PHThe Number of Animals Noah Took on the Ark
Another example that reminds us of the discrepancies in the Bible can be found in the story of Noah and the Ark.
In Genesis 6:19-20, God commands Noah to take two of every kind of animal, one male and one female onto the Ark to preserve their species.
However, in Genesis 7:2-3, the instructions are more specific, stating that Noah should take seven pairs of clean animals (suitable for sacrifice) and one pair of unclean animals.
So, which is it? This discrepancy reflects differing traditions within the text, likely stemming from the merging of multiple sources behind the composition of Genesis. As Robert Alter explains in his Commentary:
As scholarship has often noted, two versions of the Flood story, the Priestly and the Yahwistic, are intertwined in a somewhat confusing fashion... Abraham ibn Ezra and other medieval exegetes rescue consistency by proposing that when God directed attention to the clean-unclean distinction, He had to add the difference in numbers because more animals needed to be sacrificed. (Noah, like his counterpart in the Mesopotamian Flood stories, does in fact offer a thanksgiving sacrifice after the waters recede.) But the tensions between the two versions, including how they record the time span of the Flood, persist, and there are some indications that the editor himself struggled to harmonize them.
Another example that reminds us of the discrepancies in the Bible can be found in the story of Noah and the Ark.
In Genesis 6:19-20, God commands Noah to take two of every kind of animal, one male and one female onto the Ark to preserve their species.
However, in Genesis 7:2-3, the instructions are more specific, stating that Noah should take seven pairs of clean animals (suitable for sacrifice) and one pair of unclean animals.
So, which is it? This discrepancy reflects differing traditions within the text, likely stemming from the merging of multiple sources behind the composition of Genesis. As Robert Alter explains in his Commentary:
As scholarship has often noted, two versions of the Flood story, the Priestly and the Yahwistic, are intertwined in a somewhat confusing fashion... Abraham ibn Ezra and other medieval exegetes rescue consistency by proposing that when God directed attention to the clean-unclean distinction, He had to add the difference in numbers because more animals needed to be sacrificed. (Noah, like his counterpart in the Mesopotamian Flood stories, does in fact offer a thanksgiving sacrifice after the waters recede.) But the tensions between the two versions, including how they record the time span of the Flood, persist, and there are some indications that the editor himself struggled to harmonize them.