Which of the versions of the creation story in Genesis is correct?

Question

Genesis 1:25-27
And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let us make man in our image.... So God created man in his own image.
or
Genesis 2:18-19
And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

Answer 1

Genesis chapter 1 is a complete overview of the creation week. Genesis chapter 2 is a more detailed description of events that happened during the creation week. They are both accounts of the same story, same week. There are no contradictions between the two.

The verse you are referring to is obviously Genesis 2:19, "And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof."

The Hebrew verb translated “formed” could easily have been translated “had formed.” In his Exposition of Genesis, H.C. Leupold stated:

Without any emphasis on the sequence of acts the account here records the making of the various creatures and the bringing of them to man. That in reality they had been made prior to the creation of man is so entirely apparent from chapter one as not to require explanation. But the reminder that God had “molded” them makes obvious His power to bring them to man and so is quite appropriately mentioned here. It would not, in our estimation, be wrong to translate yatsar as a pluperfect in this instance: “He had molded.” The insistence of the critics upon a plain past is partly the result of the attempt to make chapters one and two clash at as many points as possible (1942, p. 130, emp. added).

Hebrew scholar Victor Hamilton agreed with Leupold’s assessment of Genesis 2:19 as he also recognized that “it is possible to translate formed as ‘had formed’ ” (1990, p. 176). Keil and Delitzsch stated in the first volume of their highly regarded Old Testament commentary that “our modern style for expressing the same thought [which the Holy Spirit, via Moses, intended to communicate—EL] would be simply this: ‘God brought to Adam the beasts which He had formed’ ” (1996, emp. added). Adding even more credence to this interpretation is the fact that the New International Version (NIV ) renders the verb in verse 19, not as simple past tense, but as a pluperfect: “Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air” (emp. added). Although Genesis chapters one and two agree even when yatsar is translated simply “formed” (as we will notice in the remainder of this article), it is important to note that the four Hebrew scholars mentioned above and the translators of the NIV , all believe that it could (or should) be rendered “had formed.” And, as Leupold acknowledged, those who deny this possibility do so (at least partly) because of their insistence on making the two chapters disagree.

The main reason that skeptics do not see harmony in the events recorded in the first two chapters of the Bible is because they fail to realize that Genesis 1 and 2 serve different purposes. Chapter one (including 2:1-4) focuses on the order of the creation events; chapter two (actually 2:5-25) simply provides more detailed information about some of the events mentioned in chapter one. Chapter two never was meant to be a chronological regurgitation of chapter one, but instead serves its own unique purpose—i.e., to develop in detail the more important features of the creation account, especially the creation of man and his surroundings.

Answer 2

Both are correct in that they tell a fable to point out that God made people and the world etc.

Only poor scared fundamentalists try to make it into an historical account, like there would be CNN there saying "And now God is taking out the rib. And now he's making it into a female. And now he's ...."

It's a story. But that doesn't mean it doesn't hold a Truth.

Answer 3

None, the true and correct story of creation of humans is found from Revelation 12 through 19, and it is in the order that it took place.

See if you can tell who is who, and in what verse is this generation, right now.

Answer 4

Genesis 1 is 100% correct when translated from the original Hebrew to the modern language of science.
Genesis 2 was written by a different author for a different audience.

Answer 5

Neither actually happened.

For what it's worth, the second story is older. The first story was probably a polemic against Babylonian creation myths.

Answer 6

I think we both must have submitted are questions at about the same time. Kinda weird. That's where this Lilith story comes from.

Answer 7

Both creation stories in Genesis are correct.

Answer 8

Neither...ask the big bang or the Singularity in where the Big bang came from, which is already unbounded by space and time, therefore no "creation/first cause" is required.

Answer 9

well if it is in the pure unchanged bible that 1 and no matter wht any 1 says it is the word of god so... the first is right and for those who say it isant prove it!

Answer 10

Neither.

They were both shots in the dark by a tribe of nomadic goat-herders.