Chapter Two of Genesis has been used by critics as the very first occurrence of inconsistency in the Bible. Some have gone on to conclude that the author must have collated 2 different account and clobbered them into one book in Genesis because they saw a different way that God was addressed in chapter 2 as compared with chapter 1 (See following section on this issue). Rather than jumping to conclusions, what we have here is a demonstration of what David Cooper termed as "the law of recurrence".
Before we go into this law of recurrence in Genesis, 2 prophetic examples can be found in the Bible (From Fruchtenbaum's "The Footsteps of the Messiah").
The first pair is found in Ezekiel 38 and Ezekiel 39. Chapter 39 gives a complete account of the invasion of Israel from the north and the subsequent destruction of the invading army. This is followed by Chapter 39 which repeats some of the account given in Chapter 38 and gives some added details regarding the description of the invading army.
The second pair is found in Isaiah 30 and Isaiah 31. Chapter 30 gives a complete account of the fall of Judah's alliance with Egypt. Chapter 31 simply repeats the prophesy, adding more details.
Turning back to Genesis 2, this chapter elaborates on Day 6 of God's creation and not, as some have tried to insinuate, a different version of the creation account. Other well-meaning Christians have "fall into" this trap hook-line-and-sinker and invested creative energy to try and explain away the apparent contradictions.
The Elaboration of the Creation of Man and Woman in Day 6
From Genesis Chapter 2 verse 4 (the beginning of the 2nd chapter should have logically started from here), the author took on a different way of addressing God by calling him Yahweh Elohim (or LORD God in NASB) instead of just Elohim (God) in Chapter 1. The purpose, I believed, is to introduce a personal reference of God to narrate the creation of Adam and Eve in this section. because God took a personal interest in Day 6 of creation.
What we have from verses 4-6 is a description of how a piece of land looked like before it was transformed by God to become the Garden of Eden. At this point in time, there was no rain yet and the earth was watered by a mist that rise from the earth itself.
Some may ask why Christians are so sure that Chapter 2 is purely elaborating on Day 6 of creation and describing on a particular place called Eden rather than a different creation account. The clue can be derived from verse 5 where it explained why no shrub and plant of the field had appeared in the earth. The 2 reasons were that (a) "God had not sent rain upon the earth" and (b) "there was no man to cultivate the ground".
If the appearance of shrubs and plants is dependent on the appearance of man, then we must conclude that the only place where God can cause them to appear is in the garden of Eden since we would not expect the first man to be able to cultivate the whole earth. This obviously cannot be true since God can cause life to appear without the help of man. The need for water was answered in verse 6 when it explained that "a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground" (the highlighted words suggest that the author who wrote the book of Genesis did not experienced this phenomena anymore and it was so after the rain made its appearance from the time of the Noahic Flood).
Hence what verse 5 described would fit the context of a particular part of the earth and in this case, the land that God eventually plant the garden of Eden. The other clue came from verses 19-20 where though God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky out of the ground after forming Adam for him to name in verse 19, the cattle were already there in the garden for Adam to name in verse 20. Hence we can see that there is no contradiction that God indeed created the animals before man and that Chapter 2 was indeed an elaboration of Day 6 of creation.
Some will also attempt to cast doubt on this account as an elaboration of Day 6 of creation by asserting that it is impossible for so many things to happen in a single day especially for Adam to name all the animals. To me, this "problem" is not insurmountable. Firstly, God can definitely effect the creation works instantaneously. Second, Adam could be giving names to animal classes and not variants. He could be naming them ants, dogs or cats but not necessarily fire ants, termites etc. Furthermore, given his pre-fall status, his capacity to do all these in one day may not seem impossible.
In verse 7, the Bible elaborated how God created the first man. Though an elaboration, it was in keeping with the spirit of simplicity that it still took a mere verse to describe how God formed man from the dust of the earth and made the man into a living being by breathing the breath of life into his nostrils.
God then proceeded to plant the garden in Eden with "every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food" (v 9). It is also at this point that we are introduced to the 2 special trees: the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The Bible made it clear that the garden of Eden was not some mythical place when the author took a total of 5 verses (v 10-14) to describe the river which flows out of Eden to water the garden and how it is subsequently divided into 4 rivers which were described in some amount of details. We know that this garden was in the region of Mesopotamia since 2 of the rivers are known to us till this day (The Tigris and Euphrates).
The Edenic Covenant (Part 2)
In Chapter 2, we also have the 2nd part of the Edenic Covenant in verses 15-17 with the remaining 3 of the 7 provisions (we mentioned the first 4 in the previous post).
