Adam and Eve:

Contradictions and Deceptions

by David Epstein

February 11, 2001

Throughout the Bible, there are many conflicting stories which cast doubt upon the validity of the Bible as a historical document. It’s possible that there might have been several authors, possibly during different historical periods, with each author taking a different perspective on Biblical characters and events. Furthermore, it’s even possible that different authors wrote about the same characters and their accounts became interspersed. The scholarship in this area is diverse and non-definitive; there are no conclusive points of view about whether there was one or many authors, or if there were many authors, their works co-mingled with each other or developed from their predecessors.

I tend to think that there were several authors. From a historical perspective, it would make sense that there was one author during the period of Abraham, one during the story of Exodus, one during the time of King David, and so forth. The Bible then would be a collection of historic accounts from different periods. One would, of course, look for differences in styles of writing, description of events, characterization. This also leads right into the literary perspective of the Bible, namely that it is a creative story of a people that straddle one epic event to another. Here too, different writers could have crafted their works of fiction to convey the inner consciousness of the people during their time, with particular emphasis upon the relationship of their society, culture and religion to the worship of their God.

What I often find noteworthy is that the contradictions don’t occur across different stories, but within a specific account of an event or description of a character. The most obvious example is the creation of Adam. In one section, we are told that man is created in the image of God, yet we’re also reminded that Adam was created from the dust of the earth. If these two are in fact contradictory, then at least one of them must be a falsehood. In other words, they both can be false, but both can’t be true.

On the other hand, if they are not contradictory, then they are complimentary accounts of the same underlying reality. If man is created in the image of God, it conveys to the reader the idea that God created man in the image of himself, or alternatively, his vision of what he thought himself to be. Man, in this respect, is the product of God; it is the *form* of man that’s being featured here. When it’s said that man (Adam) was made from the dust of the Earth, remember that the earth too was conceived and made by God. Here, it’s the *substance* of man that’s being emphasized. From an allegorical perspective, man is a reflection of God (in his image, his form), yet he’s also created from the same Earth he will live in (he is the same substance of God’s creation). These are two related yet quite different accounts of human creationism. Think of man being created from the “dust of the earth” as him being jello, and think of him as being created in the “image of God” as the jello mold or container.

Niels Bohr’s idea of complimentarity has application in the creation story of Adam. These two different accounts are like two sides of the same coin, alternative aspects of the same phenomenon. Yet this idea can’t explain some of the other contradictions in the Bible. Take a look at the story of Abraham (Abram) and Sarah (Sarai). In Genesis, Chapter 11, verses 27-29, we discover that Abram father was Terah, and that Sarai was Terah’s daugher-in-law. In verses 11-12, Abram tells Sarai, ‘a fair woman to be looked upon’, to pretend that she’s his sister so that he won’t be killed by the Egyptians. Sure enough, he isn’t killed. If Abram had said she was his wife, the Pharaoh undoubtedly would have had him killed.

Either way, the Pharaoh would have taken Sarai to be his wife. Abram’s deception, however, didn’t just insure his survival, but secured two additional ‘rewards’. The first was the material benefits given to him by the Pharaoh: sheep, oxen, servants. The second was retribution by God against the Egyptians, infesting them with great plagues, because the Pharaoh took Sarai to be his wife. The plagues undoubtedly weakened the Egyptian dynasty and economy. This allowed Abram to obtain even greater wealth as we see in Chapter 13, verse 2: “And Abram was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold.”

Now, leapfrog to Chapter 20, where they have since had their names changed to Abraham and Sarah. Here, Abraham went to the land of Gerar to the south. Again, he says that Sarah is his sister; and one again, a political leader takes this as a sign that he can claim her for himself. In verse 2, Abimelech, the king of Gerar, takes Sarah to be his wife. But this time, God interferes by appearing in Abimelech’s dream: “Behold, thou shalt die, because of the woman whom thou hast taken; for she is a man’s wife.” When Abimelech wakes up, like the Pharaoh, he asks why Abraham deceived him. In verse 11, Abraham says the fear of God was not in this place and that he thought he would be killed if the truth were known (that he was Sarah’s husband). Abimelech returns Sarah to Abraham. And once again, Abraham profits from his deception, for Abimelech gives him more sheep, oxen, and servants; and to Sarah, he gives her silver. The main difference to the story in Egypt is that God didn’t infest their land with plagues.

Why the inconsistency with the Egyptian story? Why did God intervene this time and warn their leader? Were the people of Gerar more favorable than the Egyptians in his eyes? Maybe they were a Semitic people; after all, their king was Abimelech, and “melech” in Hebrew means King. Yet besides this inconsistency, there is another one. In verse 12, Abraham makes a remarkable revelation: “And moreover she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and so she became my wife.” We were not told this information earlier on. Sarai was refered to as Terah’s “daughter-in-law”. Why didn’t the author mention that she was his daugher?! Does this point to the existence of another author?

This means that the Pharaoh and Abimelech weren’t lied to, though they were deceived. Sarah was both the half-sister and wife to Abraham. Hence, when Abraham told them she was his sister, he wasn’t entirely making a false statement. Rather, he refrained from sharing the entire truth, and he used this non-disclosure to secure great material gain from these unsuspecting rulers.