Cre
The History of Life
The Evolution of Creation
from Big Bang to Mankind
according to
the Original Text of the Bible
and the Findings of Natural Science
“Science without religion is
lame
and religion without science is
blind.
Both are important
and should work hand in hand.”
Albert Einstein
The quotation on the front page stems from:
Albert Einstein,
1879-1955
Founder of Theory of Relativity
Nobel Prize 1921
“Every serious scientist must possess a type of
religious feeling, because he cannot imagine, that the extremely minute
connections, which he is observing, are being thought by him for the first
time.
In the incomprehensible universe an immeasurably
superior mind is being revealed.
The widespread idea that I am atheist is based on a big
misconception. Whoever reads this out of my scientific theories has hardly
understood them ...
Not God is relative, and not the existance, but our
thinking.
I don’t believe that science and religion necessarily
have to be in contrast. Much more I think that there is a very close connection
between both of them.
And I believe that science without religion is lame
and that religion without science is blind. Both of them are important and
should work hand in hand.
I believe in the mysterious and to be honest I sometimes
face this mystery with great awe. In other words: I believe that there are many
things in the universe which we can not perceive or see through.”
In:
A.Bucky “The private Einstein”, page 159
The key
for the understanding of Genesis 1
5
The Bible text of the creation report 14
The Beginning: A priest discovered the “Big Bang” Genesis 1:2 19
The “tohuwabohu” and the mystery of early life Genesis 1:2 25
1. “Let there be
light!” Genesis 1:3-5 31
How long did
God’s “creation days” last? 35
A scientific
proof for the age of the earth 44
The testimony
of the stars 46
2. The
“firmament”: Here Luther was wrong!
Genesis 1:5-8 48
The worldview
of the prophets 53
3. The coming up
of the mainland Genesis 1:9-10 61
The coming
out of land plants Genesis 1:11-13 63
Did God
“create the species”? 67
4. Why God did
not create the Sun on day four Genesis
1:14-19 60
5. First
animals: Here Darwin was wrong Genesis
1:20-23 74
6a. The coming out
of the land animals! Genesis 1:24-25 79
6b. The creation
of mankind Genesis 1:26-28 82
Genetic proof
for the descent of man 87
We have to reign - but how? Genesis 1:28-30 96
Pain and suffering in creation Genesis 1:31
101
The war about heaven and earth Genesis 2:1
113
7. The mystery
of the seventh day Genesis 2:2-3 117
Did
life come from heaven? The subtitle
Genesis 2:4 120
Summary: The red thread from Genesis 1:1
to 2:4 128
Epilogue: Is Evolution
compatible with Christianity? 133
Links: “Creation & Evolution” 136
2. Adam and Eve in
Eden (Genesis 2)
Warfare in Paradise? 138
The myth of the “second creation report” 140
The text of Genesis 2:5-17 142
Where was Paradise? 143
When did Adam live? 148
Did Adam have a mother?
The clay legend ... 153
“Out of dust” - like you and me! 157
Who was the “second man”? 162
Who is the one from whom we all descend? 166
The name of God: JHWH 168
Adam, Gardener and Soldier 170
Eve - bride under arms 173
Is it possible to make a woman
out of a man? 176
Summary
of Genesis 2: Adam in Eden 179
3. The Attack of the
Serpent (Genesis 3-5)
Who spoke with Eve? 182
How the sin entered into the
world 188
4. Noah and the Flood
(Genesis 6-9)
The Flood - local catastrophe
with worldwide implications 200
5. Babel (Genesis
10-11)
Babel and the “origin of languages” 210
The legendary building of the tower of Babel 215
God’s judgement over system of denominations 218
Denominations today 220
Summary:
Creation & Evolution on one page 223
Genesis is the first book, so to speak the entrance of the Bible. And as
for many doors, we need a key to open it. Fortunately this key is already in
the door: In its last sentence the original text of the creation report gives
us the explanation what the whole chapter is all about.
That is not unusual because in ancient times it was quite common to
finish a document with a final remark, a so-called colophon
which, in retrospective, summarizes the entire text and thus corresponds to a
modern heading.[1] For example the
whole book of Leviticus is summarized in its sub-title: “These are the
commandments, which the LORD commanded Moses for the children of Israel in
mount Sinai.” Leviticus 27:34
Now, the Hebrew original text of the subtitle of the creation-report
contains sensational informations that will open us a door for a much better
understanding of Genesis and even the whole Bible. It begins as follows:
“Elleh toledot ha-schamayim we-ha-arets”
These are the toledot of the heavens and
of the earth. Genesis 2:4
The Hebrew key word toledot means descendants,
generations, genealogy, family tree, pedigree. It stems from the Hebrew
verb yalad = to beget, to bear, to give birth:
ya La D = give birth
ho L i D = beget
to Le Dot = a number of
conceptions, births
In the Bible ...
... toledot occours 39 times and is a special
term for descent and family trees. All passages are quoted on the
following pages according to the King James Version which always translates it
with generations (except Exodus 28:10: “birth”, and 1 Chronicles
7:9 “genealogy”). toledot always stands for descent. Also, according to
the theological dictionaries, toledot literally means “a sequence of
conceptions” or “genealogies” (Gesenius 873, Koehler 1021). With other words:
The so-called “creation report”
is a family tree !
According to this sensational discovery the entire
creation report is made up by a sequence of (biological) conceptions - it is
based upon descent. The ancient text of the Bible expresses in one simple
sentence what Darwin found out several thousand years later:
All the creatures
mentioned in the creation report
are part of a gigantic family tree -
and mankind is related to all of them!
Many family-trees in the Bible
If there is a book in which descent is of importance
then it is the Bible. It contains several family trees, which can be classified
into two categories:
·
One records the precise sequence of a certain line of
descent. Here Ruth 4:18-22 as an example:
·
Now these are the generations (toledot) of
Pharez: Pharez begat (holid) Hezron, and Hezron begat Ram, and
Ram begat Amminadab ...
·
The second kind of genealogy describes how different
lines branch off from a common origin. A classical example for this is the
genealogy of Genesis 10 which is very similar to Genesis 1: Entire populations
develop from common ancestors, the report is expressively called “family tree”
- look at the next page.
In such spread-out family trees, that give an overall
view of families and peoples, it is neither possible nor necessary to mention
every single member. As a consequence the verb holid = beget
appears seldom if at all. Instead it is contained in the sub-title which
characterizes the whole process as a line of descent or family tree. A
comparison of the two family trees in Genesis 1 and Genesis 10 shows the
correspondence - entire “populations” develop from common ancestors:
... provides one more important confirmation. The whole
creation report again and again uses expressions like seeds and kinds,
be fruitful and multiply, which all indicate descent. In
an overall review, the different plant- and animal “clans” are listed, which
one after the other settled the earth.
The New Testament also begins with a family-tree!
Everybody who knows the Bible also knows that family
trees play an important role in it. Therefore it is not an accident that even
the New Testament begins with a family tree:
A record of the
genealogy (greek: genesis) of Jesus, the Messiah, the son of David,
the son of Abraham. Matthew 1:1 (according to NIV)
In fact the Hebrew
translation of the New Testament uses exactly the same word here as the Hebrew
Old Testament in Genesis 2:4, namely toledot!
These are the genealogies
(Hebrew: toledot) of Jesus Christ, the son of David ...
And correspondingly
the Septuaginta, a Greek translation made by jews some centuries before Christ,
translates the text of Genesis 2:4 with exactly the same words that can be
found in Matthew 1:1:
This is the book of
the genealogy (Greek: genesis) of heaven and earth ... Genesis 2:4
(according to the Septuaginta)
This shows that our interpretation of the creation
report is in agreement with the Hebrew language. We have not bent the Bible
text into the right shape, but we only brought to the light what it wanted to
say for thousands of years: “This is the family-tree, these are the generations
of heaven and earth!”
Hebrew “toledot” = descendants,
genealogies
39 occurences, King James Version
Genesis 2:4 These are the generations of
the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD
God made the earth and the heavens.
Genesis 5:1 This is the book of the generations
of Adam ...
Genesis 6:9 These are the generations of
Noah: Noah was ...
Genesis 10:1 Now these are the generations
of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons
born ...
Genesis 10:32 These are the families of the sons
of Noah, after their generations, in their nations ...
Genesis 11:10 These are the generations of
Shem: Shem was an hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad ...
Genesis 11:27 These are the generations of
Terah: Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begat Lot.
Genesis 25:12 Now these are the generations
of Ishmael, Abraham's son, whom Hagar bare unto Abraham ...
Genesis 25:13 And these are the names of the sons
of Ishmael, by their names, according to their generations ...
Genesis 25:19 And these are the generations
of Isaac, Abraham's son: Abraham begat Isaac ...
Genesis 36:1 Now these are the generations
of Esau, who is Edom ...
Genesis 36:9 And these are the generations
of Esau the father of the Edomites in mount Seir ...
Genesis 37:2 These are the generations of
Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock ...
Exodus 6:16 And these are the names of the sons
of Levi according to their generations; Gershon, and Kohath, and
Merari ...
Exodus 6:19 And the sons of Merari ... these are the
families of Levi according to their generations.
Exodus 28:10 ...and the other six names ...
according to their birth.
4.Mose 1:20 And the children of Reuben, Israel's eldest
son, by their generations, after their families, by the house of their
fathers, according to the number of the names ...
4.Mose 1:22 The children of Simeon, by their generations,
after their families, by the house of their fathers ... able to go forth to
war.
4.Mose 1:24 Of the children of Gad, by their generations ...
4.Mose 1:26 Of the children of Judah, by their generations ...
4.Mose 1:28 Of the children of Issachar, by their generations ...
4.Mose 1:30 Of the children of Zebulun, by their generations ...
4.Mose 1:32 Of the children of Joseph, namely, of
the children of Ephraim, by their generations, after their families ...
4.Mose 1:34 Of the children of Manasseh, by their generations ...
4.Mose 1:36 Of the children of Benjamin, by their generations ...
4.Mose 1:38 Of the children of Dan, by their generations ...
4.Mose 1:40 Of the children of Asher, by their generations ...
4.Mose 1:42 Of the children of Naphtali, throughout
their generations, after their families ... able to go forth to
war ...
4.Mose 3:1 These also are the generations
of Aaron and Moses in the day (yom) that the LORD spake with Moses in mount
Sinai.
Ruth 4:18 These are the generations of
Pharez: Pharez begat Hezron.
1.Chronicles 1:29 These are their generations:
The firstborn of Ishmael, Nebaioth; then Kedar, and ...
1.Chronicles 5:7 And his brethren by their families,
when the genealogy of their generations was reckoned ...
1.Chronicles 7:2 And the sons of Tola; Uzzi, and
Rephaiah ... they were valiant men of might in their generations ...
1.Chronicles 7:4 With them, by their generations,
after the house of their fathers, were bands of soldiers for
war ...
1.Chronicles 7:9 And the number of them, after their genealogy
by their generations, heads of the house of their fathers ...
1.Chronicles 8:28 These were heads of the
fathers, by their generations, chief men.
1.Chronicles 9:9 And their brethren, according to their generations,
nine hundred and fifty and six.
1.Chronicles 9:34 These chief fathers of the Levites were
chief throughout their generations ...
1.Chronicles 26:31 Among the Hebronites ...
according to the generations of his fathers ...
An open door
The history of nature and mankind unfolds according to
natural and spiritual laws and can be compared with the development of seed: If
you know what kind of seed has been sown, you are able to predict, what kind of
plant and fruit will develop in time.
That’s why the first book of the Bible is of such
significance: it describes the roots out of which modern history is
developping - “Genesis = origin” is the exciting book of the beginnings.
Here we encounter exactly those phenomena we are increasingly confronted with,
only they have “grown” in the meantime. We absolutely have to learn our lessons
from prehistory, because otherwise we will repeat the mistakes of the past -
only we will have to pay a much higher price than our ancestors.
Now the Hebrew text has provided us with the key for the
creation report: the origin of life is based on “totally natural” descent which
is tightly interwoven with creative acts of God. Thus, the “door” into Genesis
is wide open, and this will have effect on our understanding of the whole
Bible, because Genesis is its first book, you might say the “entrance to the
Bible”. Already the first steps lead us into a realm of revealed mysteries, and
we can prepare for more surprises - as long as we allow the Bible to have its
say.
By the way ...
Did you know that the most frequent noun of the Old
Testament is ben = son? This noun, being a byword for descent, reminds us, what an important
part descent is playing in the Bible and in God’s plans: It occurs 4.929 times,
followed by elohim = God with 2.600 occurances - only the name of
God, Jahweh =
LORD,
is more frequent, with 6.828 occurances. These three words already contain a
trend-setting message: The LORD - Son - God!
The Creation Report
The text of Genesis 1:1-2:4
according to the AMERICAN STANDARD VERSION
Titles, footnotes and
comments in brackets were added.
Italicized words are
not in the Hebrew original.
Chapters and verse
divisions date from the 15th century A.D.
and are not part of the original text of the Bible.
The creation of the universe
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth.
The early earth in focus
2 And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was
upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved righeph upon the face of the
waters.
Day one: sunlight reaches the surface of the
earth
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was
light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided
the light from the darkness. 5 And God called the light Day, and
the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one
day jom.
Second day: a new atmosphere
6 And God said, Let there be a firmament raqia^ in the midst of the
waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 7 And God
made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from
the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. 8 And God
called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a
second day.
Third day: the appearance of dry land
9 And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be
gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. 10 And
God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called
he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
Third day: land plants “brought forth”
11 And God said,
Let the earth put forth grass, herbs yielding seed, and fruit-trees
bearing fruit after their kind, wherein is the seed thereof, upon the earth:
and it was so. 12 And the earth brought forth jatsa', grass, herbs
yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit, wherein is the seed
thereof, after their kind: and God saw that it was good. 13 And
there was evening and there was morning, a third day.
Fourth day: The heavenly lights can be seen
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the
firmament of heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for
signs, and for seasons, and for days and years: 15 and let them be
for lights in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was
so. 16 And God made the two great lights; the greater light to rule
the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
17 And God set them in the firmament of heaven to give light upon
the earth, 18 and to rule over the day and over the night, and to
divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. 19 And
there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.
Fifth day: Animal life in the sea
20 And God said, Let the waters swarm with swarms of
living creatures nephesh, and let birds ^oph fly above the earth in the open
firmament of heaven. 21 And God created the great sea-monsters, and
every living creature that moveth, wherewith the waters swarmed, after their
kind, and every winged bird after its kind: and God saw that it was good. 22 And
God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the
seas, and let birds multiply on the earth. 23 And there was evening
and there was morning, a fifth day.
Sixth day: land animals “come forth”
24 And God said,
Let the earth bring forth jatsa' living creatures after their kind, cattle, and creeping
things, and beasts of the earth after their kind: and it was so. 25 And
God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their
kind, and everything that creepeth upon the ground after its kind: and God saw
that it was good.
Sixth day: mankind prepared and created
26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after
our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the
birds of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over
every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 And God
created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and
female created he them.
Blessing and commission
28 And God blessed them: and God said unto them, Be
fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have
dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over
every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
Human privilege: fruits and seeds to eat - herbs
for animals
29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb
yielding seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in
which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for food: 30 and
to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the heavens, and to
everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given
every green herb for food: and it was so. 31 And God saw
everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And there was
evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Seventh day: Completion of the work
2:1 And the heavens and the earth were finished, and
all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God finished his
work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work
which he had made.
Blessing and sanctification of the seventh day
2:3 And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it;
because that in it he rested from all his work which God had created and made.
The subtitle of the whole report
These are the generations toledot
of the heavens and of the earth, when they were created ...
Genesis 2:4
“In the Beginning”
A Priest discovered the Big Bang!
This is how the first words of the Bible look like in
Hebrew: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” For thousands of
years, the Bible takes it for granted that the universe had a beginning. In the
meantime, the great majority of scientists is also convinced that there really
was a “beginning” in which the universe “exploded” from a single spot. But that
has not always been so:
Secular science always assumed
that the universe is eternal. Believers had to say: “Well, even if the universe
seems to be static, it must have had a beginning when God created it.” The
discovery of the 20’th century that the universe is not an invariable, eternal
entity was a total shock for the secular mind. It came totally unexpected.
Lee
Strobel “Indizien für einen Schöpfer” Seite 143
Thus, the model of the big bang is anything but an
attempt to deny God but, to the contrary:
“It was a man of God who had the
idea of the Big Bang. At the end of the nineteenth century the young Belgian
priest and astronomer Georges Lemaître learned about a mysterious discovery.
His American colleague Edwin Hubble had noticed that all galaxies recede from
the earth with extreme speed. It occured to Lemaître that the distant galaxies
behave like the fragments of an exploding grenade. Shortly after that he
published in the science magazin “Nature” a phantastically-sounding theory:
Ages ago, something like an “ur-atom” should have exploded out of which space,
time and matter emerged. The other scientists were horrified. Their pious
colleague had to be wrong. By all means, they wanted to avoid in their
cosmologic modells anything like a creative act.
But the priest was right. Today hardly anybody doubts the fact that once
everything began with a “Big Bang”. Fifteen billion years ago ...”
Olaf Stampf in DER SPIEGEL 2/2002: “Die Wiedergeburt des Kosmos” on page
148
Even concerning the character of this beginning the
Bible gives us a hint: The Hebrew word bara = create
describes a sudden act, through which God brings something total new into
existence . Thus, “big bang” is quite a good name for the creation of the
universe:
“Within three minutes” Bill
Bryson writes in “A short story of almost everything”, “98 percent of all
matter which exists now or will ever exist came into being. There is a
universe. It’s a place of the most fullfilling possibilities and in addition it
is even beautiful. And all this was finished within the time it takes to make
oneself a sandwich.
Lee
Strobel “Indizien für einen Schöpfer” Seite 127
The “Big Bang” of science harmonizes with the
“beginning” of Genesis 1. Thus, the first sentence of the Bible could be
the location where science and faith meet each other ...
No creation without evolution!
It is true that the use of bara' = to create indicates a certain
suddenness, compare Exodus 34:10; Numbers 16:30, Isaiah 48:7. But a sudden
beginning does not at all imply an immediate completion! To the contrary: all
creative acts of God indicate new beginnings which mark the start of a further
development of the thing created. That's why the start of the Genesis creation
is specifically called “beginning”, which forces the reader to expect a further
development. In fact, it takes 19 verses until the next creative act happens!
In addition, the Bible itself gives us what is probably
the most vivid example for “creation and evolution”: It states that each
individual human life represents, in a certain way, a new creation - which
happens in the mother's womb!
Everyone, whom I created
(bara') for my glory ...
Isaiah 43:7, NIV, compare Psalm 102:19; Malachi 2:10
According to the Bible, every person is a special
creation. Many characteristics of a person are specified by the genes this
individual has been given. These, in turn, are selected during the fertilization
act, combining sperm and ovum. This event happens within very short time,
relatively suddenly - and it amounts to a creative act! But this is not at all
the end but only the beginning of an extensive development in which the
personal features unfold. This “evolution” of the incividual does not run its
course fully automatically, but depends on many further influences from
environmental factors to own decisions and actions. All this shows to what high
degree God includes natural processes into his creative acts.
