Do Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 Contradict Each Other?

[greenbaggins]

I keep seeing this canard pop up, even in recent liberal books. So, I wrote a blog post about it, seeking an exegetical basis for refuting such a claim.

 

[Contra_Mundum]

Notice that (along with numerous instances in Gen.1) Gen.2's presentation of God's special and original creation of man to be a gardener once again upends the evolutionary assertion. Evolution makes the hominid a hunter-gatherer, then a nomad/herder, and finally a gardener/farmer and settler. The Bible's account would have us see the occupational herdsman (4:20) as a social development after agriculture; and the nomadic way-of-life as (among other things) reflective of a decline in human prospects (4:12), settlement being the goal of the temporary pilgrim.

Ch.1 is simply jammed with contradictions to the order of evolutionary assumptions. IF--peradventure!--God had wanted to condense for literary sake (or for some other notion) his work of creation-by-evolution-process, but leave IN the text those hints (for a later, scientific age) that could discern the "sweet harmony" between the orderly-but-simplistic literary account and the order that nature and history took in time and space--why doesn't the ORDER of events reinforce the evolutionary consensus? Instead, the literary order confounds evolution's alleged order, repeatedly. If nothing else, it sure seems God meant us to think he inspired his version "completely backward" from a purely natural explanation for some reason.

In the end, I conclude there's no hope of harmonizing the biblical account with the naturalistic challenge. Today's preacher trying to make peace with the two is living out of time. Either he must say: "Concerns for order are entirely literary and immaterial to preaching the substance of creation; so I minimize the accidental terms that convey it." He aims to avoid any confrontation of two incompatible versions of: what happened to bring the world to be in the state it is. It is enough to say that it happened, and how it happened is simply the top coat of pretty (i.e. orderly) divine paint disguising an unfathomably deep and messy pile of odds and ends.

Or else, he will have to choose of which ORDER--the one predicated on supernaturalism, the other predicated on anti-supernaturalism--to believe and teach as that which is fundamental to perceiving our living reality. I think only the first of these is actually true to the text.

 

[Dachaser]

Notice that (along with numerous instances in Gen.1) Gen.2's presentation of God's special and original creation of man to be a gardener once again upends the evolutionary assertion. Evolution makes the hominid a hunter-gatherer, then a nomad/herder, and finally a gardener/farmer and settler. The Bible's account would have us see the occupational herdsman (4:20) as a social development; and the nomadic way-of-life as (among other things) reflective of a decline in human prospects (4:12), settlement being the goal of the temporary pilgrim.

Ch.1 is simply jammed with contradictions to the order of evolutionary assumptions. IF--peradventure!--God had wanted to condense for literary sake (or for some other notion) his work of creation-by-evolution-process, but leave IN the text those hints (for a later, scientific age) that could discern the "sweet harmony" between the orderly-but-simplistic literary account and the order that nature and history took in time and space--why doesn't the ORDER of events reinforce the evolutionary consensus? Instead, the literary order confounds evolution's alleged order, repeatedly. If nothing else, it sure seems God meant us to think he inspired his version "backward" from a purely natural explanation for some reason.

In the end, I conclude there's no hope of harmonizing the biblical account with the naturalistic challenge. Today's preacher trying to make peace with the two is living out of time. Either he must say: "Concerns for order entirely literary and are immaterial to preaching the substance of creation; so I minimize the accidental terms that convey it." He aims to avoid any confrontation of two incompatible versions of: what happened to bring the world to be in the state it is. It is enough to say that it happened, and how it happened is simply the top coat of orderly divine paint disguising an unfathomably deep and messy pile of odds and ends.

Or else, he will have to choose which of ORDER--the one predicated on supernaturalism, the other predicated on anti-supernaturalism--to believe and teach as that which is fundamental to perceiving our living reality. I think only the first of these is actually true to the text.

The persons who stumble over this entire issue are those who have to accept evolution as proven "scientific facts", and yet the scriptures plainly teach us that God created fiat and had no need to use the evolutionary process on earth.