(5) Physical labour in the garden (to cultivate it and keep it).
(6) Permitted food (From any tree of the garden you may eat freely) and forbidden food (from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat) in the garden.
(7) Penalty of disobedience (for in the day that you eat from it, you will surely die)
We will revisit the details of the Edenic Covenant later on in Chapter 3 of the Genesis study.
Helper for Adam
While in the garden of Eden, God was the initiator when He noted that it was not good for man to be alone. While God in his infinite wisdom knew what Adam (man) needed was the woman, yet He did not "force" it onto Adam. As a living being with free will, Adam needs to discover for himself this inner need. Hence God set up this interesting exercise for Adam to select a helper from amongst the animals.
God did this by raising from the ground every beast of the field and every bird of the sky and brought them to Adam for him to name them. In the biblical context, naming is an exercise of authority and it validated man's authority over the animal kingdom. So, Adam gave names to 3 categories of animals: (a) the cattle (or domesticated animals) who were already in the garden and hence there was no need for God to bring them to Adam, (b) the beasts of the field (or wild animals) and (c) the birds of the sky. It was also in verse 20 where the man's name was first revealed as Adam.
This naming exercise obviously did the trick and after naming all the animals, Adam did not find a helper suitable for him in the animal kingdom and was still alone. Once Adam came to this personal realisation, God took over control, causing a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and formed a woman using portion of flesh and bone from Adam's side (NASB translated tsalah as rib but the Hebrew literally means side. It also fits verse 23 better where Adam described the woman as the bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh).
When the woman was brought to Adam, he finally encountered the helper that was suitable for him and broke into a song in verse 23 and named God's special creation as "woman".
The First Spoken Language
It is interesting to take a slight digression here to discuss what was the first spoken language before God confused the language in Chapter 11 at Babel.
Fruchtenbaum made an interesting case that Adam was created with the ability to speak the Hebrew language. He made the argument on 2 points:
(a) All names before the Tower of Babel are Hebrew names and have meanings only in Hebrew even though the Jewish people did not exist as yet. That is not true of all names after the Tower of Babel when you have non Hebrew names.
(b) Prior to Babel all the wordplays in the Bible make sense only in Hebrew. Genesis 2:23; 3:20; 4:1 and 4:25 are all examples of Adam and Eve's use of wordplays that make sense only in Hebrew, proving that Adam's language was Hebrew.
Genesis 2:23 - She shall be called Woman (ishshah), Because she was taken out of Man (iysh).
Genesis 3:20 - Now the man called his wife's name Eve (chavvah), because she was the mother of all the living (chay).
Genesis 4:1 - Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain (qayin), and she said, "I have gotten (qanah) a manchild with the help of the LORD."
Genesis 4:25 - Adam had relations with his wife again; and she gave birth to a son, and named him Seth (sheth), for, she said, "God has appointed (shiyth) me another offspring in place of Abel, for Cain killed him."
While I do not know much about all the ancient languages, this postulation does have its merits and we can suggest that the original language at least bears resemblance to the Hebrew language.
The Meaning of Helper
Turning back to the study, feminists had a field day accusing the Bible for being patriarchal here by degrading woman to be a mere helper for the man.
This demeaning view of the word helper is unfortunate and I feel three points here are in order to refute this:
(1) The Hebrew word for helper is ezer. This same term is used to describe God in passages such as Deuteronomy 33:7, 26, 29; I Samuel 7:12; Psalm 20:2; 33:20; 46:1; 70:5; 115:9-11; 124:8; and 146:5. Surely a term used to describe God should not be seen as demeaning.
(2) In Genesis 1:28, both man and woman were both recipients of God's mandate to exercise authority and dominion over the earth. Again, this would hardly be a degrading proposition for the first woman.
(3) The Hebrew word for suitable is neged which literally means "what is conspicuous, what is in front of". Taken in its entire context, the helper suitable for Adam implied a helper of his equal.
Fruchtenbaum concluded that the woman will be"one who will perfectly complete him, one who will provide what is lacking in the male, one who can do what the male cannot do alone. Man was created in such a way that he needs the help of a partner, and she corresponds physically, socially, and spiritually. There was headship before the fall, but it was complementary, not competitive.".
This symbiotic relationship between man and woman was reflected in verse 24 in which the final union between them will be the act of marriage to become one flesh.
An Ominous Statement
The final verse in Chapter 2 describing Adam and Eve's innocence (naked and not ashamed) was to become the preamble of the account of the Fall in Chapter 3.
No comments:
Post a Comment