Creationists, what's up with two creation stories?

busterdog · Jan 15, 2008

gluadys said:
If, in fact, it does work literally, then my question above is irrelevant.

But so far all we have seen are justifications for not making it work literally. And as long as this is the approach, my question is relevant.

Don't we know where this is going? Neither one of our entrenched positions is going to change. Don't we need some glimmer of hope here, or do we just plow forward and cover the same old ground?

Its no secret how I feel about the way my opponents proceed. But, quite apart from that, where is the tangible evidence that this is going anywhere. Fault needn't be assigned for the question to be answered.

By the way, Arctic Fox did a good job above. So, why am I hearing about mantras?

Scotishfury09 · Jan 15, 2008

shernren said:
Now, let's just assume that God knows what He's doing when He creates stuff. Reasonable, no? Therefore, the ESV is incorrect in putting in "So out of the ground ... " It can't be as if God says to Himself "Hmm, Adam needs a mate - I know, let's create crocodiles and baboons!" The creation of the animals and birds can't be God's response to Adam's loneliness - God's creation of Eve is.

I very much appreciate your response but I think you might be forgetting the mythical nature of the story.
Saying that the creation of animals and birds can't be God's response assumes that this should be taken as fact, which it shouldn't. I doubt God did any of what is in this passage in the manner that it was written. This is how the Hebrews thought, not how God thought.

Also, the Epic of Gilgamesh should be taken into account when we read this passage. I believe that the many similarities between the two myths are put there on purpose by the writer of this passage. Just as how the first creation account parallels Enuma Elish. The ANE culture would have been very familiar with both legends, but when they heard the stories of the Bible they would have thought, "Hey, that's not how the story goes!"

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh is a king who is seen as unsurpassable in greatness.

Supreme over other kings, lordly in appearance,
he is the hero, born of Uruk, the goring wild bull.

Now, the gods are angry because Gilgamesh is making to much noise. They tell Aruru to create an equal for Gilgamesh to shut him up. Arura creates Enkidu.

In the wildness she created valiant Enkidu,
born of Silence, endowed with strength by Ninurta.
His whole body was shaggy with hair,
he had a full head of hair like a woman,
his locks billowed in profusion like Ashnan.
He knew neither people nor settled living,
but wore a garment like Sumukan."
He ate grasses with the gazelles,
and jostled at the watering hole with the animals;

Enkidu is an untamed man who lives with the beasts of the wild as his companions. This is why the Bible explains how the animals were given to man at first to be his companions. Later, Gilgamesh sends a harlot to tame him, but that's neither here nor there.

Thus, if God's creating the beasts of the field and the birds of the air is not causally postcedent to His declaration of Adam's loneliness, it need not be temporally postcedent either. Furthermore, if v. 18 'Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him." ' is logically answered by v. 21 'So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.', then vv. 19-20 are an ellipsis within the overall structure of the passage, and they are not necessarily required to be temporally in sequence between 18 and 21.

Well, as I've explained I think it is casually postcedent, but also v. 21 could also be answering the end of v. 20

But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.

busterdog · Jan 15, 2008

shernren said:
Firstly, it is telling to note how the creationists have gone about defending their position. It has really amounted to nothing more than repeating the mantra "no, they need not be contradictory - no, they need not be contradictory - no, they need not ... ", and asserting that the answers can be found online.

Click to expand...

I don't know if Fox is YEC. But, aside from his position on what is "narrative", a point on which I am clear, he did just fine.

Having said that, I actually don't think the passage itself offers a strong argument against creationism.

* * *

Within Sun Tzu's framework - I know the other side; do they even know themselves?

Click to expand...

Works for me. I appreciate the ground ceded to creationists.

Click to expand...

gluadys · Jan 15, 2008

busterdog said:
By the way, Arctic Fox did a good job above. So, why am I hearing about mantras?

Not in terms of keeping to a literal reading of Genesis 2. His analysis is all about not reading Genesis 2 literally and why this is ok.

