Gen 2:4-7 Is this consistent with the account of Gen 1?

[kindlychung]

4 This is the history F3 of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, 5 before any plant of the field was in the earth and before any herb of the field had grown. For the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground; 6 but a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. 7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. NKJV

This paragraph seems to imply that while man was made, there was no plants on the earth, but as we can see in Gen 1, plants had already been created on the third day, before man was formed out of dust.

11 Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth"; and it was so. 12 And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13 So the evening and the morning were the third day.

I don't understand, please help me.
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[Polycarp1]

There are two distinct accounts of Creation in Genesis: the famous six-days account in Gen 1 (culminating in the creation of the Sabbath in Gen 2:1-3), and then a retelling which focuses on the Creation and Fall of Man, in the rest of chapter 2 and chapter 3. Sort of, Gen 1 shows events from a panoramic view, then Gen 2-3 focus in on particular events.

Now, scholars have identified four strands of narrative in the Torah/Pentateuch. What precisely these represent is hotly disputed; that they exist, is not. (They may be four completely independent stories of Hebrew origins, shuffled together; they may be what was preserved from Moses's teaching by four separate groups, later merged back together, etc.) Gen 1-2:3 is from what is termed the Priestly ("P") tradition, one fascinated by genealogy and ritual and with a focus on God's transcendence, and with a tendency to use "YHWH Elohim" (rendered "the Lord God") to identify Him. Much of the "frame story" uniting the various individual stories in Genesis is P's work. On the other hand, the Adam-and-Eve story, like the majority of the other compelling stories in the Torah, is the work of the Jahwistic ("J") writer, whose characteristics include: 1. He's a simply fantastic storyteller. 2. He has a strong focus on the patriarch Judah and events in the South of the Holy Land, the area that was assigned to the tribe of Judah. Most scholars believe that the J narrative was preserved there. 3. His normal usage for identifying the deity is YHWH, God's unspeakable name, which most translations render as "the LORD" (with 'LORD' in caps.). The other traditions use either YHWH God or avoid mentioning YHWH as a name until He reveals it to Moses. (The other two main traditions are E, using Elohim for God and focused on Joseph and the Ephraim area in the North, and a tendency to show God acting through nature; and D, responsible for most of Deuteronomy, and with a strong prophetic, ethical focus.)

Out of respect for the sources, whoever united or reunited the four strands into the Torah as we have it tended to leave in quite a few contradictions of detail and "doublet" preservations of about the same story. To give an example of how this works, take the Parting of the Red Sea. The bit where Moses holds up his arms with outstretched staff is vintage P; J tells of God parting the waters and the familar story of the Israelites crossing dryshod and then the Egyptians becoming mired and engulfed in the returning waters; in E's retelling, he makes sure we know that it was God sending a strong wind which pushed back the waters.

Anyway, details about whether plants or people came first (or even whether it was one "day" (yom, which might mean either '24-hour day' or 'notable period of time', as in usages like "in King Arthur's day") or six, were left un-"corrected" out of respect for the traditional sources. If one reported it one way and the other the other, this was not at issue -- the important thing was not whether God did it on Wednesday the Fourth Day of Creation, but that He's the one that did it. Coming at the Creation stories from a modern Judeo-Christian vs. secular scientific stance, we miss the crucial point the writers were at pains to make -- All of Creation was created by God Himself, and He called it good. The old "spirit=good/matter=bad" dichotomy, and the idea that God Most High musta worked through assistants, angels and such, dates back at least to the days that Scripture was being assembled into the Tanakh, and the writers are at pains to make clear that it was God Himself who did it and who called it good. This, not the details of what he happened to do when, seems to have been a primary emphasis.

 

[zeke37]

This paragraph seems to imply that while man was made, there was no plants on the earth, but as we can see in Gen 1, plants had already been created on the third day, before man was formed out of dust.

I don't understand, please help me.

grass was created on the third day....and all seed bearing plants....but no veggies....nothing that has to be cultivated......nothing that grew out of the ground without a seed.....

mankind is created on the 6th day....

Gen 2 is not a retelling, but a linear telling....after the 7th day of rest.....

after that day, after God had created all that is stated in chapter 1, God states that He does not have a farmer, and makes one....(symbolic all through the bible) Adam the individual.....

so it is not a retelling, but a continuation, as it should be....there were no cultivated crops (HARVEST) yet....only wild growing foods.....

so now God forms a special husbandman (farmer) ADAM.


in His service
c

 

[Assyrian]

Except that Gen 1 talks about seed bearing plants and fruit trees that God intended for food, also the word used for plants in Gen 2 is not used in the bible to describe agricultural plants, it refers to wild bushes you find growing in the wilderness.

