Berean777
Servant of Christ Jesus. Stellar Son.
They don't appear contradictory because they are not to be read as a sequential narrated story, rather they are highlighting all the things that God did with no specific order. Off course there was order in how things were created but the author uses an ingredients style of concrete writing that talks about functions and not sequences. Even the numbering of days have a functional aspect to them that the author writes about again further from that short summary.
These independent clauses are shown by the shear number of colons and semicolons used to portray a list of things.
For example if my wife gave me a grocery list I will enter them as I prefer to write them without any specific order to mind and each one would be off course purchased in an orderly manner when I am in the fruit section, I am NOT going to pick up an apple then head to the freezer section to pick up frozen vegetables, then head back again to the fruit section to pick up let's say a banana.
The author obviously lists everything that comes to mind without much thought to the sequence of events. The order he provides are tied to his perceived grand moments related to the FUNCTIONS of each event.
If you read Genesis from an abstract language point of view of today or from a scientific sequence then you completely missed the point that the author is trying to highlight.
The author used a concrete language structure with the anthropological thought process it accompanied which is completely opposite to how we think today according to our current world views.
For example the concrete language structure was built to describe functions of each event without specificity to sequence. Therefore each event will be described in the sequence and it is much going back and forth in describing each function and so it generates a lot of redundancy in the language, however the author's mission is to give a functional description of each event in the sequence. Sometimes when describing that function he would insert new things or leave out things. Sometimes he would leave out that the animals were created before Adam or even places them after Adam because his focus is not on the sequence but on the function related to the main character.
For example he talks about the creation of the world as the function of God and further down he uses that same information as light was created and further down in the functionality list he has Adam naming the animals and familiarising himself with the land and then Eve comes on the scene whereby the author tries to convey that Adam has down the due diligence in preparing a place for her and comforting her in seeing a totally new world, much like a child. In fact Adam was like a father to Eve when you think about it and the author tries to portray that in his writing.
Therefore your comment below is looking for timing and this is not what the author intended to highlight. Your looking at Genesis as a narrated sequence of events when it should be clear that it is not, rather it is going back and forth in describing the functions according to those that the author intended to talk about, that is all!
"Except there are those who simply deny they are contradictory, in spite of the difficulties in timing with that view"
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