Only three creative
acts in the whole “creation report”!
Another misunderstanding is the belief that God is
constantly busy performing miraculous creative acts. But in the Hebrew Bible, bara'
= to create is a rare word. On more than a thousand pages, it occures
only 47 times.[2] Even in the 31
verses of the “creation report”, we cannot find many creative acts; only three
new creations are mentioned:
Genesis 1: 1 heaven
and earth = the universe, matter,
space, time
Genesis 1:21 animals = beings with a soul (anima = soul)
Genesis 1:27 mankind = mental, spiritual beings
These are three creative acts which, in the Bible, stand
for the relatively sudden origin of entities. On the scientific side these
correspond to three events, which happened so suddenly that two of them got
quite “explosive” names:
·
The “Big Bang”, the sudden and at the same time
inexplicable emergence of matter
·
The “Cambric Explosion”, the sudden appearence of animal
life
·
The meteoric rise of mankind
Everything else in Genesis 1, between these creative
acts, consists of developmental processes. Nineteen verses of “evolution” lie
between the first two creative acts! Thus, we see that creation and evolution
are tightly knit together: Every creative act is followed by a subsequent
development, in which the newly created potential unfolds. On the other hand,
the results of such a process represent the necessary basis for the next
creative act, which is directed somewhere into this ongoing evolution ... The Bible
describes this with the following words:
God created his work,
by making it (or: to prepare it). Genesis 2:3
The creative acts of God caused such an acceleration in
the development that they point to a Creator. This is also true for “the
beginning”:
Astronomy leads us to
a unique event, to a universe which was created out of nothing ... and to which
underlies a (one could say supernatural) plan ...
The best data which science provides are exactly what I would have predicted,
if I had had nothing else but the five books of Moses ... Nobel Prize
winner Arno Penzias in: Lee Strobel “Indizien für einen Schöpfer” 103, 203
While in former centuries people marveled at the night
sky and were encouraged in their faith in an allmighty God, now the findings of
modern astronomy have become an even stronger argument for the belief in an
author of all things, an argument which convinces even (or better: especially?)
high carat scientists. An example for this is Allan Rex Sandage, a worldwide
recognized cosmologue who explored the mystery of the quasars as well as the
age of clusters of stars, who measured the distances between far away galaxies
and quantified the extension of the universe. From childhood on he had been an
atheist, but by his research he came to believe in God:
My science has brought me to the
conclusion that the world is much more complicated than can be explained by
science ... Only by the supernatural I can understand the mystery of my
existence.
Allan Rex Sandage in Lee Strobel “Indizien für einen Schöpfer” Seite
95,96
The tide has turned! The world has not become so easy to
grasp that God cannot find a place in it - as the “Enlightenment” wanted to
make people believe. Rather, the universe has turned out to be so unimaginably
big and complex that modern man has to ask himself: “What is man that God
should even take notice of him?!” But the God of the galaxies is also the God
of the atoms, and what could hinder him to reveal himself to us? What if
Galilei was right when he said:
“The Holy Scriptures as well as
nature have their origin in the Word of God. God reveals himself in the acts of
nature in the same wonderful manner as in the venerable sentences of the holy
Bible.”
I have never been an atheist ... The impossibility of conceiving that
this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through
chance, seems to me the chief argument for the existence of God. (Letter to a
Dutch student.)
The theory of Evolution is quite compatible with the belief in a
God ...
(In a letter to a German student.)
I cannot anyhow be
contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man,
and to conclude, that everything is the result of brute force.
Max
Planck, founder of quantum theory
Religion und natural science do not exclude each other as some people
believe and fear nowadays, but they complement and imply each other.
The immediate evidence for the compatibility of religion and natural
science is the historical fact that especially the greatest naturalists of all
times, men like Kepler, Newton, Leibniz, were inspired by profound religiosity
...
For the believer God
is the beginning,
for the scientist he is the end of all reflections.
Isaak
Newton, founder of classical mechanics
The marvelous
arrangement and harmony of the universe
can only have been accomplished according to the plan of an allmighty being.
This is and remains my ultimate realization.
Werner
Heisenberg
The first drink from
the cup of natural science makes atheistic.
But on the ground of the cup God is waiting ...
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
But the earth was (or: became) “tohu-wabohu”,
and darkness was over the flood,
and the Spirit of God was breeding over the face of the waters.
Genesis 1:1-2
The clef for the whole creation report
The first two verses of Genesis are as much as the clef
at the beginning of a song, fixing the key or tone in which the entire
melody is written. It is the clef which indicates with what kind of
pre-understanding all of the following notes have to be interpreted. If one
overlooks or misinterprets this “omen” the individual notes can still be
sounded, but when the context is presented as a whole, serious disharmonies
will be the consequence. This is why we have to diligently observe the first
verses of the Bible and keep their meaning in mind as we follow the text: “In
the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” After this verse, the
existence of the universe including the early earth is taken for granted. It is
interesting that the heavens are mentioned first and the earth second.
Similarly the natural sciences teach that first “the heavens” with galaxies and
stars came into being, afterwards the planet earth.
The earth however ...
The Hebrew text does not go on: “wayyehi ha-arets =
and then the earth”, as it is the case in the following verses and occurs in
the Bible hundreds of times, but “we-ha-arets hayetah”, as can be found in
other Biblical texts:
The heavens are the
heavens of the LORD, but the earth (we-ha-arets) he has given to man.
Psalm 115:16; DBY, NIV; similarly in Ecclesiastes 1:4, Ezekiel 14:16
The stress in Genesis 1:1-2 lies on a certain
antithesis: “the heavens and the earth” and “the earth (alone)”. Something
about the earth must have been different from “the heavens”: it alone is called
“tohuwabohu”! Also, for the understanding of the further text it is important
to keep in mind that beginning with the second verse, the scope is the planet
earth. All the events that are described in the subsequent verses do not
concern the universe but the planet earth some time after its creation. This
will be of importance later on.
... became (or: was) tohu-wabohu ...
Here we encounter the Hebrew expression tohu-wabohu, which in German is
also used to describe a mess or a chaos. Later we will examine the meaning of
these two words in more detail, but one thing can be said right now: The
Biblical statement of the earth having been tohu-wabohu in its beginning
disproves the opinion sometimes taught that the universe or the earth had been
created as instantly perfect from the very beginning. On the contrary, in an
early phase after its creation the earth was in a chaotic condition, and only
later processes made it what it is today!
The tohuwabohu-earth
and natural science
... and darkness was over the deep (Hebrew: tehom) ... During the
tohuwabohu, the earth was covered with waters, because the Hebrew noun tehom
depicts great and often intensively moving masses of water (Gesenius 871;
Koehler 1019), and with darkness. Today it is a common view that in its
beginning the earth went through a phase where it was mainly covered with
water. It is supposed that the gas covering the early earth differed very much
from the atmosphere the earth has nowadays. It is probable that the earth at that
time resembled a desolate “tohuwabohu” of waters covered with darkness. Hoimar
von Ditfurth describes the state of the early earth as follows:
An incredibly dense atmosphere
did not allow a glimpse of sunlight to penetrate because of its high proportion
of water vapour. For thousands of years, cloud-bursts occured in an intensity
that we cannot imagine today. In addition to that, temperatures of more than
100 degrees centigrade prevailed and the earth's surface was permanently
covered by extremely hot water vapour. Schumacher “Urknall und
Schöpfergott” page 103
Tohuwabohu, darkness and raging masses of water covering
the whole earth - how could one describe the condition of the early earth
more accurately with so few words? But the most exciting statement concerning
the early earth is made in the very last words of the prologue ...
And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Genesis 1:2
The Hebrew word reegheph, which we translated hover,
occurs only once more in the Bible:
God found (the people
of) Israel in a desert land and in the tohu ... He shielded him and
cared for him, he guarded him as the apple of his eye, like an eagle that stirs
up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch
them and carries them on its wings. Deuteronomy 32:10,11
It is a striking correspondence that this passage, just
as Genesis 1:2, talks about a tohu. And then it describes how God
protects already existing life in an environment which is hostile to life. This
action of God is then compared to the hovering of an eagle over its young,
using the same word reegheph as in Genesis 1:2. It appears to be an
expression which stands for the protection and furthering of beginning life:
reegheph:
properly cover, protect, therefore to preserve, take care of; to breed,
hatch, to rest on something in a protecting way. Aramaic: to lie on something
to give life, to protect, to care ... Julius Fürst: “Hebrew and
Chaldee Dictionary of the Old Testament”, Leipzig 1857
This is confirmed by the fact that the closely related
Arab and Syric verbs mean: spread the wings to protect and to lay
over, brood, Gesenius 756; Koehler-Baumgartner 886,887. And doesn't the
image of “eggs” or “chicks”, standing for young life, fit perfectly into the
beginning of a family tree which developes under God's “wings”? Isn't this
exactly what we should expect from a genealogy: that it starts with the early
ancestors? So we come to the conclusion: During the time of the “tohuwabohu”
primitive forms of life must have been in existence in the waters of the early
earth. This also explains why it is not said that God hovered “in heaven” or
“over the earth” but over the waters that were totally covered with darkness:
The waters of the chaotic earth were the evironment in which life on earth had
its “nursery”.
The extreme
complexity of life points to a creator
During the last 300 years, the age of life on earth had
to be increased again and again. Roland Brinkmann writes in his book “Geology”:
Life seems to be almost as old
as the oldest sedimentary rocks. Roland Brinkmann “Geology” page 50
The problem for many scientists is therefore that the
period between the end of the lethal meteorite bombardment and the appearance
of life becomes shorter and shorter ‑ much too short to make an
“accidental” origin of life plausible. And this problem becomes even more
serious as one considers the enormous difference between non-living organic
structures and even the most simple forms of life:
Even now, in the
space-age the most complicated technical apparatus we know is simple in
comparison to the most primitive form of independent life. Ekkehard Grundmann in
his standard work about Cellular Biology 1964
In the field of cellular research a similar development
has occured as in the field of nuclear research: At first atoms seemed to be
“little balls of undifinable substance equipped with a solid nucleus”. But
ungoing research revealed more and more that these “simple balls” represent
extremely complex structures. This is true for atoms, consisting of quite a
number of elementary particles and forces which interfere in extremely complex
ways, so that there is good reason to claim today that an atom is much more
complicated than a Swiss watch. But to an even much higher degree this must be
said about living cells:
We have always underestimated
the cell ...
The cell as an entity resembles a factory consisting of a sophisticated network
of closely tied assembly lines, each being built up by a set of big protein
machines ...
Bruce
Alberts, chairman of the National Academy of Sciences
in: Lee Strobel “Indizien für einen Schöpfer” page 255
That’s why Ernst Mayr, in his standard work “The
development of biology” (page 469), expresses the conviction:
The development of life must
have been an absolutely single event. The prospects that this improbable
phenomenon could have occured more than once are extraordinarily small - no
matter how many millions of planets might exist in the universe.
Indeed, Dean Kenyon, a Biophysicist from San Francisco
State University and co-author of an influential book, which asserts, that the
development of life could have been “biochemically predestined” because of the
natural affinity between amino acids, has now turned down the conclusions of
his own book and declared that ...
“... in the meantime he is
mistrusting all naturalistic theories about the “Origin of Life”. Because of
the enormous molecular complexity of the cell and because of the fact that the
RNA carries such a lot of information, Kenyon now believes that all evidence
points to a planner and designer who created life” (Lee Strobel “Indizien für einen
Schöpfer” Seite 93.
Nowadays, many natural scientists come to simlar
conclusions: On the one hand they are convinced that life on earth has
developed by descent and over huge periods of time. But on the other hand they
cannot understand the phenomenon of life without a creative intelligence. Thus
they find themselves in a quandary, as creation and evolution seem to be two
irreconcilable alternatives. But is this really true? Why don’t we allow the
chief whitness “to have a say” by asking: What does the original Bible text say
about “creation and evolution”?
1. “Let there be Light!”
And God said: Let there be light! And there was light.
And God saw the light that it was good.
And God seperated the light from the darkness.
And God called the light “day”,
and the darkness he called “night”.
Genesis 1:3-5
No creative act!
Since the text does not state much about how light
appeared; an apparently elegant solution seems to be that God simply “created”
the light. But the problem with this “miraculous” version is that you have to
read into the report a creative act which is not found there at all!
Furthermore light already existed since the creation of “heaven and earth” (Genesis 1:1), which designates the universe.
As this also includes our sun its light did not have to be created a second
time.
It
is important that at the time of the tohuwabohu not the whole universe was
dark! Otherwise it should read: ... and everything or heaven
and earth were dark. But the text limits the darkness expressly to a
certain area, namely to the flood, which covered the earth:
... and darkness was upon
the face of the deep ...
No,
the scope of the event described here is not the universe, but the earth, on
which the reporting concentrates. Thus the context shows clearly that God
meant: “Let there be light!” ... on planet earth![3]
Very
frequently in the Bible we find that God speaks and as a consequence it
happens. In most cases the fulfillment of God's word extends over lengthy
periods of time. As far as the first appearence of light on earth is concerned,
we may suppose that it happened as follows:
A
further cooling and chemical changes in the atmosphere made it possible that
the light of the sun could reach the earth's surface, though still diffuse
because of the permanent cloud cover. Now day and night became distinguishable
on earth.
In
the original text the word, which is used in Genesis 1:2 for “darkness =
GHoSHeK”, has the same form as “GHaSaK = to hold back” (Gesenius
264,266; Köhler-Baumgartner 338,341) to which it also should be related. This
is not compelling evidence, but it fits well to the idea of an earth, which was
covered with darkness because clouds “held back” the light of the sun. As it is
said in the book of Ijob:
Where wast thou when
I laid the foundations of the earth ... when I made clouds the garment thereof
and darkness a swaddling-band for it ... Job 38:4,9
Thus, in an early phase of the earth’s genesis it was
covered with darkness because of a “blanket” of clouds.
What was the light
“good” for?
And God saw the light that it
was good. Genesis 1:4
To
say of a thing that it is “good” presupposes a standard. The Hebrew word tob
used here means good, useful, serving well for a certain purpose.
Thus the question arises: What is the purpose, for which the light was “good”?
Since
the whole text is called a “family tree”, the answer is obvious: The light was good
for life on earth. And indeed: If we go back a step, we see that God “bred”
over the waters of the tohuwabohu just before “light” appeared. This “breeding”
points out that some forms of life existed in these waters. For the promotion
of this life the light was suitable. And when we look towards the
later events, we see new forms of life gradually appearing on earth, until it
is finally populated with plants, animals and humans. No doubt: for this the
light was an indispensable condition. Thereby our question is
answered: The light was “good” for the family tree of the terrestrial life,
first of all for the organisms developing in the waters of the early earth.
As
a consequence, the forms of life, which survived the tohuwabou catastrophe must
have been able to exist without sunlight and their metabolism must have
functioned accordingly. The medium in which they evolved was the water of the
worldwide ocean, which was probably salty and warmer than today.
And God called the
light “day”, and the darkness he called “night” ... Genesis 1:5
Here we find a further confirmation that the text is not
about the creation of light in the universal sense: light and darkness are
called “day” and “night”! This reminds us of the fact that we deal with
terrestrial conditions. Beginning with the second verse of the Bible, the view
focusses upon the earth. It is on the earth that from now on “day” and “night” can
be registered!
The view
of natural sciences
As
we have already seen, today it is assumed that in an early phase the earth was
hot such that a large portion of the waters was present in the form of vapour
which, together with various other gases, formed the early atmosphere.
Accordingly, it is expected that at that time the earth was wrapped into total
darkness. In the course of the progressive cooling of the earth more and more
of this vapour must have condensed. As a consequence, the cloud cover, which up
to than had held back the light, became ever more permeable, until finally the
first light could penetrate to the earth”s surface as brightness - ”and
there was light”!
Thus
it was not suddenly bright on earth, but after a time of deep darkness the
sunlight gradually began to shine through the cloud cover more and more. This
light was still filtered and partially absorbed, but the formerly dark earth
nevertheless became bright. According to the spherical shape of
the earth, two halves could now be distinguished: the dayhemisphere of
the earth, turned towards the sun, and the nighthemisphere turned away from the
sun.
And it became
evening, and it became morning - one day. Genesis 1:5
What
is, looking back, called a “day” is of course not a human day - because as
everybody knows these do not end with the morning! Here, a “day of God”, a
period of God’s activity is meant, which obviously is much longer than our
earthly days.
But
again and again believers insist that the creation-days must have been
24-hour-days. And on the first sight there are some good reasons for this
interpretation, especially the mention of “evening” and “morning”, which seem
to belong to a human day. But this interpretation leads to some conclusions, which
contradict Scripture as well as reality and become an obstacle for many people
to believe in the Word of God. So let us have a second look at the text and
find out what the Bible says about the length of the creation days - and that’s
quite a lot ...
How Long did the “Days” of
Genesis Last?
And God called the light “day”,
and the darkness he called “night”.
And it became evening, and it became morning - one day. Genesis 1:5
What does Hebrew “yom = day” mean?
The process of the production of the family tree is
divided into seven “days”. The dictionaries make it clear that the Hebrew word yom
= day covers a whole range of meanings:
·
Most frequently, yom is used for a
calendar day of 24 hours.
·
Often, it designates the bright time of a day, i.e.
approximately twelve hours (approximately, because the length of the daylight
changes according to the rhythm of summer and winter, and also with the degree
of latitude).
·
And again and again, yom is also used for
unspecified, often lengthy periods. Let me quote from the “Encyclopedia of the
Bible” by Fritz Rienecker (page 1363):
“In the day (Genesis 2:17)
means “in the instant, when ...”;
“unto this day” (1 Samuel 27:6; 2 Kings 2:22) stands for “until today”;
“the day of battle and war” (Hiob 38:23) is translated as “time of
battle” (Psalm 78:9; Hosea 10:14);
“days” (Isaiah) are “times” ... and the “days of a man” are
the duration of his life (Psalm 102:24,25; Isaiah 38:5; Lamentations 5:21).
Examples for long days in the Bible
In many cases, yom loses the specific meaning of day and becomes a
quite general and somewhat vague expression for time, period ...
Often the translation “day” can be maintained, since the usages of yom
cannot be distinguished sharply from each other, and because the basic meaning
gleams through, more or less, in many cases.
Theologisches
Handwörterbuch zum Alten Testament, THW 711
The following verses make it clear that the word day
can stand for a period or an era:
And it will happen on
that yom = day, that Tyre shall be forgotten for seventy years ...
Isaiah 23:15
Note
that here it is definitely not a review of the seventy years that is meant
(which could happen on one “day”), but the seventy years themselves are going
to happen on that one “day”!