It is not just plants that are a problem between the two accounts, the whole order of creation is different.
In Genesis 1 the order is plants, birds, beasts, man and woman,
In Genesis 2 it is man plants beasts and birds and woman.

Not only that, in Genesis 1 Adam is created in a lush world that had just emerged from the sea, in Genesis 2 he is created in a desert.

If this history then it completely contradicts itself. The alternative is that they were never meant to be understood that way, they are poetry and parable not historical chronology. Did Jesus contradict himself when he said in one verse that he was bread and in another verse that he was a door? Figurative language does not work that way.

I would say you should take the contradictions between the Genesis creation accounts and see them simply as evidence they are not meant to be interpreted literally.

 

[artybloke]

One thing about the difference between ancient writing and the writing of post-Enlightment writers is that the Genesis stories are meant to be laid down side by side simultaneously, rather than chronologically. They're not meant to be reconciled in the way that you'd have to do in a linear historical narrative like we have nowadays.

Although post-modernism has brought some of this back, we've largely lost the ability to read "paratactically" in this way. Parataxis is where things are connected by being laid next to one anothe in a serial order, rather than through a sequence of one thing leading to another.

So Gen 1 & Gen 2 should be seen, not as 1 leading to 2-3, but as 1 and 2-3. Two alternative stories, one from one point of view, the other from another point of view, not competing (so not or) but complementary. Sometimes you will find the first story helpful, sometimes the second, sometimes both together. It's up to the reader to make the connection; the compilers of the Torah just put the two together, out of respect for both stories and because they knew that both stories were important and could be learnt from.

There's a lot of this parataxis in the Bible. The four Gospels, for instance, are not competing stories but complementary.

The details of accuracy didn't matter to the ancient writers, and they shouldn't to us. What matters is the truth or the falsity of the stories, not whether they are 100% reconcilable or "accurate."

 

[gluadys]

Although post-modernism has brought some of this back, we've largely lost the ability to read "paratactically" in this way. Parataxis is where things are connected by being laid next to one anothe in a serial order, rather than through a sequence of one thing leading to another.

So Gen 1 & Gen 2 should be seen, not as 1 leading to 2-3, but as 1 and 2-3. Two alternative stories, one from one point of view, the other from another point of view, not competing (so not or) but complementary. Sometimes you will find the first story helpful, sometimes the second, sometimes both together. It's up to the reader to make the connection; the compilers of the Torah just put the two together, out of respect for both stories and because they knew that both stories were important and could be learnt from.

We also get new insights when they are set together--insights we might not get if each were looked at separately.

Richard Elliot (Who Wrote the Bible?) looks at the two creation stories in reference to the "image of God" and notes that the temptation in Genesis 3 "you will be like God" would have no resonance to beings not created in the image of God. So the creation in the image of God in Genesis 1 is crucial to understanding what the humans do in Genesis 3.

But the two stories are by different authors. Genesis 3 is part of the J tradition which never suggests that humans were made in the image of God. The combination of P's insight that we are made in the image of God, with J's story of the fall produces something more than the sum of the pieces.

 

[Rion]

Read Chapters 1 and 2 and ignore the verses and chapters (which were not there originally). You'll see how it fits.

 

[Assyrian]

The only problem with the chapter division is that it is in the wrong place. The 'days of creation' continue on in the first three verses of then next chapter. Gen 2:4 These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, is an ancient document title, and marks depending on how you interpret it, either the end of the first creation account or the beginning of the second account. Between the two accounts there is a complete change of literary style, vocabulary and even the name used to describe God. Gen 2 5: starts of back before there were and plants or human beings and goes on to describe God creating animals and birds all over again, only in a completely different order.

 

[Ben12]

Actually the account of Genesis is spiritual; in other words a pattern is established that has a divine progression thought out the rest of the Bible.

Take Adam and Eve: No corrupt and dying blood flowed in the veins of these inhabitants of Paradise. No death-dealing carnal mind corrupted them to bring their members under the power of death and sin. They lived in a realm long since closed to the human race. They were clothed upon not with garments of wool and cotton or even seamless robes, but, because of their heavenly brightness and their blessed communion with God, they lived in a realm of transfiguration and were no more in need of earthly garments than an angel. All creatures of that perfumed, effulgent paradise were under their wise and loving control. No timid creature raced in terror from snarling ravenous beasts. The pitiful cry of a dying thing was never heard. Peace reigned supreme and love without alloy. Had this blessed son in his unfallen state walked the earth centuries later, he, too, would have stilled the waves, raised the dead, and healed diseases as did Christ, the last Adam. But this was not God's plan.

