Genesis Controversies and Contradictions
Before we depart from the origin stories in Genesis, I believe it is necessary to address common questions and misunderstandings of this portion of the Bible. The book of Genesis is the most attacked book in the Old Testament if not the most attacked book in the Bible.
It is understandable that the beginning would be the focal point of critics. This is a foundational book and if it falls, so does Christianity. If Genesis is a myth or just a moral story, Christianity cannot stand. If we did not inherit sin from Adam, then we can’t all have an inherent sin nature and there is no need for a redeemer. If God did not create the family and ordain marriage, then our sense of morality is unfounded. Jesus used the union of Adam and Eve as the evidence of God’s purpose in creating human relationships, therefore, if this did not exist, Jesus was in error and His purpose and teachings are founded upon error. Every foundational issue of Christianity originates at the book of Genesis; values, morality, humanity and God’s plan of redemption. If Genesis is false, the Christian faith is built without a foundation. Then the skeptics would be right in their often declared questions, “Who are Christians to say what is right and what is wrong”. “Who are you to say Jesus is the only way to Heaven?”
The New Testament is founded upon the book of Genesis. There is a reason why the world is relentless in its determination to discredit the Bible’s claim of the beginning. If we acknowledge that God created man in His own image, then we are forced to acknowledge that God has a right to hold us accountable for how we reflect the image of the God who created us. There are many ways that critics attempt to discredit the Genesis account. Suppression of evidence is the primary tactic, but scripture is also attacked by false evidence, claims of contradictions and intimidation.
The Genesis account is rich with verifiable history, though we have to dig a little deeper to see the cohesiveness of this account. Obviously there is no way I can address every single question and remove every source of doubt. That is not my goal. My goal is to make those who refuse to believe swallow a camel while they are straining at gnats. A couple of years ago I was struggling with doubt as well. I my personal experience with Christ was unshakeable, but the constant barrage of negative attacks against the Bible left me without a feeling of confidence. I believe this is normal and even healthy if addressed in a healthy way. Many Christians will say that we shouldn’t question the Bible but have faith that it is accurate in every way. Whether this is a valid position to take, I don’t know. But I do know that I can’t take this position. How can I have confidence in God and His word if I feel like I am denying reality? What happens when I grow tired of pretending that everything is ok? Living a Christ-centered lifestyle is a hard enough challenge without adding the burden of doubt on top of it and then beating myself with guilt over my feelings of doubt. I believe there is a misunderstanding of what faith means. Samuel Clemens (AKA Mark Twain) once said, “Faith is believing something you know isn’t true”. I don’t know about you, but I can’t live under that kind of pressure. My Bible says that God is not the author of confusion. To try to marry false information with faith is nothing but confusion. What started my seeking was seeing an atheists rattle off a list of so-called facts that dispute the Bible and seeing a Christian respond by saying, “Are you going to believe the facts, or are you going to believe God?”
If God is not the author of confusion, why should we expect people to make such an absurd choice? Faith does not mean believing the impossible; faith is believing that nothing is impossible through Christ. God has given us evidence that supports faith. Because of this, we can be confident knowing if what is seen is true and does indeed validate the Bible, we can also have confidence that what cannot be seen will also be true as well. Unlike religions, our faith is built upon evidence. Claims the Bible put into print thousands of years ago are proving valid in this modern day. If anything, these prove beyond a doubt that scripture is not a moral storybook, but an accurate historical account that God has ordained for our spiritual application. The reason skeptics are believed and scripture is not is that there are few who boldly proclaim the camels and many who boldly proclaim the gnats. Because of this, the world is straining to see the gnats while ignorantly swallowing the camels. In my encounters I have found that both atheists and Christians are equally ignorant of the facts and often unwilling to apply themselves to find out the truth. The major difference is that atheists use big words and swelling arguments and are masters at stretching the facts and proclaiming their own intellectual abilities. What they lack in knowledge and understanding they more than make up for in proud assertions. Christians on the other hand feel intimidated by the proud boastings and keep silent or adopt the atheist’s argument. They either fall from the faith or try to marry the two with doctrines like ‘Theistic Evolution’ or deny the authorship of the Bible completely. Then we sit bewildered while wondering why the church has no power. Will God show Himself strong on behalf of those who don’t believe His word or compromise with those who are at war with God? The evidence is overwhelming, so there is no need for compromise. What God has revealed does not require faith, but instead we are commanded to “always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear”. Meekness does not mean to be timid. It means to proclaim the truth with gentleness of spirit.
