Contradiction claim
How many of each animal did Noah take into the ark?
Genesis 6:19-20 instructs Noah to bring two of every sort of living thing. Genesis 7:2-3 instructs him to take clean beasts by sevens and unclean by twos, and fowls by sevens. The two instructions stand within a few verses of each other in the same narrative.
2 source records · no review date recorded
How to read this record
Passages side by side
TextThe primary text, as seeded. Nothing here is summarised or paraphrased.
And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female.
Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.
Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.
Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.
Why they appear to conflict
AnalysisEach side states a proposition attributable to its passages. A claim is not assumed to have exactly two sides.
Genesis 6
Two of every sort are to be brought into the ark.
Two of each
Genesis 6:19 · Genesis 6:20
Genesis 7
Clean beasts and fowls are to be taken by sevens, unclean beasts by twos.
Seven of clean, two of unclean
Genesis 7:2 · Genesis 7:3
Formal analysis
AnalysisA contradiction requires a proposition and its incompatible counterpart under materially equivalent conditions. Every dimension below must hold for the formal test to succeed.
No formal analysis has been recorded for this claim yet. Until one exists, the classification cannot be stronger than a descriptive category.
Analytical questions
AnalysisWhat a researcher must answer to classify this record. Open questions are recorded, not resolved by preference.
- Is Genesis 7:2-3 a refinement of the general instruction in Genesis 6:19-20, or an independent instruction?
- Does "by sevens" mean seven individuals or seven pairs?
- Does the clean/unclean distinction appear anywhere else in the flood narrative, and does it presuppose later legislation?
- Does the presence of both instructions in one narrative indicate a composite source, and would that make them incompatible?
Hebrew / Greek relevance
LanguageNo original-language dependency has been recorded for this claim.
Textual variants
ManuscriptA variant is a transmission phenomenon, never in itself a logical contradiction.
No textual variant record is linked to this claim.
Manuscript evidence
ManuscriptManuscript evidence has not yet been curated for this record.
Narrator and speaker analysis
AnalysisWhat the narration establishes, distinguished from what would additionally establish that the reported event occurred.
No narrator or speaker analysis has been recorded for these passages yet.
Proposed harmonisations
InterpretationEach proposal records the premises it must supply that the text does not state. Premises are never injected silently.
A general instruction followed by a specific one
Genesis 6 states the minimum for all creatures; Genesis 7 specifies a larger number for clean animals, needed later for sacrifice.
Premises this proposal must supply
- contextualThe second instruction refines rather than replaces the first.
Editorial Harmonisation Cost Heuristic
1 / 5 — Strongly implied
The narrative order itself places the general instruction first and the specific second, and the flood narrative later reports clean animals being sacrificed. Strongly implied by the immediate context.
Reviewed by CodexTrace Editorial Board on 2026-09-07. This is an editorial heuristic, not an objective measurement.
Critical responses
InterpretationArguments that the proposed reconciliations do not succeed, treated structurally the same way as the harmonisations.
The doublet reflects composite sources
The two instructions use different divine designations and different numbers, which is evidence of two combined accounts rather than one refining the other.
Premises this proposal must supply
- historicalThe flood narrative combines more than one written source.
Analytical classification
Analysis- Classification
- Context dependent
- What it means
- The apparent conflict dissolves under the immediate literary context.
- Requires formal analysis
- No
- Review status
- reviewed
- Categories
- Numbers & quantitiesNarrative detail
- Source collections
- codextrace_research
Sources
SourceEvery externally-sourced claim on this page resolves to one of these records.
- [1]
CodexTrace. "CodexTrace editorial research". licence: CC-BY-4.0
Critical / scholarlyotherCC-BY-4.0 - [2]
King James Version (Authorised Version)
"King James Version (Authorised Version)". licence: public-domain-us
Primarytranslationpublic-domain-usLink unverified
Related records
TextRelated claims
Parallel accounts
Community
CommunityCommunity discussion requires a configured Supabase project on this deployment. Research pages are unaffected.