Many people probably don’t realize this but there are two accounts of creation in Genesis. The first is in chapter one and the second in chapter two.
It’s common early on in the Bible to see two different accounts of the same story. Scholars call these “doublets.” There are also two accounts of Noah’s flood, two accounts of covenants with Abraham, two accounts of the parting of the Red Sea, etc…
Scholars think that this is because the stories were from different authors during a time when Israel and Judea were separated and which were later edited together when the countries united again (the Documentary Hypothesis).
In any case, the chapter one account of creation contradicts the chapter two account on the order of the creation of animals and man.
Chapter one:
Animals first:
(Gen 1:24 NRSV) And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.” And it was so.
Then Man:
(Gen 1:27 NRSV) So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
Chapter two:
Man first:
(Gen 2:7 NRSV) then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.
Then animals:
(Gen 2:19 NRSV) So out of the ground the LORD God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.
As a side note, there is a peculiar twist to the second creation account. As Adam is naming every animal, God and Adam notice that none of the animals were suitable as a “partner” for Adam (not even those that produced wool).
(Gen 2:20-21 NRSV) The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. So the LORD God caused…
Another note is that the birds are formed from the water in the first account, a day before the cattle. In the second, both are formed of land together.
“god was often confused when writing the bible” — Skeptics Annoted Bible
The animals were created first, in Gen. 2;18-20 God is telling us that He created man and was making him a helper for him, then He was telling us that He HAD formed the animals out of the ground. and He gave Adam the job of naming the animals. but the word you need to look at is HAD, this is past tense.
You appear to be looking at an apologetic version of the Bible such as the NIV which is attempting to cover up the contradiction.
There are other places where the NIV paraphrases or in some cases literally rewrites the Greek or Hebrew to avoid a contradiction, errror, or something unseemly.
In the KJV and the NRSV it clearly shows the forming out of the ground of the animals is after and in response to the decision made to create a helper for Adam.
(Gen 2:18 NRSV) Then the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.
(Gen 2:19 NRSV) *So* out of the ground the LORD God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, …
I’m aware this post is old, but I thought you might be interested in this:
I recently had this very discussion in my own blog (which is in Swedish). I posted Gen 2:18-24 and claimed it contradicts Gen 1. I was told by christians to do some more research before posting quotes and interpreting them. The commenter pointed out the word “had” and said it explains everything.
So, I’ve done some checking. Out of 22 bible translations I’ve looked at, only five has the “HAD” wording Bryan mentioned, that implies that there is no contradiction between Gen 1 and 2. Also, bear in mind that four of those five were different versions of the NIV. 16 bible versions make it clear that God created Adam, then animals, then Eve. One version is ambiguous.
Keep up the good work.
furiku,
The NIV is one of the worst “translations.” It occasionally uses obscure meanings of original Hebrew/Greek words to tidy up Bible problems and in some cases, ignores the original text altogether.
Almost all modern Bible translations do a certain amount of this, but the NIV is the worst.
Do you know any websites that bring up the problems of various translations of the bible, comparing to original hebrew passages etc?
I don’t know of any myself offhand. I’ve just noticed over the years from debating bible problems, mostly with fundamentalist Christians, that this is one of the translations they like to go to. Often the NIV would contradict more literal word for word translations such as the NRSV, so I’d go to Strong’s concordance to see which Hebrew/Greek words that the NIV is pulling from and I found in some cases the NIV word(s) weren’t even present in the original text and often other words were there that they were apparently trying to hide.
This is called “paraphrasing.” A paraphrase is not an effort to translate word by word, but to try to reword or rephrase what’s in the original text to give what the “translator” thinks the author really meant.
The Living Bible is an example of an extreme paraphrased Bible but they are up front about it, claiming not to be a translation but a paraphrase. The NIV is not so honest.
When the NIV words were present in the original text, they were often conveniently obscure meanings of original text words and as you’ve found, they take convenient liberties with interpreting things like past/present/future tenses.
I just did a search in Yahoo using “NIV poor translation” and I found a lot of websites talking about the same thing, that the NIV ignores words in the original texts.
What completely surpised me however is that they were all Christian sites. Ironically (and this is news to me) they were concerned because the NIV’s ignoring of original text (paraphrasing) is also causing problems with the contradicting beliefs within the Christian Churches.
I think it would be a good idea to list the problems with common Bible translations and rate them according to their accuracy. If you do find a good site on this I’d appreciate it if you’d pass it along.
If you go by the Biblical account the chicken would have come before the egg ,but if you believe in evolution it would only make sense that the egg came first. A very long time ago a chickenlike creature was the ancestor of modern chickens. Somewhere along the line there was a bird that was not quite a chicken that had to be the mother or the father or even both whose dna combined in such a way that when the female laid an egg a chicken was hatched.
Excellent. Thanks for the article.
I really had no idea who/which came first. I was confused by different version of the bible. Plus the fact that I don’t read bible. Evolution added to my confusion too.
To Darla:
I deleted both of your commments because one of them apparently has a thinly veiled threat that God’s either going to get me or the Bible translators of the translation used above and the other only contains vauge apologetic generalizatons that don’t address the problem at all.
You claim the Bible translation is the problem. It’s not. It’s the order of things created in the two Bible. The contradiction is still apparent even in what you hold up as the only “authentic” translation: the King James Bible. Please go read it for yourself.