In my search to answer my feelings of doubts, I went to the skeptics. I invited questions that supposedly disproved the Bible. My assumption was that if I could find the answers to these questions, then I could have confidence that my faith was solid. Most of the criticisms I received were meaningless. Ignorance over the meaning of scripture and bad examples from people who call themselves Christians were primary targets. Pointing at people who failed to live according to scripture does not disprove the Bible; it only proves that man is indeed sinful as the Bible states. Sometimes, however, atheists hit on questions that hit hard. I am going to use this study to address some of these hard questions with the hope that it will give you confidence in the truth of God’s Word. In my studies, I like to go after the hard questions because I believe good understanding of scripture is essential. There is no way you can have complete confidence with a nagging doubt lingering in the back of your mind. I can’t hit every question so I picked the two questions that appear on the surface to be the most difficult.
The ‘unanswerable question’
Here is the question atheist pose often. Where did Cain get his wife? In Leviticus 18 the Bible strictly forbids interfamily marriages (brothers and sisters, fathers and daughters, etc..). Either Cain was living abominably, or there were other parents besides Adam and Eve. If you say that it was ok back then, you are saying that God changes and morality changes. The Bible says that God does not change, so either this is an error, the law is an error or saying all men came from Adam and Eve was an error.
On the surface this questions sounds like a minefield. As atheists frequently say, “it is an unanswerable question”. In reality this is a simple question and understanding what God has clearly revealed about Himself and His word disarms this question. Let’s start by looking at how we interpret the Bible. To understand the Bible, we don’t zero in on one passage and build a doctrine around it. We take a birds-eye view, dive in for a closer look to examine a passage and then go back to the birds-eye view again. We must always ask ourselves, how does this fit into the whole picture. Remember, God’s word is a revelation about Himself and His plan. We don’t know everything about His plan, but we do know enough to get the big picture understanding. To understand we have to look at how each of the parts of this question fits into the overall picture. Where did Cain’s wife come from? Did Cain violate the law of God? What is the purpose of the law? Does God or His morality change?
Let’s first look at the question of possibility. The argument is usually a misunderstanding of scripture. In the previous study we examined Cain’s sin of murdering his brother. Now the scripture goes away from Cain and back to Adam and Eve. Look at these two passages:
Genesis 4:
25 And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and named him Seth, "For God has appointed another seed for me instead of Abel, whom Cain killed."
Genesis 5:
3 And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.
4 After he begot Seth, the days of Adam were eight hundred years; and he had sons and daughters.
5 So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died.
We are not given any names of Adam’s sons except Cain, Abel and Seth. It is important to understand that Seth’s birth is a consolation to Eve for Abel’s death and the scripture is written in this context. It is not written in the context of time range. Many get confused by thinking that Cain and Abel were the first children and Seth was the third. Seth was not the third child but was the first son born after the death of Abel. The is a hundred and thirty year window in which other children were born. Genesis 5:4 that says “and he had sons and daughters” as an closing note not as a declaration that daughters were born after Seth only. Within that 130 year window of time, children other than Cain and Abel were born. Cain’s wife was definitely a close relative. Logical would compel us to it being a sister. This would also explain Cain’s fear of being killed by whoever found him. A stranger would not care about Cain’s past, but because everyone knew who he was and was also mourning the loss of Abel, Cain felt a very real sense of danger. He felt safe when the sin was a secret, but when God exposed it for all to see, Cain feared the vengeance of his family. Even in judgement, God showed mercy by protecting Cain from retaliation.
This brings up the part of the ‘unanswerable question’. Did Cain (and all other children of Adam and Eve) commit an abomination before God by intermarrying? No. Intermarrying was a common practice in ancient times and even in modern times in some cultures. Cain took his wife 4,000 years before the law was given saying intermarriage is a sin. Later in this study of Genesis we will see that Abraham’s wife was his sister. They had the same father but different mothers. Abraham also sent his faithful servant to his own family to find a wife for his son so that Isaac would not be influenced by the culture around him. Cain clearly married a close relative and was innocent before God.
Does God’s moral law change? Why did God declare intermarriage a sin in the law given through Moses and not consider it a sin for the first 4,000 years? Before we answer this question, let’s step back and look at the big picture. A foundational principle for biblical interpretation is that no truth from scripture is for private interpretation but is given by inspiration of the Holy Spirit to reveal God’s purposes planned before time began (1 Peter 1:20, 2 Timothy 1). God is not making this up as He goes, but is fulfilling the plan He ordained before the foundation of the world. If all scripture fits into the pre-ordained plan of God, then we must look at the revealed plan to understand scripture. We can’t know or comprehend the entirety of God’s plan, but He has revealed enough to us so that we can trust Him.
