Peter Kirk

Well, I didn’t say I could understand the Bergen book, only that I have it! But I have worked on a translation of the Hebrew Bible, as well as the Greek NT, and so I do know a little Hebrew.

I now understand the issue you had with Genesis 2:8,19. In Bergen’s book Randall Buth rightly argues that NIV’s use of pluperfect tenses in these verses (“had planted… had formed” – apparently an attempt to harmonise these verses with chapter 1) is without linguistic justification. Buth writes: “What is happening here is that the creation story is purposely told from two different perspectives in chapter 1 and chapter 2”. This is equally clear in the Hebrew and the LXX Greek text, but may have been clarified in the Apostle’s Bible translation of LXX which you mentioned. So, yes, in chapter 2 there do seem to be acts of creation after the formation of the man, but before the formation of the woman who in fact seems to be the last to be created, the final crown of creation. So Adam would have witnessed this further creation and so been better educated than Eve. I still don’t see the relevance of this to the situation in 1 Timothy 2, but then maybe I need to get the DVD.