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he was not a historian, nor a biblical scholar. He had an anti-religious agenda and there is no reason to take him seriously. He was out of his field.



Irish_farmer, ad hominem arguments won't give you advantage in a discussion. On the contrary, they hint that you're out of arguments against the message, and thus had to retreat to attacking the messenger instead. If you think that Asimov is wrong, just read his writings and disprove them. Claiming he can't be taken seriously because he's not a member of your sect is not working.

But do not worry: We'll see in the following that the contradiction between the two Genesis stories is indeed not a real contradiction. However not for the reasons that YECs are so desperately clinging to.

Remember that Genesis 1 gives an abstract creation account from the simple to the complex. When we replace "the gods" by "the forces of nature" and "six days" by "some billion years" we almost (but not quite) end up with a rather modern overview of the Big Bang and the evolution.

Genesis 2 describes a totally different scenario. The creator is not "the gods" but only one particular god, who is in the following referred to with the Hebraic letters JHWH (and in the King James bible with THE LORD). Not one heaven was created, but several heavens (we'll learn later in the bible that there are three). Unlike in Genesis 1, there are no plants growing yet because it had not rained. JHWH makes a single human (not many as the "them" in Genesis 1) from dust and inflates him with his Holy Breath. Afterwards he lets the plants grow and creates the animals. Now Adam gets a task: He has to name all existing animals. When Adam has done his deed, he gets his sexual reward, with which the creation is finished.

Note the different time scale. The gods can create something within the blink of an eye, but the second creation took a lot more time than the first one due to Adam's naming task. While a man can indeed do this in his lifetime, it certainly takes many years.

Apparently, Genesis 1 is more a scientific account, while Genesis 2 looks more like a folk's tale. Now what wanted the bible editor, or the editing committee or whoever, tell the posterity with those incompatible accounts?

Back then (2600 years ago) Genesis 1 was the state of the art in creation theories. It was the Babylonian equivalent of Quantum Theory. Educated people believed that the world really began this way. So the Torah started with a scientific theory, and the religious part only started on the second page!

The apparent contradiction is just an instruction how to correctly read the Torah. The message is: "Always keep in mind that this is a religious book. Do not confuse it with science. The rest of this book tells you of the god JHWH and his little problems to get correctly worshipped by humans. But you can always go back to page 1 and see the difference to how creation really happened according to modern Babylonian science."

Of course, this theory is a speculation and the contradictions could as well have been caused by sloppy editing and simple mistakes. But somehow I like the idea more that there's an intention behind it.

Did the message reach its goal? I guess so, as today science is the main source of human knowledge, and is separated from religion. Only some sects, like extreme Islamic fundamentalists or YECs, seem not to have received that message yet. But I'm confident that they will some day.