Creation According to Genesis: One Account or Two?

It's not irrelevant. I am pointing out that the text does not support one of our interpretations over the other. I thought that to be important. If in fact that point was already obvious, then perhaps your own comment was redundant rhetoric. You've been insistent that you would interpret chapter 1 to imply simultaneous creation of man and woman. I simply disagree. I'm not going to apologize for doing that one time more than you think is correct.Again, there is nothing new in your post other than attempts to impute motives on very weak evidence. I don't see any rebuttal at all. Can I take that trend as indicating that we are done here?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Mist is not rain. Period. And given that the stated pre-requisite was worked around, perhaps the pre-requisite for man was also worked around. I provided some argument about why I thought that was reasonable. Are you going to address any of that, or are you just going to repeat yourself. That's exactly wrong. The text I cited says that man was placed in a garden that God had previously created. Assuming the translation is correct, then the conclusion is that God worked around the need for rain and the need for man by stepping in Himself.Which leaves you with the translation to attack if you care to do so.The text says nothing about God dropping any seeds, or even a need for God to do so. You are making stuff up. If instead, God dropped some mature plants, then there is no contradiction with chapter 1.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

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It's not irrelevant. I am pointing out that the text does not support one of our interpretations over the other. I thought that to be important. If in fact that point was already obvious, then perhaps your own comment was redundant rhetoric.

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Since your comment was aimed solely at the meaning of "garden" after previously claiming that it supported your view over mine, saying that it supported neither would be a concession on your part, agreeing with the point you are replying to. It doesn't read that way, does it?

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You've been insistent that you would interpret chapter 1 to imply simultaneous creation of man and woman

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I've been insistent that it is described as a single event, which is true. It certainly doesn't read as suggesting that women were an afterthought, made from a piece of a man.

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Again, there is nothing new in your post other than attempts to impute motives on very weak evidence. I don't see any rebuttal at all. Can I take that trend as indicating that we are done here?

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It would be more accurate to say that your previous post lacked any rebuttals. If you,re ready to concede, leaving my points unanswered I'm not stopping you.

Your translation is wrong.And it's that simple.If you think otherwise, prove it.Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

Nice argument. You win.

I think you're overlooking one thing:If the plants need water and man,and if god didn't place man in the garden, even though man was actually created before the plants,then God would still have had to step in and take care of the plants in the garden before that man was placed in it.Otherwise the man would have had to have taken care of the plants before he was placed there.

Genesis 2:5 tells us why YHWH put off planting the garden: he first needed some water and second needed a man.In terms of whether plants were created before or after humans according to the second myth, Genesis 2:5 tells us all we need to know: there were no plants because there wasn't any way for them to be watered and there wasn't anyone to take care of them.The rest is just a matter of reading the events in the order they are presented.Edited by Jon, : No reason given.Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

And if you wouldn't conflate the two types of foliage mentioned in the text, you would see that the parallelism is even stronger. Verse 5 mentions both "shrubs" and "plants", not just "plants".This yields the following parallels:(wild) shrubs need: something to water them (2:5)
(cultivated) plants need: man to cultivate them (2:5)
Water is provided for the shrubs (2:6)
Man is formed to cultivate the plants (2:7)For support for this translation, see the Futato article that I referenced earlier in this thread. Or look at the notes of the NET Bible for Gen. 2:5:

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tn The first term, שִׁיחַ (siakh), probably refers to the wild, uncultivated plants (see Gen 21:15; Job 30:4, 7); whereas the second, עֵשֶׁב (ʾesev), refers to cultivated grains. It is a way of saying: back before anything was growing.

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tn The two causal clauses explain the first two disjunctive clauses: There was no uncultivated, general growth because there was no rain, and there were no grains because there was no man to cultivate the soil.

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That's maybe possible.It's also possible that the shrubs and herbs are being combined to mean plants and that water and humans are being listed as a prerequisite for both (water is certainly required for both, and I don't think the author would have tried leading his audience to think otherwise).Your own citation seems to agree with my analysis (my emphasis): Would you contend (as I think your position would require) that the Garden was a food gardeni.e., nothing was present that wasn't a 'cultivated grain'along with an orchard?You might have an argument here; though in either case there is a clear structure in the second myth that is dependent on the plants (or at least 'herbs'—KJV—) not existing until after there is water and after there is man, while the first myth certainly describes their creation well before the creation of man (and, in fact, uses the same word'herb', at least according to Strong).ABE:Looking at your source I find a lot to make me skeptical of Futato's arguments. For example, he says:

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Mark Futato (1998):

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External considerations (comparing Gen2:4-25 with Gen 1:1-2:3) and internal considerations (the flow of the narrative in Gen 2:4-25), however, disallow a strictly chronological reading of Gen 2:4-25.

