# Contradictions in Genesis **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 30, 2016, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/contradictions-in-genesis/744629 "2016-01-30T00:54:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![lpixler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9f8e36/32.png) [@lpixler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lpixler)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2016, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/contradictions-in-genesis/744629/1 "2016-01-30T00:54:21Z")
In the New Testament, God states that woman shall have no authority over man because she was second in creation and first in the fall, which leads Christians to subsume the Priestly account of creation (in which male and female were created simultaneously). Jewish rabbis took the contradiction seriously, and explained it to keep the Genesis story as the word of god (who wouldn’t contradict himself). There’s a theory that the first creature was created as androgynous, with both a male and female head. The Hebrew word for the act of taking from Adam’s rib to make Eve comes up later in the Bible when the holy Tabernacle is literally cut in two, leading the rabbis to argue that Eve was not in fact created from Adam’s rib but was half of the androgynous creature and maintaining that they were created simultaneously. So it’s Christianity that enforces the submissive gender role of women. I just haven’t been able to figure out how Christians argue away the two different creation stories. I know they take the Yahwistic account to be real, but what do they make of the Priestly account? Why is it included in the Bible? How do Christians explain away the fact that Genesis clearly states (first and foremost) that male and female were created simultaneously? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2016, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/contradictions-in-genesis/744629/2 "2016-01-30T01:05:44Z")
All I know is [Lilith](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilith) is pretty damn hot. ---
**Author:** ![Snarky\_Kong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Snarky\_Kong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snarky_Kong)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2016, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/contradictions-in-genesis/744629/3 "2016-01-30T01:18:52Z")
Because nobody actually cares about 90% of what’s in there anyway. Have you read it? Crazy shit. ---
**Author:** ![ekedolphin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ekedolphin/32/10003_2.png) [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2016, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/contradictions-in-genesis/744629/4 "2016-01-30T01:26:39Z")
I’m a Christian male, but I consider much of Genesis to be mythology. Notably the creation story and the Great Flood. And I _certainly_ don’t believe in the inherent subservience of women. ---
**Author:** ![lpixler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9f8e36/32.png) [@lpixler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lpixler)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2016, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/contradictions-in-genesis/744629/5 "2016-01-30T01:36:58Z")
Don’t Christians care what’s in the Bible? And isn’t the Bible supposed to be the word of God, thus the reason it’s “holy?” ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2016, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/contradictions-in-genesis/744629/6 "2016-01-30T01:40:06Z")
> [@lpixler](#): > > Jewish rabbis took the contradiction seriously, and explained it to keep the Genesis story as the word of god (who wouldn’t contradict himself). There’s a theory that the first creature was created as androgynous, with both a male and female head. The Hebrew word for the act of taking from Adam’s rib to make Eve comes up later in the Bible when the holy Tabernacle is literally cut in two, leading the rabbis to argue that Eve was not in fact created from Adam’s rib but was half of the androgynous creature and maintaining that they were created simultaneously. > > So it’s Christianity that enforces the submissive gender role of women. Which rabbis, exactly, where these? ---
**Author:** ![lpixler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9f8e36/32.png) [@lpixler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lpixler)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2016, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/contradictions-in-genesis/744629/7 "2016-01-30T01:47:44Z")
> **[Legend of the Androgyne](https://www.learnreligions.com/what-was-the-androgyne-2076659)** > > In rabbinic literature, the androgyne was a creature that was both male and female and had two faces at the beginning of Creation in Genesis 1. ---
**Author:** ![lpixler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9f8e36/32.png) [@lpixler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lpixler)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2016, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/contradictions-in-genesis/744629/8 "2016-01-30T01:49:18Z")
Judaism is all new to me. This is what I’ve been reading. I’m just trying to set some things straight in my mind. ---
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2016, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/contradictions-in-genesis/744629/9 "2016-01-30T02:05:06Z")
> [@lpixler](#): > > Don’t Christians care what’s in the Bible? Sure. But the majority are perfectly happy to accept the Biblical creation myths as myths, and much of the rest of the OT as either myth or allegory. > [@](#): > > And isn’t the Bible supposed to be the word of God, thus the reason it’s “holy?” Sure. But again, the majority of Christians do not need their word of God to be literal or inerrant in all its particulars. . ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2016, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/contradictions-in-genesis/744629/10 "2016-01-30T02:30:39Z")
> [@lpixler](#): > > I just haven’t been able to figure out how Christians argue away the two different creation stories. I know they take the Yahwistic account to be real, but what do they make of the Priestly account? Why is it included in the Bible? How do Christians explain away the fact that Genesis clearly states (first and foremost) that male and female were created simultaneously? The Cathollc view is more or less the same as the secular one, that there were two different sources drawn on for the text, and while they were generally in agreement, differences are explained by their authors wishing to emphisize different theological and moral concepts via the story. I’m not sure how the more fundamentalist branches of Christianity reconcile the two stories. ETA: Here’s the Catholic Enclopedia’s take" > [@Entry on Adam](#): > > Notwithstanding the differences and discrepancies noticeable in the two accounts of the origin of, mankind, the narratives are nevertheless in substantial agreement, and in the esteem of the majority of scholars they are easiest explained and reconciled if considered as representing two varying traditions among the Hebrews — traditions which in different form and setting embodied the selfsame central historic facts, together with a presentation more or less symbolical of certain moral and religious truths. ---
