What is the reasoning behind the belief that Eve was NOT created on the sixth day?

Upvote:0

It is more than likely that Eve was taken from Adam after the sixth day. The clues can be gleaned from the Timeline:

Dry land Earth > Man fashioned + Gan Eden planted > Man borne to Gan Eden + Trees from the ground in Gan Eden > Man alone > living creatures as helpmate, from ground in Gan Eden > No suitable helpmate > Eve from Man in Gan Eden.

God made the dry land Earth on the third day.1 From that earth, he fashioned man on the sixth day.2 [And] the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, on the same day or _ day? The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it on the same day or _ day.3 [And] from the ground in the garden of Eden, God made the trees from which man could eat from, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.4 This was on the _ day.

... some time elapses ...

After deciding to make a helper fit for him, God made from the ground in Eden, every living creature that Adam was later to name.5 This was on the _ day.

... some time elapses ...but for the man there was not found a helper fit for him. cf. [Gn 2:20]

Finally God takes Eve from Man on the _ day.

There isn't enough information to fill in the blanks and the timeline strongly indicates that Eve was taken out of Man, in Gan Eden, after the sixth day [Adam from dry land Earth].


1. [cf. 1:9-13]↩

2. [cf. Gn 1: 26-31 & Gn 2:7]↩

3. [cf. Gn 2:8, 15]↩

4. [cf. Gn 2:9]↩

5. [cf. Gn 2: 18-19]↩

Upvote:1

Many people reason that Eve was not created on the 'sixth day' because there are two quite separate creation stories in Genesis - verses 1:1-2:4a (attributed by scholars to the Priestly Source) and verses 2:4b-25 (attributed to the Yahwist). The first story says that man and female were both created on the sixth day, but does not mention Eve. The second story says that Eve was created from a rib taken from Adam, but there is no mention of how many days elapsed from the creation of Adam, whose creation was the very first event in this creation story (Genesis 2:7), and the creation of Eve, whose creation was the very last event in this creation story (Genesis 2:22)

Leon R. Kass explains, in The Beginning of Wisdom, page 56, that we must scrupulously avoid reading into the second story any facts or notions taken from the first, and vice versa. Following his advice, we can not read the creation of Eve out of Adam's rib into the first story, and we can not read the six days of creation out of the first story into the second one. We do not know the time span between the creation of Adam and Eve, but it must be substantial because, in the interim, God created each of the animals out of moist earth and brought them to Adam to be given names.

Upvote:6

The Biblical basis for claiming that Eve was created after the sixth day is one from inference instead of literalism.

The account in Genesis 1 starts with all the creatures first, then man on the sixth day. Chapter two continues on describing a different time of creation, or a smaller, second creation, if you will.

The story in Genesis two has Adam created separately, then God places him in the garden (verse 15). Then God decides that Adam should not be alone so he brings all the beasts to Adam to name them. Because of the wording, some literalists say that God made separate beasts right in front of Adam to be named; Adam then names all of them (verses 19-20).

Adam found none of the beasts suitable for his helpmate, so God put him into a sleep then made Eve from his rib (verses 21 -22).

The inference is that naming all the beasts would take a good deal of time. Even assuming that there were less kinds then there are today, seeing all of them, examining them, then deciding a name for all of those kinds would surely take longer than a day. Unless God brought the beasts to Adam in rapid fire succession, and Adam named them just as quickly, literalists holding this position insist that the event took a long time, much longer than a day.

Proponents of this view must neglect a literal reading of these verses, however. The final verse in Genesis 1, declaring the close of the sixth day, unmistakably puts the creation of mankind then. Takers of this view simply state that they are two separate stories with two separate lessons and neither is necessarily literal or more valid than the other.

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