Authors Note:

There are a few things I want to talk about before I get into a discussion of the text of Genesis 2:4-2:25, i.e. Creation Part Deux. The first has to do with a branch of theological studies called “apologetics”. Apologetics is the field of study that attempts to resolve apparent inconsistencies, contradictions and basic mistakes in the Bible. Such a field of apologetics is necessary because of the fact that the Bible contains obvious contradictions, mistakes, anachronisms and inconsistencies but according to literalists 2 Timothy 3:16,17 means the whole thing is infallible when it says, “All scripture is inspired of God”. Don’t even get me started on 2 Timothy quite yet… it’s a whole ‘nother can o’ worms there since it wasn’t even written (most likely) by Paul and the “scriptures” referred to didn’t refer to the Bible we have, thereby rendering that claim to be pretty groundless. Still, you don’t need to attack 2 Timothy in order to see that apologetics are a self-defeating exercise.

If this book were actually of supernatural origin, it seems highly unlikely that apologetics would be required. After all, here’s the reasoning used by fundamentalists. See if you can spot the flaw:

The Bible is God’s inspired word. We know this because of it’s amazing harmony, consistency, accuracy and supernatural wisdom. Because it is God’s inspired word, it is free from error and does not contradict itself.
If it appears to contradict itself, other scriptures can be used to work out the meaning of the apparent contradiction because the book explains itself.

See what this means? The Bible is it’s own authority. If it is contradicted by itself (which is obviously impossible if it’s the perfect work of a perfect God) then a reasoned resolution to the conflict should be reachable through using other parts of the Bible. If it is contradicted by reality, (i.e. – no metal dome in the sky) then it can be reinterpreted. Apologetics, therefore, is the weaseling out of the fact that without apologetics the Bible quite obviously is not infallible or consistent. Now, I ask you, how can a skeptic like myself accept the idea that God would create a book that appears to be wrong to people who aren’t up to speed with all the crazy apologetic defenses for why it really isn’t? If you attempt to decide if the Bible is divinely inspired by reading it critically, you’ll likely decide it isn’t. However, if you start with the idea that it is divinely inspired than no mistake in it, no flaw, no contradiction is too big for you to find some insane way to explain away. I personally believe that any communication from God would be obviously correct and the energy would have to be expended in trying to find reasons it was wrong, not the reverse.

However, as you’re about to see, the Bible not only starts off on a very questionable foot, it immediately shifts gears and flatly contradicts itself.

Genesis 2:4-2:25
or Apologetics Gets Invented

If you have already read my entry about Genesis 1:1-2:3 you may have noticed that I left a few things out. I made reference to the fact that the order of events in the initial creation account contradicted not only science but also the second creation account. This, as I mentioned previously, should not be possible. Enter the first good chance for apologetics. I also avoided mention of some seemingly backwards aspects of the supposed creation account (like light being created before the light sources were) because I wanted to cover all of that in this little tour of apologetics.

In the initial chapter of Genesis, there are 6 creative days and on they go like this:

Day 1: A beginning, a primordial earth, light, then darkness
Day 2: A metal dome splits the waters above and below
Day 3: Dry land is separated from the waters under the dome, plants grew on earth including fruit bearing plants with seeds
Day 4: The sun, moon and stars are added to the dome to serve “as signs”
Day 5: Birds and sea monsters are brought forth from the seas
Day 6: Cattle, insects and wild animals on the earth are created, then mankind is created male and female in the likeness of God to rule over all the animals and plants
Day 7: God took the day off

Let’s compare that to the order of events in Genesis 2:

1. God makes the earth and heavens, but there are no plants yet, even though God waters the land
2. God makes man from the dust of the ground
3. God planted a garden in Eden for the man he made
4. God made trees grow in the garden
5. God tells Man to be a farmer
6. God decides to make man a a helper and makes, not woman, but animals
7. God makes woman out of man’s rib
8. He never really rests, just keeps on as a character in the story

In the first story the order of creation is the earth-> plants-> birds and fish -> animals -> man and woman but in the second story it goes the earth-> man-> plants -> trees -> animals -> woman. This is where apologetics folks role up their sleeves and start the spin. “It’s not really a contradiction”, they say. “One is chronological, the other is just telling the story from a human perspective.” to which I say, “you’re full of crap” and here’s why.

