Genesis 1 speaks of God creating plants, animals and man in that order (on Days 3, 5, 6a and 6b). Genesis 2 tells us that God created man, plants and animals in that order (see Genesis 2:5-9, 19).

Likewise, Genesis chapter 1 speaks of man and woman being created at the same time (1:27) whereas chapter 2 speaks of them being created separately (2:7, 18-25).

Liberal scholars would argue that the different names of God used in Genesis chapters 1 and 2 (God - Elohim - in Genesis 1 and LORD - Yahweh - in Genesis 2) are also evidence that these two chapters were probably written by two different authors.

Are there two creation accounts? Is there a contradiction between Genesis 1 and 2? 

The storyline of Dan Brown's bestselling book, The Da Vinci Code, is that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had a child. This child was the real Holy Grail (as opposed to the cup Jesus drank from at the Last Supper), because it carried the bloodline of Christ. Mary and the child escaped to France after Christ's death and eventually from Christ's bloodline the Kings of France were descended. Jesus' true message was supposedly the sacredness of everything feminine, a truth the Roman Catholic Church tried to suppress down through the ages.

 Well, if you can believe that story, you will fall for anything. However, one of the Da Vinci Code's claims was that one of the ways the early Church (under the malevolent male chauvinist apostles and their successors) tried to suppress the ‘true message' of Jesus was by holding a council in the fourth Century in which they decided which books would be allowed in the Bible. Those that they approved made it into the Bible, and those they wanted to suppress were lost to history.

 An important issue arises from this: Who decided what books made it into the Biblical Canon? (Dictionary Definition: The term ‘canon' means the list of books accepted as part of the Bible). How can Christians believe the Bible to be the Word of God if a fourth Century Church Council of fallible men got to decide which books made it in and which did not?

 INTRODUCTION

The non-Johannine origin of the Pericope Adulterae is considered a foregone conclusion by most textual critics. This is hardly surprising, considering the external evidence against it:

1. The agreement of the most ancient MSS of John’s Gospel in omitting the passage: including P66, P75, Codex Sinaiticus (01), Codex Alexandrinus (A), Codex Vaticanus (B), Codex Ephraemi-Rescriptus (C), Codex Purpureus (N), Codex Borgianus (T) and Codex Washingtonianus (W) - all dating from the 3rd to the 6th centuries.
2. The breadth of versional support is against the passage, most manuscripts of the Syriac, Coptic, Gothic, Armenian, Georgian and Slavonic Versions omitting the incident.
3. The early Greek Church Fathers who provide commentaries on John omit it, including Origen and Chrysostom.
4. The placement of the account in various positions, including at the end of John’s Gospel or at the end of Luke chapter 21 in some manuscripts.
5. The marking of the passage as dubious with an asterisk or obelus in many manuscripts which contain it.
6. Finally, the disturbed state of the text in the manuscripts that contain it, seen in the fact that various forms of the incident are found in the manuscripts. Von Soden classifies seven different versions of the text amongst the manuscripts.

Most modern treatments of the passage have tended to focus on this external evidence. However, internal evidence is also frequently claimed to be against the Pericope Adulterae and it is with the internal evidence that we shall primarily concern ourselves here. The two commonly-voiced internal arguments against the incident are (1) that its style and vocabulary differ from the rest of John’s Gospel and (2) that it interrupts the flow and themes of John’s Gospel. As we shall see, these arguments are rather dubious.