On the yom =
day I cleanse you from all your sins,
I will resettle your towns, and the ruins will be rebuilt. Ezekiel 36:33, NIV
Here yom=day
means the time span of many years, until a devastated land will be rebuilt and
inhabited again.
Especially those days of the Bible which
refer to actions of God often cover longer periods of time, for example the
day of the LORD (Ezekiel 13:5 and others), the day of visitation
(Jeremiah 46:21), the day of eternity (2.Peter 2:18), the
day of salvation, which lasts until now (2 Korinthians 6:2) and so on
...
If we
consider Genesis 1 from this point of view, it is obvious that we have to deal
with God's “days”, because humans didn't even exist for the first five “days”,
and it is God who acts.
It is a matter of fact that the days of God have to be
measured on quite a different scale than our human days. Not in vain the Bible
stresses:
For a thousand years
in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the
night. Psalm 90:4, NIV; compare 2 Peter 3:8
God himself is not subject to time, he reigns over it.
God sees the events of our time as we conceive the past day - which is, as
it were, timelessly present in our mind. Also it would be inappropriate to
convert God's days into thousands of human years, for example the seven
creation days into seven thousand human years. The Bible does not say: “One
thousand years are one day”, but: “one thousand years are like
one day”. And it goes on: “like a night watch” (those are four hours) and “even
like a day that has just gone by” - as it were timeless.
The temporal
framework of the Bible
No doubt, God's dimensions surmount human imagination.
The Bible stresses that God shows mercy to thousands of generations, Exodus
20:6. That must be some tenthousands of years, and these again are almost
nothing in comparison with the age of the earth: “Generations come and
generations go, but the earth remains forever”, Ecclesiastes 1:4. The Bible
measures time in so called “eternities”, Hebrew ^olam, Greek ayon,
which describe long ages beyond human imagination. A number of these
“eternities” have already passed by, Ecclesiastes 1:10; 1.Corinthians 10:11,
Ephesians 3:9. That does not sound as if the earth was young! Significantly the
Greek word ayon is used in scientific language, as (a)eon, in order to
designate the highest category of earth ages, each of which covers hundreds of
millions of years. Can it be that the “unbelieving” scientists understood
better than the “believers” that “from the creation of the world God’s ETERNAL
power is clearly seen BY THE THINGS THAT ARE MADE”, Romans 1:20?! Can it be that
a scientific look at heaven and earth reveals the ETERNAL character of God’s
power? Anyway, we don’t honour God by shrinking his days to our human
standards!
The Bible does not
teach a “young earth”!
There is not one single verse in scripture which would
give us a number for the age of the earth. Every calculation of the age of the
universe - for example that of the famous James Usher, archbishop of Ireland,
who in the year 1650 claimed to unmistakably read out of the Bible, that God
created the earth in the year 4,004 a.Chr. - are based on several
interpretations and human speculations. (His contemporary John Lightfoot went
even one step further and claimed that God had begun with creation on the evening
before october 18’th.) Paul resolutely warns us not to go beyond Scipture and
teach human speculations as dogma because this will lead to arrogance and
controversy: ... you shall learn: “Not beyond what is written!” - that none
of you be puffed up for one against another. 1.Corinthians 4:6
The content of the
Genesis days
The whole seven-day work is characterized as a family
tree or phylogenetic tree. The other family trees of the Bible covered
centuries or even thousands of years - should the “family tree of heaven
and earth” then, be a matter of 144 hours only? Never! Just imagine the events
of the third day: First, the dry land emerged out of the global ocean.
And on the same day the first plants colonized the continent and even bore
fruit, as the Bible confirms: “And it was so!” Should all this have happened
within 24 hours? Consider what kind of earthquakes and sunamis such a rapid
emergence of the dry land must have caused. And in this raging chaos, the first
plants would not only have grown but even yielded fruit within 24 hours? Or
remember the animals, which increased so much on the fifth day, that the
seas were teeming with them - and all this by natural reproduction and not
by miracles! Mankind finally, was so fertile that they filled the earth within
the sixth day, because again it says: “And it was so!” (verse 31)
The Genesis-”days” in
jewish and christian exegesis
That’s why, there were already long before Darwin jewish
and christian interprets who considered the genesis-days not as a human week:
In the history of exegesis we
find besides the interpretation of the creation-days as calendar days from the
start also an accomodated interpretation ... The jewish philosopher PHILO OF
ALEXANDRIA (about 25 before to 40 after Christ) interprets the numbers in the
creation report allegorically and takes the view that Genesis 2:4b (“on the
day, when the LORD God made heaven and earth”) means the creation of the whole
universe in one single day ... Following Philo the church-fathers Origines
(ca. 185-254 a.D.) and Augustinus (354-430 a.D.) taught similarly. www.wort-und-wissen.de
The “day” that lasted
for six “days” ...
One
statement should convince even the last sceptic: In the subtitle of
Genesis 1 the six days (yom) of the family tree are
summarized as one single day (also yom):
... in the day
(yom), that the LORD God made heaven and earth. Genesis 2:4
It is for sure that this day must have lasted longer
than 24 hours, because Exodus 20:11 states that God “has made heaven and earth in
six days”! Thus the direct context confirms that it would be absurd to
insist on 24-hour days in the creation report.
The day which has not
ended until today!
With each of the first six days it is explicitely stated
that it finished, but not so with the seventh day. Why? Apparently, this day is
continuing over thousands of years until the present day. Should we then not
expect the preceding six days to be long divine days, also?
For somewhere he has
spoken about the seventh (“day” is not in the original text!) in these words:
"And on the seventh day God rested from all his work." And again in
the passage above he says, "They shall never enter my rest." ...
There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God. Hebrews 4:4-5,9
An objection: The
sabbath command
Six days you shall labor and do
all your work ... For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth
... Exodus 20:9-11, NIV
This statement is sometimes used to argue that the
creation days must have been human days of 24 hours. But it is a fundamental
mistake of interpretation to derive the length of God's days from human
categories. It is the other way round: The five books of Mose contain a type, a
mere shadow of the works and character of God, “not the very image of the
things” (Hebrews 8:5; 10:1, ASV). Thus the human days of the mosaic law
represent an illustration, of reduced proportion, of the works of God, but
never a direct measure of God's framework. God could hardly have instructed the
Israelites to work for six billion years and afterwards rest for one billion
years! No, the sabbath principle does not concern the length of the days, but
the ratio of six to one. Thus we also understand the rule that every seventh
year had to be a “sabbath” (Leviticus 25:4) - we are dealing with
the principle of “six plus one”!
One more objection:
days and numerals
Occasionally
it is pointed out that the days of the creation report are provided with
ordinal numbers (second day, third day). Since in all other passages, where
days occur together with numerals, human days are meant, the Genesis days
should also be short days.
But this
objection is not justified. Neither in the Bible nor in any other language that
I know of numerals have an influence on the size or character of the thing
which they designate. It does not matter wether one is talking of “eggs”, “many
eggs”, “three eggs” or “the second egg”, these eggs, by that means, never
become bigger or smaller, nor do chicken eggs, by that means, mutate into fish
or ostrich eggs. It is always the context which determines what character and
length certain “days” have, the occurence of numerals does not change anything.
And now, let’s read a scipture which connects the word day
with a numeral - and exactly this very verse emphasizes that God’s
days are totally different from human days:
But, beloved, be not
ignorant of this one thing, that ONE day is with the Lord as a thousand years,
and a thousand years as ONE day. 2.Peter 3:8, compare Psalm 90:4
A serious objection:
“evening and morning” ...
At first
sight, the use of the words evening and morning seems to be the
strongest argument for the interpretation that the Genesis days must have been
terrestrial days with sunset and sunrise. But a closer look reveals the exact
opposite. Because if it were about human days it would have to say:
And there was
evening, and there was night - the first day.
But the
text has quite a different, unusual, unearthly sequence:
And there was
evening, and there was morning - the first day.
How can a night be followed by an “evening”? Nowhere
else in the Bible you will find this sequence - days, which end with a morning!
If the Genesis report had been about human days, this statement would make no
sense:
·
First the darkness, the night, existed, which
covered the earth (verse 2).
·
Then brightness came, which God called day -
without mentioning a “morning” (verse 3).
·
After this, it would have become evening (verse
5),
·
and immediately after this, morning - without a
“night” being mentioned in between (verse 5).
Would we
call such a sequence of night-day-evening-morning “one day”? This
sequence is unique in the whole Bible and a strong argument that this passage
is not about terrestrial days. It is also noticeable that with each subsequent
day the “evening” is immediately followed by a “morning” - the “night” is
always and totally missing. If we had to deal with terrestrial days, this would
make no sense!
Some
refer to the Jewish custom according to which the new day already begins on the
evening of the previous day (compare the beginning of the sabbath on Friday
evening). But even this sequence (evening-night-morning-day) does not fit with
what we find in the creation report - here the days end with the
“morning”!
However, if we consider that in Genesis 1 we are
dealing with God's days, we will not expect at all that the actions of God
should be limited by sunrise and sunset, as is true for human beings. Above
all, we will not expect a “night” to occur in which God would be “idle” or
“sleeping”. But how then shall we interpret the text of Genesis 1?
The word
^ereb, which we translated as evening, has the primary meaning change,
transition. It is derived from the Semitic root ^rb,
which means to enter (compare assyr. erêbu = enter, Gesenius 615,
Köhler-Baumgartner 732). It designates a change transforming a previous state
into a new one. Hereby a mingling, a mixture can occur. Thus the previous state
is not totally dissolved but integrated into the new one.
The
evening of a terrestrial day is a vivid example for this: When the sun “enters”
the horizon a change from day to night takes place, an a mixture of light and
darkness is produced, the “twilight”. Therefore it would make sense to
translate ^ereb more generally as transition or change.
And this would, as we shall see immediately, make much more sense in the
context of Genesis 1 than the translation as “evening” which is also
correct but too specialized, too narrow.
Even in English, the word “evening” or “eve” is not only
used for the sunset of a day but also in an abstract sense for the last phase
of a person's life, for the “evening of life”.
Boqer derives from the Semitic root bqr, which in
Arabic means to split. The related Aramaic verb baqra means to split,
to plow, the noun baqar denotes cattle used for plowing.
The root underlying the word boqer = morning means to split, to break
through. According to L.Koehler its actual meaning is therefore break
through (Köhler-Baumgartner 145). Deriving from this primary meaning, it is
then used for the “day break” in the dawn (compare also ghhw page 112;
Köhler-Baumgartner page 144,145).
Conclusion
In the
context of Genesis 1 we could therefore translate these words as follows:
A transition
happened, and then a break-through followed.
Every
time a pivotal work of God was finished this led to the break-through for the
next event, which thereby could start its initial phase. A “night of God”
in-between would be illogical; also it does not occur in the text. God’s
“days”, his “phases of activity” follow each other without times of “rest”
in-between. What separates them is not a “night of inactivity”, but their
different contents. For God, a day is always finished at the point when it
reaches a stage where it provides the necessary elements for the breakthrough
of the project which belongs to the following day.
Terrestrial evening and morning are thus a human picture
for delimiting God's actions: In the evening we terminate our work, in the
morning we start with a new commission. In-between there is always a night for
us - but not so with God, who is “the Father of lights, with whom is no
variation nor shadow of turning” (James 1:17, Darby).
A scientific
argument: global, not local events!
It only
makes sense to talk about morning and evening, connected with sunset and
sunrise, if a certain geographic place is in view. But without doubt, in
Genesis 1, the earth as a whole is in view, a not limited area: “Let there
be light!”, the emerging of the mainland, its settlement with plants, the appearence
of land animals ... Where and how should it then become “evening” or “morning”?
It is only beginning with Genesis 1:9 that the report focusses on the
continents, and then, beginning with Genesis 2:5, on the Near East, where
it would make sense to speak of “morning” and “evening” as referring to the
times of sunrise and sunset - but certainly not in Genesis 1:5!
A scientific proof for the age
of the earth
Again and again, the
dating methods of the natural sciences are criticized by “young-earth-creationists”.
For this reason we want to present a proof for the high age of the earth which
is independant of any dating method. It is due to Karl Philberth and
accomplishes a dating of the elements of the earth's crust on the basis
of the nuclide map alone.
It is based upon the fact that there are
atoms which disintegrate radioactively. A chemical element may exist in
different forms with different weights. They are called isotopes, and some of
them, usually the heavier ones of an element, are radioactive. Each of the
radioactive isotopes has a characteristic time interval, which is called
“radioactive half-life”, within which half of atoms decay. These radioactive
half-lives can be different and are characteristic for every kind of isotope. They
are virtually independent of external factors such as pressure and temperature,
as well as the chemical compound, in which the atom may be bound.
Now, it is an incontestable fact that all
possible 263 stable and all 23 long-lived isotopes with a radioactive half-life
of more than 500 million years exist in the earth's crust and can be traced. On
the other hand, the 39 isotopes with a radioactive half-life between 10,000 and
500 million years are completely absent (the only exeption are a few isotopes which
are constantly being produced until today, either as intermediate products of
the decay chains of the long-lived uranium-238 and uranium-235, or as products
of cosmic-ray hits, such as carbon-14.)
There is only
one possible explanation: so much time must have passed since the formation of
the elements of the earth's crust that all isotopes which are not long-lived
disintegrated to such an extent that they can no longer be detected. This is
the case after approximately thirteen radioactive half-lives. The following
table points out how many per cent of an isotope are left after 1, 2,
3 ... radioactive half-lives:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13
half-lives
50 25 13 6,3 3,1 1,6 0,8 0,4 0,2 0,1 0,05
0,02 0,01 % remain.
On the other hand,
for the long-lived isotopes, less than thirteen half-lives must have passed,
because they are still present in a traceable quantity. Since the detection
limit coincides with a radioactive half-life of about 500 million years, one
can estimate that the time of the general formation of the elements must be
approximately 13 x 500 million = 6.5 billion years ago.
One might
postulate that during the emergence of the earth's elements all 286 stable and
long-lived isotopes were formed, but none of the 39 isotopes with shorter
half-lifes, or that they would later have disappeared somehow. But, appart from
the half-life, there is no systematic difference between the traceable and the
missing isotopes, either in their physical structure of their atomic cores, and
energy balance, or in their chemical characteristics. Therefore, no reason can
be found, why, on the one hand, all stable and long-lived isotopes exist until
today, while, on the other hand, all those with shorter half-lives are
completely absent. The only factor which distinguishes them is their
radioactive half-life. A coincidental probability for exactly this distribution
is smaller than one in one quintillion!
The undeniable fact that all the
isotopes with a radioactive half-life
of less than 500 million years can no longer be detected on earth,
while all the others still exist,
can only be explained by an age of approximately 6.5 billion years
for the chemical elements.
Summary of:
“Datierung von
Elementen der Erdkruste allein nach der Nuklidkarte”
by Karl Philberth, Chemikerzeitung, Dr.Alfred Hüthig Verlag, Heidelberg,
special edition 109
(1985) pages 251-253.
The testimony of the stars ...
The fact
that we can see millions of stars in heaven creates an irresolvable problem for
advocates of a young universe: Our galaxy, the “Milky Way”, has a diameter of
100,000 light-years. Thus, the light of many of its stars takes more than
50,000 years to reach us. But the light of the majority of the stars, which
belong to other galaxies, takes millions of years. A compelling conclusion is
that the universe must be at least that old, because otherwise the light of
most of the stars would not be visible on earth. Other explanations are either
disproved or absurd, as shown in the following statements from “THE ANSWERS
BOOK - The Most-asked Questions about Creation, Evolution & the Book of
Genesis Answered!” (tab 95-97), which advocates a recent universe and a young
earth:
“If the universe is young and the light of many stars
takes millions of years to reach us, how come that we can see them? (tab
95) ...Some people have tried to question the distances, but that's an
extremely improbable answer. There are many billions of stars, and many of them
have the same properties as our sun, as documented by the analysis of their
light. Such a large number of stars must be spread out over a large volume,
otherwise we would get fried. Astronomers use many different methods to
measure distances, and no respectable astronomer, including those who believe
in the creation report, would claim that the distance measurements are so
inaccurate that billions of light years could shrink to some thousands. There
is good evidence that our Milky Way actually has a diameter of 100,000 light
years!” (tab 99)
Did God create a “movie” about
heaven?
Perhaps the most
frequently used explanation proposes that God created the light already on its
way, so that Adam could see the stars immediately and did not have to wait for
many years, until the light of even the nearest stars would have reached the
earth. We should not limit the power of God, but this explanation causes some
quite serious complications. Consequently, every time we observe the behavior
of a distant object, we would see something which in reality never
happened ... For a universe which
was let's say 10,000 years old, this would mean that everything we see beyond a
distance of approximately 10,000 light years would be part of a gigantic movie
performance of things and events which in reality never happened and that we
would see objects which perhaps do not even exist.” (tab 95)
“These signals give
the impression of witnessing of a series of real events, but in reality would
have no real starting point ... This is even as grotesque as if one would
claim that God created the fossils in the ground to trick us or even to test
our faith.” (tab 97)
“But what the
astronomers receive is a certain very specific pattern of variations within the
light ... a predictable succession of events, including neutrinos, visible
light, X-rays and gamma-rays coming in. The radiation tells about an apparently
real event. The astronomers are quite correct in interpreting this message as transmission
of an actual reality and conclude that a real object was out there, which
exploded, lit up, emitted X-rays, and burnt according to the laws of physics.”
(tab 96)
The authors of the
book quoted see no way out of their dilemma other than to disconnect the “days”
of Genesis from merely “earthly days” and to redefine them as “extended time”:
“It is no longer adequate to say: God created the universe in six days. He
certainly did, but six days measured with what kind of clock?” (faa 100). Thus
we arrive at the same result: The universe is at least as old (in years) as the
distance (in light years) of the farthest objects: There are galaxies which are
over 10 billion light years away - they must be over 10 billion years old!
Second Day: The “Firmament”
And God said: Let there be an expanse between the waters,
to separate water from water ...
And God called the expanse heavens.
Genesis 1:6-8 (Darby)
A translating error
with severe consequences!
Around
the year 400 A.D., the Vulgate originated, a widespread Latin translation of
the Bible. In the passage which we are now examining, it uses the word firmamentum
for expanse. According to an ancient eastern worldview, this firmament was a
metal dome, to which the celestial lights were fastened. The rain water stored
over it would fall down through holes in the dome.
The Vulgate held an outstanding position throughout
church history. And since the fact that it was just a translation was not
sufficiently taken into account, the conviction creeped into people’s minds
that the Bible itself contained these conceptions, though they were in reality
colored by the spirit of the time. And as one did not dare to question the
Bible, the ideas smuggled-in also had a lengthy life. For example Luther’s
translation, written more than one thousand years later, still speaks of a
“firmament”, and the modern ecumenical “Einheitsübersetzung” translates it as
“vault”. But does the original Hebrew text justify this interpretation? Does
the word raqia^, which is used, have anything to do with a “firmament”?
The investigation of many related words points into a completely different
direction.
raqa^: making thin - not firm!
