I see nothing in post 1811 that refutes my statement about the verb form. You make some statement about vaw consecutive that you claim shows that birds were created after humans but that does not change the fact that no english translation that uses the correct verb form, ie had created, shows birds being created after humans.
Your response is not surprising since it's obvious you have no working knowledge of biblical Hebrew and therefore have no business making claims about the language... your presumption to do so is what prompted my intervention into this thread again. Here's what I wrote with some added emphasis:
The Hebrew grammar itself precludes the resolution you propose... the vav consecutive orders events in Hebrew narrative and in chapter 2 the creation of the man precedes that of the birds, which contradicts the order of chapter 1.
I followed that up, on your request, with support from Arnold and Choi's
A Guide to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Cambridge University Press, 2003), pointing specifically to their section on Verbal Sequences (3.5) and the
Imperfect plus vav
consecutive (3.5.1):
this verbal construction is summarized as one of "succession in time or progression" (p. 83) and that it "expresses temporal sequence" (p. 84).
You infer there are English translations that use "the correct verb form, ie had created" but fail to document this. Very well, I'll do so for you and in the process expose your confirmation bias... the only version that I'm aware of that translates it such is the NIV:
Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air.
The problem is that the NIV is a shamelessly biased translation prompted by the Christian Reformed Church and the National Association of Evangelicals... they claim that by including translators from a large cross-section of Christian denominations that the NIV has been "safeguarded ... from sectarian bias", this despite the subsequent claim that "the translators were united in their commitment to the authority and infallibility of the Bible as God's Word in written form" (Preface v) --- this, of course, is itself reflective of sectarian interest since not all Christians would commit to so radical a claim as biblical infallibility. And, not surprisingly, the like-minded translators' bias shines through in
mistranslations of passages like Gen 2:19 where they sweep aside the contradiction under discussion with a sleight of hand, misleading unsuspecting readers such as yourself into thinking there is no problem when there really is one.
Now here is the same verse in other major translations:
And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air... (KJV)
Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air... (NKJV)
And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky... (NASB)
So the LORD God formed out of the ground various wild animals and various birds of the air... (NAB)
So from the soil Yahweh God fashioned all the wild animals and all the birds of heaven. (NJB)
So out of the ground the LORD God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air... (NRSV)
And the LORD God formed out of the earth all the wild beasts and all the birds of the sky... (JPS)
So on the one hand we have the NIV with "had formed" and on the other hand we have all these other translations with "formed/fashioned"... are you seriously going to suggest that all the scholars involved in these other versions botched the job, that their knowledge of Hebrew is deficient compared to the NIV translators? I can assure you with over twenty years of biblical Hebrew under my belt and easily passing two competency exams in the language at the graduate and post-graduate levels of university that I am in a position to evaluate what's going on here and, rest assured, the majority of translations in this case have it right and the NIV reflects a blatant mistranslation aimed at eliminating the conflict between Gen 2:19 and the creation account in the previous chapter.
Kind regards,
Jonathan