As we look at the law God has given, we see God’s purpose emerge. If we only look at the individual law, they often don’t make sense. If we look at the law and then step back and look at the plan God has revealed, any logical person would stand in amazement. When we look at the law in light of history and science, we see what the children of Israel could not see. The law delivered through Moses instructed the people on sanitation, relationships, protection, and worship. Most of the laws on worship pointed directly to the sacrifice that Jesus would one day make on the Cross. The laws on sin revealed the complete impossibility of man keeping himself pure without God’s intervention. The laws on sanitation were advanced for even modern times. God had to use laws because the people could not comprehend the reasons behind the laws. God didn’t just arbitrarily conjure up a list of impossible laws to be mean. God provided laws for the benefit of the people He loved.
To put this into perspective consider the sanitation laws. If God had told the people that there were microscopic living creatures that needed to be warded off, they would not have understood. At the end of the 1800’s Chemist Louis Pasteur claimed that there was a link between germs and disease. Scientists around the world called it absurd to think a tiny organism could attack a large human. Even the development of antibiotic gauss was mocked by the medical community for 20+ years after it was effectively put into practice. If 100 years ago scientists and doctors balked at the idea of germs, we can understand why God did not explain the reasons behind the commands He gave.
The law has a purpose. In the case of Cain’s wife, there was no need for this law at the beginning. There are over 130,000 genes that we inherit from our parents (Explain genes to the ancient world). Genes are formed in pairs. At the moment of conception, we inherit one gene of each pair from each parent. In order to contract a genetic disease, both genes will be defective. Therefore, if two people come from the same parent, the likelihood that they both have the same defect is much greater. But if we marry outside of our family, the risk of genetic defects is greatly reduced. Man was not created with defective genes. Our defects are a result of the curse of sin. Cain was only one generation from the original creation and therefore there was no need for this law. However, after 4,000 years the defects were very real and there was a need to protect the people from the harm they could not see. That is what the law does. It directs and protects us from the dangers sin produced in this fallen world.
Did morality change? It is the same as it always has been. It is immoral to disobey God and pass on the consequences of our actions onto others. In the case of intermarriage, we are passing the consequences of our neglect for God’s law onto the children that will be put at risk. There is no need for intermarriage today, but the risk associated with it is plainly seen. God has always protected the innocent and held those accountable who violated the standard He put into place for protection. We have the right to neglect that the law of intermarriage but we will see the consequences. If what is seen validates the law God established then we should believe God’s warnings for what we don’t see. What are the spiritual consequences God’s commands protect us from? We will never be able to see the spiritual side of life with our eyes until we stand before God. Knowing that we can’t see it or comprehend it should direct us to the One who can see and comprehend it and created it. If God can see what we can’t, then it only makes sense to trust God’s commands instead of our desires. If God was right about sanitation, He was right about genetics and the commands about worship pointed directly to His plan of redemption through Jesus Christ, it stands to reason that the commands we don’t have any way to understand in this life have a definitive purpose as well. It also stands to reason that the consequences are not worth the gratification.
Having said this, it is also important to understand that we don’t obey God because we feel like His commands make sense; we obey because He is God. God does not have to justify Himself to us. I think it is important to obey unconditionally and also important to understand that because God loves us, He revealed enough to us so that we could have understanding and love Him. God is not the author of confusion, but of order. We should have confidence to obey what we do understand and the trust to obey what we don’t understand.
Two creation stories
This is a favorite among skeptics. The church as a whole doesn’t communicate the truth of God’s word to the believers. Because believers don’t understand, they are dumbfounded when a Bible critic says something like, “The creation story in Genesis 1 contradicts the creation story in Genesis 2. The Bible is filled with contradictions.”
As a review, look at the creation account in Genesis
The first 5 verses of Genesis discussing the first day of creation. The remainder of creation follows:
Day 2 verses 6-8, God created the firmament (or expanse).
Day 3 God created the dry land and separated from the seas, and the plants. 9-13
Day 4 God created light, stars, moon and sun. 14-19
Day 5 God created life in the waters, birds 20-23
Day 6 God created animals on the land and the beasts of the field 24-25
Also on day 6, God created the crown of His creation. Man was created in the image of God.
Day 7 God rested to give man a day of rest.
Now look at the accused contradiction found in Genesis 2:
7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
8 The LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed.
9 And out of the ground the LORD God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
15 Then the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.
16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat;
17 "but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."
18 And the LORD God said, "It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him."
19 Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name.