Let us begin with the verb raqa^, from which raqia^
is derived. The very first occurrence in the Bible shows quite vividly the
original meaning of this word:
And they did beat
the gold into thin plates, and cut it into wires. Exodus 39:3, KJV, ASV
The
meaning is: with pressure something is spread out into a thin layer. But by
extensive hammering, gold plates never become “firm” or “stable” but, quite to
the contrary, they become so thin that they can be cut and converted into
threads! The next occurence confirms this:
And they shall make
the censers into broad plates for the covering of the altar. Numbers
16:38
The fire
basins also were much more stable before they were spread into a thin layer, so
that they could be fit snugly onto the surface of the altar. And it is not
always metal at all, which is spread so thinly:
God spread out the
earth and all that comes out of it ... Isaiah 42:5
Here it is stated that the earth's crust is a thin
layer, which in turn is covered by a thin layer of vegetation. raqa^
does not only describe “hammering” and does not always refer to metals, but
generally means that something is spread out into a thin layer. And the context
of Genesis 1 confirms our result:
The “raqia” as a thin
layer of air
And God made the thinly
spread layer (raqia^)
and separated the waters which were below the thin layer
from the waters, which were above the thin layer.
On the
one hand, the earth was covered by a global ocean, on the other hand, it was
wrapped into a cloud cover, in which water vapour constituted a major
component. Apparently, at first these water clouds were laying at first
directly on the waters of the ocean. A separation, as we regard it as normal
today, came into existence only when a special atmosphere emerged and lifted
the waters of the cloud cover, separating it from the earth's surface.
God called the thin layer “heaven”. This Hebrew word is
a plural form and designates always entities which are, in some way, “higher”
than the earth (compare Isaiah 55:9). It is always the context which makes
clear what kind of “heavens” is meant:
·
There are the “air-heavens”, the skies, which consist of
different atmospherical layers, where for example birds fly (compare Jeremiah
8:7; Lamentations 4:19) and smoke ascends (Joshua 8:20).
·
Furthermore, there are the so-called “star-heavens”,
that is the stars of our galaxy, a portion of which appears to us as the night
“skies” (Genesis:15:5).
·
Finally, there are the “supernatural heavens”, invisible
realities, which exceed our three-dimensional world (Daniel 4:23).
Obviously,
in Genesis 1:6 the atmosphere is meant. This results not only from the “clef”
(Genesis 1:2), which limits the perspective to the earth, but also from the
context: On the one hand, it is stated that the “expanse” rested directly on
the waters of the earth. On the other hand, it is mentioned that animals flew
“on the surface of the thin layer of the (air-)heavens”, Genesis 1:20.
Therefore the “raqia^” of Genesis 1 is the thin layer of the atmosphere
underneath the cloud cover, and separates the earth's surface from the clouds
above.
Even the entire atmosphere with a thickness of some
kilometers is, in comparison with the earth's diameter of 12,800 km, only a
thinly spread layer. If we take an apple as model for the earth, the air layer
between the clouds and the earth's surface - which is much less than the
total atmosphere - is not even as thick as the peel of the apple!
The “original” raqia^
in the heavens
The
invisible heavens also have a raqia^, and Ezekiel describes it in a
vision. It separates the throne of God from the rest of creation, and it looks
“like the sight of a wonderful crystal, which is spread out” (Ezekiel 1:22). As
we see, crystal-clear transparency is characteristic of this heavenly raqia^.
But this does not mean at all that it is also inflexible like a crystal. This
only describes the aspect of its outward appearance: transparency is typical of
crystal.
In
Revelation 4:6, the same object is described as looking “like a sea of glass,
clear as crystal”. The expanse is transparent like glass or crystal, indeed,
but at the same time it is like a “sea”, and that is certainly not an
indicative for stiffness, but rather a typical image for continuous motion!
Of course, we have to be cautious when we relate heavenly
visions to terrestrial conditions. But nevertheless, we can assume that the
raqia^ of the atmosphere is somehow a reflection of a heavenly reality and
has quite a lot in common with it: it also is a relatively thin layer, which is
transparent like crystal and in steady motion like the sea. It would be
absolutely appropriate if we put it this way: We are living on the floor of a
crystal-clear “sea of air”!
Oxygen as indicator
for simple life
The earth's first atmosphere must have been lost into
space, presumably when the earth was melted by impactors, because typical solar
noble gas concentrations are no longer found. It was replaced by a second,
different one. If we consider cometary impactes and the gases derived from
volcanic eruptions, it probably contained mainly nitrogen, water vapour and
carbonic dioxide as well as perhaps some methane and ammonia. But it is certain
that there was no free oxygen. Oxygen only appeared with the third atmosphere.
The only plausible explanation for it is that it was produced by organisms,
capable of performing photosynthesis, which produces oxygen by utilising
sunlight. These organisms gradually converted the atmosphere into an oxidizing
one. Methane and ammonia were oxidized and thereby dissappeared from the
earth's atmosphere.
The logic of the
Biblical report
It is amazing that in Genesis we find exactly this
causal chain. The report does not describe the arbitrary acts of a moody
artist, but a family tree, a continuous development, in which each day's
process follows logically from that of the previous one. An overview shows
remarkable parallels between the Biblical text and natural science:
Bible: Natural
sciences:
1. The Spirit of God “bred” over In the waters of the early earth
(simple forms of life in) ... there were simple
the
waters of the early earth. microbial
forms of life.
2. Light penetrated Utilizing sun light,
to the earth's surface. these
(cyanobacteria)
(Verses 3-5) produced oxygen.
3. The new atmosphere The increasing quantity of O²
of
the second day developed. led to the
constitution of
(Verses 6-8) a
new atmosphere.
The root “raq” in
different languages
Let us have a look at those words that have the first
two consonants in common with raqa^, since it often occurs in Hebrew and
related languages that such words have a common origin and a similar meaning:
Hebrew: raq = 1. thin, slender; 2. insignificant, minor, “only”
" raqiq
= thin bread (Exodus 29:2,23)
" riqqua^
= which is beaten thin (Numbers 17:3)
" raqqah
= what is thin, temple (Judges
4:21-22)
Assyrian: rakaku = to make thin
" rukku
= plate (c.f. the similarly
sounding: “flat”)
Arab: raqqa = to be thin
" marquqa
= thin bread
"
rakaáh = to spread a spot
" rukáh
= expansion of an area
Syrian: riqo^ = to make thin
This shows: it is not
about hardness, but the focus is on being thin. The whole word family r-q
designates the spreading out of things into a thin layer, no matter what
material is involved! (in detail: cdbb 630-649) Some older and also some modern
Bible translators recognized the correct meaning and translated accordingly.
Thus, for example the Dutch “Statenvertaling” has “uitspansel = expanse”,
the German “Elberfelder” has “Ausdehnung = expanse”, Darby translates as
“expanse”.
The World View of the Prophets
Prophets speak out or write down whatever God gives them
in various ways. The question is, if the typical human errors and
misunderstandings also slipped into the Scripture. At least a teacher in an
elementary school is able to make the pupils write a dictation without
mistakes, so an almighty God should be able to manage the equivalent with
adults. Did God nevertheless allow the Scripture to pass on an antiquated,
oriental world view or do its statements correspond to reality?
In some circles it is
persistently asserted that the Bible describes the earth as a disk, standing on
columns over waters. In German translations, the expression “disk” for the
shape of the earth never occurs (Elberfelder 1905,1993; Luther 1912, 1984;
Einheitsübersetzung 1980; Schlachter 1951). The only expression which might
resemble this thought is the German “Erdkreis” (in English translations
“world”). This word occurs about 34 times in the Old Testament as a translation
of the Hebrew “tebel”[4]. It is derived from
the verb “yabal” (Gesenius870) with the basic meaning of “to carry away”. Often
it is used in the context of waters and then means “to wash away”[5]. Karel Claeys states in his
German book “Die Bibel bestätigt das Weltbild der Naturwissenschaft” (The Bible
confirms the world view of natural sciences):
The etymological
derivation of the Hebrew “tebel” is therefore an expression for masses of earth
substance carried-away, having been moved by waters like rain or rivers” (cdbb
684).
A literal translation
of “tebel” could thus be: “something that has been carried away (by waters)” or
“sedimentary layer”. In fact mankind inhabits almost exclusively those fruitful
regions of the earth which mainly consist of material which has been eroded,
“carried away” and deposited. Accordingly, where “tebel” is used in the Old
Testament, the context often speaks of the creatures inhabiting the “tebel”.
Two examples:
The earth is the
LORD's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it. Psalm
24:1, NIV
In days to come Jacob will take
root, Israel will bud and blossom and fill all the world with fruit.
Isaiah 27:6, NIV
In the New Testament we find “Erdkreis” about 15 times,
as translation of the Greek “oikumenee”[6]. This is also the
word which the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, uses regularly
for “tebel”. “oikumenee” is derived from the Greek “oikos=house” and designates
the cultivated and inhabited areas of the earth. Accordingly, the context
always speaks of the human population of the aread esignated. Again two
examples:
In those days Caesar
Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire (Roman) world.
Luke 2:1
One of them, named
Agabus, stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine would
spread over the entire (Roman) world. Acts 11:28
“Tebel” primarily designates the aspect of the origin of
the habitable surface, while “oikumenee” stresses the land development by
humans resulting from it. In his book “Die Bibel bestätigt das Weltbild der
Naturwissenschaft”, Karel Claeys deals in much more detail with this subject
(cdbb pages 51-53 and 683-690) and with the Biblical world view in general. The
following examples are just a brief summary of some of his investigations.
The earth's crust is
floating on turbulent floods!
There are people who
have been irritated by statements of the Bible which give the impression that
the earth is floating on waters underground (for example Psalm 24:2; 136:6).
But this is based on a misunderstanding of the Biblical text. It indeed states
that under the earth's crust there are “turbulent floods” (Hebrew tehom), but
from a modern viewpoint this does not constitute a problem! Meantime e know
that large parts of the earth's interior are slowly moving like liquids. Below
the relatively thin crust, the earth's mantle, which reaches down to a depth of
2,900 km is floating on the iron-nickel cored, whose outer part is liquid, and
behaves itself like a very viscous liquid.
The rocks in the
mantle have extremely high temperatures and are under high pressure, they
incessantly move in enormous circles which drive the movement of the tectonic
plates of the crust. On these “turbulent floods” the continents are floating
like boats and are shifted by different “currents”. This phenomenon also has
been thouroughly examined by Karel Claeys.
Even from a merely human point of view, the ancients
could have been capable of this insight, because every volcanic eruption with
lava masses streaming out gives us an “insight” into the conditions of the
earth's interior. It does not take too much phantasy to imagine that under the
rigid crust of the earth there are “turbulent floods” of liquid magma.
The earth is “hanging”
in space!
God spreads out the northern
skies over empty space, he suspends the earth over nothing (Hebrew
belimah). Job 26:7, NIV, similarly KJV, ASV, DBY
The word “belimah” is a composite of “beli=without” and
“mah=something”, thus literally means “without anything”, “nothing” (kbl 129,
Gesenius100), and thereby corresponds in an amazing way to the modern insight
that the earth is surrounded by a vacuum (Latin “emptiness”) - it, as it
were, “hangs” in “nothing”!
Several
passages of the Bible speak suggestively of this phenomenon, which has been
scientifically investigated in modern times only. The original text always uses
the Hebrew term “natah” (Isaiah 4:22; 42:5,8; 45:12; 51:13; Job 9:8; 26:7;
Psalm 104:2; Zechariah 12:1). According to the dictionaries (kbl 611,
Gesenius500), this means: to stretch (out), to extend, to spread out, to bend:
According to E.König
“natah” has the meaning of the Latin “expandens”, which literally is
“expanding”. With the exception of Isaiah 45:12 and Jeremiah 10:12 this verb is
always used as predicative participle ... As a predicatively used
participle describes a condition or an action which occurs continually, the
expansion of the heavens of the stars has to be understood as a continuous
activity of God in the universe ... (Karel Claeys, dbb page 158)
The knowledge of the
“Expansion of the universe” therefore literally corresponds to the statement of
the Bible: “God is expanding the heavens”! The following Scripture text gives
us one more, particularly vivid picture for the expanding universe:
(God is) expanding
(natah) the heavens as (a lot of) dust. Isaiah 40:22
Here
the innumerable galaxies are compared with a cloud of dust particles, which are
in constant expansion (Karel Claeys in cdbb 122-125) The Hebrew “doq” used here
derives from “daqaq = to grind something to a fine powder” and designates a
substance which has been ground to fine dust. Actually we have to use the model
of a dust cloud, if we want to give an appropriate model for the expanding
universe:
If we use a yardstick
of 100,000 light-years = 1 mm, then the diameter of a galaxy (in fact
100,000 light-years) would be about one mm. The average distance between
galaxies would be about five cm. The total number of all galaxies would
according to this yardstick be within a radius of 200 m or a diameter of
400 m. (Karel Claeys, dbb page 158)
The dimensions of the
universe
The
heavens of the Bible are not of a doll's house format at all, but are rather an
epitome for a size which humans cannot capture even mentally:
As the heavens are
higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts
than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:9, NIV
God
stresses that it will never be possible for the human race to even just measure
the dimensions of the universe (Jeremiah 31:37). And when some Scripture text
talk about the heavens of the heavens, we begin to understand that there remain
entire dimensions which are unexplored:
Behold, the heavens
and the heavens of the heavens cannot contain you! 2.Chronicles 6:18
This
sounds as if by the expression “heavens of the heavens” the term “heaven” would
be multiplied with itself. That again is not dissimilar to the modern insight
that our galaxy with its approximately one hundred billion stars is only one of
altogether one hundred billion galaxies!
Anyhow,
it is to be noted that the expression “the heavens of the heavens” clearly
presupposes that there is substantially more than the heavens which are visible
for us.
How completely
different is this view of the creation from those primitive conceptsof the
ancient Near East, which the so-called historical-critical exegesis interpreted
into the Hebrew scriptures! Instead of a firm dome, which arches over the
earth's disk, the Bible opens our view upon an expanding universe, consisting
of innumerable galaxies, exceeding any human imagination.
And nevertheless, for the creator this gigantic cosmos is only like an expanding
cloud of dust! He, the only one who “IS”, has created this universe, is
expanding it by his insight and prepares it according to the purpose of his
plan, unto the completion He has in view (Ephesians 3:9-11).
(Karel Claeys in cdbb 122-125)
Did the Babylonian
world view creep into the Bible?
Theologians have assumed that the Biblical creation
report does not date back to the time of Moses, approximately 1400 B.C., but to
600 B.C., originating during the Babylonian captivity of Israel. They assert
that the Israelite writers sometimes used the Babylonian creation myth “Enuma
Elish” as a pattern, and sometimes wrote the exact opposite of it, in order to
dissociate themselves from their suppressors. Thus, on the one hand, they took over
from the Babylonians the view of the heavens as “metal firmament”, while, on
the other hand, deliberately not mentioning “sun” and “moon” in the creation
report, because the Babylonians worshipped these as gods. By calling them
“lights”, the Israelites wanted to reject their supremacy. How arbitrary these
assumptions are - proofs cannot be found for these speculations - is
shown expecially by the example of the stars, which are mentioned explicitly,
although they, as well, were connected with superstitions. And wouldn't it be a
contradiction to call sun and moon nothing but “lights”, in order to stress
their subordinate ranks, but then to state, in the next sentence, that they
“reign over” both day and night? But the Biblical report does exactly that! This
shows how incoherent these theories are.
The family trees,
which underly Genesis and form its basic structure, reach back to Adam, thus
approximately to 3,900-5,400 years B.C. The creation report could even date
back to Adam himself, because it was he, whom God had gifted with the “spirit
of discernment of life”, so that he was able, e.g., to give every creature an
appropriate name (Genesis 2:7,19). Therefore it would not be surprising, if he
was also well-informed about the process of the development of life.
At least the “family tree of heaven and earth” (Genesis
2:4) is closely connected with the “family tree of Adam” (Genesis 2:4-5:32),
which reaches down to Noah, thus to a time about 2,300 or even 3,200 years B.C.
Therefore it is probable that the first chapter of Genesis originated at a time
between 2,300 and 5,400 years before Christ.
Genesis is the older original!
Certainly the family
trees of Genesis 1 to 5 were a holy family treasure of the Adamites and were
passed on from generation to generation as faithfully and correctly as
possible, in oral or written form. It is a well-known fact that the people of
antiquity possessed an extraordinary memory, so that even an oral tradition
could be extremely accurate. It is to be expected that these family trees were
also a part of Abrahams possessions. It is remarkable that he and his father
lived approximately 2,000 B.C. just in the city of Ur in Chaldea - which
like Babylon, was called a city “of the chaldeans” (Genesis 11:31; Isaiah
13:19)!
The Chaldeans were an
Aramic tribe who, according to extrabiblical sources, settled in Ur in southern
Babylonia in about 1100 B.C. only. But the Arameans (Syrians) had been living
in various parts of Syria and Mesopotamia for a long time before that. Aram was
a son of Sem (Genesis 10:22), and the mention of the Chaldeans in Job 1:17 may
indicate that they were around in what was probably about Abraham's time.
At the
time of Abraham, if not earlier, the Biblical report must have come into
contact with the Chaldean, and therefore Akkadian culture, which later merged
into the Babylonian culture. In addition we have to consider that not only did
the Adamites profit from Adam's knowledge, but also that by their extraordinary
longevity they must have represented unusual authorities for the Sumerians,
Akkadians and Chaldeans around them. Thus it would not at all be surprising, if
these peoples accepted the Biblical teaching about the creation, even if they
adapted it to their own religion by modifying it, and so in the course of time
it was changed and disfigured. This explains the parallels between the Biblical
creation report and the Babylonian creation myth “Enuma Elish”. A long time
after this probable first contact, the meticulously tradited Biblical text and
its modified, Babylonian version met again, during the time of the Babylonian
captivity of the Israelites.
Third day (1):
The Coming up of the Mainland
God said: Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together to one
place, and let dry ground appear! ... And God called the dry ground
“land”, and the gathered waters he called “seas”
Genesis 1:9-10
The earth was covered with water “in the
tohuwabohu”
The Biblical text
sounds simple but nevertheless it is amazing that it speaks of a time when the
earth was totally covered with water. It was only later that the dry land
emerged out of the global ocean. Who would expect that a mere human writer, an
inhabitant of the Middle East might have made such a statement just out of his
own mind?
According to geology the earth was probably covered with
a global ocean early in the Archean eon. Within the long periods of the Archean
and the Proterozoic (Precambrian) the continents emerged between about 4.0 and
1.6 billion years ago.
It is remarkable that
the article is used for the mainland, when it is mentioned for the first time:
Let the dry
land appear! Genesis 1:9
In Hebrew, this is normally only done, if something is
either already well-known, or has already been mentioned, or has existed
before. Also, it does not say that the dry land should “come into being”, but
“become visible”. Therefore, it may be that the mainland existed already before
the tohuwabohu of Genesis 1:2, but that it was flooded during the tohuwabohu.
