Mark 10:6

[dreamer_easy]

I have a question (for the knowledgeable this time, thank you, rather than for the peanut gallery :-) about this verse:

But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. (KJV)

(Did you see what I did there?)

The context is Jesus' teaching on divorce, but I was wondering if this reference to Genesis is the one synaesthete7 mentioned a while back, and if so, if it's a paraphrase of Chapter 1. (I'm curious about how Biblical literalists reconcile Chapters 1 and 2 - again, another issue which must have engaged great minds for centuries.)

Comments

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Nothing to reconcile, as far as I've ever been able to see (and I remember being truly boggled when I first heard someone say the two chapters contradicted/were "obviously" different accounts). Chapter one is a broad, sequential view of creation, an overview or outline, if you like; chapter two focuses specifically on the creation of man and woman and how it came about, putting man at the centre of the narrative where he will remain for the rest of the book. Ch. 1 is chronological in nature, ch. 2 is thematic.

(And yes, that is the reference I meant. :)

[reveilles.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was my reading of the first two chapters, too. It wasn't until I got to college that I encountered the idea that someone thought they were contradictory. For me, it's sort of like writing an academic paper: you put the big, broad strokes in the introductory section, and then you basically start over in more detail in the next section, focusing on the particulars of what you're interested in, and then go from there.

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Zigackly.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Clearly the redactors weren't worried about apparent contradictions! But Chapter 1 isn't quite sequential, since there Adam is created last of all the creatures on the sixth day, and in Chapter 2 the animals are created after him - apparently after the seventh day, although I guess the idea is this is a flashback. :-)

I just noticed a rather wonderful thing. In Chapter 1, God has been rather abstractly bringing things into being with words. In Chapter 2, He uses His hands - not just the familiar picture of making Adam from the clay, but he plants the garden of Eden. I have this lovely mental picture of God kneeling and working in the soil. Maybe with a little wheelbarrow by his side, humming "Morning Has Broken".

Morning has broken

[purplepooka.livejournal.com]

Already? What shoddy workmanship....
< g,d&r >

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

It depends on which translation you're looking at whether the present or past tense is used in regard to God creating the plants of the field and the animals He brought to Adam to name.

I do think the garden of Eden was planted specifically as an environment for Adam after Adam was created, however -- at least that's how it reads to me, though I could be wrong and it wouldn't break my heart if I were. So your mental image of God humming might not be too far off. :)

[rj-anderson.livejournal.com]

Oh, and also, I think purplepooka is right, tongue-in-cheek or not: it seems very unlikely to me that a redactor, if such a person had existed, would have failed to smooth over the very first two books of the Bible!

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

You're right (of course)!

KJV: And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air (Genesis 2:19)

NIV: Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air.

Holman: So the LORD God formed out of the ground each wild animal and each bird of the sky, and brought each to the man to see what he would call it.

New Living Translation: So the LORD God formed from the soil every kind of animal and bird.

Contemporary English Version: So the LORD took some soil and made animals and birds.

Egad, the confusion! I must look into this further.