bring them to man and so is quite
appropriately mentioned here. It would not, in our estimation, be
wrong to translate yatsar as a pluperfect in this instance: 'He
had molded.' The insistence of the critics upon a plain past is
partly the result of the attempt to make chapters one and two
clash at as many points as possible.
Just who these anonymous "critics" are we are not told, but
apparently they include the translators of the KJV and RSV
versions of the Bible, which both render verse 2:19 in the simple
past tense: "And out of the ground the Lord God formed".
Unsurprisingly, it is only the NIV which uses the pluperfect -
the NIV, the translation produced by evangelical Christian
inerrantists who confessed in advance their agenda to "smooth
over" many of the difficulties and contradictions in the Bible,
which they accomplished through several egregious mistranslations
(since they are probably deliberate, it would not be right to
call them errors)."
Apparently realizing the problem that he has created for
himself, Ebon not only ignores the bulk of material from the
article on the pluperfect (including failing to provide any
actual objections against it), he also tries to retread the
argument from chronological progression that he essentially
conceded almost from the start. Simple past tense of the passage
dealing with the presentation of the animals supposedly indicates
that they were created after Adam was found to be alone with no
suitable helper - conveniently forgetting what he had earlier
conceded. (Had Ebon any sense as well, he would realize that the
KJV was produced rather before the time of Leupold and could
obviously not be in view here. He also fails to note our point
that even without the pluperfect the story is perfectly
consistent.) As before the charge of bias is merely that of
laziness and does not serve to answer the arguments, and also
fails to account for our point, "even commentators that prefer to
keep the simple past tense suppose not that these is a
contradiction, but that G2 is reporting the order out of sequence
purposely in order to stress man's dominion over the created
animals." Either way Ebon is gigged.
Ebon isn't finished with his fishing expedition, however. He
alleges that I "admit" that Genesis 2:9 states that fruit trees
were only created after Adam. Where he gets that idea I can only
guess. I am clear in identifying the plants "of the field" as
agricultural varieties relevant after the expulsion from Eden.
"Fruit trees" and "plants/herbs of the field" are not overlapping
categories. Hold onto your hats, though, for Ebon has an ace up
his sleeve (supposedly):
There is one more stark contradiction in this text, one which
Mr. Holding's article does not breathe a whisper of, and yet it
derails all of his carefully laid apologetics. Genesis chapter 1
states that creation took a full week - seven days, evening and
morning. But the second creation story, beginning in 2:4, says
this:
"These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when
they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth
and the heavens."
Catch that? This verse says "In the day" - that is, one day,
singular - "that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens."
Chapter 2 goes on to list all of God's creative acts without any
suggestion that any time was passing. In short, while chapter 1
spreads the creation out over a week, chapter 2 compresses it
entirely into one day.
Some "ace in the hole"! Ebon asserts that "in the day"
means on one particular day based solely on the singular form of
"day" within that phrase. Thus, we may conclude that Genesis 35:3
makes clear that Jacob experienced his troubles during a single
day of distress. Leviticus 14:1-9, likewise makes clear that the
rules in effect in the day (14:2) of a leper's cleansing, which
take about a week, take merely one day to go through (probably
they meant that it would seem like a week even though it takes a
mere Ebon day!). No doubt we'll see that Bible "contradiction"
listed in a future Ebon Musing. He is simply misinterpreting a
phrase in hopes of propping up his sagging (settled, actually)
argument. He won't find a single scholar -- even one of liberal
persuasion -- who takes "day" in this verse as meaning a 24-hour
period. That's the kind of nonsense "freethinking" study will get
you. And on this where I say:
Given these internal clues, we would argue that if any
contradiction is found ... it is intentional -- serving a
rhetorical or polemical purpose -- and therefore, of no
consequence for any supposition of inerrancy.
It is said:
"I'm sorry to be the one to inform him of this, but even if
the writer (or writers) of Genesis deliberately intended the text
to conflict like this, that doesn't make it any less of a
contradiction."
Ebon then proceeds to make a semantically absurd claim:
"This is a simple matter of definition. If two statements
cannot logically both be true, then together they are a
contradiction. The writer's intent simply does not enter into it.
If I said 'Black is white,' it would not be any less of a
contradiction if I meant to say it."
I regret to inform the semantically-challenged Ebon that the
intent of the author has everything to do with whether or not a
passage is contradictory. Ebon's example illustrates this with
superb irony. Suppose I write that "Black is white" with the
intent of making a comment on Frank Black's race. His claim of
undeniable contradiction comes crashing heavily to the ground. In
addition to my intent being an identification of Mister Black's
race, it is also be an intentionally paradoxical statement, in
keeping with what I have in mind with my comment above. There
exists in such instances a semantic contract between reader and
writer, an "understood" point that "I am purposely creating a
contradiction for a reason." As such the statement moves beyond
the realm of what can be properly called "error" and enters into
the realm of artistic license, and therefore beyond Ebon's grasp
as an apparent "fundaliteralist."
Sources
Coll.WAP - Collins, C. John. "The Wayyiqtol as
'Pluperfect': When and Why". Tyndale Bulletin 46, 1995,
177-40.
Gree.UE - Greenberg, Moshe. Understanding Exodus. Berhman House:
1969.
Mat.Gen126 - Mathews, Kenneth A. Genesis 1-11:26. Broadman and
Holman, 1996.
This articles comes from the Tektonics website. We want
to Thank J.P. Holding.
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