Later it became “visible” again. Psalm 104 would confirm this view:
The turbulent flood
(Hebrew tehom) covered the earth like a garment, the waters stood above the
mountains. Psalm 104:5-6
Here the same “turbulent flood”, Hebrew tehom
is mentioned, which also occurs in Genesis 1:2. One detail is amazing:
According to the Biblical report, during the time of the flooding of the earth,
“mountains” must already have been in existence, even though these must have
been relatively low. Then another phase followed, in which the previously
flooded “mountains” rose above the water level:
The waters stood
above the mountains. At thy rebuke they fled ... The mountains rose, the
valleys sank, unto the place which thou hadst founded for them. Psalm 104:7-8
Karel Claeys' book “Die Bibel bestätigt das Weltbild der
Naturwissenschaft” (cf. the literature references and the book recommendation
in the Appendix) deals in much more detail with the “genesis” of the
continents, as well as the mountains and sediments.
Third day (2): Land Plants
No creative act, but guided evolution!
It is amazing that
the Biblical text does not mention a single miracle or creative act regarding
the land plants, but uses expressions which are intensely “evolutionistic”!
Then God said: Let
the land produce (NIV) vegetation ... And it was so: And the earth brought
forth grass ... Genesis 1:11-12
It
literally says: “Let the earth cause!” God commandet the dry land bring forth
vegetation. God spoke, but the earth “acted”. The Biblical is clear about this
as it does not continue “and God made”, but “and the earth caused
the plants to come out”. The verb yatsa' used here appears
1,068 times in the Bible and always means that something which is already
existing comes out of a certain environment:
The various usages of
yatsa' ... never deviate much from the main meaning to come out. (jwth 756)
Very
often the scource from which something comes out is not explicitely mentioned,
but has to be concluded from the context. Here are just two of many examples:
God brought Abram
out (of the tent) ... Genesis 15:5
Then the servant
brought forth silver articles and clothing (which up to then had been
packed up in their bags). Genesis 24:53 (Further examples: animals out of the
arch: Genesis 8:17, people out of a house or a city: Genesis 19:5,8, 12, 16,
17; 38:24; 43:23; 45:1)
yatsa' never (!) indicates
the creation of a new thing:
We have to keep in
mind that the verb does not refer to the creative acitivity of God in the sense
of the first-time production of a thing ... (Jenni-Westermann, Theological
Dictionary, jwth 759)
Therefore the plants
of the third day cannot represent a new creation. Accordingly, already 1,600
years ago, the Biblical report was interpreted in an “evolutionary” way:
Augustine declared
that the plants had been created “causaliter” on the third day, which means
that on that day the earth received the capability to bring them forth. (mebg 205)
The land plants came
out of the sea!
The
context makes it clear from where the land plants originated: The last thing
mentioned before the coming out of the land plants are the “seas”. And we have
already seen that it is exactly there that simple forms of life must have been
in existence since the “breeding” of God over the ancient ocean. Later, the
sunlight penetrated the clouds and enabled some of these organisms to carry out
photosynthesis. Therefore, when the continents rose on the third “day”, this
emerging land mass caused some of the existing plants to adapt to life
on the “dry ground”, and thus to come out.
The Biblical text speaks of grass, herbs and trees,
which seems to reflect an ascending order in size and development and stresses
the fact of the “coming out”. Therefore we probably have to deal with a
“pioneer vegetation”, the very beginnings of land plants.
Land plants and the
scientific view
We know very little
about the first vegetation on earth, since it dates back to very ancient times,
from which only a small number of fossils have been found. Furthermore, land
plants decay rapidly and are therefore only rarely preserved as fossils.
In the time of the
middle Silurian to early Devonian (approximately 400 million years ago) the
first plants can be found which are conserved in some measure, and which have a
recognizable Cuticula, water-leading vessels and fortified and ramifying stalks
and sporangia ... (nudl 87-88)
It is probable that before the more highly developed
plants a group of algae colonized the land at the beginning of the Cambrian
(approximately 540 million years ago). At least from this time, the remains of
differentiated large algae can be found, which, in the opinion of some
scientists, must have inhabited shallow water areas, tidal zones, or the
mainland (Pflug).
Finally we want to make it clear that there remains a
certain tension between the Biblical report and the natural sciences. The
latter assume today that the colonization of the land by plants took place
after the appearance of the marine animals, while the Biblical report has the
reverse order. Although there are arguments which might reduce these tensions,
we do not want to gloss over the fact that, with the present state of
scientific research on the one hand and our interpretation of Genesis on the
other hand, a harmonization does not seem to be easy in this question.
But whenever we compare the Bible and natural science
with each other, we have to keep one thing in mind: we have to deal with human
research, which is prone to errors and mistakes on both sides. Thus no one will
probably deny that 200 years ago the horizon of the natural sciences was quite
different from that of today. Knowledge increases - and that is also to be
expected for the interpretation of the Bible. Today, much better Bible editions
are available than ever before, and computer programs allow us to study the
original text much more easily and more precisely.
Nevertheless “to err is human”, which is true for all
areas. Therefore it is hardly possible that we should ever be able to
completely harmonize our understanding of the “Word of God” and the “creation of
God”. Both Bible interpretation and natural science can only be approximations
to reality, because any human knowledge is patchwork (1 Corinthians 13:9). This
has also been stressed by the Nobelist Manfred Eigen:
Because of the
limitations of human insight, conflicts between religious
and scientific world views are almost inevitable. Manfred Eigen in “Stufen zum
Leben”, page 275
For this reason, it is neither realistic nor legitimate
to expect that any Bible interpretation should agree to one hundred percent
with the “present standard of natural sciences”. To the contrary, it would be
rather dubious if harmonizing always functioned without difficulties. It is
much more realistic to consider to what remarkable extent the Bible does agree
with what is regarded as “facts” in scientific research today, and then to draw
conclusions accordingly.
As far as the “family
tree of heaven and earth” (Genesis 2:4) is concerned, there can be not doubt:
even if some details don't “fit”, most of the principal statements “hit”, and
the overall view harmonizes amazingly well with today's scientific standards.
This extremely high measure of agreement is a weighty argument for the Bible
being inspired by the Creator, because in Biblical times, no writer could have
given such a precise description of the evolution of life on his own, simply
from the human point of view.
Did God “create the species”?
And the earth brought
forth grass, herb producing seed
after its kind ... Genesis 1:12
A crucial expression ...
The noun “kind”, “species”,
in Hebrew min, is mentioned again and again in the family tree of
Genesis 1. This corresponds with its importance in modern biology:
The species is the
most fundamental unit in evolutionary biology ... The multiplication of
species is a necessary condition for the evolutionary process ... The
species are the actual units of evolution ... The species is perhaps the
most important unit of evolution, of systematics, of ecology and of
ethology ... (mebg 237,238)
... very often misunderstood and misapplied!
To emphasize it right
from the start: God never “created” the plants or their species! According to
the Biblical text, it was rather the earth which “brought forth” the plants,
and they again brought forth seeds “according to their kinds”. Therefore it
might be said that the earth “created” the species! More than anything else,
the Biblical expression “min=species” is a proof for the common descent
of life. It literally means “origin, descent”. The root from which it comes
means “to split, to furrow” (ghhw 420):
The noun min
literally means separation, disconnection ... that means what differs and
causes separation. (fhh 730)
The meaning of min = species has three aspects:
·
1. A common origin. Then
comes:
·
2. Disconnection, separation. And as a consequence:
·
3. Incompatibility
An actual example for the
“origin of a species”
This meaning of
“min=species” has not changed until today and is the same in modern Hebrew.
Here it is used to name “sectarians” and “Jewish christians” (kblh 519):
The modern Hebrew
“min=heretic”, as well, has its origin in “to disconnect, separate”. (fhh 730)
The reason for this
connotation is that some Jews consider other Jews who believe in Jesus as the
Messiah to be “heretics”, a different “species” that has changed its “ethical
code”. Therefore, they exclude them from their community, although the Jewish
christians cling to their Jewish roots and call themselves “Messianic Jews”.
But in the sight of the “Orthodox” they are “of a different kind” and have to
be separated from the original fellowship of the Jews.
Thus, we see the
three aspects of “min=species”: Though “Messianic Jews” have a common origin
with other Jews, they have become so much different, that they are
“disconnected, separated”, even excluded, and considered as no longer
“compatible” with the Jewish community, as if they were a different “species”.
4. Why God did not create the
Sun on the Fourth Day
And God said,
Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens,
to divide between the day and the night;
and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years ...
And God made the two great lights...
And God set them in the expanse of the heavens ...
Genesis 1:14-17 (Darby)
The sun existed from the very “beginning”!
Where did the light of the first day come from, if God
created sun, moon and stars only on the fourth day, attaching them to the
“firmament”? This is a frequently asked question, but the problem lies with the
one asking, not with the Bible text. The creation report is built up strictly
logical, and we can only understand it, if we consider the already made
statements while we follow the text: The first words presuppose the existence
of the universe for all the following events, summarizing it with the
expression “the heavens and the earth”. Thus the sun, the moon and the stars
existed already for a long time before the events of the fourth day took place.
But what then happened on the fourth day?
Lights, not heavenly bodies
The translations give a correct interpretation of what
is written in the original text: “lights”. We don't have to deal with sun and
moon as celestial bodies, the words sun and moon do
not even occur! The text rather expressivly mentions the light beams,
which are radiating from them, Hebrew ma'or. The Hebrew word for the
shining bodies would be ner or menorah = Lamp, but
their light, the radiation that emanates from them, is called ma'or:
The pure gold
lampstand (menorah, from ner), the lamps (ner) thereof, even the lamps (ner) to
be set in order, and all the vessels thereof (physical bodies!), and the oil
for the light (ma'or). Exodus 39:37
Obviously ma'or here means the light,
which is shining from the burning oil. Again and again is distinguished between
the physical lamp (ner) and the light, which emanates from it (ma'or):
... and they shall
cover the lampstand (ner) of the light (ma'or). Numbers 4:9
So we can summarize: the text, by not mentioning “sun”
or “moon” and by the use of the Hebrew ma'or = light, makes clear
that not the celestial bodies are meant, but the light, which emanates from
them!
The lights were “prepared” - not
“created”!
A
further observation confirms this fact: the word bara' = to create
is not used concerning the “lights”. Rather we meet the word ^asah = to
make, to prepare, which has quite a different meaning. After “to say”
and “to be” it is the third-most frequent verb of the Hebrew Bible (2,627
occurences) and means: to prepare something, which is already existing,
in a subsequent and purpuseful way. Some examples in Genesis:
I will make
you (Abraham) into a great nation. (Genesis 12:2, NIV)
... hunt some wild
game for me and prepare me the kind of tasty food (out of it)
such as I love ... Genesis 27:3,4
And they took stones and made
a heap (out of them) ... (Genesis 31:46)
And he made a richly ornamented robe for him (out of existing
material). Genesis 37:3
Thus on
the fourth day God did not create new lights, but continued to prepare the
already existing ones. In other words: God made the lights -
visible! Therefore it is not so difficult to imagine what happened:
From the first day on the light of the celestial bodies
had penetrated to the earth - though only diffuse, nebulous - as brightness =
'or. From the fourth day on they were to be seen also as lights =ma'or,
as if on a cloudy day in our time “the heavens are torn open”.
Did God fix the stars
on the “firmament”?
There is
a statement in these sentences, which has often led to wrong conclusions:
And God set them in
the firmament of the heaven ... Genesis 1:17
That
sounds as if God had fixed the celestial bodies on the “firmament”. But remember:
the Genesis report focusses on planet earth from the second sentence on.
Without exception everything that God does thereafter, happens here. Thus it is
not to be expected that on the fourth day celestial bodies are created in the
universe. And actually God's command does not concern space, because it does
not speak about “heaven”, but:
And God gave (Hebrew:
natan) them into the expanse of the (air-) heavens ...
As the
context makes clear, this “expanse” is the thin air layer, which separates the
clouds frome the earth's surface. In it the flying animals have their domain
(Genesis 1:6,20).
And the Hebrew nathan = to give has
nothing to to with “fixing”, but states that God saw to it that the light could
reach and penetrate the lowest air layers. The same word is used a little
later, in order to describe, which kind of food God provided for mankind
(Genesis 1:29). Indeed the sunlight is an important gift for humans and
animals.
One process, many lights ...
The original text
says:
Let there be
(singular): Lights (plural) ...
This is in accordance with our opinion that it was only
a single process, which caused the appearance of a multitude of lights. It was
the “opening” of the sky, which had the consequence that many lights became visible
on earth.
The dominating influence of the
“lights” on earth
The entire terrestrial life is determined by the rhythms of the “heavenly
lights”:
The three fundamental
time measures of the calendar - day, month and year - are based on
the astronomical circulations, which affect the human life most strongly.
The oldest calendars correlate to the moon, which does not only appear
and disappear but also changes its shape during the month. Months made it
already quite comfortable to describe seasons.
The later calendars however were based upon the movement of the sun.
To the Egyptians we owe the division of the day into 24 hours from sunrise to
sunrise. Starting point for this was the subdivision of the night into twelve
hours, whose beginning was given by the appearance of a certain star or
constellation in the east. Then, probably for symmetry reasons, the day was
likewise divided into twelve hours. (chac 44,45)
... to rule day ...
and night ...
Up to the fourth
period only diffuse light reached the lowest atmospheric layers. From then on
the light of sun and moon could exercise a much stronger influence, which
indeed is enormous. The energy, which daily reaches the earth by solar
radiation, keeps the whole atmosphere in continuing motion. It is to be
expected that the direct solar radiation caused an increased heating up of the
earth's surface, which again must have exercised a crucial influence on the
atmospheric procedures.
All life depends on
the sun, both that of the plants, and that of animals and humans. Thus sun and
moon exercise their influence, or, with the words of the Bible, “rule” in the
physical, chemical and biological procedures of the earth and its organisms:
In many aspects life
on earth resembles an orchestra, which plays according to the rhythm of heaven.
The movements of sun and moon are reflected in ebb-tide and tide of insect
populations and the activities of organisms on the whole planet. (chac 342)
Reasons for the second change of the terrestrial
atmosphere
It is
probable that the cause for the opening of the cloud cover has to be searched
in a change of the terrestrial atmosphere. Here the procedures of the preceding
“day” must have played an important role:
The coming up of the mainland must have caused a more intensive
circulation of the air, especially in the lower atmosphere. And the appearance
of land plants must have caused a rising percentage of oxygen. And a change of
the terrestrial atmosphere inevitably causes a change of the “lights”: on their
way through the different air layers the radiation is influenced e.g. by
absorption, reflection and dispersion. Biblically expressed: it is made,
prepared = ^asah. As we shall see, these changes were necessary to
make the following developments possible.
5. First animals - here Darwin
was wrong
And God said:
“Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures ...”
Genesis 1:20
What is the “cambrian explosion”?
The last
thing which the text reported was the settlement of the dry land with plants
and the modification of the atmosphere. A merely human writer would probably
have chosen to then let the land animals appear, which would have fitted nicely
into the environment already existing. But the biblical text declares that
animal life started in the waters of the seas. And actually, according to
natural science, “the waters” are the location where the first animals lived.
Thus the thread of the genealogy which started with the “breeding” of God over
the waters of the early earth is picked up again. The first “branch” were the
land plants, and now the animals were a further, distinct “branch”, which
developed explosively during the fifth day, aproximately 530 million years ago:
The cambrian
explosion stands for an incredible quantum leap in biological complexity.
Before it, life on earth consisted of relatively simple organisms -
single-celled bacteria, blue-green algae and later some kinds of sponges and
primitive worms or molluscs. And then suddenly, completely out of the blue we
find a perplexing variety of complex organisms without corresponding
predecessors, which appeared - in a geological perspective - from one moment to
another. Lee Strobel “Indizien für einen Schöpfer” page 316
If we would condense the history of the earth into 24
hours, then the cambrian explosion would last for just one minute! Scientists
agree that this event - measured with the geologic scale - was a
sudden, really surprising phenomenon:
At the end of precambrium
something happened which has correctly been called “an explosion of forms of
life”. David Norman: “Ursprünge des Lebens” page 32
The sudden appearance
of animals on the stage of life caused Darwin quite a headache which persisted
even to the end of his life. Up to about 600 million years ago, only “simple”
organisms existed in the waters, and, according to Darwin's theory, they should
have slowly and gradually developed into more complex forms of life. But
completely against all expectations the first animals appeared in an amazing
diversity of species and extreme complexity, and that quite suddenly:
None of the sudden
developments of animals worried Darwin more than the sudden appearance of the
majority of the large animal categories in the lowest layers of fossil-keeping
rocks. Where could they have come from? (E.Mayr in mebg 345)
To the end of his
life the phenomenon of the missing ancestors remained an unsolved mystery for
Darwin:
Why don't we find ...
large layers filled with the remainders of the ancestors of the cambrian
fossils which, according to my theory, must under any circumstances have been
deposited in those old, unknown epochs of geologic history? Darwin in “The Origin
of Species” page 644
In the years after
1859 this difficulty has become even much greater. Wherever new strata were
investigated, the earliest forms inevitably appeared in the cambrian, nothing
of them could be found in the precambrian strata. Ernst Mayr “Die Entwicklung der
biologischen Gedankenwelt” page 345
All the more it is amazing that the millenia-old text of
Genesis always testified that exactly this explosion of life took place on
earth or, more exactly, in the seas. The cause for this amazing development was
God's second creative act, reported in Genesis.
A new dimension:
animals have a soul!
And God created
living souls ... Genesis 1:21
Most translations use
the word “creatures” here, others “living things”, but the Hebrew text says nephesh =
soul. The soul is the domain of sensations, desires and urges and is,
according to the Bible, that which makes humans and higher animals “living
beings” (plants are never called “living”). On the physical level this
manifests itself in respiration, blood circulation, and the capability of
intentionally guiding movements. In his book “About animal and human behavior”,
Konrad Lorenz comes to the conclusion:
The ability to lust
or to suffer ... surely is the prototype of all kinds of sensation. And
this ability, in particular, I would like to attribute to the higher animals
...
It is easy to recognize, when a dog is sad, not however, why he is ...
Very often my teacher, Heinroth, the “grandfather” of the reductionist
behavioral research, was accused of dealing with animals and their
physiological trains of thought as if they were machines. He used to reply: “To
the contrary, animals are sentimental people with extremely little intelligence”.
Konrad
Lorenz “About animal and human behaviour” page 371
The first higher
animals on earth had their origin in the second of only three creative acts and
actually represented a novelty which cannot be explained on a merely
materialistic level. At the same time they originated in the context of
previous biological developments: the first animals descended from lower forms
of life, because the text states:
Then God created
living souls ... after their kind.
