On Day 3, God created general plants everywhere. On Day 6, God provided special species of plants in the Garden of Eden.
I used to believe what you stated above until I was corrected by the language experts and Scholars that translate Scripture with precision and accuracy.
Simply put, in order to make your statement correct, a series of alterations to the original Hebrew must take place to ensure that the initial conditions of the Creation Account align with your theory. That is a big no-no as far as any Scholar is concerned.
One alteration is to change the word 'day' in Genesis 2:4 to something that is completely nonliteral and made up...
Genesis 2:4
"These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens."
The day that the Earth and Heavens were finished and ready for its first form of life is the Third Day. So, to make your 'Farm of Eden' theory work, the verse must be altered to say...
Genesis 2:4
"These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the [SIX DAYS] that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens."
Moreover, an assumption must be made that Genesis 2:4 is also referring to all of the:
- Plants
- Trees
- Animals
- Fowl
- Creeping Things
- Fish
- Whales
- etc.
...existing beforehand, even though
the verse clearly does not state that. None of those are mentioned. So, once again, Genesis 2:4 must be altered to make your theory work...
Genesis 2:4
"These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth [and the plants, and the trees, and the animals, and the fowl, and the creeping things, and the fish, and the whales, etc.] when they were created, in the [SIX DAYS] that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens [and the plants, and the trees, and the animals, and the fowl, and the creeping things, and the fish, and the whales, etc.]"
Obviously, that is an unacceptable way to interpret the verse. Even if the word 'day' referred to more than one day, the problem of adding all of the additional plants, trees, animals, etc. to the original text is still there.
As a side note, if you were to debate historians, evolutionists, etc., you will have a tough time selling the idea that Man immediately had access to domesticated food and animals from the beginning, since they will argue that many plants and animals were domesticated much later.
Your next hurdle, which you already have a debatable solution to, is that you are now competing with alternative translations that are contrary to your theory...
Genesis 2:5 (New Living Translation)
"Neither wild plants nor grains were growing on the earth. For the LORD God had not yet sent rain to water the earth, and there were no people to cultivate the soil."
You will always have to defend your translation from this moment on to explain why your translation contradicts other translations such as the above example.
Your absolute biggest error is translating Genesis 2:17 improperly...
Genesis 2:17
"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."
You will either have to change 'day' to something non-literal or you will have to violate all kinds of translational rules, hermeneutics, exegesis, etc., and alter the phrase 'surely die' to mean something it does not (e.g., spiritual death).
If you really care about precision and listening to Scholars as you often boast, then I would suggest you look at this study here...
Finally, to interpret Genesis 2:17 as announcing natural consequences instead of a juridical penalty ignores the overwhelming biblical evidence of how authors used the phrase in question throughout the Old Testament. As such, the natural consequences interpretation seems to establish human arbiters as higher authorities than the text to determine its truthfulness and relevance. Scripture no longer interprets Scripture. How the pastor handles texts like Genesis 2:17 remains vital to maintaining a ministry faithful to the authority of Scripture and that properly disciples the church members in their walk with God.
When I was a district pastor, one of the more interesting elements in my work was fielding questions about a word or phrase from the original biblical languages. Like first year Hebrew students, members have unparalleled access to Internet and software resources that enable them to know enough...
www.ministrymagazine.org
Here is another Scholar articulating all of the errors in your interpretation of Genesis 2:17...
If we keep going, we discover more problems like animals being created after Man...
Genesis 2:18
"And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him."
Man was alone. This means there were no animals that existed yet. God makes animals in the next verse to solve the problem...
Genesis 2:19 (New Living Translation)
"So the LORD God formed from the ground all the wild animals and all the birds of the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would call them, and the man chose a name for each one."
Once again you are back to having to alter the text (e.g. 'had formed') to make it fit your theory.
It is not just plants that is the issue here.
How will you explain that Man was alone while surrounded by animals? How will you explain that the solution of Man being alone while surrounded by animals was to create more animals? That does not make sense!
Anyhow, the Simple Minded may be fooled by phrases like "Genesis 1 and 2 don't contradict", but those that have studied these issues in depth know better...
The overlapping stories of Genesis 1 and 2 are contradictory but also complementary, with the first (the Priestly story) concerned with the creation of the entire cosmos while the second (the Jahwist story) focuses on man as moral agent and cultivator of his environment.
en.wikipedia.org
Are you able to prove them wrong
@tonychanyt ? Put your money where your mouth is and let us see how you handle it.
