The Genesis contradiction

Rayvin

I saw a post that mentioned a contradiction in Gen. 10 and Gen. 11. How in one it says they spoke different lang. then the next states that there was only one lang.

I mentioned this to my dad to see what he came up with. He mentions that Tongue,lang,dialect is also just like saying Canadians speak English.. just a different dialect. Basicly that when it said different tongue according to nation was still Hebrew but a different dialect or accent. So no contradiction still one lang untill God changed it at the Tower of Babel.

What is your take on this?

Sad emo

To me, chapter 11 reads as a retrospective account of how the different languages came to be.

So chapter 10 tells you that all the languages were there, including Shem's general line of descendants. Chapter 11 then gives the account of how there came to be so many languages and continues with Shem's specific line of descendants through Arphaxad - so the book now shifts from the story of the whole world into the story of Israel.

Leolaia

I regard this as a rather non-existent contradiction, more apparent than real. Chapter 10 is "the Table of the Nations", a listing of the descendents of Noah....born at various times ("Arpachshad" is born in 10:22, born two years after the Flood according to P in 11:10, and his great-grandson "Peleg" is born in 10:25, almost a hundred years later according to P). P in ch. 11 places Peleg half-way between Noah and Abram, and the obscure folk etymology in J in 10:25 ("in his days the earth was divided"), could possibly be an allusion to the J narrative in 11:1-9 (cf. the same use of the word "earth" in 11:1). Chapter 10 is simply giving a list of the descendents of Noah to show how the "70 nations" of the earth (cf. Deuteronomy 32:8-9) are geneologically descended from Noah's three sons. It has a different literary purpose than the first half of ch. 11, which tells a narrative of how the seperate nations of ch. 10 came into existence. Perhaps it would have read a little better for the redactor to have placed 11:1-9 before 10:1, but this would have destroyed the connection between ch. 10 and the narrative in 9:18-29 which concerns the sons of Noah and the grandson Canaan.

Now What?

Also bear in mind that Genesis is a record of several similar, but also different oral traditions. For example: The creation story of chapters 1 (Priestly tradition) and 2 (Yahwist tradition), and also the flood account (easily seen in the number of animals taken on the ark. One account says 2 of each in ch 6 and the other 'adds' 5 more to the clean animals in ch 7). So sometimes you get this going back and forth feeling.

Most of the seeminly contradictory passages are not really such, per se. They simply reflect the different oral traditions used to carry on the message. When they decided to put the traditions down in writing, they edited in these various traditions. Since it is in a mythic style of literary form, but we in our culture tend to be more exacting in historical detail, it often creates either the illusion of contradiction or historical improbability (although there are cases with dates and names that are just plain wrong).

Focus first on the message, then on the culture that wrote it. Remember, they did not record history the same way we do now with such demand for exacting detail.

Sheepish

I have a really cool version of the four Gospels. They are all put in one. They deleted the repeated verses, and simply added everything else. Some of it fills in holes the others left. But there is no contradiction.

I have heard and discussed a lot of so-called contradictions in the Bible. I would say just about every one (especially that you guys would bring up) are explainable. I will admit there are a few things that I don't understand, but those do not negate the rest of the scripture, and are not important for doctrine or understanding of scripture. They don't contradict, they are just freaking puzzling!

Most people who bring up contradictions, in my experience, have not read the entire Bible, and don't even understand the story. They are repeating things they've heard. I will go so far as to tell you most Christians haven't read the Bible, or studied it much. That is part of the problem (not only) with JWs, they only have experienced it throught the filter of the societies publications.