Answering 439 Bible Contradictions: #11
Answer: No. Genesis 1 and 2 are complementary. Though animals and mankind were created from the ground, God made Adam subsequent to the animals and uniquely in His image, thus giving Adam dominion over the earth.
Problem: Genesis 1:25-27 describes God creating of all animal life before mankind, while Genesis 2:18-22 teaches that God created humans first, then animals.
Explanation: The creation account in Genesis 2 is not contradictory to the creation account in Genesis 1. It’s simply more detailed. Genesis 1 uses a wide-angled lens to overview the creation of the world in six, literal, 24-hour days. Genesis 2 zooms in to give more details about the creation of man and the Garden of Eden. In Genesis 1, you’re looking at creation atop New York City’s Empire State Building. In Genesis 2, you’re observing the sixth day of creation from the sidewalk.
In Genesis 2:19, the KJV says, “Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam….” This supposedly contradicts the order of creation in Genesis 1 where the birds of the air and the fish of the sea (vv. 20-23) as well as the beasts of the earth (vv. 24-25) were created before Adam (vv. 26-27).
Verb tenses in Hebrew are more simple than in English, meaning there is more flexibility in how actions are completed. Context determines if the Hebrew word for “formed” (yatsar) means God “formed”, “has formed”, “had formed”, “did form” etc. Thus, some Bible translations (e.g. NIV) clarify the tense of the verb “formed” by making it a past perfect (“had formed”), also called pluperfect. This removes any kind of contradiction.
Per the ESV, Genesis 2:19 reads: “Out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man (emphasis mine)”. Even William Tyndale, the first to translate the Bible into English from the Hebrew text, translated verse 19 as “after that the Lord God had made of the earth all manner of beasts….”
In the end, it matters not if one translates 2:19 as “had formed” or “formed” because the main point of this verse is not so much the timing or created order of animals and man. The purpose is to show the method. Animals and man are the same in that they were created out of the ground. But they differ significantly because man, in contrast to animals, was created in the image of God and thus has dominion over all creation.
In sum, the accounts in Genesis 1 and 2 complement each other. The former is broad and emphasizes order while the latter is narrow and highlights content.