20 So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him.
Is this a contradicting second creation story? The key to this question is found in verses 7-8. Look closely at the timeline here. God formed man, breathed life into him and he became a living being. Then God planted a garden and there he put the man whom He had formed. We are still on the sixth day. Five days were spent creating the heavens and the earth and all the living creatures in the earth and sea. On the sixth day, God created man as the crown of His creation. He is now a living breathing complete man named Adam. In Adam’s presence God planted the garden of Eden. Out of the ground of that garden, God formed pleasant trees and plants for beauty and food. God pauses to instruct Adam about the trees. “All is for you and good to eat except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Adam nods his head in acknowledgment and watches in wonder and God continues to create out of the garden. God proceeds to create the beasts of the field and birds of the air. Adam is included in the creative process as God creates and then gives Adam the task of naming them as they are created. God uses the creation in the garden as a time to teach and also to draw Adam into the creative process. He is given the opportunity to take ownership in God’s creative process as each animal is brought before him to be named. The error people make is that they don’t look at the whole picture but try to separate these as two separate events. The Garden of Eden was created on the sixth day. It is not a summarization of the creation account.
So why are the birds created out of the water on day 5 in chapter 1 and out of the ground on day 6 in chapter 2? Simply put, these are not two separate chapters, but one event intended to be taken as a whole. We don’t know if God created the same types of birds or different birds out of the ground in the garden. It really is irrelevant. What is relevant is that God included Adam in the process of creation so that he could know that it was God who created all that he saw. God did not require Adam to believe the creation account by faith. God required Adam to trust His commands by faith. Faith always has a foundation. It was so in the beginning and this remains true today. Adam was without excuse when he fell to sin. He was given a solid foundation in which to trust God’s commands. We also are given overwhelming evidence to support our faith. We have history that validates the Bible, archaeology, science and the testimonies of countless changed lives. No one can claim to be deceived. We are deceived when we are willingly ignorant. As 2 Thessalonians 2 puts it, those who are unrighteous are deceived because they rejected the truth of God. Because they rejected the truth, God gave them over to the delusion that they first chose. The reason people are willing to split hairs looking for a contradiction while ignoring the indisputable evidence is because they don’t want God to be true. The choice has already been made. When someone in deception hears the truth, they will respond to it or reject it. God honors our choice even if it is the wrong choice. If God did not honor our rejection of Him, it would not be love and we would be no different than the beasts of the field and birds of the air. We are the only part of His creation that was made in His image and man was created last so he would be the crown of God’s creation. Only we have the capacity to love God. We also have the capacity to reject God.
I picture this like my children helping daddy. Since they were old enough to walk, they always want to help daddy with what he is doing. Unless what I am doing is dangerous, I always let them help me. I always have to work around their mistakes and do most of the work for them. I give them directions, guide their hands and sometimes let them mess things up while they think they are doing good. I obviously don't need there help and often their help slows me down, but the benefit gained exceeds the benefit lost. When they help, they get a sense of ownership in the project and they get to say, "Look what we helped daddy do!"
In a very real sense, this is what Adam experienced. God did not need Adam's help, but by involving him in the creation process, Adam was given a sense of ownership. The Garden of Eden wasn’t just something God created, but Adam could say, “This is ours”. God may have done the work, but Adam was given ownership as long as he was within God's will.
Works are like this. We do good works not because God needs our help, but because God has given us the privilege of taking ownership in His kingdom. We are not just called into God's kingdom, but we are called to be involved in the creative process that God is performing. Even now, God is in the process of creating the kingdom of heaven and like Adam, we are given the privilege of working with our Heavenly Father to complete this work. When we obey God's call, we are given a sense of belonging and ownership of the kingdom that we help create. God is indeed the power behind all we do and He does not need our help, but like a loving father, He invites us into that relationship of working together with Him toward something we will be proud to say, “this is our kingdom”.
We are not blind sojourners, but joint heirs together with Him. We are joint-heirs, sons and daughters, and friends of God. Jesus said, “the kingdom of heaven is among you” and He also referred to the future kingdom of God. We are involved in God's kingdom now, but He has not presented it as a completed work. He has given us the joy to be a part of what He is creating. We need to have the understanding that works don't get us into the kingdom, but we are answer a call with those who are children of God to work with Abba Father to finish this great project. God has not changed. As He did with Adam from the beginning, He also does with us today. God seeks to draw His children into the great work He is doing. The kingdom of heaven is being created before our very eyes and we have been given the honor of working with our heavenly Father. God presents us with opportunities and even though the power to create belongs to Him, the privilege of carrying out that work is given to us. It isn’t His kingdom, but ours.
The Genesis account does not contradict itself or the rest of scripture. It fits perfectly into the plan of God and His revelation in scripture.
