Why did God create man before creating a woman?

Answer 1

God made man because he wanted people of greater intellect than the angels to acknowledge god's power and to know right from wrong. The main purpose of man was to pray. Then he made women because they were the equal companions of man. So that a man would not have been lonely.

Answer 2

There are two different stories of the creation of man in the Book of Genesis, so The Bible gives us a choice:

• Genesis 1:26-27 says that God simply spoke the first man and woman into existence on day six, as the last act of creation. Here, there is no suggestion that the man (or men) was created before the woman (or women).
  
• In the second creation account (Genesis 2:4b-25) Adam was the very first act of creation, and it appears that God actually intended to stop with just Adam. After God made Adam he realised that man would need company (Genesis 2:18-19): "And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air . . ." So God began to create other living things.
  
  It seems to have taken God quite some time to realise that what Adam really needed for company was a woman. Depending on just how many species God is assumed to have created (after all, there are thousands of species that could be potential help meets for Adam), this could have been an extraordinarily long time. Only then did God create Eve.
  

For more information, please visit: http://christianity.answers.com/theology/the-story-of-creation

Answer 3

God created Adam first in order to impress upon him the great kindness that is the existence of man and woman together. Had they been created simultaneously, it would be easier to take this state of affairs for granted. Our tradition teaches that God did not create Woman until Adam felt the lack. According to tradition, there is only one Genesis creation-narrative, with ch.2 serving as an expansion of the brevity of ch.1, not a separate set of events. While Judaism has always seen the Torah as an intricate tapestry that nonetheless had one Divine source, some modern authors such as Wellhausen (the father of modern Biblical-criticism, 1844-1918) have suggested artificially chopping up the narrative and attributing it to various authors, despite the Torah's explicit statement as to its provenance (Exodus 24:12, Deuteronomy 31:24). This need not concern believers, since his claims have been debunked one by one, as Archaeology and other disciplines have demonstrated the integrity of the Torah. No fragments have ever been found that would support his Documentary Hypothesis, which remains nothing more than an arbitrary claim:http://religion.answers.com/theory/debunking-the-jepd-documentary-hypothesis

http://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=6&article=1131(a Christian author)

http://www.WhoReallyWroteTheBible.com/excerpts/chapter4-1.php