Evolution

[Hananiah]

[quote name='crusader1234' date='Apr 30 2004, 04:51 PM'] The creation stories should not be taken literally, people... there are TWO stories!!! There is no possible way we can discern which one to believe, thus making them historically incorrect one way or another. [/quote]
Uf. You won't find a single Father of the Church embracing the theories of secular historical criticism (which should be quite obvious, since the scholars who came up with thse ideas wanted to discredit Christianity). You are siding with Julius Wellhausen against 3000 years of Christian and Jewish patrimony.

You are proposing that Genesis has two contradictory creation stories which can not be taken literally. Well, for thousands of years Jews and Christians have read these stories, taken them literally, and not seen any contradiction. Don't you think that if there were two different stories, someone would have noticed?

In fact, the "two" stories can be reconciled quite easily.

[quote]Then God said, "Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them"; and it was so.  The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good.  There was evening and there was morning, a third day. (Genesis 1:11-13)

Now no shrub of the field was yet in the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, for the LORD God had not sent rain upon the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground. But a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground.  Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.(Genesis 2:5-7)[/quote]
This is the argument brought forth most often for the two story theory; the first story has the creation of plants before the creation of man, and the second has it after. However, the contect of the statement "no shrub of the field was yet in the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted" makes it clear that it is referring not to all plants, but solely to cultivated plants i.e. crops. Look what it says immediately afterward: "for there was no man to cultivate the ground." If the "shrubs and plants of the field" of verse 5 referred to all plants (grass, bushes, trees, etc) this would make absolutely no sense. Such plants don't need men to cultivate them!

[quote]Then God said, "Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens."
God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good.  God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth." There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.  Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind"; and it was so.  God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:20-25)

Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. (Genesis 2:19)[/quote]
This argument is similar; some claim that the "first" story has the creation of animals before the creation of man while the "second" story contradicts the "first" by placing this event afterward. Again, the solution is fairly simple. It's not too hard to imagine that God simply created more animals and birds on the sixth day (the day of the creation of man, to which Genesis 2:19 refers) over and above those which He created on the fourth and fifth, and that the "every" in v. 2:19 means He created one of every [i]type[/i] of beast and bird on that day, not that He created every beast and bird which had ever existed. As Genesis 1 records, that had already been accomplished.

Modern readers like to see everything in chronological order, and thus are tempted to see 2 different stories in narratives such as Genesis 1-2, which do not fit into our literary paradigm. However, this type of writing is fairly common in ancient near-eastern literature. Quite often such narratives start out with a broad overview of events (Genesis 1) and then take a step chronologically backward, and fill in the details (Genesis 2). The two chapters stand as a unified whole.

[Azriel]

I'll say it once, I'll say it a thousand times.

We cannot know how God did it.

The fact that we need to remember is that HE did.

The rest is just details.

The older I get the more I am aware of the great beauty that lies in mystery.