Creation According to Genesis: One Account or Two?

That's all that matters.If they aren't even applicable to the text in question, then the rest is irrelevant (at least in this thread). See above. Then it might be worth your while to start a thread for that discussion. As far as this thread goes, if the principles cannot be shown to apply to the creation myths, then there's really no point discussing them. It's not about what is ultimately possible under some conditions somewhere. It is about what is happening in the Gen 1 and Gen 2 creation narratives. In some of his posts, arachnophilia discusses some of those reasons. For example:

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arachnophilia in you are replying to a thread that is 11 years old. in Contradictions: Hint that Genesis 1 and 2 are Allegorical:

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genesis 1 serves primarily two functions:

1. as an etiology for the practice of shabbat, and
2. to erase J's earlier creation myth which was deemed heretical

we know about the earlier version because part of it is still present in genesis (chapters 2-4), and because other books (psalm 74, job) reference events that seem to be from the missing section, which are (again) concordant with other ancient near eastern mythology.

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If Gen 1 was meant to supplant the other portions of the Gen 2 narrative, then we should not be surprised to find the two accounts contradicting one another in certain places, especially in those places where the redactors allowed them to treat the same subject matter (the creation of man, plants, and animals, for example). The authors/redactors make mistakes all the time. If we followed your approach we'd conclude that there were no contradictions in the Bible.We have two separate stories from two separate sources. We get to look at them and decide how good of a job the redactors did in sewing them together. Did they smooth over the rough spots? Or did they leave a lot of inconsistencies behind?The fact is that the redactors here didn't fix the problems where their source materials disagreed. Their intentions are irrelevant to whether or not the contradictions exist. As I mentioned, the redactors of the Flood story probably never meant for their pieced together accounts to contain contradictory material, and they themselves might have even read the accounts as being consistent, but that doesn't change the fact that the contradictions exist. Or consider the conversion of Paul as told in Acts. Did his companions hear the voice he heard (Acts 9:7) or didn't they (Acts 22:9)?Just because the accounts were compiled into a single narrative by a redactor or group of redactors doesn't rule out the possibility of contradictions; indeed, the compilation into a single account seems to have almost no bearing whatsoever on the consistency of the finished product.

Jon, my goal in this discussion was to help explain the Hebrew grammar; specifically, to respond to your claim that the waw-consecutive could not convey a pluperfect sense. I have done this. I have provided support for my claim that the waw-consecutive CAN be and IS used as a pluperfect in Biblical Hebrew. This is all that I was trying to do here.If you think that a literary work is better understood by skipping entire chapters (or sentences or words), more power to you. I think this is a ridiculous position, but I have no interest in arguing against it here.

I don't recall making this claim. Perhaps you have, but you haven't provided support for interpreting Gen 2:19 as being in a pluperfect sense, which has been one of the actual points of contention running through this thread. They are two separate works; the fact that someone pasted them together doesn't change that. That's unfortunate because that discussion would be relevant to the topic.

Hi Kbertche, I just love the way a lot of people try to take a dead language and make it into modern Hebrew or Modern English by using terms that only apply to those languages.Biblical Hebrew verbs had no tenses. They are verbs of action.There are only two kinds of verbs in Biblical Hebrew.There is the perfect verb which is completed action.
There is the imperfect verb which is ongoing action.These two verbs can appear in any of 7 different stems.But 70% of all verbs in Biblical Hebrew are in the Qal stem. Which is simple action, active voice.There is no such thing as a Pluperfect verb in Biblical Hebrew.It does not make any difference what you or I think about it or anyone else, facts are facts.God Bless,

We all understand that. The problem is that in order to make sense of a story in the Bible, most of the people here need have to have the story rendered in English in order to understand it.Verb tense is just one of the mismatches between English and Hebrew language and thinking. A faithful translation of Hebrew text that does not use the pluperfect might well be English text that does use the pluperfect.The questions here revolve around what cues are appropriate for deciding past and present in a story that nobody here thinks happened in a single instant. Jon opts for a fairly straight forward approach of what is told first, happens first. He also gathers contextual clues about what ought to make sense given other verses. Other people may interpret various amounts of context as giving clues about what happened first.I think the usual/traditional reading is to read Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 as consistent which forces some choices of tense. I think the NIV does a reasonable job at this. But that particular line of argument is, IMO, ruled out for this particularly thread because it assumes the answer which is being questioned, namely whether the two chapters are consistent.

uh, yes there is.

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This feature of succession characteristic of the wayyiqtol construction [= consecutive imperfect] becomes particularly evident when biblical writers, when they do not want to express succession, deliberately avoid wayyiqtol and replace it with w- .. qatal [= non-sentence-initial perfect].
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This case is especially common in narratives, where w- .. qatal preceded by a qatal or wayyiqtol, corresponds to the pluperfect or past perfect in some European languages (...): Gn 31.33b-34 "and he went out (וַיֵּצֵא) of Leah's tent, and he went into (וַיָּבֹא) Rachel's tent. (34) Now Rachel had taken (וְרָחֵל לָקְחָה) the terafim and had put them (וַתְּשִׂמֵם) in the pack-saddle of the camel .." (as this last action occurs after the preceding one, the writer goes back to the wayyiqtol form); 1Sm 28.3 "Now Samuel was dead (וּשְׁמוּאֵל מֵת) and all Israel had mourned him (וַיִּסְפְּדוּ־לוֹ) and had buried him (וַיִּקְבְּרֻהוּ) in Ramah, his city. Meanwhile Saul had removed (וְשָׁאוּל הֵסִיר) from the land the necromancers and the soothsayers"; 2Sm 18.18; 1Kg 22.31; 2Kg 4.31; 25.5. Hebrew has no other way of expressing the value of the pluperfect than by avoiding wayyiqtol in this way2 (...).
2 It would thus be grammatically very irregular if a wayyiqtol had the value of the pluperfect. (...)

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P. Joon & T. Muraoka (2009), A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew, 2nd ed., p. 362.

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here is another source: Without Form and Void - Chapter 3pluperfects are constructed by placing the subject out of order, between the waw and the verb, rather than using a waw-consecutive.Edited by arachnophilia, : disable smileys

don't bite; he's incorrect. biblical hebrew does have a way of expressing concepts that align with pluperfects in english, and the proper studies of grammar detail them. i gave two sources above.

man, i forget about this board for a couple of months, and everyone's talking about me. strictly speaking, no, that wouldn't be correct; it's still following the standard narrative waw-consecutive form. i suspect it's more that verse 15 is assigning his role, and not so much his physical location.though arguable verse 8 does include a verb you could translate as a pluperfect:

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וַיָּשֶׂם שָׁם, אֶת-הָאָדָם אֲשֶׁר יָצָר

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"and there he placed the man that he made" or "had made". it's technically perfect, but i think you'll find nearly every translation renders it a pluperfect, because it just reads more smoothly. the concept doesn't change here, and i don't think it matters too much.while we're on the topic, i think this is a place you can uncontroversially translate pluperfects.

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וְכֹל שִׂיחַ הַשָּׂדֶה, טֶרֶם יִהְיֶה בָאָרֶץ, וְכָל-עֵשֶׂב הַשָּׂדֶה, טֶרֶם יִצְמָח: כִּי לֹא הִמְטִיר יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים, עַל-הָאָרֶץ, וְאָדָם אַיִן, לַעֲבֹד אֶת-הָאֲדָמָה (verse 5)

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Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.