The mental gymnastics of Biblical inerrantists never cease to amaze me.
And as I pointed out in the What do creation scientists believe thread, good luck getting a creationist to give you a definition of “kinds”. Did Adam give separate names to horses and zebras? How many “kinds” of birds are there?
Surely a much better explaination for the discrepancy than this tourtured reasoning is that the terms “plant of the field” and “herb of the field” refer only to cultivated plants, not to the whole of plants (excluding cultigens) which had been previously created …
See, I can argue both sides in the debate!
IMHO, the creation of beasts after man is the most impossible discrepancy to explain. It just cannot be done, without doing violence to the text.
Check out the article to which I linked earlier. It contains the NIV rendering of that verse. For your benefit though, the verse reads “Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air” (emphasis mine).
First of all, if you’re going to claim that there IS a contradiction, then you’re responsible for showing that there are absolutely no possible explanations. Otherwise, all you have is a possible contradiction. As I said, the burden of proof rests on the accuser.
Second, this is hardly an implausible explanation, since numerous Hebrew scholars do render the verse that way. As I already emphasized, that is how the NIV reads, and this is corroborated by the four Hebrew scholars cited in the article to which I linked.
It’s hardly tortured reasoning. Remember, I cited the immediate and exact context of the phrase. According to the rules of English grammar, “before any plant of the field was in the earth” is a modifier to the antecedent phrase “the heavens and the earth when they were created.” Nowhere in that sentence is Adam even mentioned.
It’s hardly tortured reasoning. Remember, I cited the immediate and exact context of the phrase. According to the rules of English grammar, “before any plant of the field was in the earth” is a modifier to the antecedent phrase “the heavens and the earth when they were created.” Nowhere in that sentence is Adam even mentioned.
Now, MEBuckner cited other translations which punctuate the verses differently. As I said though, the burden of proof rests on the accuser. If alternate translations are possible, then a contradiction is merely possible, rather than proven.
Have I, at any point in this debate, presented myself as a Biblical inerrantist? Certainly not. Remember, at this point, I am merely contesting the claim that the alleged contradictions presented are indeed mutually exclusive. So far, that has yet to be proven.
Moreover, note the precise wording of Genesis 2:5. It doesn’t say that there were no plants whatsoever; rather, it says that the plants of the field and the herbs of the field had not yet emerged. In fact, the repetition of this phrase shows that the author is calling attention to this distinction. Again, we see that there is not necessarily a contradiction between the two accounts. In other words, they are not mutually exclusive.
The paragraph begins: “In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth …” and goes on to say, in Genesis 2.7: “… then the Lord God formed man from the dust …”.
The clear and obvious meaning, is that during that time, when God made the earth, and more specifically before there were “plants of the field” (whatever they might be), God made man.
I have no idea what other meaning you are trying to assign to the paragraph … as I said, if you must find a weasly way out of this apparent contradiction, surely the uncultivated/cultivated distinction is more “fruitful”, so to speak. [Bad pun alert ]
I saw a little extract. It would be necessary to see the whole of Genesis 2.18 and 2.19, to make the point - not just 2.19 in isolation. When read together, these two paragraphs currently admit of no possible ambiguity.
See, if I run the standard 2.18 against your 2.19, it still reads as if God made man first, then said he would make animals, and then made animals:
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” [my emphasis] Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air… [your emphasis]
All those Hebrew scholars could be totally right - still doesn’t make a lick of difference; the important words are the “then” and “will” I highlighted. Unless these are also changed, the meaning stays more or less the same. And without the other version of 2.18, you simply cannot tell.
As for the “no contradiction unless there are absolutely no other possible explainations”, I venture to say that such a standard means that it is effectively impossible to prove a contradiction at all - do you apply this standard to any document?
FWIW, the Jerusalem Bible, a completely separate translation that intentionally did not make use of previous English translations, renders the passages this way:
It’s relatively clear that in the second story, plant life, both wild and cultivated, is created after the creation of (a single) man, not three days before.
BTW, according to 2:19, the wild beasts and birds of heaven are created after God sets the man in the garden in Eden.
Even the most ingenious re-sorting will not make the two stories fit together without contradiction.
The only other place it appears is in Job 36:27, which the NIV renders as “He draws up the drops of water, which distill as rain to the streams” (with a footnoted alternate reading or “distill from the mist as rain”); the KJV gives the passage as “For he maketh small the drops of water: they pour down rain according to the vapour thereof” (with 'ed here being rendered as “vapour”).