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[...] The Hebrew verbs translated "formed" and "brought" are waw-relatives, resulting in the prima facie sequence of God's forming (wayyiser) of Adam (v 7a), followed by God's forming (wayyiser) of the animals (v 19a). A straight-forward reading of Gen 2:29, in other words, puts Gen 2:4-25 in conflict with a chronological reading of Gen 1:1-2:3, where the animals were formed before the man (Gen 1:24-27). One may resort to the use of the waw-relative for the past perfect in this case to harmonize the two texts, but a waw-relative is not the obvious syntactic choice for dischornologized material, as Gen 2:10 has already shown. The point is that while a prima facie reading is chronological, a closer reading (aided by an external comparison with Gen 1:1-2:3) leads us to the conclusions that the prima facie, chronological reading is not correct. (pp. 10—11)

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It's also not clear that the word translated as 'herb' in the creation accounts (‘eseb) refers specifically to cultivated grains, as it appears later in Deuteronomy, for example, to describe what is essentially wild grass for cattle grazing:

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Deuteronomy 11:15 (NRSV):

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... and he will give grass in your fields for your livestock, and you will eat your fill.

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Given this, I think that Futato's argument that the author of the second creation account meant to make a distinction between wild plants and cultivated plants is very weak. It's not at all clear that such a distinction exists or that it plays into any parallelism in the story.
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Futato, M (1998) "Because it Had Rained" (PDF). Westminster Theological Journal 60; pp. 1—21Edited by Jon, : ABEEdited by Jon, : ABE v 2

Maybe it is. But that hasn't been established to my satisfaction.My comment was that the Sailhammer's statement as quoted in Wikipedia was conclusory, and the basis for his claim was not give. I indicated that the basis for the comment should be explored. I did not say that the issue was settled in my favor. In fact I addressed that point directly. Perhaps I am not the only person who can be accused of not reading the other persons posts.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

What would establish it to your satisfaction? If we explore it we will find that there is no direct or contextual reason to translate the verbs into the pluperfect and that the only places where the NIVand other agenda-serving editionstranslates into the pluperfect where others use the simple preterite is in 2:8 and 2:19, where doing so relieves the tension between the first and second creation narratives.It's really a lot of special pleading, and the burden here should rest on those who prefer the pluperfect rendering of 'plant' and 'form'.There are a lot of hurdles to overcome: as I've already mentioned, the motives in regards to the creation of mists and rivers and the formation of man as well as the plants-water-man structure throughout 2:5-17; and as PaulK has mentioned, the motives regarding the creation of animals in 2:18-20. Ahhh... but perhaps you have not yet addressed it to our satisfaction. Edited by Jon, : No reason given.Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

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Maybe it is. But that hasn't been established to my satisfaction.

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I'll leave it to you to do the research, as you said you would.

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In fact I addressed that point directly.

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Not really. Here's your response again: This is NOT an interpretation of the NIV translation, it is an attempt to harmonise the more common translation, preferred by Sailhammer, with the other story. This argument does not support the NIV translation - it rejects it.Thus it does not "remove" the argument against the NIV translation - it agrees with it.(And I note that you claimed earlier that some fundamentalists endorsed the NIV translation so clearly this is not "the " fundamentalist view, only "a" fundamentalist view)Even worse, Sailhammers argument still weighs against it. By adding an unmentioned prior creation of animals, you are still reducing the significance of the presumed second creation (absent in the NIV) and raising some awkward questions about the text. So really, I don't think that you managed to rebut Sailhammer's point at all.

That's fine. I have acknowledged a couple of times that this was my responsibility. On the other hand, I am burning the candle on several ends this week (and next) with paid gigs intended to keep the wolves away from the door. I'll get to it. I don't think I claimed that. I simply said that I had addressed the comment made by Sailhammer. You claimed that I had ignored your point. That's clearly not correct.My point is that Sailhammer's comment does not cover all possibilities. And I do not need to rely solely on the NIV translation. I cited one other translation that is even more demonstrative than the NIV translation.Again, Sailhammer likely had more to say than what is provided in Wikipedia. Perhaps this avenue of exploration would be more fruitful discussion more information.I agree with you that citing fundamentalist preferences that are designed to harmonize the translations are week arguments unless those attempts are backed up by interpreting the original language. In some cases they do explain their interpretation in terms of that language, but I won't make that argument officially without being a bit better prepared.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Once again you've saved me a bunch of work. Instead of looking up the material, I can just accept that the results are in your favor even though you did not look up the matter either.It turns out there was really no need for me to respond to your OP at all. Everything was settled with just a few links and mentions of arguments that you did not understand. Sorry I wasted your time.

Nothing you said has anything to do with my claim that:If you want to address this in your next reply, feel free to do so. If not, please just click the You have not yet responded link at the bottom of this post. Either method will ensure that you don't waste any more of my time. Edited by Jon, : No reason given.