**Author:** ![svd678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/53a042/32.png) [@svd678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/svd678)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2016, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/contradictions-in-genesis/744629/11 "2016-01-30T03:06:59Z")
As a liberal Protestant I have no difficulty realizing that there are more than 2 creation myths and that they differ in details, according to the points of view of those who recorded them. And that God did not write the Bible, but people did who had various insights and inspirations. Anyone who knows the Bible knows of a lot more -contradictions- if you are collecting them. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2016, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/contradictions-in-genesis/744629/12 "2016-01-30T05:02:55Z")
What day was it any religious believer anywhere was ever fully on board with every bit of their sacred Holy Book? It has never happened. ---
**Author:** ![Stoneburg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@Stoneburg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoneburg)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2016, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/contradictions-in-genesis/744629/13 "2016-01-30T05:27:56Z")
Some intelligent Christians realize that the OT is a collection of bronze age myths, and also happen to understand that when Jesus talked about bringing a “new law” and not putting new wine into old wine skins he was talking about abandoning the stuff that makes up the OT. In a way it is super weird that it’s included in the Bible, since it’s the very stuff Jesus was teaching against (though later editing has tried to obscure that). Old Testament = An eye for an Eye Jesus = Turn the other cheek That should have been a clue you’d think… ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2016, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/contradictions-in-genesis/744629/14 "2016-01-30T05:33:49Z")
I believe the usual way to explain discrepancies in the Bible is to declare that one (or both) of the passages is an allegory. So it’s true but in a symbolic sense. So a person who believes the Bible is inerrant could read the first part of Genesis where it says God created plants and animals before he created man and say that that’s the actual account of what happened. And then that same person could read the second part of Genesis where it says that God created man before the plants and animals and say that this is an allegory for how man is God’s most important creation. Or he could take it the other way around if he wanted and declare the first account is the allegory and the second account is the literal description. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2016, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/contradictions-in-genesis/744629/15 "2016-01-30T05:47:33Z")
> [@lpixler](#): > > There’s a theory that the first creature was created as androgynous, with both a male and female head. > [@Bricker](#): > > Which rabbis, exactly, where these? I think Plato was the one who argued an androgynous first creation. I’ve been Jewish for 49 years, and I never heard that connected to rabbis before. Just to inject a little levity: (this is, however, true) the “Adam’s rib” story started out as a just-so story to explain why human men do not have bacula like most mammals. The “rib” removed from Adam is a euphemism for the baculum. Apparently in ancient Hebrew, instead of getting a “boner,” you got an “extra rib,” so when a rib was removed from Adam, the people hearing the story would have understood-- not that it was a story about sex, mind you, but that this was when and why HaShem removed the baculum that humans used to have. It also probably explained why human woman got horny pretty frequently, as opposed to going into comparatively infrequent heats, like other mammals. ---
**Author:** ![Flyer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/flyer/32/7298_2.png) [@Flyer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flyer)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2016, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/contradictions-in-genesis/744629/16 "2016-01-30T06:05:47Z")
There is only ONE Creation story. It’s spread out over two chapters, with a different emphasis in each chapter. Anybody who says that there are different stories is simply too lazy to read the plain language of the Bible or else too stupid to understand it. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2016, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/contradictions-in-genesis/744629/17 "2016-01-30T07:04:18Z")
I don’t think swinging a dead cat in a graveyard at midnight cures warts, but I still think _Tom Sawyer_ is a great novel. Similarly, the Old Testament is great literature whatever its relationship to “truth.” Some of the inconsistencies in the Bible are deliberate hints at suppressed truth. There may be a very clever logic puzzle hidden in Genesis 46. Genesis 46 verses 9-15 list 32 living descendants of Jacob by his wife Leah and then announces the total as 33! The summary in 26-27 is also contradictory: [QUOTE=Genesis 46] 26. All the souls that came with Jacob into Egypt, which came out of his loins, besides Jacob’s sons’ wives, all the souls were threescore and six; 27. And the sons of Joseph, which were born him in Egypt, were two souls: all the souls of the house of Jacob, which came into Egypt, were threescore and ten. [/QUOTE] Arithmetic error? If posed as an abstract logic problem, there is a specific solution … whose nature would give the writer good reason to suppress its overt expression! ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2016, 7:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/contradictions-in-genesis/744629/18 "2016-01-30T07:16:06Z")
> [@Flyer](#): > > There is only ONE Creation story. It’s spread out over two chapters, with a different emphasis in each chapter. Anybody who says that there are different stories is simply too lazy to read the plain language of the Bible or else too stupid to understand it. Is this a whoosh or are you serious? If it’s the latter, then clarify for me what happened in the one creation story; did God create man before or after he created the other animals? As a bonus New Testament question, what was the last thing Jesus said before he died on the Cross? ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2016, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/contradictions-in-genesis/744629/19 "2016-01-30T08:17:48Z")
> [@Stoneburg](#): > > Some intelligent Christians realize that the OT is a collection of bronze age myths, and also happen to understand that when Jesus talked about bringing a “new law” and not putting new wine into old wine skins he was talking about abandoning the stuff that makes up the OT. In a way it is super weird that it’s included in the Bible, since it’s the very stuff Jesus was teaching against (though later editing has tried to obscure that). > > Old Testament = An eye for an Eye > Jesus = Turn the other cheek > > That should have been a clue you’d think… You do realize Jesus literally says “I have come not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it”? Also: \>unironically using the phrase “Bronze Age myths” ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2016, 8:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/contradictions-in-genesis/744629/20 "2016-01-30T08:33:19Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > You do realize Jesus literally says “I have come not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it”? > > Also: > \>unironically using the phrase “Bronze Age myths” What’s wrong with “bronze age myths?” [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/contradictions-in-genesis/744629.md?page=2)