Contradictions between Genesis 1-2

I think that this is an important point. One of the motives of the redactors was surely to unite these disparate tribal groups under one religious banner. This could have been achieved by combining different texts (with different groups of adherents) into one text, agreeable to wider audience. This would have been all the more important if there was open conflict between groups with different scriptural allegiances. These problems could be avoided by highlighting the religious similarities to create a stronger and more stable grouping.
It's not a dissimilar idea to the later assimilation of pagan cultures by Christianity; much better to stress the similarities than fight over differences.

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Mutate and Survive

Hi Creationist,
You seem to be very reliant on interpretation here. This is puzzling, because the contradictions in Genesis are only a problem when it is held to be the literal truth.
For example, if I say "My dog is dead", there is only one literal interpretation, i.e. that my former canine buddy has ceased to enjoy oxygen. Of course, we could interpret what I said as allegorical, symbolic. Then you could read all sorts of explanations into the statement. But here we enter "words mean what I choose them to mean" territory. How would you know your interpretation was correct? I could have intended the statement to mean "I am sad" in a more general way, but since I left you with no way to know what kind of allegory I was using, you could never take "I am sad" as being a reliable interpretation. It is certainly not a literal interpretation.
If you choose to believe that the events described in Genesis really happened the way the text says they did, then there is a low limit imposed upon the amount of interpretation that one can reasonably apply to those texts.
To say that a story is partly literal, partly metaphorical begs the question "Which bit is which, and who decides that?".
Of course, if you allow the whole thing to be read as just an allegory, then the whole problem of contradictions in the text disappears, in a puff of logic.
Note: No dogs were harmed during the writing of this post.

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Mutate and Survive

Hello imageinvisible,
The problem with this line of reasoning is that not everyone accepts that God wrote the commandments.
You say God wrote them.
I say that whichever mortal wrote Exodus wrote them (or possibly adapted them from another source).
Unless one accepts divine authorship your point is irrelevant and it fails to address many of the specific contradictions anyway.

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Mutate and Survive