Okay, now let's continue the creation account with chapter two. That's the focus of this third lesson. I want to zoom in and continue on with the discussion that we've been having about the creation of all things, but we're going to zoom in and talk about Adam and Eve and all the highlights and themes of this particular chapter, the Garden of Eden, the two trees, all this kind of stuff. But before we do, before we dive into verse five, I really want to address something that pretty much everybody hears.
I would be surprised if you hadn't heard this, and that is that there are two different creation accounts. This is the accusation. Okay, there are two different creation accounts. Chapter one is one account, chapter two is the second account, and they contradict each other.
They are mutually exclusive. You can't harmonize them in any way, shape, or form, and because they're contradictory, therefore they're false. This is an overview, kind of a slight generalization of what the accusation is, but it's true. It happens all the time.
It might have happened to you depending on a school university or a college or God forbid you even heard this in a sermon or a homily or something like that read it in a book where if you go to a class, and this often happens and I want to print with two broad of a stroke here, but if somebody goes, let's say they raise an approximate or a Catholic home and they learn a lot of scripture, they go to youth group, then they go to college and they want to take a course and maybe it's an elective on the Bible, on the Old Testament. And so you start off with Genesis chapter one, and the first words out of the professor's mouth is, Genesis one and two are two different creation accounts that contradict each other. And the students are like, oh, wow, I know this, never heard this. And so the professor continues to pile it on higher and deeper.
That's what Ph.D. stands for, piled higher and deeper. And the professor convinces so many of these young men and women that scripture contradicts each other and they lose their faith. First, the professors lost his faith or her faith.
Now the kids are losing their faith as well. And I'm not exaggerating too much when I say this happens all the time. You go to colleges, you go to university classes, sometimes even in Bible studies in different churches and they say, contradict each other. And I'm here to tell you, as we before we open up the whole lesson of chapter two, they do not contradict each other because God's word cannot air.
We talked in our other course, a scripture one and one we have a whole hour dedicated to inspiration and an errancy. So you can go check that out if you want to. But this God's word cannot air because God cannot air. So properly understood, scripture does not contradict itself.
Now, at face value, you might say, oh, there's a contradiction here. But remember what Stanikasan said, they're only apparent contradictions. And probably it's because I don't really understand the text very well. And so he's got to be patient and humble and just kind of work it out.
So here, just here in the notes, we follow along on this part one here. Are there two contradictory creation accounts? I want to go with you and show you what one of the accusations is very simply and give you two ways to understand how they are not contradictory, but they're beautifully harmonious and they're balanced. So point A here says in Genesis one, creation occurs over six days.
As we will know, we talked about that over the entire course of the last lecture. Six days of creation culminates in the seventh day, the Sabbath day of rest is in the seventh is the number of covenant, all of that stuff. Well, here in chapter two, as we're going to discuss together in this lesson, God creates things in a different order than he did in Genesis chapter one. So for example, in Genesis chapter one, first he creates the plants, then he creates the animals, then he creates man and finally woman.
That's the order plants and animals, then mankind, man and woman. But in chapter two, as we're going through the highlights here, it's kind of summarizing it for you right now, first God creates man, then he creates plants, then he creates animals, and finally he creates woman. So the order is completely different. So the accusation is irreconcilable.
You can't say that scripture is without air if the first two chapters contradict each other. That's the accusation that so many poor unsuspecting people, young men and women in college or adults might get from the history channel or whatever it is. So I'm here to tell you there are two ways to understand this. The first here in your notes is through a literary device.
The Hebrews were master storytellers. This is true all over scripture, over and over and over again. You just can't read it superficially and quickly. You can't speed read scripture and be like, oh yeah, these are all the problems.
They're master storytellers through repetition or through chaiasms or all these other different effects. Well, there's a literary device being employed here. It's called the synoptic, presumptive technique. Synoptic, presumptive.
Chapter one is a synoptic view. The presumptive view is chapter two. So Genesis chapter one, as we talked about in the last lesson, is the synoptic view. Think of it oftentimes teachers, Catholic teachers will probably want to give you the analogy of a camera.
So think of chapter one as the wide angle view of creation, taking everything in from the 30,000 foot view. So it describes God as Elohim. That was a name for God throughout all of chapter one. Elohim is the general term for God.
It describes his his transcendence, his power, his majesty. God simply speaks efficacious word, is spoken and things come into existence, let there be light and there was light and everything all six days. God just simply has to speak his word, which as we discussed is Christ, is the second person of the Holy Trinity. And things come into existence from nothing.
They didn't exist and now they exist. That's God's almighty power. His omnipotence, that's described in chapter one, the wide angle view where he creates the heavens and the earth from nothing. All things that are visible and invisible.
Then chapter two is like to use a camera analogy. It's the zoom lens. It zooms in and that's the resumptive technique. It zooms in and it depicts God as Yahweh Elohim.
Yahweh is the covenantal name for God. We'll talk a lot more about that in our Bible study on Exodus, chapter three, or you can go to the Salvation History course if you're dying to find out more about that story. But it's the burning Bush story. God reveals himself as Yahweh.
And here in chapter two, consistently you have God being described as this covenantal figure. So now he is eminent, he is personal, he's relational to creation, but specifically to Adam and Eve. So chapter one is Lord Elohim. Chapter two is Lord God.
