Buzsaw writes:
In context, the statement in question aluded to the timeframe of just before day three when there was no sun and moon, etc and before the plants were made. Chapter one is the only consistently sequential record of creation.
And yet, you wish the second narrative to agree with the first. If the second narrative is sequentially inconsistent (inconsistent with narrative one) then what makes you think that narrative one is the
"consistently sequential...record." What makes you think the man was made
before the woman? Because the story has a flow to it, that's why. God made the man and then the animals and brought the animals to the man to see what he would call them. After surveying and naming all the animals, the man found no mate among them. Then the woman was made;
after the man;
after the animals. So, actually, the sequence of narrative two IS consistent with the story of narrative two. It is NOT consistent with the story of narrative one.
Narrative one; the narrative you say is
"the only consistently sequential record of creation" has plants appearing on day three, birds appearing on day five, and animals including humans (male and female) on day six.
Telling the story
as if the man appears before the plants, before the birds, before the other animals and well ahead of woman is no accident but is important to the story in narrative two. You cannot reorder the events of narrative two without ruining the story told there; and the order of those events is entirely different from what you have called
"the only consistently sequential record of creation," i.e. narrative one.
BTW, The woman of narrative 2 is made NOT by speaking her into existence simultaneously with the man, as depicted in narrative 1, but rather by cloning her, sometime after, from a surgically removed piece of the man. This is not a random and irrelevant reordering of events but a purposeful and independent description of a very different idea of origins. The fact that it does not mention fish or seas is on a par with the fact that it does not mention sun, moon, or stars. It's all about the land, the garden, the naked people, and the talking snake.
Narrative one sounds a bit like an evolution.
Narrative two sounds exactly like a fairy tale.
Theology is the science of Dominion.- - - My God is your god's Boss - - -