Arctic Fox said:
Also, a simple glance will reveal that the order remains an important element to the flow of chapter 1, but less so after that, and so the order is not emphasized.

But what a simple glance at the Hebrew shows is a succession of waw consecutives just like in Genesis 1.

And, as I said to shernren, the way the narrative frames the creation of the animals in terms of making a helper for Adam confirms that this is a temporal order.

The order is just as essential to the second story as the first, but it is a different order.

So I have not yet seen how the text works literally. All I have seen are ways to justify a non-literal reading of Genesis 2.

Scotishfury09 · Jan 15, 2008

busterdog said:
But, quite apart from that, where is the tangible evidence that this is going anywhere. Fault needn't be assigned for the question to be answered.

By the way, Arctic Fox did a good job above. So, why am I hearing about mantras?

I think I've provided evidence, even to Fox's claim about the separate accounts. The evidence lies in the lack of argument from creationists. All you've done is claim that this argument is going nowhere. Of course it won't go anywhere if you don't try to argue it.

Arctic Fox's only reason it shouldn't be taken chronologically relies on his assumption that "created" does not mean they were made at that point and rather at some other time, but like I've already mentioned it's in v. 18 where the chronology comes from.

Busterdog, if you don't want to argue, I can't make you, but to just keep spouting on and on about how this argument isn't going anywhere without supporting why it isn't seems a little ridiculous to me.

busterdog · Jan 15, 2008

Scotishfury09 said:
Busterdog, if you don't want to argue, I can't make you, but to just keep spouting on and on about how this argument isn't going anywhere without supporting why it isn't seems a little ridiculous to me.

Using the chronology alone is a limited, but not necessarily forbidden use of the text. Lots of areas of text manifestly stop to change the time frame and then proceed again. See the generations referenced in Gen. 5. and the geneology of Noah.

Fox and Shernren both pointed out problems with the translation, which leave you on the horns of the dilemma. If you want to stick with looking at the order alone, go ahead. Its not a crazy argument. But, as noted, lots of other arguments should erode your confidence.

Scotishfury09 · Jan 15, 2008

busterdog said:
Using the chronology alone is a limited, but not necessarily forbidden use of the text. Lots of areas of text manifestly stop to change the time frame and then proceed again. See the generations referenced in Gen. 5. and the geneology of Noah.

Those parts are very much different from the verses here. Gluadys has already explained that this portion of the story advances the plot and shouldn't be seen as an ellipses.

Fox and Shernren both pointed out problems with the translation, which leave you on the horns of the dilemma.

I'm not sure Fox actually said anything about the translation that had anything to do with what I was talking about...

ArcticFox said:
Chapter two refers back to some of the events of chapter one. God made the animals, and so he brought them to Adam. We focus too much on trying to read that was "God made the animals, then, after that event of making all the animals, he brought them to Adam, who already existed." This is not what it is saying. It simply says that, "God brought the animals he had made to Adam." There is no statement of anything being made first or second or last or such.

In fact, the Hebrew could read like this, "God brought the made animals to Adam."

If you had read both the OP and this post, you would notice we aren't talking about the same thing. He's talking about the word used for creation of the animals, I'm talking about v. 18. I've also addressed this recently, but maybe you missed that post.

Gluadys and I both posted about shernren's interpretation of the passage. Maybe you missed that too?

If you want to stick with looking at the order alone, go ahead. Its not a crazy argument. But, as noted, lots of other arguments should erode your confidence.

I've never said this is the only problem, there are others, but this happens to be the one I'm focusing on. What other arguments should erode my confidence?

Assyrian · Jan 15, 2008

gluadys said:
Originally Posted by shernren

It continues with either

So out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.

or from the NIV

Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.

Now, let's just assume that God knows what He's doing when He creates stuff. Reasonable, no? Therefore, the ESV is incorrect in putting in "So out of the ground ... "

Click to expand...

I am not sure this works, shernren. After all the Hebrew is simply "And the LORD God formed..."

In that respect, both translations are wrong.

