Questions regarding Genesis Chapter 1 and 2

[Ultima4257]

Hello everyone,

I am new to general theolgy so if this isn't the place to post this please let me know. Today I was studying in Genesis and I noticed what I thought to be differences in the creation story in chapters 1 and 2. Basically after comtemplating it I thought I heard God say to me it is a more in depth view of Chapter 1 and I am curious if this is the conclusion most of you have come to.

And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day. (Genesis 1:20-23 ESV)

From this passage it seems clear that God created every type of bird on the fifth day.

Now out of the ground the LORD God had 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. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. (Genesis 2:19-20 ESV)

From this passage I originally thought it contradicted the first chapter since the birds were created on the fifth day and not the sixth day which is when the beasts of the field and man were created.

My question is this, is chapter 2 of Genesis a more detailed account of chapter one even though it doesn't seem to be in the same order? It seems it might since some of it seems to be a narration or explanation of future events with passages like these:

a) When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground
(Genesis 2:5-6 ESV)

It seems clear that this verse is a narration relating to future events since it didn't rain on the earth until the flood came.

b) And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,
“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man.”
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. (Genesis 2:22-25 ESV)

In this passage it once again seems to be a narration or explanation of future events since at that time Adam and Eve were the only two people on the planet, therefore they didn't have a father and a mother.

So am I right in assuming that God, since He is all knowing and knew that Adam would need companions, created the birds and beasts in the manner spoken of in Chapters 1 and 2?

 

[granpa]

not "every winged creature" but rather "every gilled creature"

the wings of arthropods are modified gills

 

[granpa]

both accounts have the same order

air creatures-water creatures-land creatures-tree dwelling creatures

 

[Papias]

My question is this, is chapter 2 of Genesis a more detailed account of chapter one even though it doesn't seem to be in the same order?

Gen 2 is a separate story. Yes, they both presage events in the future. You can tell it is a separate story by reading it, it has different characters, different events, often different order where the events are similar, and was written at a different time.

Looking at the order, there are many differences. For instance, humans are made after the other animals in Gen 1, but before them in Gen 2. Gen 2 even explictly states why it was done that way. Gen 1 creates the flying creatures before land animals. Etc.

Gen 2 is actually the older story, predating Gen 1 by centuries.

All of that is well known by Hebrew scholars, and has been for at least decades, much of it for centuries.

Saying that Gen 2 is a "more detailed" account of Gen 1 is like saying that Gone with the Wind is a more detailed account of Star Wars.

Papias

 

[miamited]

Hi ultima,

You'll find in the discussion of the beginning of all things that there are some varying beliefs. Most of those who call themselves 'christians' do believe that somehow God did it, but the literalness of the passages is not to be understood exactly as God has written to us in the Scriptures.

However, I will give you my understanding and I am fully convicted and convinced that it is correct, as are all others who hold different understandings.

God is a being of great and immeasureable love. Love cannot be fully appreciated unless there is something to love. Because of this, God creates life. He did at some point in the past ages of His realm create the angelic realm. We don't know when this was but we do know that they are created beings, just as we are. However, as regards the knowledge of our realm, and yes we live in a 'realm'. A physical conception of time and space. The angels live in another realm. They actually live in the same realm as God. We know this because of the many, many passages of Scripture that speak of angels around the throne of God; that the angels come to appear before God; that the angel that appeared to Zecheriah said to him that he stood before God.

We live in another wholly created realm. According to the geneologies of Genesis, this realm was created about 6,000 years ago. According also to the account of Genesis, God first created the earth and filled it with plants of all kinds. Now, because of our knowledge of natural things we find it very difficult to understand that such a thing could be because we know that plants need sunlight to grow. One reasonable explanation of the possibility of this phenomenon is that the plants were created only one day before the sun and perhaps they didn't grow for a day after God created them fully formed, but then the next day, with the addition of sunlight, they began to grow and multiply. This is a perfectly reasonable understanding. I can go down in my basement and close off all light, both natural and artificial, and plant a plant that is reasonably grown in dirt and it will not be dead the next day or even two when I would then carry it outside to the sunlight. It would just be fairly dormant until it received the sunlight necessary for the plant's processes to begin making sugars which would cause it to grow.

Another argument used against a literal understanding is that there can't be days without the sun. This is still today patently false. The length of time that a 'day' describes is, and always has been the time that it takes for a planetary body to revolve one full rotation upon its axis. So, if, when God spoke the physical form of the planet earth into existence it was spinning at roughly the same speed that it rotates now, the measure of a day, just as we measure the length of days today, would be about 24 hours. I believe that God knew that the time would come would men would not tend to believe as literal His account of the creation and therefore caused His Holy Spirit to also have written that each day consisted of an evening and a morning.

Many argue that the word 'yom' translated as 'day' in the account of Genesis can mean a couple of other 'lengths' of time and I fully agree. However, when we add the contextual usage of the word 'yom' with 'evening and morning' we tend to erase all the other possible definitions of the word. Further, Hebrew scholars still to this day, claim that anytime the word 'yom' is associated with a number as in first, second, etc. that it always, ALWAYS, is understood as a period of time equal to a standard, one rotation of the planet, day. As far as has ever been determined, neither of these 'rules' has ever been broken. Since, as believers, we know that the purpose of God's written Scriptures was to communicate to mankind all about Him, then quite frankly, we would have to understand that He caused them to be written using form and function that mankind could understand. I mean, He didn't cause His
Scriptures to be written to communicate to ants or angels or aardvarks all that He had done.

Finally, and I believe it speaks volumes about whether or not one truly appreciates the power and the glory and the wisdom and the majesty of our Creator. A God, who some 6,000 years ago created an entire realm of existence from one end of the universe to the other that worked perfectly is a greater God, than one who, as some would like to claim, just kind of started the ball rolling with, I don't know, something, that became what we see today.

Those who study such things as the heavenly bodies in the universe tell us that all the stars actually created themselves through some force of pulling bits of some matter together with their gravitational forces. That stars are still being formed today. That stars live a life of coming into existence and then being snuffed out. However, according to the literal Scriptural account this cannot be true. Why? Because every one of those scientists will tell you that it happens over millions or possibly billions of years, but according to the literal Scriptural model there hasn't yet been even 100,000 years.

Now, I fully agree that this is a very hard concept to understand and believe, but I'm convinced that it is the truth. Finally, yes, I do agree that Genesis chapter 1 and Genesis chapter 2 are both describing the same event and the same general period of time as the 6 days of God's creative power to build this realm of existence and the first days of the life of Adam and Eve.

The very last point to make, is that after we have read through the Scriptures, we find that there will be one singular event in which God is going to 'fix' all that sin has wrought in His creation of both the angelic realm and our realm. The Scriptures account that at some point God is going to stand from His throne and proclaim, "Enough! The time has come to finish all that I have begun." At that time He will cast both the unbelieving, unwilling angels and people in one place and He will keep all of the believing and willing angels and people with Him. That seems to be the general overall teaching of the whole of the Scriptures.

God bless you.
In Christ, Ted