 

[Assyrian]

Umm, which verse is that?

 

[SpiritMeadow]

There are two distinct accounts of Creation in Genesis: the famous six-days account in Gen 1 (culminating in the creation of the Sabbath in Gen 2:1-3), and then a retelling which focuses on the Creation and Fall of Man, in the rest of chapter 2 and chapter 3. Sort of, Gen 1 shows events from a panoramic view, then Gen 2-3 focus in on particular events.

Now, scholars have identified four strands of narrative in the Torah/Pentateuch. What precisely these represent is hotly disputed; that they exist, is not. (They may be four completely independent stories of Hebrew origins, shuffled together; they may be what was preserved from Moses's teaching by four separate groups, later merged back together, etc.) Gen 1-2:3 is from what is termed the Priestly ("P") tradition, one fascinated by genealogy and ritual and with a focus on God's transcendence, and with a tendency to use "YHWH Elohim" (rendered "the Lord God") to identify Him. Much of the "frame story" uniting the various individual stories in Genesis is P's work. On the other hand, the Adam-and-Eve story, like the majority of the other compelling stories in the Torah, is the work of the Jahwistic ("J") writer, whose characteristics include: 1. He's a simply fantastic storyteller. 2. He has a strong focus on the patriarch Judah and events in the South of the Holy Land, the area that was assigned to the tribe of Judah. Most scholars believe that the J narrative was preserved there. 3. His normal usage for identifying the deity is YHWH, God's unspeakable name, which most translations render as "the LORD" (with 'LORD' in caps.). The other traditions use either YHWH God or avoid mentioning YHWH as a name until He reveals it to Moses. (The other two main traditions are E, using Elohim for God and focused on Joseph and the Ephraim area in the North, and a tendency to show God acting through nature; and D, responsible for most of Deuteronomy, and with a strong prophetic, ethical focus.)

Out of respect for the sources, whoever united or reunited the four strands into the Torah as we have it tended to leave in quite a few contradictions of detail and "doublet" preservations of about the same story. To give an example of how this works, take the Parting of the Red Sea. The bit where Moses holds up his arms with outstretched staff is vintage P; J tells of God parting the waters and the familar story of the Israelites crossing dryshod and then the Egyptians becoming mired and engulfed in the returning waters; in E's retelling, he makes sure we know that it was God sending a strong wind which pushed back the waters.

Anyway, details about whether plants or people came first (or even whether it was one "day" (yom, which might mean either '24-hour day' or 'notable period of time', as in usages like "in King Arthur's day") or six, were left un-"corrected" out of respect for the traditional sources. If one reported it one way and the other the other, this was not at issue -- the important thing was not whether God did it on Wednesday the Fourth Day of Creation, but that He's the one that did it. Coming at the Creation stories from a modern Judeo-Christian vs. secular scientific stance, we miss the crucial point the writers were at pains to make -- All of Creation was created by God Himself, and He called it good. The old "spirit=good/matter=bad" dichotomy, and the idea that God Most High musta worked through assistants, angels and such, dates back at least to the days that Scripture was being assembled into the Tanakh, and the writers are at pains to make clear that it was God Himself who did it and who called it good. This, not the details of what he happened to do when, seems to have been a primary emphasis.

very informative and well stated post. Thanks. Seldom see anyone stating plain fact.

 

[greeker57married]

There are two distinct accounts of Creation in Genesis: the famous six-days account in Gen 1 (culminating in the creation of the Sabbath in Gen 2:1-3), and then a retelling which focuses on the Creation and Fall of Man, in the rest of chapter 2 and chapter 3. Sort of, Gen 1 shows events from a panoramic view, then Gen 2-3 focus in on particular events.