But it is more than a simple and + verb. It is a waw consecutive which can express chronological sequences "And God formed..." or "Then God formed..." but it can also express things that are logically consecutive, "And God saw it was not good... So God formed."

What isn't justified is taking a waw consecutive in a sequence of waw consecutives in the narrative expressing a series of events and deciding to make one of them pluperfect. The plain simple meaning of the text is that God formed the animals and birds after he saw Adam was alone and said he would make a helper suitable for him, he brought the animals to Adam, and when no suitable companion was found he made Eve.

Of course not only does the plain and simple meaning contradict the sequence of events they see in Gen 1, the beautiful simplicity of the narrative's account of God forming animals and birds as part of the search for a companion for Adam, is utterly abhorrent to literalist they cannot possibly take the story the text tells us at face value.

gluadys · Jan 15, 2008

Assyrian said:
Of course not only does the plain and simple meaning contradict the sequence of events they see in Gen 1, the beautiful simplicity of the narrative's account of God forming animals and birds as part of the search for a companion for Adam, is utterly abhorrent to literalist they cannot possibly take the story the text tells us at face value.

And that is why, in the literalist's vocabulary, "literal" becomes a word so flexible in meaning as to be useless.

Instead of meaning "the plain sense of the text", it comes to mean "however I choose to interpret the text" no matter how far my exegesis takes me from the plain sense.

Added to this is the sense of "literal" being equivalent to "real" or "empirically possible". IOW, a "literal" meaning is related not only to the text (the original sense) but also to the external world of phenomena.

When this "literal" conflicts with the literal meaning of the text, it is commonly the text that is reworked to fit what the interpreter sees as reasonable in terms of possible event.

But what is happening is obscured by the use of the same terminology for two different referents.

shernren · Jan 15, 2008

But busterdog, I'm far less of a literary scholar than gluadys, so if you think my comments carry weight, hers carry even more.

Let me just throw out something from the book I am referring to (the one quoted in my sig) :

Very briefly, the criteria for taking a wayyiqtol as pluperfect are the following:

- Some anaphoric reference points us back explicitly to a previous event.
- The verb begins a paragraph or pericope.
- The logic of the referent requires it.

The logic of the referent can be supplied by the literary context, and this is what we have here: the first pericope [Genesis 1:1-2:3] gives us the broad sequence of events, which enables us to find a rhetorical effect from the different sequence here. The reader knows from Genesis 1 that God made the birds and land animals before he made the man, but when he reads 2:19, he finds that it reinforces the message of 1:1-2:3. Physically, God made these animals before man, but conceptually, he made the animals anticipating man's dominion over them - that is, in God's mind the animals were a logical consequence of the man.

gluadys · Jan 15, 2008

shernren said:
But busterdog, I'm far less of a literary scholar than gluadys, so if you think my comments carry weight, hers carry even more.

Let me just throw out something from the book I am referring to (the one quoted in my sig) :

Very briefly, the criteria for taking a wayyiqtol as pluperfect are the following:

- Some anaphoric reference points us back explicitly to a previous event.
- The verb begins a paragraph or pericope.
- The logic of the referent requires it.

The logic of the referent can be supplied by the literary context, and this is what we have here: the first pericope [Genesis 1:1-2:3] gives us the broad sequence of events, which enables us to find a rhetorical effect from the different sequence here. The reader knows from Genesis 1 that God made the birds and land animals before he made the man, but when he reads 2:19, he finds that it reinforces the message of 1:1-2:3. Physically, God made these animals before man, but conceptually, he made the animals anticipating man's dominion over them - that is, in God's mind the animals were a logical consequence of the man.

For the reason Assyrian gave, I would disagree with the use of the pluperfect.

For the rest of the argument, I would agree that viewing chapter 2 in light of chapter 1, there is logical sense in what he is saying. It is a perfectly sensible way to reconcile the different orders.

But logical sense is still not literal sense.

A reconciliation of a contradiction is an admission that literally there is a contradiction. Otherwise there would be no need of a reconciliation.

