Compare the Two Genesis stories

     Behind the apparent conflict between evolution and conservative Christianity is the implicit assumption that every word of the Bible is literally true in the sense of history and science as we understand those terms today. The resolution of the conflict is easy: It is straightforward to show that the Genesis creation stories are inconsistent with such a rigid literal reading.

     The first thing to note is that Genesis tells the creation story twice, first in Genesis 1:1 - 2:3 and then again in the rest of the second chapter. It is instructive to lay out side-by-side the events in the two versions:

            Genesis 1:1 - 2:3                                                                 Genesis 2:4-25

1:1-5, Day 1: Heaven and earth created;                       2:4-6: Heaven and earth created, but no         

light created and separated from                                   rain and no vegetation.

darkness (i.e., night and day).                                       Water bubbled up from below.

                                                                                     2:7: Created man, male only.

1:6-8, Day 2: Separated water above from

water below, creating sky.                                             2:8-14: Planted the Garden of Eden,

                                                                                    complete with trees and four rivers and

                                                                                    other goodies.

1:9-13, Day 3: Waters under were gathered

to make seas and dry land. Produced                             2:15-17: Put man into garden as

vegetation.                                                                   caretaker, warned

                                                                                   him about the forbidden fruit.

1:14-19, Day 4: Made stars, sun, and moon.                  2:18-20: Man needs helper, so God makes

                                                                                  land animals, then birds.

1:20-23, Day 5: Created sea creatures and

birds.                                                                          2:20-25: God makes Eve out of Adam's

                                                                                  rib, makes them man and wife, and they

                                                                                  live happily ever

1:24-31, Day 6: Created land creatures.                        after, until ... (see Chapter 3!)

Created man in His image, male and female.

Gave man domination.

2:1-3, Day 7: God rests.

     The first thing to notice upon reading these stories is that they have a totally different "feel." The concensus among modern scholars is that each version was written by a different author, most likely at different times. (The tradition that Moses wrote Genesis has no supporting evidence, and is another issue for another time.) The second story, for example, has no mention of time frames. The phraseology is quite different. But more importantly, events happen in different order. Is man created on Day 6, well after vegetation and animals, or early on, before vegetation and animals? Was it birds or land animals first? Were animals or vegetation first? How did God separate light from darkness, creating night and day, before creating the sun and moon? These details show that there is more here than a mere retelling of the same story with emphasis on a different set of details. From a strictly literal standpoint, at least one of these stories cannot be historically accurate.

     There is reason to believe that neither is literal. The first story has day and night being created before the sun and moon. In the second version, water bubbles up from the ground before there was rain. This is a picture straight from the primitive cosmology of the day, which had a water-filled universe in which the firmament and dry land formed an air bubble in the midst of the water. With this picture of that ancient (and scientifically incorrect) cosmology, the strange language about water in the the Genesis creation myths makes sense. However, neither version of the myths is literally correct.

     These stories are not history or science. They are a retelling of old Mesopotamian creation myths that predate the Bible by at least a thousand years (for example, the Enuma Elish). These stories undoubtedly were part of an oral tradition that was not, as far as we know, written down until at least the time of King David. What is new in the Genesis stories is that polytheism is replaced by monotheism. These myths are the attempts of pre-literate, pre-scientific desert nomads to understand where they came from and to make the point that God created all and that we belong to God. The symbolic truth of the stories is what is important, providing a powerful introduction to the rest of the Bible. There is no requirement anywhere in Christian theology for the creation myths to be objectively true; Biblical literalism is an assumption that impedes an understanding of the universe as it really is. It impedes the spiritual growth of its adherents. It is a roadblock to faith among people who believe in reason above blind adherence to superstition and fear, but have somehow been misled into thinking that their choices are literalism or nothing. Once one understands that there is another option, namely that parts of the Bible, including the creation myths, can be understood metaphorically and symbolically, then the conflict between science and religion vanishes.