[_ Old Earth _] Genesis 2

[cubedbee]

Since this is my first post to the forum, I am a Christian who believes in Theistic Evolution. My question for any Literalists out there, is why do choose to believe chapter 1 instead of chapter 2? The differences are significant. By reading chapter 2 literally from verse 4 on, we discover:

1) God's act of creation took place in one day instead of six (v. 4)
2) God created man before plants (v. 5)
3) God creates both animals and birds after man. (v. 19)

 

[SyntaxVorlon]

Gotta love how creationists like to say the bible is pure truth without contradiction.

 

[serapha]

Since this is my first post to the forum, I am a Christian who believes in Theistic Evolution. My question for any Literalists out there, is why do choose to believe chapter 1 instead of chapter 2? The differences are significant. By reading chapter 2 literally from verse 4 on, we discover:

1) God's act of creation took place in one day instead of six (v. 4)
2) God created man before plants (v. 5)
3) God creates both animals and birds after man. (v. 19)

Hi there!

Let's just discuss what you posted.


1) God's act of creation took place in one day instead of six (v. 4)


"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,"


I could take the literal interpretation of "day" to mean "year" also rather than the literal "24-hour day" for the word used for day can be translations "in the day" to mean in the year, or in the 24-hour day, or even "in the lifetime". Context IS everything, and the context of the text is not to indicate a literal "24-hour day" because of the terminology of "in the day" which indicates "a time of..." rather than "a day of..."



2) God created man before plants (v. 5)

"And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground."



hmmmm it says there was not a man to till the ground. but yet the plants were created. How does that say Man was created before plants?



3) God creates both animals and birds after man. (v. 19)'


The text doesn't spek of creation, now does it? And... this goes back to your inference in your first statement.... it doesn't say "on that day God created", now does it? It says God formed every beast of the field. okay. When did God do that? It doesn't specific in Chapter 2, does it? It simply states that God brought all of the animals and fowls of the air to Adam to be named. That is all it says.


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


There is no conflict between Chapter one and chapter two of the book of Genesis. In fact, they complement each other.


~serapha~

 

[cubedbee]

Thank you for replying. Responding to your replies:

1) I totally agree. I was just throwing this point out because I've seen people argue that 'yom' is always interpreted as a literal 24 hour day, which is simply absurd.

2) I had trouble understanding the KJV of this verse. If the plants are not yet in the earth, has God created them yet? Its possible he could have created plants, either mature or seeds, and then planted them after this verse (as it indicates he planted the garden of Eden). I, however, interpreted this as saying they were not yet created. I can concede this to you though.

3) This one I can't agree with. God created Adam in verse 7. In verse 8, he plants the garden of Eden. In verse 15 he puts Adam in the garden. Then, looking at verse 18 on, we have

18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.
21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Reading this passage, we see that the reason God created the animals was to find Adam a helper. What is verse 19 refering to except for creation? In the same way that God formed Adam out of the ground, it says he formed the animals. This takes place between the formation of Man and Woman.

Even though the passage clearly is chronological, I've heard it argued that the formation of animals took place before Adam and was just mentioned here. Even if one accepts this, we still have the matter of Adam naming every single animal and bird that God created before Eve's creation. There are over 20,000 species of mammals, reptiles, or birds. Assuming Adam named for the entire day, that's just over 4 seconds per animal. They would have been running by at full speed and he'd just be blurting the first thing that came to his head. No wonder he fell into such a deep sleep at the end of the day.

 

[wesley]

Well I would tend to be more of a theistic evolution person myself

I think its worth pointing out that the first two chapters of the book of Genesis are poetry not to be taken literally. Here we have a cross up in peoples theology. Most would say that you must believe in a literal 6 day or (in chapter 2) 1 day creation, yet they fail to see that it is poetry (this is because those chapters are generally not formated that way in bibles).

The first two chapters of Genesis is based on Moses (assuming he was the author) view of the world as well as current knowledge that he had. Those chapters are just trying to say to us today that God created the world thats it end of story.