dpardo responds to me:
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My understanding of Genesis 2 is that the author does not always narrate chronologically but instead, shifts, at times, to detail some events.
And your justification of this is what, precisely?
My justification for this is that the author already gave us the chronology in Chapter 1.
That makes no sense.
If a person comes to you and says, "First I ate breakfast, then lunch, then dinner," and then a couple hours later he says, "First I ate lunch, then breakfast, then dinner," are you seriously trying to say that it is justifiable to think he was "shifting to detail some events" because he already gave us a chronology?
Are you truly that naive?
They were simple questions, dpardo:
Are birds and whales animals?
Were they not created the day before humans?
Were not humans first created the day after birds and whales?
Was not Adam the first human?
Were there any animals created anywhere when Adam was created?
Weren't the animals created specifically after the moment god noticed Adam was alone?
You can't have it both ways. Either humans were created before animals were created, contradicting Gen 1, or they were created after, contradicting Gen 2.
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Are you seriously claiming that god has the attention span of a gnat? That he noticed that Adam was alone but was then immediately distracted by the need to create the animals? That the animals had nothing to do with the search for a helpmeet for Adam?
I am claiming that God did not create the animals in Genesis 2:19.
(*blink!*)
You did not just say that, did you?
Genesis 2:19: 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.
What is this if not an act of creation?
Like I said, let's forget about the animals...let's talk about the
PLANTS:
Genesis 2:5: 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.
Not only are there no animals around, there aren't any plants around because it has never rained
ever and there isn't someone to work the soil.
Both of these are in direct contradiction to Genesis 1.
Since Gen 2 directly states that there are no plants or animals anywhere before Adam gets created, how is that squared with Gen 1's timeline where animals and plants are created before humans?
Is Gen 1 holding back? God created humans somewhere between day 3 and the beginning?
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The reason, IMO, for the following statement in Genesis 2:19:
"And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field..."
is to tell us that he formed them out of the ground.
But that's exactly how he did it in Gen 1:
Genesis 1:24: And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
It's also how he did it with regard to plants:
Genesis 1:11: And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
1:12: And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
1:13: And the evening and the morning were the third day.
So what are you complaining about? Oh, that's right...because in Gen 1, birds and whales come out of the water. Yet another contradiction. The only way around it is to insist that Gen 2 is some secondary creation story...that god happened to forget that he had a whole slew of animals already wandering around that he could have brought to Adam so instead he creates a whole new set.
But the problem is that Gen 1 says that animals come from the ground, too.
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Are you claiming that God made the animals in an attempt to find a helpmeet for Adam?
Yes. That's precisely what the Bible says:
Genesis 2:20: 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.
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If so, how do you reconcile this with the direct statement that there was no helpmeet to be found among the animals? If they weren't looking for one among the animals, why would they bother mentioning that one wasn't to be found?
The reason, IMO, for the following statement in Genesis 2:20:
"...but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him."
is to inform us that the animals did have helpmeets.
(*blink!*)
You did not just say that, did you? That sentence has absolutely nothing to do with finding helpmeets for the other animals. It says absolutely nothing about how the he-goat has a she-goat and the lioness her lion. Gen 2:20 (and your hatchet jobs of quotation are getting ridiculous) says that Adam, who was alone and needed a helpmeet, was presented with a parade of animals whom he named but couldn't find a helpmeet for himself.
God did not send Adam the task of pairing off the animals. He sent Adam the task of looking for a helpmeet for
Adam and one could not be found. And because one could not be found, god makes a female human out of Adam's body.
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I'm still having a hard time believing you claimed birds and whales are not animals.
I apologize. I thought that was a trick question.
So how were you going to justify that birds and whales are not animals?
Yes, the question is a bit of a trick question. It points out that there were animals running around on the earth
BEFORE there were any humans anywhere.
And yet Gen 2 directly states that there weren't any animals anywhere before the creation of the first human.
That's a contradiction.
If I tell you, "Breakfast, then lunch," and then immediately say to you, "Lunch, then breakfast," those two statements cannot be reconciled no matter how much you try to claim that the first timeline is accurate and the second is just "details." The first was just as detailed as the second.
Don't you think enumerating the days and providing the chronological order of events is fairly detailed?
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!
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