Bible Contradictions 1-5
Jun 11th, 2010 by ljkim
Someone sent me this list of Bible inconsistencies and I thought maybe what I could do is go down the list and talk about each of them and see what we can learn… The first five have to do mainly with Genesis 1-2 and the two stories of creation: Gen 1 gives a kind of song, listing the seven days of creation in a rhythmic pattern… Gen 2 gives the story, that you’ve probably heard growing up, of Adam and his rib, and Eve and the two trees… Because I’ve talked about these before (and even made a little YouTube video for Daniel, back when he was still a kid) I’ll respond briefly to the first batch!
Contradiction #1
GE 1:3-5 On the first day, God created light, then separated light and darkness.
GE 1:14-19 The sun (which separates night and day) wasn’t created until the fourth day.
Just as we say the sun rises and sets – even though the sun doesn’t really rise, the earth revolves on its axis…we speak from the perspective of the way it appears to us. In the same way, someone standing on the surface of the earth as it was forming would see light…light everywhere… long before the atmosphere cleared up enough to see the distinct shape of sun and moon. The fancy word is that the Bible uses phenomenological descriptions…
I’m not a cosmologist, so go ask one yourself – but from what we know, Genesis 1 pretty much describes the order of how the planet was formed in a nursery song kind of way…
Contradiction #2-5
GE 1:11-12, 26-27 Trees were created before man was created.
GE 2:4-9 Man was created before trees were created.
The next few all have to do with the different way the story is told between Genesis 1 and 2. Trees were created first in Gen 1, but it says something different in Gen 2. Same with birds, animals, and the two genders. This has to do with a basic misreading that comes from people trying to read the old King James version. If you look closely in any modern translation (we use the ESV, but any one is fine) – and look at 2:4-9, it doesn’t actually say that man was created first. Nor does it say that animals were created after man… but rather: v.19 “Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field…and brought them to the man to see what he would call them…” Now I’m not a Hebrew scholar – I only studied it for two years plus one of Aramaic – and this is my reading of it – but don’t take my word for it… This is how EVERY actual Hebrew scholar reads these passages too.
By the way, if there were an actual contradiction on the very first page of the Torah – don’t you think someone would have caught on after all these (thousands of) years? Could we moderns really be the first generation to notice this? Anyway, what can we learn from this?
The point of the Creation Song in Genesis 1 is: in the polytheistic worldview of the time, the sun and moon and waters and lands were all the domains of separate gods… Each with their own power. Each with their own competing laws, and competing peoples. Genesis 1 highlights the idea that there is one God over all these things – and that all these things, everything we know, and every power, is a created thing under God.
Genesis 2 gives us a mythic narrative about ADAM (Hebrew for mankind) his early life, relationship with God, and the choice he makes in breaking with God. The point is not to show us the cosmology of how planets are formed – or early civilizations… But to show us our root problem with God – we, like Adam, would rather choose to be our own gods…
Have a question or an issue? Leave a comment – the first one is moderated, but the ones after post right away. Looking down the list of Bible Contradictions, is there one that you’re especially curious about? Let me know and we can do those first…
Related posts:
One question that has always bothered me is how Paul writes about the role of women, more specifically in 1st Corinthians.
Oh, interesting point about Genesis 1 asserting a single God over all. I haven’t heard/thought about that before… Or if I’ve heard it from you, I forgot, I guess!
Hey Wai, check the next post and see if that covers some of it…