Now, scholars have identified four strands of narrative in the Torah/Pentateuch. What precisely these represent is hotly disputed; that they exist, is not. (They may be four completely independent stories of Hebrew origins, shuffled together; they may be what was preserved from Moses's teaching by four separate groups, later merged back together, etc.) Gen 1-2:3 is from what is termed the Priestly ("P") tradition, one fascinated by genealogy and ritual and with a focus on God's transcendence, and with a tendency to use "YHWH Elohim" (rendered "the Lord God") to identify Him. Much of the "frame story" uniting the various individual stories in Genesis is P's work. On the other hand, the Adam-and-Eve story, like the majority of the other compelling stories in the Torah, is the work of the Jahwistic ("J") writer, whose characteristics include: 1. He's a simply fantastic storyteller. 2. He has a strong focus on the patriarch Judah and events in the South of the Holy Land, the area that was assigned to the tribe of Judah. Most scholars believe that the J narrative was preserved there. 3. His normal usage for identifying the deity is YHWH, God's unspeakable name, which most translations render as "the LORD" (with 'LORD' in caps.). The other traditions use either YHWH God or avoid mentioning YHWH as a name until He reveals it to Moses. (The other two main traditions are E, using Elohim for God and focused on Joseph and the Ephraim area in the North, and a tendency to show God acting through nature; and D, responsible for most of Deuteronomy, and with a strong prophetic, ethical focus.)

Out of respect for the sources, whoever united or reunited the four strands into the Torah as we have it tended to leave in quite a few contradictions of detail and "doublet" preservations of about the same story. To give an example of how this works, take the Parting of the Red Sea. The bit where Moses holds up his arms with outstretched staff is vintage P; J tells of God parting the waters and the familar story of the Israelites crossing dryshod and then the Egyptians becoming mired and engulfed in the returning waters; in E's retelling, he makes sure we know that it was God sending a strong wind which pushed back the waters.

Anyway, details about whether plants or people came first (or even whether it was one "day" (yom, which might mean either '24-hour day' or 'notable period of time', as in usages like "in King Arthur's day") or six, were left un-"corrected" out of respect for the traditional sources. If one reported it one way and the other the other, this was not at issue -- the important thing was not whether God did it on Wednesday the Fourth Day of Creation, but that He's the one that did it. Coming at the Creation stories from a modern Judeo-Christian vs. secular scientific stance, we miss the crucial point the writers were at pains to make -- All of Creation was created by God Himself, and He called it good. The old "spirit=good/matter=bad" dichotomy, and the idea that God Most High musta worked through assistants, angels and such, dates back at least to the days that Scripture was being assembled into the Tanakh, and the writers are at pains to make clear that it was God Himself who did it and who called it good. This, not the details of what he happened to do when, seems to have been a primary emphasis.

The J, E,P,D documentary theory is a theory and not a fact. The Writer uses Elohim the word for God as creator, the word means the "The Powerful One, The Mighty One. The word for God Yahweh refers to the covenant God the God of redemption. Which he used in the sense of God's Relation to man. As a matter of fact Elohim and Yahweh ore used together in chapter two.There is no proof from the text that there are two different writers One who wrote the Creation account in Chapter one and the account in chapter two.

God Bless
Greeker

 

[Assyrian]

Is there anything in scripture that says it was the same author?

 

[artybloke]

The J, E,P,D documentary theory is a theory and not a fact.

Actually, it's a hypothesis. A theory would require much more rigourous evidence ("proof" is for maths & alcohol) than is possible in this instance.

The evidence is textual and linguistic (statistical analysis of word use, for instance).

The majority of OT scholars still agree with this hypothesis; though perhaps not as rigidly as in the past. It seems the most likely explanation for the repetitions of stories and the changes in style throughout the Torah. But it probably will never become a theory, unless someone accidentally stumbles across signed copies of the original documents. Not a likely scenario...

 

[gluadys]

The J, E,P,D documentary theory is a theory and not a fact.

A common error of laypeople is to think that theories are "deficient facts" ideas waiting to become "fact" when more evidence is produced.

However, theories never become facts. What theories do is encompass facts in an explanatory framework that makes sense of the evidence.

So technically you are right. The documentary thesis is a theory (or even better, as artybloke suggests, a hypothesis), not a fact. However, it is a thesis with considerable textual, contextual and linguistic evidence to support it and it does make sense of many features of the Pentateuch.

 

[greeker57married]

A common error of laypeople is to think that theories are "deficient facts" ideas waiting to become "fact" when more evidence is produced.

However, theories never become facts. What theories do is encompass facts in an explanatory framework that makes sense of the evidence.

So technically you are right. The documentary thesis is a theory (or even better, as artybloke suggests, a hypothesis), not a fact. However, it is a thesis with considerable textual, contextual and linguistic evidence to support it and it does make sense of many features of the Pentateuch.

what those who hold to the Documentary hypothesis consider evidence is how they interprete the text or data. Those who came up wth this view did not believe in the divine inspiration of Scripture. They did not believe the miracules of the Old Testament. So they would say a writer or prophet could not have know these events, so they would say that a later editor added them.

I believe in the inspiration of all the Scriptures which is Plenary verbal inspiration.