The word kind is the translation of min =
origin, species, descent. By the use of this word, it is made obvious again
that we are dealing with a genealogical process. Into this “family tree”, God
gave a completely new quality, soul-life. God did not create the “species”, but
the animal souls - after or according to their species,
which were already existing or developing. The text describes four groups of
animals:
The swarming or creeping animals
You can hardly find a more suitable expression for the
first living beeings that populated the seas. The trilobites can serve as a
classic example for these “creeping ones”: they were small animals which were
creeping on the bottom of the sea, sometimes perhaps swam around, and the
cambric oceans were literally “swarming” with them.
Birds before land animals?
And flying animals
shall fly over the earth. Genesis 1:20
The next kind of
animals which are mentioned are flying animals. Which merely human author would
have assumed the origin of flying animals in the waters? But according to the
biblical text before the appearance of vertebrate land aminals on the sixth day
a settlement of the main land with flying animals took place. The Hebrew text
does not use zippor, which always designates bird, but the more general ^oph.
This is derived from the verb ^uph, which means to fly in the broadest sense
(compare in English the insect “fly”), and designates generally flying animals
as birds or bats (for example Leviticus 11:13,19; Deuteronomy 14:18) and also
insects (for example: Leviticus 11:20; Deuteronomy 14:19).
Actually some of the oldest insects found as fossils had
wings. According to Brinkmann the oldest insect at all (!), the Eopterum (a
kind of dragon-fly), originates from upperdevonian layers and proves that the
first flying animals developed during the fifth day.
“And God created the
great sea-monsters ...”
It seems hard to
believe, but the biblical text actually states that God created “sea monsters”
(verse 21, tannin). The term tannin designates predatory animals
in all scriptures where it appears (Genesis 1:21; Exodus 7:9; 7:10; 7:12;
5.Mose 32:33; Hiob 7:12; Psalm 74:13; 91:13; 148:7; Jesaja 27:1; 51:9; Jeremiah
51:34; Hesekiel 29:3; 32:2) and is always translated with words like monster,
dragon, serpent, sea monster. The Hebrew word tannin designates
always predatory sea or land animals. The tannin which came into being
during the fifth day must have been enormous, since the text explicitly calls
them “big”.
Actually
the palaeozoicum was very much coined by animals which can only be described as
“great predatory sea monsters”. Out of the octopusses which existed already
from the kambrium on, during the ordovizium enormous, ink-fish-similar sea
monsters developed, who reached a length of 4.50 meters.
A further group of which the expression “great sea monsters” reminds are the “sea-scorpios,
which terrorized the seas at that time. Some of them became two meters long and
possessed enormous claws, with which they seized smaller animals.” (alue
65)
“moving creatures”
The last term, remes, seems to be a more
general expression for all kinds of animals that “move”, summarizing the rest
of the newly created living souls. Actually since the “cambrian explosion” all
“Stämme” of the animal sphere (Tierreich) exist, nothing new has appeared ever
since!
It is commonly
supposed that the strong increase of oxygen in the earth's atmosphere, which
preceded the fifth day, was an important if not even the decisive factor to
make this explosive development of animal life possible.
Sixth Day (1):
The “Coming out” of the Land Animals
And God said: Let the
earth bring forth (jatsa'):
living souls after their kind -
cattle, and creeping thing,
and beast of the earth, after their kind! And it was so.
Genesis 1:24,25 (Darby)
The land animals came out of the sea
Concerning the land
plants one might want to insist that the earth “brought them forth” out of
itself. But should the earth also have received the ability to bring forth
“living souls” out of itself, which then came out of the soil? Definitely not!
But somehow our blue planet must have succeeded in fulfilling God's command
because it says: “And it was so.” But how?
We saw already that the verb jatsa' = to come out, to leave,
never describes the new creation of something. Rather it means that things
which already exist come out of somewhere. Therefore living souls must already
have existed somewhere at that time, so that the earth could cause their
“coming out”.
If we want to answer the question where they came from
we don't need much phantasy, because the context leaves nothing to speculation:
Immediately before the “coming out” of the land animals the text speaks about
the aquatic animals, and it uses the very same expression:
Let THE WATERS
swarm with living souls ...
And God created every living soul,
with which THE WATERS swarm, after their kind ...
And God said:
The earth shall cause living souls to come forth
(out of THE WATERS) after their kind ... Genesis 1:20-24
Is it not obvious that some of these aquatic animals
which are called living souls and which have just been mentioned in
detail “came out” and colonized the land?
Then God prepared (Hebrew: asah)
the land animals ... Genesis 1:25
It is no coincidence that it is not said that God
created the land animals (Hebrew bara' = to create something totally new)!
The absence of a creative act in the context of the “coming out” of the land
animals is therefore one further confirmation of the fact that they descended
from aquatic animals!“ Living souls” had already been created in the seas and
did only have to come out onto the land, where they were further
prepared, Hebrew “asah”!
The Bible reports
another event where God gave a command which is almost identical with that of
the sixth day:
Cause to come out (jatsa')
all living beings ... flying animals and cattle (behemah) and swarming
animals (remes), which move on the earth!
Subsequently the
command was fullfilled:
And all living beings
(chajjah), everything which swarms (remes) and all flying animals, everything
which swarms (ramas) upon the earth after their families came out
(jatsa'). Genesis 8:17-19
Down to the details, the procedure corresponds to the
sixth, the same words are used, only this time it is Noah who gets the command.
Of course he did not create the animals himself - all of them were already
present on his boat. Noah only had to make way for them to come out (jatsa').
As we compare the two events their similarity becomes evident:
Genesis 8:17-19 Genesis
1:24
God commands: God commands:
Noah shall The land shall
bring forth (jatsa') bring forth (jatsa')
living beings living souls
(out of the ark, (out of the sea,
into which (as the reader
knows, where they (as the reader
knows,
he had to bring them before) had been created before)
onto the land. onto
the land.
Neither Noah nor the earth had to bring animals forth
out of themselves, but they had to give an impetus for already existing living
beings to leave their previous territory.
No blessing for the
land animals?!
The newly created sea
animals of the fifth day receive a special blessing from God:
And God blessed them,
saying: Be fruitful and multiply!
But in the case of the land animals, God omits blessing them with
fertility. Do they therefore have a deficit? No, the reason is rather that they
did not need this blessing any more! They descended from the sea animals of the
preceding day. As a consequence, the blessing given to the sea animals affected
them equally. It was not necessary to bless them again.
In addition to all this, we here encounter for the third time the Hebrew
expression for min = kind, species, which was first used for the species
of land plants (Genesis 1:12) and then for the sea animals (Genesis 1:21). Now
the land caused some of them to come out after their kind. It is to be
expect that afterwards these prototypes of land animals split up again into
further species. At any rate the repeated use of the expression min =
offspring, descendent is a remarkable indication for the descent of land
animals from predecessors which “came out” of the sea. All these circumstances
remind us of the fact that we are dealing with a family tree!
Sixth Day (2):
The Creation of Mankind
And God said: Let us
make (Hebrew: ^asah) man(kind)
in our image, according to our likeness ...
Then God created (Hebrew: bara') the man(kind) in his image,
in the image of God created (bara') he him,
male and female created (bara') he them.
Genesis 1:26,27
The origin of mankind
Is it not amazing
that mankind as ruler of the creation was not made on a separate day? It has to
share the sixth day with the other land animals, which are its direct
forerunners and - ancestors! Because the Bible text stresses that we have
to deal with a family tree. Thus we can hardly doubt that we descend from some
kind of land animals of the sixth day - the text mentions us together with
them as it were in a breath.
The word, which is used for the making of mankind, ^asah
= to prepare, indicates that something existed already, out of which God
prepared mankind. It is always the context which shows out of what something is
“made”. In this case the last thing mentioned are the different land animals.
So it would appear that God made (^asah) mandkind out of precursor land
animals.
Man is an
animal - says the Bible!
Indeed there are
statements in the Bible which go even further and insist that in some aspects
we really are land animals:
The sons of man
should see, that they themselves are but large, fourfooted beasts (behemah)
(!) ... Prediger 3:18-20
Salomon uses the same word here, which in Genesis 1
is the name for the last group of animals just before the appearance of
mankind. According to the Bible, concerning our physical and psychological
nature we are land animals! On this level man is not an entirely new
entity, he is only the further development of land animals. No wonder
therefore, that we can suffer from the same diseases as other animals, for
example rabies, chickenpox, BSE, foot-and-mouth disease.
What means “in the image of
God”?
The development of
mankind happened in two steps, and the second was logically based upon the
first:
And God said: Let us
uns make (^asah = prepare out of something, which is already
existing) mankind ... Genesis 1:26
The preparation of
mankind, basing on its descent from the land animals of the sixth day, was only
the first development stage of mankind. A second step followed, the creation of
mankind:
Then God created
(bara') mankind in his image,
in the image of God created (bara') he him,
male and female created (bara') he them. Genesis 1:27
God had steered the
physical development of certain land animals (= preparation, ^asah) to
supply the conditions for integrating the newly created human components. The
question is: what was so completely new about the emergence of humans that the
word to create (bara') is used even three times in one sentence?
The Bible text itself
gives us an indication because it stresses that the creation of mankind happend
“in the image of God”. C.S.Lewis explains quite beautifully what this could
mean:
Everything which God
has created possesses a certain similarity with him:
Space resembles him in vastness, not as if the size of space were
identical with the greatness of God, but it is in some way a symbol or a
translation of the greatness of God into non-spiritual dimensions.
Matter is similar to God because it possesses strength, although natural
physical energy is different from the power of God.
Plants resemble God because they have “life” and he is the “living God”.
Nevertheless life in this biological sense is not identical with the life which
is in God. It is just a symbol for or a shade of it. In the animal world we
find - beyond the flora - further characteristics of similarity:
For example, the intensive activity and fertility of the insect world
gives us a weak notion of the incessant activity and creative power of God.
With the higher mammals we find the first beginnings of instinctive
affections. They are similar to the love which lives in God.
And as we reach mankind, the highest developed living being, we find the
most perfect similarity to God that we know. ... Man does not only live but he
also loves and thinks; in him biological life reaches the highest stage, which
we know. (C.S.Lewis in “Pardon, ich bin Christ”, libc 125)
Typical for mankind is thus its special similarity to
God. While animals form a unity of body and soul, man represents a unity of
body, soul and spirit (1.Thessalonians 5:23). As high as animals with their
newly created soul stand above plants, mankind with its newly created spirit
stands above the animals.
The creation of
mankind - a leap in development
Also the natural sciences acknowledge that “homo
sapiens”, though he has many things in common with animals, represents an
absolute innovation in the terrestrial biosphere:
Zoologically man
certainly is an animal. But he is a unique animal, which differs from all other
animals in so many fundamental aspects that a seperate science for the research
of humans is absolutely legitimate. (E. Mayr in mebg 350)
Mankind is even so much higher developed than all other
mammals that science is facing a mystery:
The enormous gap, which
separates humans from the highest primates, the pongidae, and which man must
have bridged once during his evolution, constitutes one of the central problems
in evolution research. (Konrad Lorenz in tmv 223)
It is perhaps just as
considerable that, as soon as more than 100,000 years ago the stage of homo
sapiens was reached, no further increase of brain size took place. It is
difficult to understand for what reason selection should have provided such a
perfect brain for man that it would 100,000 years later permit the achievements
of for example Descartes, Darwin or Kant or the invention of the electronic
brain or yourneys to the moon or literary creations like those of Shakespeare
or Goethe. (E.Mayr in mebg 501)
Here we encounter the same phenomenon as with the
emergence of animal-soul life: where ever the Bible text speaks of a creative
act of God, on the sides of natural sciences you find a great leap forward in
the evolution of life.
Our calling:
Ambassador of two worlds
It is dangerous to
stress the relationship of man and animals too much, whithout telling man at
the same time about his greatness.
Blaise Pascal in Johannes Hemleben: “Darwin” page 147
Man has a dual
character: He is “homo”, which means “earthling”, with terrestrial origin and
animal qualities. But he is at the same time “sapiens”, which means
“understanding”, created in the image of God. From the combination of these
apparently contradicting qualities results the special status and the god-given
mandate of man:
... and they shall
have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the flying animals of the
heavens and over the foor-legged animals and over the whole earth and over
every creeping thing that creeps on earth. Genesis 1:26
·
As a classical member of the vertebrates and mammals,
built up by the same material structures as the material and animated things
which are surrounding him, man is their adequate representative
·
As a “logical”, spirit-talented being he is on the other
hand able to hear from God and to answer him. This makes a personal
relationship with God possible, which enables man to live in a responsible
position between God and the creation and to be a connecting link between these
two realms.
The indispensible
basis for this mandate is the homogeneity of mankind with God. To be “the image
of God” means to represent him in a visible way. Only as far as man resembles
the character of God he can fullfill his task to reign over the creation! To
rule “in the image of God” means in other words: To rule, as God would do it.
Human government therefore must never be an independant, arbitrary tyrany
detached from God. We are administrators who are responsible to God and will
some day give account to him.
Genetic Proof for the Descent of
Man
Summary of a 26-page
article by Edward E. Max, M.D., Ph.D.:
Plagiarized Errors
and Molecular Genetics
Another argument in
the evolution-creation controversy
Scource: www.talkorigins.org/faqs/molgen - Copyright © 1986-2002
In this article, E.E.Max describes some discoveries from his own field of
molecular genetics. He shows how they provide evidence for evolution that is
both convincing and conceptually simple enough for the interested layperson to
appreciate.
In the context of this article “creationist” designates
the specific belief that different species or “kinds” were created seperately,
not the general belief that a creator is responsible for all of creation, no
matter whatever mechanisms he used. Whether an “evolutionist” does or does not
believe in a Creator is not specified.
Species similarities and their different
interpretations
Present-day humans and chimpanzees, despite obvious
external and behavioral differences, have extremely similar internal organs and
physiological functions; indeed their genes are more than 98% identical.
However, the similarities between species in anatomy and protein structure can
be interpreted in two entirely different ways:
·
“Creationists” say that apes and humans were created
independently but were designed with similar features so that they would
function similarly.
·
Evolutionists say that the similarity between features
of, for example, humans and apes reflects the fact that these features were
inherited from a common ancestor; that is, the similar features of humans and
apes are determined by modern copies of genes that once existed in a species
that was ancestral to both apes and humans. Just as the resemblance between two
siblings suggests a common parentage, resemblance between species suggests
common ancestors.
Evolutionists believe that humans, gorillas, and chimpanzees evolved from a
common ancestor: an ape-like creature that lived perhaps five to ten million
years ago, rather recently on the geological time scale. Species less similar
to humans than are apes - mice, for example - are believed to have branched off
millions of years earlier from a common primitive mammalian ancestor.
Both the gene copying and the independent creation views
seem consistent with the similarity data, but which view is correct?
Copied mistakes as
compelling evidence
One way to
distinguish between copying and independent creation is suggested by analogy to
the following two cases from the legal literature: In 1941 the author of a
chemistry textbook brought suit charging that portions of his textbook had been
plagiarized by the author of a competing textbook. In 1946 the publisher of a
trade directory for the construction industry made similar charges against a
competing directory publisher.
In both cases, mere
similarity between the contents of the alleged copies and the originals was not
considered compelling evidence of copying.
After all, both
chemistry textbooks were describing the same body of chemical knowledge (were
designed to “function similarly”) and both directories listed members of the
same industry, so substantial resemblance would be expected even if no copying
had occurred.
However, in both
cases errors present in the “originals” appeared in the alleged copies. The
courts judged that it was inconceivable that the same errors could have been
made independently by each plaintiff and defendant, and ruled in both cases
that copying had occurred.
The principle that duplicated errors imply copying is
now well established in copyright law. In recognition of this fact, directory
publishers routinely include false entries in their directories to trap
potential plagiarizers.
Can “errors” in modern species
be used as evidence of “copying” from ancient ancestors?
In fact, the answer to this question appears to be
“yes,” since recent molecular genetics investigations have uncovered some
examples of the same “errors” present in the genetic material of humans and
apes. To understand these findings it is necessary to know a little about DNA,
the chemical molecule in which genetic information is stored.
Inside the cell's
nucleus, most of the DNA exists as a double helix. The genetic information is
stored in the sequences of nucleotide bases (A, T, G or C) that form the rungs
of a ladder. Each rung is formed by a pair of nucleotide bases touching each
other, one base attached to one strand backbone, and the other attached to the
other strand backbone. An “A” nucleotide always pairs with a “T,” and a “G”
always pairs with a “C.” In order to synthesize a protein, the cell reads the
genetic information of the gene for that protein by “transcribing” a molecule
of RNA from the gene. The RNA sequence is then “translated” into protein.
When a cell divides, the entire sequence of its DNA must
be duplicated into two faithful copies of the original; one copy goes to each
of the “daughter” cells created by the division. Occasionally, errors occur in
this copying mechanism, creating “mutations” in the DNA sequence. Such changes
can occur in most cells in the body - liver, skin, muscle, etc. - without being
transmitted to offspring when the organism reproduces. However, when mutations
occur in the egg or sperm or, more generally in “germline cells”, they can be
passed on to future generations.
DNA errors
Recombinant DNA technology has allowed scientists to
determine the sequence of nucleotides in segments of DNA from many species, and
several billion nucleotides' worth of information has accumulated. These
sequences have vastly increased our understanding of how genes normally
function; but, more to the point of this article, they have provided a treasure
trove of genetic “errors” that are potential clues to the analysis of copying
discussed earlier. In this context I use the word “error” to include any DNA
feature that we have good reason to believe (1) originated from a genetic
“accident”; (2) serves no benefit to the organism carrying the features; and
(3) therefore cannot reasonably be interpreted as having been “designed.”
Unitary pseudogenes
Guinea pigs and primates, including humans, get sick
unless they consume ascorbic acid in their diet. For humans and guinea pigs,
ascorbic acid is thus a vitamin (vitamin C), while most other species can
synthesize their own ascorbic acid and thus do not require this molecule in
their diet. The reason humans and guinea pigs cannot manufacture their own
ascorbic acid is that they lack a functional gene encoding the enzyme protein
known as L-gulono-gamma-lactone oxidase (GLO), which is required for
synthesizing ascorbic acid. In most mammals functional GLO genes are present,
inherited - according to the evolutionary hypothesis - from a functional GLO
gene in a common ancestor of mammals. According to this view, GLO gene copies
in the human and guinea pig lineages were inactivated by mutations. Presumably
this occurred separately in guinea pig and primate ancestors whose natural
diets were so rich in ascorbic acid that the absence of GLO enzyme activity was
not a disadvantage - it did not cause selective pressure against the defective
gene.
·
Molecular geneticists who examine DNA sequences from an
evolutionary perspective know that large gene deletions are rare, so scientists
expected that non-functional mutant GLO gene copies - known as “pseudogenes” -
might still be present in primates and guinea pigs as relics of the functional
ancestral gene. Pseudogenes are called “unitary” if they arose from single,
rather than duplicated genes, such that no functional copy remains.
·
In contrast, “Creationists” believe that humans and
guinea pigs were each created independently of all other species and must have
been “designed” to function without GLO. If this were true, these two species would
not be expected to carry a defective copy of the GLO gene.