It doesn’t seem very likely that a blatant contradiction in the Torah, within a few verses yet, would be passed down the centuries with no clarification or explanation.
Which suggests to me that the problem is our attempt to render key Hebrew phrases in English form, especially with reference to tense.
If we say “then God did it,” we attach to “then” a very definite sense of time sequence–ie, that’s the point of the word. But I can imagine that the original Hebrew term was more ambiguous. Perhaps the “then” in “Then he breathed into his nostrils a breath of life, and thus man became a living being” has in Hebrew (or had in ancient times) more of a ceremonial or commendatory sense, as if one had said “And Lo! He did breathe (yes he did!) into his nostrils a breath of life, and thus man became a living being”, basically an inserted emendation describing how man became a living being, not implying sequence.
(In general, oughtn’t one read these as ceremonial orations of praise to the preserving God of a people, not as courses in natural science?)
Well, Scott, that was entirely my point – that the two Origin Stories in Genesis 1-4 are stories, each told to make a point, not verbatim narratives of a historical sequence of events. But atheist and fundamentalist alike have condemned the stance that one can read the Bible seriously for the underlying meaning without subscribing to its alleged inerrant omniveracity.
Which demonstrates nothing. All that shows is that the Jerusalem Bible used the preterite tense. As I said, yatsar can be rendered in either the preterite or the pluperfect tenses, which shows that a contradiction does not necessarily exist.
Your example, and that of the KJV, merely show that the creation of animals can be rendered in a self-contradictory way. This is not the same as showing that a contradiction does occur.
Okay, that’s your first mistake. There is no “standard” Genesis 2:18, apart from the original Hebrew rendition. You are quoting from a translation that DOES betray an inconsistency, but as I have repeatedly emphasized, it is not the only possible translation.
That doesn’t prove your case; quite the contrary. Genesis 2:19 says that God had formed the animals (i.e. created them at some unspecified time in the past). Then he proclaimed that Adam should not be alone. The pluperfect tense (“had formed”) means that the formation of animals occured at some time previously, and does not specify that it happened after the creation of Adam.
With all due respect, I think you’re erroneous in assuming that this makes it impossible to prove any contradiction. That’s clearly a huge and unsubstantiated leap of logic. Moreover, it is easily disproven. If a text says, for example, that Mr. Smith owns exactly one car, and if another text says that the same person owns three, then the precise wording shows the two accounts are mutually exclusive.
But since your whole argument seems to be pinned on a particular verb-form that you have produced exactly one on-line reference to support, whereas your opponents have produced several independant translations to contradict your account, I think that I can respectably say that the “standard”, or majority, of translations do not support your thesis.
Since I have asked before repeatedly, I will ask again: produce the whole passage, and we will see in context what it says.
And I say that, absent twisted logic and reliance on some obscure and insupportable verb-tense picked up by none of the usual translators, there exists a contradiction here as obvious as the example you give.
The plain reading of the text states quite explicitly that man was created first; and that animals were created afterwards,
As for (c), the “plants of the field” point, nice job absorbing the argument I made originally and quoting it back to me as if it was your own. Do you forget already that you had some other bizzare timing argument, which you have I see dropped, and that I made the cultigen/wild plant distinction?
You evidently have not read the Bible receintly - it is filled with stuff that is blatantly contradictory or obsolete. Just go to Leviticus. Seen anyone making sacrifices like those required there, lately?
[I always wanted to ask fundies whether they sacrifice small animals as required by Leviticus]
This is not a problem for non-fundie Rabbinical Jews, because they have centuries of commentaries and interpretations embodied in the Talmud - they don’t in general take the OT literally.
It is a problem for fundie Christians, because they don’t have a Talmud - so they are obliged by their faith to take this stuff literally.
And in the US, they oppose certain core teachings of biology on the basis of literal interpretations of the OT.
Which is why it makes sense to ask - if evolution cannot be true because the creation story in Genesis is literally true - which story is it?
I challenge you - read Genesis 1 and 2. They are not long, only a couple of pages. Are these the same account? Could they be the same account?
Do you forget already that you had some other bizzare timing argument, which you have I see dropped, and that I made the cultigen/wild plant distinction?