Apparent Contradictions
A Look at the Stories of Creation

My first serious thought about the content of Genesis 1 and 2 came as a student at an engineering college. In that context, the creation narratives were viewed as a failed scientific description, and they reassured my commitment to atheism. Since Genesis 1 and 2 were not only unlikely, but also contradictory, the whole idea of God creating the world had no basis.
The discrepancies between the two portrayals of the Genesis creation event seemed immediately apparent. In Genesis 1, God created humankind at the end of his great works and the whole process took seven days. In Genesis 2, he created humankind first and then made the plants in a process that took only one day. I had read the text and found it wanting.

It was only years later that I learned a new way of looking at the text. In the interim I had come to believe in the God of the Bible in spite of unanswered questions about the Bible. It wasn’t that I solved all of the problems I had with the Bible and then believed in God. In fact, I am still discovering how it all fits together.

My breakthrough moment came while I was doing research for a paper. I had been assigned to read from a commentary written by an Italian Jewish scholar, Umberto Cassuto. He wrote in the 1940’s and was noted because he was a scholar who believed in the literary unity of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible, including Genesis). He did not read the text with the same faith that I did, but he introduced me to a concept I’d never thought of–the literary quality of the Bible. I’d been viewing the text as a technical journal with straightforward description. I’d not thought of the Biblical writers as being artistic, too.

More important than resolving any contradictions, Cassuto’s commentary opened a new world of interpretation to me. Once I began to view the Bible as literature, I saw beauty in the text of Scripture. I was able to notice, for the first time, that Genesis was not written as a scientific textbook.

Nowhere in the text does God describe the structure of nucleotides or the laws governing the movement of pressure systems around the earth’s atmosphere. The description of creation is given, instead, in a narrative, poetic form, similar to other poetry of the age. We are given a series of images of the Creator and his relationship to creation. And time after time, God creates and then calls the creation good. He is pleased by the sunlight of day and the starred darkness of night, the mammals and birds, the mountains and the oceans.

Having been introduced to the literary quality of Genesis, I was prepared to discover that the relationship between Genesis 1 and 2 might be a bit more complex than my first impression. Causatto’s reading of this book helped me learn to look at these stories differently.

Cassuto reads the two chapters as part of one narrative, a literary unit. The first part of the narrative of creation (Genesis 1:1—2:3) is a highly stylized overview of the larger process. Everything orbits around the number 7. The second part of the narrative (Genesis 2:4—25) is a flashback and expansion on day six of creation. Where Genesis 1 simply says, "So God created man in his own image," Genesis 2 tells the story behind the saying. The plants in Genesis 2 are those God created specifically for humankind in the garden (i.e. wheat, corn, etc.). Genesis 1 is the larger picture of creation while Genesis 2 is about God’s planting the garden and putting humankind in it.

When I began to explore the Bible’s literary qualities, the text seemed to open up for me in a new way. Aspects of the text like historical context and purpose began to augment my understanding of the Scripture as a whole. This was true of Genesis. The occasion of Genesis is debated, but after some study I have come to believe that the occasion for this narrative was the early history of Israel (right after the Exodus). Even if the text came later in Israel’s history, the purpose seems to be the same: to pass on the history of creation to Israelites and to correct misunderstandings about creation that the Israelites had adopted while in Egypt.

To a modern audience, the creation theology of Genesis 1 and 2 is old news. But to the polytheistic world of 1400 B.C.E. , it was revolutionary. In Egyptian theology, the gods were formed on a primeval hill that already existed. Atum, the sun-god who passes through the land of the dead every night, arose by himself. Atum sneezed and brought forth other gods. To the Egyptians, there were various levels and an unlimited number of gods. Deity was immanent in nature, in animals, in the sun, in air and in all of life.

The Israelites, having lived and worshipped in Egypt for many generations, are now told that Elohim, the God of Abraham, was “in the beginning.” There was no primeval hill that existed before God. God made all the hills. And humankind was not made to be slave labor for Elohim, as for the Near Eastern gods, but was made "in his image" to have relationship with him.

In the end, both versions affirm the same things. Nothing existed before God. No other gods made the earth. Humankind is the work of God’s hands. The evil we see in the world today is not part of God’s original plan for creation; he made all things well. Humankind was not created as a slave race for the gods, instead, we share equally the image of God. Just as God has dominion over his creation, he has given dominion over the earth to men and women.

Genesis 1

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

And God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water.” So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. God called the expanse “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.

And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.

And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.

And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky.” So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.

And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

Genesis 2

Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.

By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens—and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground—the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.) The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Asshur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”

The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

The man said,

“This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.”

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.