Bible Contradiction? When was Eve created?

For today’s post we will tackle the question the Skeptic Annotated Bible asked: When was Eve created?

Here are the answers which the skeptic believes indicate a Bible contradiction:

At the same time as Adam.

“So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:27)

After Adam and all the animals were created.

“The man gave names to all the livestock, and to the birds of the sky, and to every animal of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him. 21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. 22 And the Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.” (Genesis 2:20-22)

(All Scriptural quotation comes from the New American Standard Bible)

Here’s a closer look at whether or not there is a contradiction:

1. When dealing with skeptics’ claim of Bible contradictions it seems one can never be reminded enough of what exactly is a contradiction.  A contradiction occurs when two or more claims conflict with one another so that they cannot simultaneously be true in the same sense and at the same time.  To put it another way, a Bible contradiction exists when there are claims within the Bible that are mutually exclusive in the same sense and at the same time.
2. One should be skeptical of whether this is a Bible contradiction given the Skeptic Annotated Bible’s track record of inaccurately handling the Bible.  See the many examples of their error which we have responded to in this post: Collection of Posts Responding to Bible Contradictions.  Of course that does not take away the need to respond to this claim of a contradiction, which is what the remainder of this post will do.  But this observation should caution us to slow down and look more closely at the passages cited by the Skeptic Annotated Bible to see if they interpreted the passages properly to support their conclusion that it is a Bible contradiction.
3. The skeptic tries to pit Genesis 1:27 as affirming the claim “Eve was created at the same time as Adam” against Genesis 2:20-22 as affirming “Eve was created after Adam and all the animals were created.”
4. The skeptics rightly cited Genesis 2:20-22 as affirming “Eve was created after Adam and all the animals were created.”
   1. Notice in verse 20-21 Adam already existed. Verse 20 it mentioned there was not a suitable helper. Then in verse 21-22 Eve was created from Adam’s ribs.
   2. 1 Timothy 2:13 confirms this when it states “For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve.”
5. The skeptic misinterpreted Genesis 1:27 as affirming the claim “Eve was created at the same time as Adam.”
   1. I have written recently about the Ignorance of the Biblical Language and the Skeptic Annotated Bible.  I think this is another example of that.
   2. In the Hebrew I don’t think the authorial intent of Genesis 1:27 is to assert “Eve was created at the same time as Adam.”
   3. I would go further to say Genesis 1:27 weren’t intended to even give any sequences with the creation of human male and female.  In the phrase “in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” the Hebrew verb translated “He created ” is בָּרָא and it appears twice in the portion I quoted in Qal perfect verbal form.  The Qal perfect form is summarizing the action and not indicating sequential action, order of action, etc.  So the skeptic would be improperly extrapolating from Genesis 1:27 to argue that Adam and Eve were simultaneously created.  Really Genesis 1:27 is trying to emphasize both male and female human beings are made in the image of God.
   4. The sequential verb does appear in the beginning of Genesis 1:27 when it says “So God created man in His own image…”  Here the Hebrew verb translated as “God created” is a Qal Imperfect verb and the Qal imperfect verbal form is conveying consecutive action within a narrative. But this sequence is man (humans) were created after the creation of land based animal mentioned in Genesis 1:26, but Genesis 1:27 is not giving sequences nor simultaneous act of the creation of male and female human beings.  The skeptics don’t have no exegetical ground to interpret Genesis 1:27 the way they want to interpret it to make a problem.
6. Thus there is no contradiction here.  Seems the skeptic needs to learn of How to Handle Bible Contradictions.
7. We shouldn’t miss that worldviews are at play even with the skeptic’s objection to Christianity.  The worldview of the author of the Skeptic Annotated Bible actually doesn’t even allow for such a thing as the law of non-contradiction to be meaningful and intelligible.  In other words for him to try to disprove the Bible by pointing out that there’s a Bible contradiction doesn’t even make sense within his own worldview.  Check out our post “Skeptic Annotated Bible Author’s Self-Defeating Worldview.”