Tool Alpha
The Contradiction Desk
Claimed Bible contradictions, stated the way they circulate, each with one diagnosis and the evidence for it: the Hebrew, the Greek, the manuscripts.
Animals before Adam, or after?
Genesis 1 has the animals made before the first humans. Genesis 2:19 in many versions reads as if God formed them after Adam. Some versions read had formed.
Genesis 2:19, in every translation this tool compares.
The real question: does Genesis 2 give a second, different order of creation? After the guests sat down, she set out the plates she made. Did she make the plates after they sat down, or before?
Genesis 1 has the land animals made on the sixth day and then humankind. Genesis 2 has God say it is not good for the man to be alone, then form every beast of the field and every bird and bring them to the man. The two chapters put the animals on opposite sides of the man.
Bible Hub's parallel page for 2:19 shows the English versions dividing: the NIV, ESV, LSB and GOD'S WORD read had formed; the King James, NKJV, NASB, CSB, NRSVCE and the JPS Tanakh of 1917 read formed. The ESV prints had formed and footnotes the alternative, formed. MacArthur says 2:19 is not a new creation of animals, which were made before man on the fifth and sixth days. The sequence the skeptic reads comes from the English simple past. Whether the Hebrew verb allows the pluperfect is a judgement the ESV and NIV translators made; the sources read here do not argue the grammar.
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 Skeptic's Annotated Bible asks "Were humans created before or after the other animals?" and sets Genesis 1:25-27 against 2:18-19. At full strength the order in chapter 2 is part of the story's logic: God sees the man alone, forms the animals, brings them, finds no partner among them, and then makes the woman. A pluperfect makes that sequence harder to read.
MacArthur: the verse calls attention to the fact that God formed the animals out of the ground, as he did the man, and that the man, in God's image, names them as a sign of his rule. The ESV's text reads it the same way by printing had formed.
This is the weakest diagnosis in the translation group. It rests on a rendering the major versions split on. If the simple past is right, the order in Genesis 2 is a feature of the Hebrew and needs a different kind of answer, such as the two chapters doing different jobs. That would be a genre entry, which this first build does not include.
Not a claim that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are the same kind of account. The entry diagnoses one verb tense in English, nothing more.
- Bible Hub, Genesis 2:19 parallel versions, https://biblehub.com/genesis/2-19.htm
- ESV Study Bible, footnote on Genesis 2:19
- The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), note on Genesis 2:19
- The Skeptic's Annotated Bible, Were humans created before or after the other animals?, https://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/humans.html
- King James Version, Genesis 2:19