Furthermore it is an admission that the resolution of the contradiction requires understanding at least one pole of the contradiction non-literally.

Which raises the question: which pole of the contradiction is to be de-literalised? Why this one and not the other?

And:

Why not de-literalise both?

shernren · Jan 16, 2008

Fair enough. That was what I was thinking, too. The argument about the causal flow of this passage came to me when I was preparing yet another anti-creationist treatment of the passage - but I just couldn't get past the fact that it seems possible, if not the only possible interpretation, for vv. 19-20 to be an ellipsis between v. 18 and v. 21. The flow of the passage could either be

God declared Adam's loneliness
-> God made the animals
-> Adam named the animals
-> Among them no helper was found
-> God made Eve

or

God declared Adam's loneliness
God made the animals -> Adam named the animals -> Among them no helper was found
-> God made Eve

I don't know. I'm just playing with the position. I have nothing much invested in either the creationist insistence for harmonization or the liberal view. I just wonder about the text.

Wouldn't Genesis 1 demand a sequential treatment by way of the days' numbering, an element absent in Genesis 2?

gluadys · Jan 16, 2008

shernren said:
Wouldn't Genesis 1 demand a sequential treatment by way of the days' numbering, an element absent in Genesis 2?

Literally, yes. That is the plain sense of the text.

Of course that doesn't mean its not also a topical arrangement as suggested by the Framework Interpretation. But that moves us from a literal reading of the narrative into a logical and literary interpretation of the narrative.

ArcticFox · Jan 16, 2008

This discussion brings to my remembrance very vividly why I stopped posting on these forums for nearly half a year. Debate is healthy and good, but the content of these forums is often of the most despicable and shameful content; that, my friends, isn't even taking into consideration that we are proposing ourselves as Christians.

I'm not convinced there are two creation accounts, and not convinced that there is any reconciling necessary. Arguing against a problem I don't think even exists is difficult, would you not agree?

I will excuse myself from this bickering now. Carry on if you must, but at least pretend to be Christian when you do it.

crawfish · Jan 16, 2008

gluadys said:
And that is why, in the literalist's vocabulary, "literal" becomes a word so flexible in meaning as to be useless.

Instead of meaning "the plain sense of the text", it comes to mean "however I choose to interpret the text" no matter how far my exegesis takes me from the plain sense.

Excellent point. Growing up, I was told two things about scripture:

1) It is inerrant.
2) It is internally consistent.

The problem is, with a literal 21st-century view, it takes a lot of guesswork to harmonize #1 and 2. At times - as can be said of the aforementioned text - one must choose to take one passage literally and another allegorically. How one arrives at choosing *which* passage to take which way is often based on which one the chooser decides needs to be taken literally. Which means, of course, that they're adding man's logic to God's word when deriving meaning.

Scotishfury09 · Jan 16, 2008

I don't have much time before my Pauline Epistles class, but I'd like to share with you the email I got back from ICR on this specific topic. I'll be back to discuss it later, enjoy!

Thank you for contacting ICR. Your concern has to do with a common misunderstanding about the order of events as listed in the first two chapters of Genesis. Chapters 1 and 2 are not separate contradictory accounts of creation. Jewish literature in giving historical often present an overall description and then retell portions in order to examine a particular. Thus, chapter 1 is the big picture and Chapter 2 is a more detailed account of the creation of Adam and Eve and Day Six of creation. Here is a brief discussion of the two "accounts" of creation in the article,
Adam and the Animals (#212) :

Before discussing this stewardship, however, we need to answer two objections that have been lodged against the Biblical account of the animal creation and its relation to mankind. The first is the charge of skeptics that the two accounts of creation (Genesis 1 and 2) contradict each other, the main "proof" of this charge being the inference in Genesis 2 that Adam was created before the animals, whereas the order of events in Genesis 1 clearly indicates that Adam and Eve were created on the sixth day, after all the animals had been created. The controversial passage reads as follows:

And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them: And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof" (Genesis 2:19).

