Joseph wrote: Several believers have joined the forum since I last raised the issue of creation order.
Joseph has apparently sensed the presence of some here whose faith he has not yet had the opportunity to try his best to destroy.
Joseph, I know I said I would not participate in threads you obviously create with the sole purpose of bashing the Bible. But providing the answer to this alleged "contradiction" was just too easy for me to resist. Honestly, Joseph, the Bible has a lot of things that are hard to understand. Why don't you pick on those things? Why do yo pick on everything and anything having to do with a belief in God or the Bible, even things which can be easily explained by almost any Bible student? I'll resist the temptation to speculate on the answer to that question.
Joseph wrote: The two different creation stories in Genesis contradict each other in the matter of the order of the creation of man and vegetation. In the first story, vegetation was created on the third day, and three days later man was created. However, in the second creation story, there was no vegetation before man.
The very simple solution to Joseph's "question" is to understand that Genesis chapter One is describing God's creation of vegetation on our earth before His creation of Adam. And that Genesis chapter Two is describing God's creation of the Garden of Eden in a previously barren region of the earth, immediately after His creation of Adam. It is with this solution in mind that the translators of the NIV Bible tell us in a footnote attached to Genesis 2:5,6, that the Hebrew word which is usually there translated as "earth," giving most readers the idea that these two verses are referring to our entire planet, can also be translated as "land," which most readers would then understand to refer only to a limited geographical area.
The sad thing is that Joseph is well aware of this fact. For it was recently discussed at some length in another thread dealing with Noah's flood. In that discussion Hebrew lexicons were quoted saying that the Hebrew word 'eres, which appears in both of the passages which Joseph wants us to believe are in conflict, is used in the Old Testament to refer to both our entire planet and to a limited geographical area. Thus Bible translators and Bible readers are often left to determine only from its context which of these two ways the writer of Genesis was using this word.
The same thing is true today of many English words. One word often has two or more meanings. When we read something someone has written using such a word, we must determine its meaning by examining the context in which the writer used it. Usually the context makes its particular meaning quite clear, but not always.
Since this subject matter was very recently discussed at some length with Joseph, I must now decide if he has a very bad memory, very poor reading comprehension skills or if he is very dishonest.
