Did God create the universe…twice?

Did you know that there are two very different Creation stories in the first few chapters of the Book of Genesis?  I challenge you to get out two Bibles, set them next to each other, and read the two accounts, one verse from each account, at a time.  You will be shocked at the number of major discrepancies.

How could Moses have told the same Creation story twice, one right after the other, but with so many, many discrepancies between the two versions?  It makes you wonder…did Moses really write the Book of Genesis??

Excerpts copied from:  contradictionsinthebible.com

Ancient and modern readers alike have long recognized the differences between the seven-day creation account of Genesis 1:1-2:3 and the garden of Eden account of Genesis 2:4b-3:24.

…But the most notable differences, indeed contradictions, lie in their presentation of the order of creation and the manner through which man and woman come into existence. For instance, the first account describes how God creates—the Hebrew verb used is bara’—plants on the third day (1:11), then animals on the fifth and sixth days (1:20-24), and lastly male and female together in the image and likeness of the creator god (1:27), thus displaying how mankind is vastly different from the animals. The repeated emphasis is on a god who creates (bara’) by pronouncing the thing into existence, separating it out, and then claiming the goodness in the created thing and by extension in the created order of the world.

 

We find none of these features in the second creation account. Rather, we are now informed that Yahweh (here the deity’s name is specified) first forms—the Hebrew verb is yatsar—man from the dust of the earth (2:7), then plants (2:9), and then so that the man should not be alone, Yahweh forms (yatsar) animals from the earth that are in essence similar to the man (2:18-19), but since man is unable to find a satisfactory companion among the animals, woman is built (banah) from the man’s rib (2:22). Thus in our first account plants and animals are created (bara’) before both male and female are created together in the image of the god(s), but in the latter account man is formed (yatsar) from the ground first, then plants and animals, and then, woman is built from the man’s rib.

…One of the most prominent and distinguishable differences between these two creation accounts, especially in the Hebrew, is the manner in which each creation account depicts the creator god. Genesis 1:1-2:3 refers to the deity with the Hebrew word for god (elohim) in all 35 of its occurrences. The second account, Genesis 2:4b-3:24, refers to the deity as Yahweh¹ in all of its 11 occurrences. This is inline with the larger textual traditions from which these two creation accounts originated. In the first creation account, the name Yahweh is not used nor is it known until it is revealed to Moses at Sinai (Gen 17:1; 28:3; 35:10; 48:3; Ex 6:2-3). Not so for the textual tradition of which this second account was its beginning; it always uses the personal name Yahweh and contradictorily professes that the name Yahweh was known and invoked throughout the whole patriarchal era (Gen 4:26; 12:8; 13:4; 15:7; etc.). See #11.

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