If there were a real contradiction here as to when the animals were created, it is strange that their Creator, the Lord Jesus Christ, seemed unaware of it! In answering a question about the permanence of marriage, He quoted from both Genesis 1 and 2 together, with no intimation that the accounts were not perfectly complementary.

He which made them at the beginning made them male and female [quoting Genesis 1:26], and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: And they twain shall be one flesh [quoting Genesis 2:24] (Matthew 19:4, 5).

In the more detailed account of the forming of man and woman in Genesis 2, there was no need to mention the animals at all until they were to be brought before Adam to be "introduced" to him, as it were, and then named by him. The superficial contradiction is removed simply by noting that there is no distinction in Hebrew between the past tense and the pluperfect tense, the context determining which to use. By replacing the past tense ("formed") by the pluperfect ("had formed") in Genesis 2:19, one can read the verse as follows: "And out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field...."

Some commentators have argued against this translation, but its legitimacy is verified by Dr. H.C. Leupold, Professor of Old Testament Exegesis at the Capital University Seminary (Lutheran) in Columbus , Ohio , in his masterful two-volume commentary on Genesis:

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" (Exposition of Genesis, 1950, Vol. 1, p. 130).

The two accounts are complementary, not contradictory!

Were plants created after man?

It appears from Genesis 2:5, 9, that plants were created after man. We have already noted that Genesis 2 focuses on issues directly affecting Adam and Eve, not creation in general. Also, notice that the plants and herbs are described as of the field in Genesis chapter 2 (compare 1:12) and they needed a man to tend them (2:5). These are clearly cultivated plants, not just plants in general. Also, the trees (2:9) are only the trees grown in a supernatural fashion in the Garden of Eden, not trees in general.

Were animals created after man?

It appears from Genesis 2:18-22 that land animals and birds were created between Adam and Eve. However, Jewish scholars apparently did not recognize any such conflict with the account in Chapter 1, where Adam and Eve were both created after the beasts and birds (Genesis 1:2325). Why is this? Because in Hebrew the precise tense of a verb is determined by the context. It is clear from Chapter 1 that the beasts and birds were created before Adam, so Jewish scholars would have understood the verb formed in Genesis 2:19 to mean had formed or having formed. If we translate verse 19 as follows, Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field . . . the apparent disagreement with Genesis 1 disappears completely. James Jordon suggests that the word formed (or pressed/collected together) may indicate that God brought the animals to Adam just as He brought them to Noah. With either interpretation, the animals were already created, and God, in Genesis 2:19, brought them to Adam.

So how did the creation of plants, animals and people proceed?

From Genesis 1, we know the order in which things were created:

1. Plants day 3 (1:11-13)
2. Animals days 5, 6 (1:20-25)
3. Adam and Eve day 6 (1:26-31)

From Genesis 2, we know the order that things happened in the garden on Day 6:

1. There were no cultivated plants in the garden yet (2:5)
2. Adam was created: outside of where the garden was to be made (2:7)
3. God made the Garden of Eden (2:8,9)
4. God put Adam in the garden (2:8)
5. God brought animals to Adam for him to name (2:19-20)
6. God created Eve (2:21-23)

Furthermore, in Genesis 2:4, we read 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 (AV/KJV). Genesis 5:1 reads, This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him.

Generations is a translation of the Hebrew word toledoth, which means origin or record of the origin. It identifies an account or record of events. The phrase was apparently used at the end of each section in Genesis identifying the patriarch (Adam, Noah, the sons of Noah, Shem, etc.) to whom it primarily referred, and possibly who was responsible for the record. There are 10 such divisions in Genesis.

