Saturday, December 10, 2011

Adam Names the Animals

Genesis 2:19-20
19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.

Commentary
Here God created some additional animals in front of Adam so he could see God do it. God then has Adam name each kind of animal. This naturally raises the question of  “Could Adam have named all these animals in one day?”

Before this question can be answered it is necessary to know the number of different kinds of animals Adam had to count.  First of all Adam did not have to name millions of species of animals, since “kind” in these verses does not equate to specie, but ether genus or family. Second these were land animals so Adam did not have to name fish and other aquatic animals.

It has been estimated that  Adam would probably have only needed to name some 2,500 kinds of animals. However to allow for some unknown kinds lets make it 3,000 kinds of animals. At one every five seconds Adam could have finished the task in 4 hours and 10 minutes.

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