Sorry, Bob, but I can make no sense at al out of your approach. It may satisfy you, but it just doesn't with me.
Each person has free will and can choose as they please -- I am not arguing that you have to accept the details in the text that I am highlighting.
But I note that a few other posters here seem to have much less difficulty making sense out of those details.
I5t seems that you are claiming the author on one page used one chronology and then, for some reason, started jumping around on the next.
Not at all. I claim that only Gen 1:2-2:4 is a time boxed chronological sequence and that NO other timeboxed chronological sequence is given at all - as a counter/opposing/alternate account of the creation of all the elements listed in the 7 day creation week account.
There is an obvious "drill down" focus starting in
Gen 1:1 with the entire universe.
Gen 1:2-2:4 -- earth, the sun, the moon and all life on earth.
Gen 2:5-2:25 - Eden - Marriage, the Law of Eden.
In Genesis 2 man exists - and so also do the birds and fish of Genesis 1. So also do elements like oxygen and oceans of Genesis 1 - exist in Genesis 2.
To insert "fluff" into the Bible claiming that in Genesis 2 nothing exists that was listed in Genesis 1 -- unless it is "
repeated" - relies on a logic that I find "illusive" and less than objective.
OK, fine, Then why do you assume 2 is a further explication of 1? The way you have it, it's a totally different ballgame.
Because there are details in Genesis 2 (such as marriage for the man and woman of Genesis 1, and such as the tree of Life) not mentioned in Genesis 1.
I think this point is obvious enough for both sides to admit.
You raised a good point about why someone would put tow contradictory accounts together. The reason is that Judaism has two of everything.
That is not a reason - it is sidestepping. It is not true that Judaism has the Messiah as being both good and evil -- for example.
"Two" is not the explanation. Because the effort you are trying to sustain is "TWO conflicted and contradictory to each other" you mean to justify that with merely "two". Doing so is glossing over the salient point of your own argument, you "assume it" rather than proving it.
Given three rabbis, you get 5 opinions, so to speak. Judaism had two conflicting nations: Israel and Judah.
Again misdirection - you would need "TWO self-conflicted and contradictory accounts for Judah's origin" try get that bit of equivocation to fly. I think we both know that.
Israel produced two different Bibles: Pentateuch and Septuagint.
Wrong again.
The first 5 books of the Bible are included in the Greek Septuagint - LXX. You are conflating the process of translating that Pentateuch from Hebrew to the greek of the Septuagint with the idea of "two conflicted versions of the text of the Pentateuch" as if "translating was a form of "contradiction".
We both know that is totally false.
Judaism actually did present two different list of commandments. There are 11 Commandments, for example, in the Samaritan Pentateuch.
misdirection again.
We both know that there is no numbering at all of the commandments in either Hebrew, or Greek or modern translations.
We both know that the Samaritans were a hybrid group and as John 4 states they were at odds with the Jews - no way to blame the Jews for what the apostate Samaritans were producing after they returned in a hybrid form from Assyrian captivity. Christ said of them "
you worship what you do not know - we (Jews) worship what we know.. salvation is of the Jews" John 4.
As I am sure we are both aware.
The biblical redactors butt edited them together, because they were trying to pull everyone into a unity by representing both sides here.
I find that speculation - rather odd. It is illogical for some later group to "Assemble a Bible that starts off being self-conflicted and contradictory" as if that is the best way to get it accepted as valid.
Imagine the Ten Commandments starting off with "I Am the God that brought you out of Egypt -- no I am not the God that brought you out of Egypt" as the "best way" to present the LAW of God - as valid, legit, accepted.
The problem with the "contradictory and self-conflicted Bible" solution -- is that there is not even a rationale for doing it.