In fact, GLO pseudogenes have
been detected in both guinea pigs and humans, consistent with the evolutionary
view. The kinds of mutations found in the human and guinea pig pseudogenes are
typical of the ones seen in genetic diseases.
Endogenous retroviruses
Infectious
retroviruses were discovered as agents of human disease and have been
intensively studied. Infectious retroviruses include HTLVI, which causes a kind
of leukemia in humans, and HIV, which causes AIDS. These viruses typically
infect specific kinds of white blood cells - lymphocytes - and insert
reverse-transcribed copies of their RNA genes into the DNA of these cells.
Soon after the discovery of infectious retroviruses,
scientists noticed that similar sequences were present in the DNA of many mammalian
species, including humans; these copies are called endogenous retroviruses, and
presumably represent the consequences of ancient retroviral infections of
germline cells.
In human DNA there are about 8
different classes of endogenous retroviruses with members of each class varying
in number from one or two to more than 50 copies. Essentially all of these
endogenous retroviruses contain mutations that would disrupt the function of
their genes, as would be expected if they inserted millions of years ago with
no selective pressure to maintain the function of the genes.
How ancient errors can persist in modern species
How could non-functional sequences, arising in a
germline cell of a particular individual, come to be preserved in all
individuals of a species? The extra burden of carrying along even a large
pseudogene sequence - for example, 100,000 nucleotides - is insignificant for a
mammalian cell with approximately three billion nucleotides' worth of
information. In any case, there is no known “proofreading” mechanism by which
the cell might distinguish non-functional from functional DNA and selectively
eliminate what it does not need. Functionless DNA sequences that scientists
have inserted into the DNA of mice or other species are faithfully passed to descendants,
and naturally occurring pseudogenes and retroposons apparently behave
similarly. Retroposons derive from non-viral RNA accidentally
reverse-transcribed into DNA that is inserted back (“retroposed”) at some
random position of the cell’s DNA. Although the high content of apparent “junk
DNA” was initially surprising when it was discovered, our current understanding
of the mechanisms of genome expansion (duplication and insertion) and the
apparent lack of significant selective pressure to minimize genome size make
the accumulation of useless sequences in our DNA seem inevitable.
The crucial observation relating
the discovery of pseudogenes and retroposons to the theory of evolution is
this: some pseudogenes and retroposons are shared between different species, as
though they were copied from a pseudogene or retroposon in a common ancestor:
Shared unitary pseudogenes
Many of the unitary pseudogenes in humans are shared
with other primates. By “shared” I mean more than simply that the same gene is
inactive in two different species, since that situation could result if the
corresponding genes of the two species were inactivated separately by
independent mutations.
Instead, in all the examples I
describe, the pseudogenes in primates carry many of the same crippling
mutations found in the corresponding human pseudogenes.
Since independent random mutations would not be likely
to be identical in two different species, the identically mutated pseudogenes
are strong evidence that the mutations occurred in a common ancestral species.
For the example of the GLO unitary pseudogene of humans, it is known that
vitamin C is required in the diet of other primates (though not for other
mammals except guinea pigs).
The theory of evolution would
make the strong prediction that primates should also be found to have GLO
pseudogenes and that these would carry similar crippling mutations to the ones
found in the human pseudogene.
A test of this prediction has recently been reported. A
small section of the GLO pseudogene sequence was compared from human,
chimpanzee, macaque and orangutan.
All four pseudogenes were found
to share a common crippling single nucleotide deletion that would cause the
remainder of the protein to be translated in the wrong triplet reading frame.
·
The RT6 gene encodes a protein of about 230 amino acids
expressed on the surface membrane of T lymphocytes of rodents; both the human
pseudogene and its chimpanzee homolog contain mutations producing the same
three stop codons that would prevent the synthesis of an RT6 protein.
·
Several of the human odorant receptor pseudogenes are
found in other primates, and share the same defects as the human pseudogenes.
·
The human NPY1 receptor pseudogene shares a critical
frameshift mutation with primate homologs.
·
The human urate oxidase pseudogene shares three
crippling mutations with the chimpanzee and orangutan pseudogenes.
Conclusion: shared genetic errors prove common
descent!
All of the examples of
functionless sequences shared between humans and chimpanzees reinforce the
argument for evolution that would be compelling even if only one example were
known. This argument can be understood by analogy with the legal cases
discussed earlier in which shared errors were recognized as proof of copying.
The appearance of the same “error” - that is, the same useless pseudogene or
retroposon or endogenous retrovirus at the same position in human and ape DNA -
cannot logically be explained by independent origins of the two sequences.
The “creationist” argument -
that similarities in DNA sequence simply reflect the creator's plans for
similar protein function in similar species - does not apply to sequences that
do not have any function for the organism that harbors them. The possibility of
identical genetic accidents creating the same two pseudogene or retroposon or
endogenous retrovirus sequences independently in two different species by
chance is so unlikely that it can be dismissed.
As in the copyright cases
discussed earlier, such shared “errors” indicate that copying of some sort must
have occurred. Since there is no known mechanism by which sequences from modern
apes could be copied into the same position of human DNA or vice versa, the
existence of shared pseudogenes or retroposons leads to the logical conclusion
that both the human and ape sequences were copied from ancestral sequences that
must have arisen in a common ancestor of humans and apes.
At the present stage, the
evidence suggests what to me is an awesome notion: like a biological Rosetta
Stone or Dead Sea Scroll, our own DNA - an Encyclopedia Brittanica's worth of
information in every cell of our body - contains a record of the past which we
are just now learning to read.
This record, reflecting millions of years of genetic history, includes the
relics of ancient genetic accidents that occurred before our ape-like ancestors
roamed the plains of Africa, relics that we now share with other descendants of
those same ancestors: modern gorillas and chimpanzees.
In higher organisms, genes are composed of various
shorter pieces, called exons. After transcription, the pieces in-between,
called “introns”, are cut out, while the exons are spliced together for
translation. After this processing, the RNA may accidentally be reverse-transcribed
and inserted into the cell's DNA, producing a “processed pseudogene” -
which is not needed.
Objection: Some processed
“pseudogenes” are functional, so they could be examples of “similar design for
similar function!”
Several examples of this possibility have been reported,
and these could be interpreted as “similar design for similar function.” But
these examples share a feature that clearly distinguishes them from the
hundreds of examples of useless processed pseudogenes reported: they lack crippling
mutations that would preclude function, and thus remain capable of encoding a
useful protein.
Objection: If all these
sequences were really nonfunctional, they would have been eliminated over
evolutionary time!
This argument reflects ignorance of the facts discussed
above. To repeat: no mechanism is known by which non-functional DNA sequences
might be distinguished from functional ones and targeted for elimination by
cellular enzymes. In bacteria there is selective pressure for short, rapidly
replicating DNA, but this is not true for mammalian chromosomes, in which genes
are widely separated from one another and in which nonfunctional regions
apparently constitute 90-95% of the DNA.
In the original article E.Max
goes much more into detail, explains several other categories of functionless
genetic sequences and gives many more examples for “DNA errors”, which humans
share with other mammals. He also deals with other possible objections: www.talkorigins.org/faqs/molgen
We have to reign - but how?
The fivefold blessing for mankind
God gave man a fivefold blessing in order to enable him
for his future tasks. Even in this blessing the dual nature of man is
reflected - the first part corresponds perfectly to the blessing of the
newly created animals of the fifth day:
Man Animals
1. Be fruitful
... Be fruitful ...
2. ... and
multiply ... ... and
multiply ...
3. ... and fill
the earth ... ... and fill the
waters of the seas,
and
let the flying animals
multiply
on the earth ...
Mankind has those impulses which are necessary for the
preservation of the species and the conquest of habitats in common with the
animal world - which is only a logic result from the common descent. But
in addition to this God gives mankind two further blessings ...
The submission of the
elements
4. ... and subdue the
earth ...
The word which the original text uses here contains the
idea of superiority and sounds quite brutal, because kabesch means to
trample down, subdue, force into service and often relates to the
submission of enemies.[7] Some might interpret
this as giving mankind the permission to exercise a despotic control over the
other creatures. But let us not forget that the earth is in a fallen condition
since the tohuwabohu and that the authority of God has to be reistablished over
it. Thereby the influence of hostile forces must be overcome. And furthermore
the commandment of God does not aim at the other living beings but at “the
earth” quite in general and probably relates to the natural forces. Indeed
mankind is “subduing” the earth by means of its intellect:
Mankind today more powerfully
transforms (the earth) than plants and animals did ever before ... (bgeo 312).
Never before has a single kind influenced the processes of nature with such
deep and longlasting effect as we do now. (rrdm 8)
Mankind has left behind passivity towards its evironment
and has begun to subdue the elements, on which it had been dependent up to
then, by the use of its intellect. An animal for example fears fire, but man
uses it as protection against cold weather, to prepare food etc. In similar
ways man has “subdued” and made useful many other elements of the earth.
We must reign - if we
want it or not ...
5. ... and have dominion over
all kinds of animals which move upon the earth.
Concerning the human authority over the animal world the
Bible text uses radah, which is quite neutral. Particularly our close
relationship with all the other forms of life on earth should help us to deal
compassionately with them - God has “put us in their place”! Our descent
from animals is therefore not an obstacle but an indispensable component for
our calling:
I assert that one can only
comprehend the singularness of mankind in its whole impressive magnitude if one
perceives it in contrast to the background of ancient historical features which
mankind has always still in common with other highly developped animals. (Konrad Lorenz in tmv
193)
And last not least we do not only have the mandate to
rule over the animals which surround us, but we also have the obligation to
gain control over “the animal which dwells in us”. We need no longer be
submitted to our desires and lower instincts, but we have the ability to make
conscious decisions independent from circumstances and momentary feelings. We
are capable to not only seek our own well-being!
The Bible text claims it and experience confirms it: We
not only have the potential but also the impelling force to take dominion over
the elements of nature. Therefore, also in the future the question will not be if
man will exercise his dominion, but only how he will do this. And as we
will see later, the urge of humans to take dominion is neither self purpose nor
an alien element in creation - this world desperately needs man and his
dominion!
Were the first human
vegetarians?
And God said (to
mankind!): Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed,
which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit
of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for food.
But to every animal of the earth, and to every bird of the heavens, and
to everything that moves upon the earth, in which there is a living soul, (I
have given) every green herb for food ... Genesis 1:29-31
These words are often
interpreted in a way as if all animals and humans up to the time of Noah had
only consumed plants as food. But this would prohibit all kinds of predatory
animals and would contradict the occurence of “sea monsters” in the Genesis
report (Genesis 1:21). It is also remarkable that God did not speak these words
to the animals of the fifth day, where it would have been appropriate, for
example in the framework of their blessing, but only to mankind.
Consequently they are not a commandment for the animals,
but a proclamation of God's will for mankind of the sixth day, a declaration,
which makes clear his ideas and provision. Therefore also the perfect tense: “I
HAVE GIVEN you ...”, compare Genesis 15:18:
On the same day the
LORD made a covenant with Abram and said: To your seed I have given this
Land ... Genesis 15:18
Habitats and food
Already the blessing for the animals included a
separation between the habitats of land animals and aquatic animals. It is
interesting that also the food declaration comprises a demarcation, which in
our translation is correctly emphasized by a “but”. While mankind gets
the right to eat all kinds of seeds and fruits, the animals in contrast are
only given green fodder:
But to every animal of
the earth, and to every bird of the heavens, and to everything that moves upon
the earth, in which there is a living soul, (I have given) every green herb
for food ... Genesis 1:29-31
Actually mankind nourishes itself mainly of seeds and
fruits, while most herbivores predominantly eat “green fodder”. Thereby the
assignment of seed and fruit to humans logically includes green plants. Only
the other way round this is not the case - all animals that eat seed or
fruit easily become rivals for us (for example rats or mice).
In reality the text of Genesis 1
does not deal with the question “vegetarian nutrition or meat”, but with the
division into “green plants (only)” and “seed and fruit”!
An Objection: The
food declaration for Noah (Genesis 9)
Often Genesis 9
is interpreted in such a way that up to then humans were only allowed to eat
plants and from then on they got the permission to also eat meat. But that can
not be correct, because already much earlier Abel slaughtered animals, and he
did not do that against the will of God (Genesis 4:4-5)!
Also the dominion of
sixth day's mankind “over the fish” must have meant their consumption, because
a “gentle” use as with cows (milk), sheep (wool) or chicken (eggs) is hardly
possible with fish. And the division of animals into clean and unclean
ones - already before the deluge (Genesis 7:2)! - proves, that they
were regularly used for food.
It is also
questionable why just after the flood Noah should have gotten the permission to
kill animals. Indeed already before these words he had slaughtered
animals (Genesis 8:20). No, another explanation is much more probable:
The increase of
wickedness, in particular of violence, had been the reason for the deluge:
The land was full of violence, Genesis 6:11. Therefore after the flood God
did not only repeat his blessing, which he had spoken in previous times, but he
added a restriction, which stood in connection with the cause of the recent
catastrophe: But the flesh with its life, its blood, you shall not eat,
Genesis 9:4. The purpose of this regulation was, to restore the missing respect
for living beings and their soul.
This interpretation would fit very well into the
context, because in the next sentence the blood, which is the life of all
humans is especially protected:
And indeed your
blood, your lives, will I require: at the hand of every animal I will require
it, and at the hand of man, even at the hand of every man's brother, will I
require the life of man. If anyman sheds the blood of man, by man shall his
blood be shed ... Genesis 9:5-6
Conclusion
The blessing of
Genesis 9 is thus not an extension of the blessing of Genesis 1, but a
repetition (compare the first verses) with a restriction, which should
underline the simultaneous introduction of death penalty for murder, which had
not been demanded before, for example for the murder of Kain. The newly
introduced prohibition of eating blood should teach respect for life.
Pain and Suffering in Creation
And God saw everything, that he had made,
and behold it was very good!
Genesis 1:31
I cannot ignore the difficulty
which results from the vast sum of sufferings everywhere ... There seems to be
too much misery in the world ...
I cannot covince myself that a merciful and almighty God should have
intentionally created wasps with the order to feed themselves in the bodies of
living caterpillars or that a cat should play with mice ...
On the other hand I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe
and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result
of brute force. (swza 75,76)
To this day, nature is in a puzzling condition: on the
one hand, we see an immeasurable variety of life, which is based on ingeniously
simple basic principles, for example the genetic code with only four “letters”
as universal language of all biological structures. This demands an intelligent
author, who wanted life and equipped it with almost unlimited potential. On the
other hand, we see competition, illness, aging and death wherever we look.
Surely, here Darwin is a voice for many people who
cannot understand how good and evil, death and life, joy and suffering can
coexist so close to each other. On the one hand the ingenious order of nature
urges to believe in an almighty and omniscent God. But on the other hand one
has to ask: “Can a loving God create sea monsters as it expressly says in the
creation report?” Is not one of the strongest reasons to doubt in the existence
of God the fact that joy and suffering are so closely interwoven in this
creation: “How can a good and righteous God allow all that?!”
To pin the blame on
Adam is no solution!
Some people try to
escape from this dilemma by saying that creation originally was free of
suffering and death and that only by Adam’s sin corruption entered the up to
then flawless cosmos. With other words: The “first man” was guilty for all
kinds of sufferings in the entire creation. But this teaching leads into a
hopeless dead end because then you have to shrink the age of life on earth to a
few thousand years and to date all fossiles to the times after Adam, ascribing
them to the Flood which then must have been a worldwide catastrophe - only then
you can keep up the postulate that before Adam there was no death.
But by doing this
massive conflicts with established findings of natural science arise, for
example concerning the age of the universe, the age of the earth and its life.
Also, insoluble discrepancies concerning the thousandfold observations of
archeology and geology are the consequence, as we will show in detail in the
chapter of “The Flood”. In the end, this kind of “short-time-creationism”
unnessessarily causes offence for modern man and impairs the credibility of the
Bible.
But how can we come out of this dead end? We have to
turn back and find the critical spot where we left the right way. In this case
we have to ask us:
Was really
“everything very good”?
Doesn't God say at the end of the creation report that
everything was “very good”? This would definitely contradict any catastrophe in
the beginning and the idea of a from then on fallen creation. It would also
exclude any form of evil, suffering or death from the family tree of “heaven
and earth”. But as we look closer we notice that the text does not declare the
“whole creation” or “heaven and earth” to be very good, but only those things
which God had accomplished:
And God saw
everything, that he had made, and behold it was very good! Genesis 1:31
Thus, if we don't want to go further than what is
written we have to admit that the classification “good” refers to the
individual acts of God only and not to the whole world. And indeed there are
two things in the creation report of which the text does not say that they were
good: the tohuwabohu and the darkness, which followed the “beginning”:
In the beginning God
created the heavens and the earth. The earth (however) was (or: became, Hebrew
hayetah) “tohu wa-bohu”, and darkness was upon the face of the deep ...
Genesis 1:2
In fact the
tohuwabohu and the darkness, which happened at the same time, are the only
things in the creation report which are not a creation or the product of a word
of God and which are not called “good”.
It is of secondary importance if we translate the Hebrew
“hayetah” with “was” or with “became” - though, according to the context we
prefer the last.[8]. The solution of
this question comes not by chewing the subtleties of grammar which can - if at
all - only be checked by experts. Much more decisive is the meaning of the
Hebrew expression tohu wa-bohu, which we will now examine thoroughly in
a way that can be re-enacted even by laymen.
The tohuwabohu of the
earth was not wanted by God!
The Bible stresses expressly that God did not create the
earth “tohu”:
The LORD created
(bara') the heavens ... HE has founded the earth - not (as a) tohu did he
create (bara') it (the earth)! Isaiah 45:18
This statement allone says it all. And besides that, we
must not forget that the second sentence of the Bible creates a certain
contrast to the first one by narrowing down the field of vision: Why, if
“tohuwabohu” describes a good raw condition, was only the earth in that state,
and not heaven also? And we know that the heavens of verse two were also not
finished at that time ...
The expression “tohu
wa-bohu”: reference to a disaster
The word tohu is used twenty times in the Bible
(for full text see the following page) and is translated as waste, desert,
in vain, vanity, emptiness, confusion, futility. The word bohu occurs
in only two other places, both times together with tohu, as in Genesis
1:2. These texts reveal the character and the dimensions of a tohu-wabohu
disaster:
Edom's torrents are
turned into pitch, and its dust into brimstone; and its land shall become
burning pitch ... from generation to generation it shall lie
waste ... And he shall stretch out upon it the line of waste
(tohu), and the plummets of emptiness (bohu). Isaiah 34:11
I looked at the
earth, and it was waste und empty (tohu wabohu), and at the heavens, and
their light was gone. I looked at the mountains, and they were quaking, all the
hills were swaying. I looked, and there was no man, every bird in the sky had
flown away. I looked, and the fruitful land was a desert, all its towns lay in
ruins before the LORD, before his fierce anger ... Therefore the earth
will mourn and the heavens above grow dark. Jeremiah 4:23
Both texts talk about devastating disasters which bring
almost total destruction to a country. Here, Tohu und bohu are
“measuring cord and plummet”, i.e. epitome of an intentional and precisely
executed judgmental destruction and devastation, and not at all the description
of a “good raw condition”! The context makes it unmistakably clear that the
cause for these disasters lies in apostasy from God.