He's Yahweh Elohim. So I just think chapter one is God and chapter two is Lord God. And you see this by the way in your Bible. So if you take out your Bible, just one quick example here, we'll talk about this a couple different instances.
You'll notice it as you read. Just go to chapter two here, verse one. This is summarizing the first creation account where it describes, let's see here, chapter two, verse two. On the seventh day God, so that's Elohim finished his work which he had done and he rests on the seventh day from all his work which he had done.
So Elohim, God blessed the seventh day and held it because on it Elohim rested from all his work, etc. So that concludes the first account of creation. But then if you go to chapter four, you see the description of God completely changes. So in the day that the Lord God made the heavens and the earth when no plant in the field was yet in the earth and no urban field that yet sprung up for the Lord God and not cause it to rain upon the earth, etc.
You can see immediately, even in the English, there's a different use here. Lord God is Yahweh Elohim. Anytime you see capital L-O-R-D, that is a, that is the word in Hebrew for Elohim or for Yahweh, okay? So Lord God, Yahweh Elohim.
So this is the presumptive view. God is intimate, God is personal, God is relational with mankind. And as your commentary, my suggested reading I gave with you describes it. It describes man in his domestic environment.
So it zooms in really on the events of the sixth day. So that's what's going on here. Just from a literary point of view, wide angle view, God creating everything with his power, then the narrow view here of God, zooming in on the events really of man and his domestic environment, okay? But he's personal, God, he's a relational God.
That right there solves a big part of the problem. But the question remains, well then why is there a different order of creation? The accusation still holds Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 has God creating everything in a different order. And in order to understand that, you simply have got to look at the original Hebrew.
Now it comes through in the English a little bit, but you kind of have to know what's going on. So you're having an introduction to the Bible, the Old Testament that I recommended for you lays this out very, very beautifully. But just a vice to say right here, the Hebrew has clearly different words for the types of plants and animals that are being created in chapter one, and that are being created in chapter two. So for example, chapter one, the kinds of plants and animals that are being described in the original Hebrew are the wild and undemesticated plants and animals.
Those things that just kind of proliferate on their own without the guidance or the input of mankind, okay? To just plant the wild animals and plants. That's what God creates by his power. As an example here, we can go to chapter one verse 11, which says, God said, let the earth put forth vegetation, let the earth, the general whole globe, okay, put forth vegetation.
Let's see here, plants yielding seed, fruit, trees bearing fruit, and which is in their seed, each according to its kind upon the whole earth. For talking about all the plants, wild, undemesticated plants over the whole earth, and if we go to chapter one verse 24, same thing about the animals, and God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, cattle creeping things and beasts upon the earth. We're talking about all of the animals that roam around the globe and all the plants that grow in their respective environments. That's chapter one.
In chapter two, the description is of plants and animals that are agricultural, cultivated, domesticated, that think those plants and animals that require the input, the protection, the husbandry of man to be a farmer and to cultivate the land and the really plants and animals of the field. And you can see this in the English as well. So for example, let's go back to chapter two verse four. I already read this to you.
It says, in the day that Yauchwei, Elohim, the Lord God, made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and the earth of the field had yet sprung up, etc. So we're talking about domesticated, cultivated plants in this point and also of animals. And this is what Adam's going to need to do within the garden to till and to keep these plants and these animals as head of creation. Okay.
So really chapter two, again, zooming in, that's an optic representative literary device, it's zooming in to describe the events of the sixth day when Adam was created, depicting God as personal to Adam, entrusting him with the sovereignty of our all creation, telling him to till and to keep the garden. It's not talking about all the wild plants and animals. It's talking about those domesticated plants and animals that Adam is going to be responsible for. So chapter two is again, zooming in, looking more narrowly here at Adam's responsibilities as it leads into the seventh day, which is covenantal rest.
What Adam must do, vis-a-vis, in regards to his creation, his role as king of creation and priests and problem, all this kind of stuff, leading into the seventh day of his union with God on the Sabbath rest. So that is what's going on here with chapters one and two. They're not contradicting each other. It's not irreconcilable, but really it's this perfect harmony, perfect balance between God is, and it's very masterfully done, between God is this all-powerful, majestic God who simply speaks and everything comes into existence, as well as God as being depicted as a personal, loving, relational God in chapter two, zeroing in on the events of the sixth day and trusting to Adam, his responsibility is for taking care of those plants and animals that are domesticated and cultivated as it leads into the seventh day of covenant Sabbath rest.
It's really that simple, and I can't believe how many PhDs or teachers of scripture out there don't know this, because what they're going to see at face value is, oh yeah, they're two different contradictory accounts, but they're not because scripture doesn't contradict itself. So I'm, I hope that this all makes sense to you, and you can go to the commentaries that I recommend for you for more. But if you've ever heard that these accounts contradict each other, right out of the gate, Genesis 1 and 2, you already have contradictions and errors in scripture, I hope you're at peace with this because they're not contrary to any way, shape or form, but it's this incredibly beautiful presentation of God is all-powerful and God is personal and intimate and what man's responsibilities are as a child of God. Okay, so I just wanted to spend this, you know, 10 to 15 minutes on that major point.
So we go into chapter two, understanding what the overarching theme is, now we can look at all the various details, and let's begin here with Roman numeral 2, the creation of Adam, him being placed in the garden, also as a paradise, and what this all means as Adam, as his identity as a son of God. Hi, I'm Dr. Nick, thank you so much for watching this clip. I hope you enjoyed it.
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