God Bless
Greeker

 

[artybloke]

Nowt to do with it. It had to do with such things as linguistic analysis, textual & contextual evidence, as stated above, not whether or not you believed in miracles.

I've never really understood the point of far-future prediction anyway. Why would the writers have written what would appear to be gobbledygook to their original hearers?

as for plenary verbal inspiration - protestant nonsense.

 

[gluadys]

what those who hold to the Documentary hypothesis consider evidence is how they interprete the text or data. Those who came up wth this view did not believe in the divine inspiration of Scripture. They did not believe the miracules of the Old Testament. So they would say a writer or prophet could not have know these events, so they would say that a later editor added them.

I believe in the inspiration of all the Scriptures which is Plenary verbal inspiration.

God Bless
Greeker

Ad hominem argument. You are not dealing with the actual textual evidence. And even as an ad hominem, you offer no evidence of the truth of your speculations about those who find the documentary thesis useful. Have you even met personally with anyone in the church who has studied it objectively?

I have. I know many students of scripture who consider the documentary thesis a reasonably accurate account of how the Torah was written and assembled. I know none who match your description of their attitude toward scripture. The people I have met are passionate about scripture; they are passionate preachers and passionate teachers. To describe them as disbelievers in the inspiration of scripture is laughable.

 

[greeker57married]

Ad hominem argument. You are not dealing with the actual textual evidence. And even as an ad hominem, you offer no evidence of the truth of your speculations about those who find the documentary thesis useful. Have you even met personally with anyone in the church who has studied it objectively?

I have. I know many students of scripture who consider the documentary thesis a reasonably accurate account of how the Torah was written and assembled. I know none who match your description of their attitude toward scripture. The people I have met are passionate about scripture; they are passionate preachers and passionate teachers. To describe them as disbelievers in the inspiration of scripture is laughable.

I understand that there are a lot of people who consider elements of the Documentary hypothesis true. I am not saying that everyone who holds this view does not believe the Bible. There a various elements that Bible students believe. You show your lack of understand of the developement of liberal theology. I am not trying to atttack everyone who believes part or all of the documentary hypothesis.

In 1970 I was a student at a Southern Baptist University. I had an Old Testament professor who believed in the Documentary hypothesis. We used the interpreter's Bible Commentary for Genesis and Exodus.
We had to read various Documentary scholars. Wellhausen was one of them. This professor had done post graduate work at Oxford University. He did not believe in the historicity of the first eleven chapters of Genesis. He believe that they were mythical stories to bring out a religious point of view. He did not believe any of the miracules in the Old Testament. He did not believe there was any prophecy of Christ in the Old Testament. He believed revelation was not God revealing Himself to man, but as man had faith that the event that was happening was of God, he wrote it down. He did not believe in a God of Wrath, Only a God of love. He laughed at the story of Noah. He said Sodom and Gomorah was not an act of God, but a natural event. He did not believe in a personal devil. When I ask this professor what about what John said in The book of Revelation, about the Devil he said John was a senile old man. I saw some students began to doubt their faith.

If you know anything about the Fundamentalist movement in the early 1900's. You know it was to refute liberal theology of which the documentary hypothesis was a big part. This movement was started by conservative scholars where this theology had infiltrated in to various schools and seminaries. Every major denomination has had to deal with this teaching some where in their history.

It sounds to me that you are like a lot some of the younger students I went to seminary with the second time. Some did not know what a conservative was. Yes many of them were not radical liberal, but without knowing it, they had been effect by this theology which was taught in milder doses.Many of them general believed the Scriptures but they were slipping. Yes many of them were Christians I believe.

God Bless
Greeker

 

[Polycarp1]

Greeker, I did not press the Documentary hypothesis as such, though I note in one place my wording implied it, but simply addressed the fact that different portions of the Torah use different terms for God, are written in differing styles, use differing imagery, and have different focuses of what is most important to convey from a given story. For all of me, that could have been partial copies of Moses's writings handed down and copied in four different places and then reunited. I'm not pushing that hypothesis as such; I'm merely illustrating that the "P" style tells the story of Creation, and then the "J" style tells the story of Adam and Eve, picking up right where "P" leaves off.

I feel that an argument for or against plenary inspiration, the documentary hypothesis, etc., is inappropriate for the forum and topic we're in. But I did feel that giving kindlychung the rudiments of the hypothesis was helpful in resolving the question asked. I don't feel either of us appropriately should be presenting our manmade theories about the authorship of Scripture here -- and both theories are in fact of human origin, as your account of the origins of fundamentalism makes clear.