Answered in Genesis

I was browsing through friends blogs when I stumbled onto this one by Jud N.:

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Questions in Genesis

According to Genesis 1, plants were created on day 3, animals on day 5, and man on day 6. According to Genesis 2, man was formed before the plants (and possibly before the animals, too). Genesis 1 makes clear that male and female were both created on day 6 (i.e. before day 7). Genesis 2 seems to imply that Adam lived some time on earth alone, most likely longer than 24 hours. Can anyone help resolve these quirks? You'd think Moses could have gotten his facts a bit more clear, after all, the Holy Spirit was helping him, right?
EDIT: I've enjoyed the bit of discussion so far, and hope to keep it up, so I did a bit more studying over lunch, and the "straightforward / literal" reading of Genesis 2 in the original NASB not only says Adam was created before plants, but before the animals too, and on the same day that God made everything else. Now it seems we're all mixed up with respect to the Genesis 1 chronology. Regarding whether or not Adam and Eve were made within a 24 hour period, I certainly don't want to limit God, but it does seem that Adam would be limited by time, right? If we're to believe the natural, "literal" interpretation of the passage, that Adam actually gave names to all the animals, it's pretty hard to believe such a task could have been completed in a literal day. I'm genuinely curious if there's an answer to these problems from the "literal history" camp. Anyone want to take a crack at it?

There were a dozen commentors before me. I responded with:

"Adam worked for 12 hours with a half hour lunch when he named the animals. He was denied the two 15 minute breaks because the worker's union wasn't invented yet.

Are you seriously asking or are you just asking to spark a discussion? Do you still have the notes from freshman Bible class in Cedarville? You should find the answers there, including Genesis. (But if you're like me, then you threw them away midway through junior year.)"

Today I responded again:

"I guess you were serious. I was half-asleep when I read your Edit. Since you want an answer, here's the quick version:

Foundation: When you read the Bible, always keep in mind "context." That's the very first rule in Bible study as well as learning Biblical languages. Also, since our Bible was split into chapters and verses in the 13th and 16th centuries respectively, you don't want to rely on that to separate thoughts and ideas - an entire book has to be read as one. Next, boring dan was right in saying that Gen 2 doesn't take into account the chronological order because it merely repeats what was written earlier and that now the writer is giving details about Adam and Eve. Finally, with an old manuscript like the Bible, you have to understand the audience: Moses was writing to Israelites during the journey to the Promised Land.

Let's take Gen 2:5: the Hebrew word for "shrub" is siyach. The only other time this particular kind of plant is mentioned is in Gen 21:15 in the wilderness and Job 30:4 also in the wilderness. And, because we don't live in an agricultural society, we tend to dismiss the word "field." "Field" in Gen 2 is associated with "field" in Gen 3, as in a farm field. When those chapters are read together and acknowledge the audience, you'll see that the Israelites heard the account like this:

"God created everything perfect before sin entered. The world was different then, no wilderness shrub to make farming difficult, before we even had the need to farm, like the way you worked Pharoah's fields. Back then a mist was in the air and covered everything, unlike the dry desert heat you feel at the moment. Rain had not fallen yet, because rain is the result of sin, and I'll explain that later as well. The Garden of Eden was created on the third day with the other plants and God put man, who He created on the sixth day, in it to take care of it. Man did not cultivate fields yet because he had the Garden. Later, when man sinned, he had to cultivate the fields in hardship and eat of its fruit."

Same with naming animals - danielmfoster is right to say there weren't as many animals as we see today. Just like there were only two humans in the very beginning, there were only a small number of animals as well. I wouldn't be surprised if it took less than a day to name them all (along with that half-hour break for some non-Tree of Knowledge fruit).

So you see, there's no need to leave the "literalist camp," nor is Genesis 1-11 just poetry and metaphor, nor do we need to disregard or minimize Genesis and Revelation and only "emphasize the middle." Those bookends are part of a very important whole. By disregarding the six literal days of Creation, you disregard Jesus' reference to it in the NT as the self-evidential truth that it is. I agree that there's been too much squabbling over those two books. Revelation has had too many cheesy movies made of it and Genesis is being blown off by the established Evolutionary dogmatists as myth. How unfortunate that those dogmatists are influencing Christian thought. It's important to accept the entire Bible as plainly true because all the themes tie in with the Gospel - both Genesis and Revelation point to Jesus. With a little time and a lot of research, you'll end up with what you knew intuitively in the first place: Gen 1-11 is literal history, part of God's inerrant word."