Originally posted by BobRyan:
"again" you equivocate between a sequence and a chronology. You argue that when all you have is a sequence (even if only bits and pieces of a sequence) you have a Chronology.
I have no idea where you are going with this. If you want to use the term "sequence", that is fine with me. Both Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 have a sequence. It is not the same. Maybe such obvious differences are an indication that the author, who placed these accounts back-to-back, didn't intend for them to be merged into a single sequence.
Anyway, I'll expand on that a bit. The Bible contains descriptions of many things we can't comprehend -- things that are beyond human experience. To explain the unexplainable, Scripture tends to use many pictures, none of which are complete, but each of which explains certain things.
For instance, the Bible gives many pictures of God. Here's some of them:
</font>
- God is Spirit (John 4:24; Psalm 139:7-10).</font>
- God is invisible (Col. 1:15; 1 John 4:12).</font>
- God is not a man (Num. 23:19; Hos. 11:9).</font>
- God is a consuming fire (Deut. 4:24).</font>
- God is the spring of living waters (Jer. 2:13).</font>
- God is our shepherd (Psalm 23).</font>
- God is a warrior (Ex. 15:2-3).</font>
- God is a protective mother bird (Psalm 91:4).</font>
If we take any one of these too seriously while excluding others, it can warp our image of God. If we focus on the first three, we may think of God as more of a "force" or a diffused gas than a personal being. Each of the remaining pictures stress certain aspects of God's character that the more technical descriptions don't get across. We don't get the best picture of God by literally combining all the pictures -- that only leads to nonsense -- but instead by combining the characteristics that underlie each picture.
As another example, Jesus uses three parables to explain why he has come to seek and to save the lost. Luke 15 contains the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost (or prodigal) son. None of the pictures is totally accurate by themselves (for instance, God can be in more than one place at a time, unlike the shepherd who needs to leave his 99 sheep to go after the lost one) but put together they paint a more complete and accurate picture.
Finally, getting to the point, Genesis 1:1-2:3 and 2:4-25 give two stories of the creation of the world. Trying to merge the two into one literal account is as ridiculous as trying to merge the parables of the lost sheep, coin and son into a single story, or of merging the descriptions of God as fire, spring, shepherd, warrior, and bird into a single figure. The two creation accounts are not contradictory, but rather they give different halves of a whole. If the two halves could neatly fit together into a single historical story, there would have been no reason to present them separately in the first place.
The first account starts with primordial waters overwhelming an earth that is "formless and void" (Gen. 1:1-2) while the second starts with primordial ground that saw no rain (Gen. 2:4-5). The first puts man's creation at the end while the second has man created first before the plants have grown or animals have been formed (unless you read it from the NIV, which tries to smooth over the difference with the animals; this is clearer in more word-for-word translations such as the NASB, KJV, NKJV or ESV). In the first God tells the humans to rule over the other creatures and subdue the earth; in the second man is placed in the garden to "work it and take care of it". The first portrays God creating mainly by speaking; the second has God forming Adam from dust and breathing life into him. Similarly, the first portrays God (
Elohim, the Hebrew generic name for God) as above his creation while in the second God (
Yahweh, the Hebrew personal name for God) walks in the garden with Adam and Eve.
Many people explain away these differences by taking one account or the other as less literal. Generally, the first account is taken as authoritative and the second is just used to add further detail to the sixth day. When there's an apparent contradiction (such as the plants already existing by this time in the first account but not being there in the second), the first chapter is taken literally and the second is adjusted to fit.
My approach is to take both accounts as two sides of a coin. Either account would lead to misinterpretations if the other is excluded from consideration. For instance, the first account stresses God's transcendence, while the second stresses God's immanence. The first shows God's sovereignty as creation takes place in highly ordered and structured days, while the second focuses on God's providence, with things being created in response to needs (man to till the ground, woman as a helper for man). The first stresses how humanity is created in God's image with dominion over the earth, while the second stresses that we came from dust and have an duty to take care of the world. Industrialists may prefer the first account while environmentalists prefer the second, but by taking both together we find balance.
It is not a matter of contradiction. Most of the differences are so plainly obvious that it is the height of arrogance to think we've only noticed them now. They were as evident when the accounts were compiled together as they are now. They are presented side by side, which is a pretty good clue that the writer of Genesis wasn't disturbed by their differences. Consider two proverbs in the Bible that are often given on Bible contradiction web sites: "Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him yourself" and "Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes". What the contradiction web sites try to minimize is where the proverbs are found: Proverbs 26:4-5 -- in other words, they are back to back! Obviously the compiler of Proverbs was well aware that these two proverbs gave different advice for a similar situation, and yet under divine inspiration he had no problem including them both. This was not a flaw he overlooked or some secret that was only discovered by later generations; the proverbs are two sides of the same coin, and so they were placed side by side. There are times when each is relevant, and it is better to keep both in mind than to always use one to the exclusion of the other.
There are other times when the Bible uses multiple accounts quite differently. Jesus' crucifixion is recorded in detail four times, yet we don't see the huge differences between the accounts that we do in creation or in the parables of the lost items. When Samuel/Kings and Chronicles give accounts of Israel's rulers, they select their details in order to fit their individual purpose, but yet the details mesh together. Saul is followed by David who is followed by Solomon in both accounts, and any differences are in minor details such as the exact moment a king died. Most of the details are exactly the same in both accounts (sometimes word for word).
In the creation accounts, by contrast, hardly
any details are the same. While both describe God as creating everything, they do it in totally different ways. Somebody who reads Genesis 2:4-25 without any preconceived ideas from the preceding chapter would get a totally different picture of creation than one who tries to reconcile the second chapter to the first. I think we often miss much of what the second account has to say to us because we are only willing to view it through the filter of the first chapter, instead of viewing both through the filter of the entire Bible.