There is simply no way to read the words at Genesis 2:5 and not equate it with day 2 of the creative days. It says:

“In the day that the Yahweh God made the earth and heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no field had yet sprung up”

This is obviously stating an exact time period. After earth was made, before plants. OK. So, what happens next? After mentioning that it hadn’t rained yet in 5b and 6, it goes on to say:

“… then the Yahweh God formed man from the dust of the ground”

And what happened next?

“And the Yahweh God planted in a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed.”

It’s a very clear order of events. The earth, man, a garden. The language is direct and reads no other way. Why, I ask you, would somebody attempt to reconcile these two accounts as harmonious? Because the alternative is unthinkable. The alternative is also, honestly, quite obvious. The alternative is that the second creation account was originally a separate story from a separate source that was put together by an editor with the first story. You can even spot the editors work if you look closely, it’s the bit at the beginning of verse 4. Here’s the transition, paraphrased to show stylistic differences more easily:

“So, THE GOD(S) blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it THE GOD(S) rested from all the work done in creation.

These are the generations of the heavens and earth when they were created.

In the day that the Yahweh God made the earth and heavens, when there weren’t any plants or herbs yet growing anywhere – because the Yahweh God hadn’t made the rain yet and besides, nobody was around to till the ground; but there was a steam that would rise up from the earth and water the ground – then the Yahweh God made man from the dust of the ground…”

Notice how the first story is regal and grand and epic and fairly stilted in it’s language. Then there is this one little sentence that sort of segues into the next part and suddenly it’s all folksy and cozy and using much more rustic and personal language. Part one up there is the “Priestly” writer, the middle sentence is the infamous “Redactor” and the third part is the “Yahwist” author. The idea that these contradictory accounts were written by the same man, dictated by God almighty and he just so happened to change the way he referred to God, the tone of his writing, the order of the events he’s describing and every major part of his story all in the space of 2 verses is extremely difficult to swallow but it’s exactly what must be swallowed in order to accept the apologetics explanation for all of this. Especially when a far more satisfying explanation exists in which these were originally separate accounts joined together. It is the only explanation that actually makes sense.

Further, the understanding that Israel was originally not monotheistic makes the “let’s make man in our image” terminology much more logical, makes the use of the phrase “the Yahweh God” which is translated in most Bibles as “the LORD God” logical too. You had to identify which god you meant (the Yahweh God) when talking about gods if you believed in a pantheon of them. These verses all make sense as parts of the early Jewish tradition, formed out of their earlier Babylonian history but make no sense as holy writ from on high.

Why does this matter? It matters because people who believe that this is an accurate depiction of how life started on this planet are attempting to subvert reality and the government in this country even today. They don’t understand their own book and yet they can use it to try to dictate reality to the rest of the world. Sad.

One final point I want to make before I step out of creation-land and into the Garden of Eden is a summary of the ways in which Genesis contradicts reality (besides simply contradicting itself). Both creation accounts are wrong on the order in which things appeared on this planet.

Contrary to Genesis 1, there is not firmament, no dome, no metal in the sky, no “waters above”. There are clouds, air and space. Second, there were living organisms on earth long before plants. Plants came after ocean creatures, not before. Fish, in a word, predate land plants. Birds came way way way after the plants, yes, but not before land animals. They say plants->fish and birds->land animals but it is actually ocean life->some plants->land animals->more plants with fruit->birds. There were already lots of insects and land animals before birds ever showed up. Sure man came near the end, in the fossil record, but other animals have shown up since the earliest humans. We’re not the most recent new species in the fossil record. Creation didn’t stop with us.

Genesis 2 is equally wrong. Man was not the first creation, almost every thing that has ever lived on this planet lived before anything remotely human. We weren’t here before the plants and animals and women were not created from man’s rib.

In short, creationists who claim this account gives amazing proof of the supernatural source of it’s message because of it’s amazing accuracy are just dead wrong. Apologists who think the two accounts can be reconciled are also dead wrong. These accounts tell us where the Jewish people came from and the nature of early Jewish thought about cosmology, nothing more, nothing less.

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