The differences in the toledoth statements of Genesis 2:4 and 5:1 affirm that Chapter 1 is the overview of the record of the origin of the heavens and earth (2:4) whereas Chapter 2 is concerned with Adam and Eve, the detailed account of Adam and Eves creation (5:1,2). The wording of 2:4 also suggests the shift in emphasis: in the first part of the verse it is heavens and earth whereas in the end of the verse it is earth and heaven. Scholars think that the first part of the verse would have been on the end of a clay or stone tablet recording the origin of the universe and the latter part of the verse would have been on the beginning of a second tablet containing the account of events on earth pertaining particularly to Adam and Eve (Genesis 2:4b5:la). Note, too, that the second chapter does not give us a complete creation record (e.g. creation of Earth and light in day one; creation of sun, moon, stars in day four).

Genesis was written like many historical accounts with an overview or summary of events leading up to the events of most interest first, followed by a detailed account which often recaps relevant events in the overview in greater detail. In Genesis 1, the big picture is clearly concerned with the sequence of events, which are in chronological sequence, with Day 1, Day 2, evening and morning, etc. The order of events is not the major concern of Genesis 2. In recapping events, they are not necessarily mentioned in chronological order, but in the order which makes most sense to the focus of the account. For example, the animals are mentioned in verse 19, after Adam was created, because it was after Adam was created that he was shown the animals, not that they were created after Adam.

In Genesis, Chapters 1 and 2 are not, therefore, separate contradictory accounts of creation. Chapter 1 is the big picture and Chapter 2 is a more detailed account of the creation of Adam and Eve and Day Six of creation.

P.S. sorry if there's any formatting errors, don't really have time to check over that.

theFijian · Jan 16, 2008

Tim Keller of Redeemer PCA (who can't be labeled as liberal) has given his thoughts on Genesis 1 as poetry:

download here

shernren · Jan 16, 2008

ArcticFox said:
This discussion brings to my remembrance very vividly why I stopped posting on these forums for nearly half a year. Debate is healthy and good, but the content of these forums is often of the most despicable and shameful content; that, my friends, isn't even taking into consideration that we are proposing ourselves as Christians.

I'm not convinced there are two creation accounts, and not convinced that there is any reconciling necessary. Arguing against a problem I don't think even exists is difficult, would you not agree?

I will excuse myself from this bickering now. Carry on if you must, but at least pretend to be Christian when you do it.

Why should it be un-Christian to seriously consider a possible reading of Genesis that faces up to the truth of what the verses of the Bible say?

In Genesis 1,
verses that depict the creation of birds
are followed by verses that depict the creation of animals
which are followed by verses that depict the creation of man and woman.

In Genesis 2,
verses that depict the creation of man
are followed by verses that depict the creation of animals and birds
which are followed by verses that depict the creation of woman.

There is a clear permutation of order in the mention of events involved. It is simply what the text says. The blatant fact of your reading of the biblical narrative is that you are trying to say that a passage that first mentions the creation of man, then mentions the creation of animals and birds, then mentions the creation of woman, is actually describing a process in which the creation of birds was followed by the creation of animals, followed by the creation of man and of woman.

I do not see what is un-Christian or un-biblical in admitting that this is a realignment of narrative. It may seem obvious to you; it might even seem to you that there is no other way to read the passage. But it is a realignment all the same. And the simple fact is that for you, in Genesis 2, the sequence of mention of events is not obviously a key to the actual sequence of events.

In that case: why is the sequence of mention of events a key to the actual sequence of events in Genesis 1?

Surely it is not un-Christian to sit and simmer and think about how we read the Bible. That is what we are all doing here, nothing less, nothing more.

Assyrian · Jan 17, 2008

theFijian said:
Tim Keller of Redeemer PCA (who can't be labeled as liberal) has given his thoughts on Genesis 1 as poetry:

download here

I was looking at some of his sermons listed on the site:

Community
Why join a church? Download | Stream

Why join a church? Can there be any question when his next two topics are...

Contemporary Topics & Issues
Frodo as Christ figure in "The Lord of the Rings" Download | Stream
Tolkien's Imagination and the Transformation of Anglo-Saxon Mythology Download | Stream

theFijian · Jan 17, 2008

^^ Hooray for engaging with contemporary culture!

Creationists, what's up with two creation stories?

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