“tohu” - the epitome
of separation from God, destruction and lack
In the whole Bible not a single
passage can be found in which tohu would refer to something which
is positive or intended by God. To the contrary, it is expressly stated that it
was not created by God and is never desired by him.
As we have examined the two Scriptures besides Genesis
1:2 where bohu occurs, let us now have a look at the remaining 17
places, where tohu occurs (all places cited at the end of this chapter):
·
In the Old Testament tohu is always found in the
context of injustice, confusion, idolatry, darkness and hostile environment. It
is an epitome of unfaithfullness, betrayal and idolatry with all its
consequences: deceit, confusion, chaos, disorientation, hopelessness,
separation of God, enmity against God, worship of demonic powers, emptiness,
lack, circumstances which are hostile to life, destruction and annihilation.
Never a ”tohu” is desired by God, but is always a consequence of the
separation from him and has a negative taste. Two aspects can be distinguished:
·
First of all, tohu is the epitome of apostasy
from the living God, for the vanity of all attitudes which do not acknowledge
God but adore created things or godless ideologies.
·
Then, tohu stands for the judgement which follows
upon the apostacy. Because, left alone without the help of God every creature
goes to ruin. The absence of God's blessing and protection logically leads to
disastrous decline and finally to total annihilation.
·
In the context the faithfullness of the Creator God is
often put opposite the tohu and the salvation of a remnant is promised
who may look insignificant but who nevertheless has the future in his hands.
Tohu is a synonym for apostasy
from God and the consequent judgment: Annihilation with the exception of a
small remnant which is saved by God's faithfullness and omnipotence in the
midst of hostility against God.
The
“making-good-again” of the earth
The expressions “waste” (tohu)
and “empty” (bohu) do not only designate something which is formless or
unshaped. Rather tohu (with or without reinforcement by bohu)
serves as a description of a horrible, dreadsome, depraving waste, of a
destruction which has occurred, or of a nullity.” (Westermann in his commentary on
Genesis). F.Delitzsch comes to the conclusion: “Sound and meaning of this
word pair is gruesome” (suus 94).
If we relate to the use of these words in all the other
texts of the Bible, starting with its second sentence, we have to suppose that
something horrible must have happened which put the earth into a condition of
separation from God. It is not explained here, what exactly happened. But from
the first to the last page of the Bible this remains a central topic:
The entire Bible reports how God restitutes a
fallen creation:
Beginning with the second sentence already,
something is “not okay”!
In this context it is
remarkable that from then on again and again it is stressed that things were
“good”. Before the background of a tohuwabohu disaster it is only logical that
the works of God are characterized as “good”: they contributed substantially to
the restoration of the damaged earth to a “good” condition. In a totally intact
and perfect creation it would be more or less redundant to stress the fact that
things were good, but in the context of a restitution of the earth out of a
tohuwabohu disaster it is quite easily understandable.
The tohuwabohu disaster gives the whole family tree of
life a special background: the genealogies of heaven and earth passed through a
crisis situation. Relatively early, shortly after “the beginning” of Genesis
1:1, a disaster happened, which caused a certain separation between the earth
and God. As a consequence, from then on God's acts are woven together with
circumstances which were not intended by him, i.e. with deficit and
destruction, tohu and bohu, but which he from then on included into his plans
and activities. Before this background, some other statements of the creation
report get a deeper meaning ...
The darkness during the tohuwabohu
The Biblical text expressely restricts the darkness to a
specific region: the flood covering the earth at that time. Apparently, this
darkness had a negative character, because the first activity of God was
directed against it: “Let there be light!” Only this light was regarded as
good: “And God saw the light that it was good.” The darkness is excluded from
this valuation. This reminds us of the darkness during another tohuwabohu:
I beheld the earth,
and, lo, it was tohuwabohu; and the heavens, and they had no light! Jeremiah
4:23
The here mentioned darkness certainly was negative, the
consequence of separation from God. The darkening clouds, which don't allow the
sunlight to penetrate to the earth are also a symbol for the fact that the
positive effects of God's power could not reach the earth.
The “family tree of life” in a fallen creation
It is remarkable that
in the second place where the verb richeph = to hover protectivly occurs,
we also have to deal with a tohu: 5.Mose 32 describes how God protected
life in a hostile environment, namely the Israelites when they left Egypt and
passed through the desert. A “wilderness” is mentioned in which God “watched”
his people “as the apple of his eye”, verse 10. The text does not only describe
the “breeding” and provision of “food”, verses 13-14, but also conveys the feeling
of threat by a tohu, from which God had to protect. This corresponds to the
meaning of richeph = to cover, protect, hedge.
Then the hovering of
God during the tohuwabohu would have been a protection against a hostile
environment: As God protected Israel and began a new history with them so he
bewared life in the tohu of Genesis 1 from anihilation in order to make a new
start with life on earth.
However, it is to be expected that the family tree of
life on its way through the tohuwabohu has been marked by two factors: the
positive activities of God on the one hand, and the separation of God and the
lack resulting from it on the other hand. The latter must inevitably have
caused competition and struggle for survival, which must have had a formative
effect on all living beings which grew up in such an environment.
“Monsters” as part of
God’s plans and works
It seems hard to
believe, but the biblical text actually states that God created “sea monsters”
as living souls (verse 21, tannin). The term tannin designates
predatory animals in all scriptures where it appears and is always translated
with words like monster, dragon, serpent, sea monster. This statement
does not at all fit into the image of a perfect world. It is, to the contrary,
one more proof for the fact that at that time struggle for survival and death
already were part of the “family tree of life”!
On the other hand it makes obvious that God's influence
always includes even developments, which were not initially intended by him.
When God created different forms of life into living souls, he did not exclude
even predatory animals from his activity. Until today it is a central aspect of
the character of God that he works even in creatures which do not at all
correspond to the “ideal”! And if we are honest we have to admit, that mankind
does not only have the material aspects or the soulish desires in common with
the other inhabitants of this earth, but that we are also affected by the
consequences of the early tohuwabohu-catastrophe. Fighting and struggle for
survival have become part of our genetic inheritance. And is not the whole
human race a “predatory kind”, very often “eating other animals”? Thank God for
his mercy even upon us!
It is not explained in the creation report what the exact cause of the
tohuwabohu was. Maybe the Bible avoids to pay too much attention to the
negative, but wants to focus on what God did. But on the subsequent pages of
the Bible this topic is dealt with again and again and even in detail, as we
shall see. In fact, the problem of evil is one of the most important subjects
of the whole Bible which continues up to its last pages, where it finally finds
its complete solution. But one thing is obvious: If we dont’t take the
existence of evil into consideration, we will understand neither creation nor
Bible and will again and again doubt in God.
God’s first reply to
the sufferings of this world does not consist of explaining words, but of
actions: The verse which describes the tohuwabohu-catastrophe ends with the
statement that the Spirit of God intervened by “hovering protectivly” over the
waters. And immediately afterwards God begins with the “making-good-again” of
the earth, namely a powerful command: “Let there be light!” on which further
actions followed.
God’s last reply to suffering and death is: Glory! And
we find a foreshadow in the Genesis report: If we consider the fact that out of
the chaos of the tohuwabohu our blue planet with all its plants and animals
developped, we can only stand in amazement - and gain hope, that God will also
bring the earth through the tohuwabohu-times which are still lying ahead, yes,
that through these difficult times creation will enter into a magnificence
which has never before existed and can now not even be imagined.
Nature carries the trademark of an ingenious and
loving creator,
but always still suffers from the consequences of the tohuwabohu -
a catastrophe, which caused separation from God and lack
for the whole earth and all forms of life on it.
God’s goal for the earth is to make everything good
again,
and as we will see
mankind shall play a decisive role in this plan ...
Appendix: All
twenty occurances of tohu in the Bible
Genesis 1:2 And the earth
was (or: became) waste and empty (tohuwabohu), and darkness was
on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of
the waters.
Deuteronomy 32:10 God found Jakob (the people of Israel) in a
desert land, and in the waste, howling wilderness. He compassed him
about, he watched over him, he preserved him as the apple of his eye. As the
eagle stirreth up its nest, hovereth (richeph = Genesis 1:2) over its young,
spreadeth out its wings, taketh them, beareth them on its feathers ...
1 Samuel 12:21 (2x) ... and turn ye not aside; for it would
be after vain things which cannot profit nor deliver; for they are vain.
Job 6:18 They wind about in the paths of their
course, they go off into the waste and perish.
Job 12:24 He taketh away the understanding of the
chiefs of the people of the earth, and causeth them to wander in a pathless waste.
Job 26:7 The shades tremble beneath the waters and
the inhabitants thereof. Sheol is naked before him, and destruction hath no
covering. He stretcheth out the north over empty space, he hangeth the
earth upon nothing ... He stirreth up the sea by his power, and by his
understanding he smiteth through Rahab. (Context apparently: the tohuwabohu
catastrophe of Genesis 1:2.)
Psalm 107:40 He poureth contempt upon nobles, and causeth
them to wander in a pathless waste.
Isaiah 24:10 The city of confusion is broken down;
every house is shut up, so that none entereth in.
Isaiah 29:21 that make a man an offender for a word, and
lay a snare for him that reproveth in the gate, and pervert the judgment of the
righteous by futility.
Isaiah 34:11 For it is the
day of Jehovah's vengeance, the year of recompenses for the controversy of
Zion. And the torrents thereof shall be turned into pitch, and its dust into
brimstone; yea, the land thereof shall become burning pitch: it shall not be
quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever: from generation
to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it for ever and ever.
And the pelican and the bittern shall possess it, and the great owl and the
raven shall dwell in it. And he shall stretch out upon it the line of waste
(tohu), and the plummets of emptiness (bohu). Of her nobles who
should proclaim the kingdom, none are there; and all her princes shall be
nought.
Isaiah 40:17 All the nations are as nothing before him;
they are esteemed by him less than a cipher, and vanity.
Isaiah 40:23 that bringeth the princes to nothing, that
maketh the judges of the earth as vanity.
Isaiah 41:29 Behold, they are all vanity, their works are
nought, their molten images are wind and emptiness.
Isaiah 44:9 They that form a graven image are all of
them vanity, and their delectable things are of no profit; and they are
their own witnesses: they see not, nor know; - that they may be ashamed.
Isaiah 45:18 For thus saith Jehovah who created the
heavens, God himself who formed the earth and made it, he who established it,
-- not as waste did he create it: he formed it to be inhabited: -- I am
Jehovah, and there is none else.
Isaiah 45:19 I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place
of the earth; I said not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek me in vain: I am
Jehovah, speaking righteousness ...
Isaiah 49:4 And I said, I have laboured in vain, I have
spent my strength for nought and in vain; nevertheless my judgment is
with Jehovah, and my work with my God.
Isaiah 59:4 None calleth for
justice, none pleadeth in truthfulness. They trust in vanity, and speak
falsehood; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity.
Jeremiah 4:23 For my people is foolish, they have not
known me; they are sottish children, and they have no intelligence; they are
wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge.
I beheld the earth, and lo, it
was waste and empty (tohuwabohu); and the heavens, and they had
no light. I beheld the mountains, and lo, they trembled, and all the hills
shook violently. I beheld, and lo, man was not, and all the fowl of the heavens
were fled. I beheld, and lo, the fruitful land was a wilderness, and all the
cities thereof were broken down, before Jehovah, before his fierce anger. For
thus saith Jehovah: The whole land shall be a desolation; but I will not make a
full end. For this shall the earth mourn, and the heavens above be black;
because I have spoken it, I have purposed it, and will not repent, neither will
I turn back therefrom.
The War about Heaven and Earth
Heavenly and earthly armies
Thus the heavens and
the earth and all their host (Hebrew: tsaba' = army, armed force, troop)
were finished. Genesis 2:1
With these words the text expressly states that creation
is at war: the here used word tsaba' = army, service in war, host, fighting
men is a special term for armed forces in military conflicts. The next
occurrence is in Genesis 21:22, where it is used for an armed force. According
to Gesenius (page 670) it is derived from ts-b-' = to wage war and is
translated with army, troops, divisions of an army, in the context with
the heavens it denotes the host of heaven (likewise Köhler/Baumgartner
page 790).[9]
Thus, the use of tsaba' in Genesis 2:1 makes the
report sound quite martial. In an intact creation this would make no sense, but
before the background of the tohuwabohu and a fallen creation this has a deep
meaning. When we take the statement of the Bible serious that the earth had
been devasteted and emptied (Hebrew: tohu wabohu), we recognize that a
battle is going on around us:
We have been born into a battled
world, and to the end of your days an intense battle will surge around you. All
the powers of heaven and hell are part of this battle - and our planet is
the place where it is fought ...
War is not one subject among many others in the Bible: it gives the set for the
entire drama! In this context everything happens. God is at war ...
As long as we resist the insight that war is the context of our everyday life,
we will not be able to understand life. We will misinterpret 90 percent of what
happens around us. We will hardly be able to believe that God really has
overflowing life in mind for us. And it will be even harder for us to resist
thoughts that we ourselves are guilty for our situation. And even worse, we
will inevitably have quite terrible ideas about God ...
John
Eldredge, “Der ungezähmte Christ” page 22-25
Let’s be realistic: What we experience now in nature and
in human society can never be called “peace”! This is obvious from the fact
that all living creatures on this earth have to suffer the last consequence of
war: death! And that God cannot be content with that, that he fights against
it, that’s a good news - isn’t it?!
The human dominion as
a campaign of conquest
Before the background
of the tohuwabohu disaster we can understand much better, why the commandment
of God has such an aggressive tone: “Subdue the earth!” Genesis 1:28 We have
already mentioned, that the word which the original text uses here contains the
idea of superiority and means to trample down, subdue, force into service
and often relates to the submission of enemies and the overcoming of
opposition. Indeed, it is an essential task of every sovereign to establish and
to secure peace in his territory. Therefore the restauration of creation
against the resistance of evil powers is an indispensible component for the
divinely-ordained dominion of mankind over the earth.
The tohuwabohu was the consequence of an uprising
against God. Now the “armies of the heavens and the earth” have the task to
rescue the lost territory, to redeem and to deliver the fallen creation.
Finally, with the rise of mankind, God's army is ready to go into the decisive
battle. That man was created as a physical and at the same time spirit-gifted
being “in God’s image” makes clear, that this will be a spiritual fight which will
include all aspects of life on earth.
The different works of God in Genesis 1 contributed to
“repair” the damages which had been caused by the disaster of creatures falling
away from him. According to God's explicit assessment the individual divine
works were good, the entire work after the appearance of humans even very good.
Which was the purpose that now could be fulfilled “very well” by this entire
work? The aim was to overcome the consequences of the disaster and to
accomplish the original intentions of God! This indeed is an essential part of
the calling of humanity:
For creation awaits
with eager expectation the revelation of the sons of God ...
in hope that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and
share in the glorious freedom of the children of God. Romans
8:19-21
Perhaps we start to comprehend the enormous significance
of humanity's calling: We shall deliver the corrupted part of creation from its
desperate condition! We have already realized that this will not be feasible
without combat. But the goal of this struggle can only be to overcome suffering
and death in creation and to achieve a stable peace a “glorious
freedom” - according to God's initial plans. The “armies of heaven and
earth” are not called to kill or to destroy, but their task is to bring healing
and life - to overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21).
This fits together with the fact that tsaba' is
also used for the service of Israel's priests - forming a spiritual army
(Numbers 4:3,30). Therefore the army, according to God's intentions, does not
leave behind a trail of devastation, but restoration and a renewed creation.
Like the stars in the heavens, they shall bring light into a darkened world
(Philippians 2:15). The leader of this army is God himself, the LORD OF HOSTS
(Hebrew: JaHWeH tseba'ot = plural of tsaba') - one of the most
frequent titles of God in the Hebrew Bible (about 270 occurences).
Slowly we begin to
understand the dimensions of God’s calling for us “earthlings” - though at
the sight of the size of the universe we are less than a speck of dust. It may
seem incredible to us, but nevertheless it is true: God’s all-embracing reply
to suffering is ... - “the man”!
The Mystery of the Seventh Day
And on the seventh day God completed his work, which he had made.
And on the seventh day he rested from his entire work, which he had made.
And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it,
because in it he rested of his entire work ...
Genesis 2:2-3
Did God really “do nothing” on the seventh day?
The interpretation that God rested completely on all of
the seventh day and did, as it were, “nothing” does not correspond to the Bible
text. First of all, the original text specifies explicitly that God completed
his work “on”, or better “in, during” the seventh day (Hebrew: bajjom, likewise
in Genesis 2:4; 2:17; 3:5; 5:1,2; 7:11; 15:18 and many other places). Otherwise
it would have to say that God finished his work within the sixth day and rested
afterwards, on the seventh day.
What does “sabbath” mean?
Furthermore, the text does not say that God rested, in
an absolute sense, but: God ceased from his work, which he had made. The
Hebrew word shabat literally means to cease (for example in
Joshua 5:12; Job 32:1; Jeremiah 48:33; Ezekiel 12:23; 6:6 etc.). From this, the
term “sabbath”, the “Jewish Sunday”, is derived. And from the “sabbath” we can
learn that shabat does not imply absolute inactivity. Although at the
time of Jesus many Jews were of that opinion, he taught the contrary. When they
blamed him for healing sick people on the sabbath, Jesus answered:
My father works even
until now, and I work! John 5:17
Obviously there are certain activities which are not a
“work” forbidden on a sabbath:
I will ask you one
thing: Is it lawful on the sabbath to do good, or to do harm? to save life, or
to destroy it? Luke 6:9
Also, the idea that God had to recover after his work is
unrealistic, even rediculous:
Do you not know or
have you not heard? The LORD is the eternal God, creator of the ends of the
earth. He does not faint nor grow weary ... Isaiah 40:28
Thus, God did not become totally inactive on the seventh
day, but just finished a particular work.
Why did God bless the
seventh day?
The text stresses the fact that God blessed the seventh
day in particular, which means that he provided it with salutary power. This
lets us expect something exceptional to happen as a consequence. The two
preceding blessings, for the animals and for mankind, had similarly been
connected with the expectation that as a result something positive would
happen - just the contrary of “nothing”! Now the development of life on
earth had reached a stage which should become the starting point of further
events. An entirely unprecedented phase in God's plans was at hand - for
which extraordinary power was required. Therefore we expect that the seventh
day will be full of action!
Genesis 1
describes a logical development. The sixth day with the creation of mankind
represents a culmination point. This is also expressed by the fact that it is
the first day which has the article: “the sixth day”, while the
preceding days were listed without the definite article: day one, a second day
etc.
The seventh day also
has the article and would therefore, from that point of view, be on a level
with the sixth day. But the seventh day surpasses all the preceding days! God
explicitely distinguished it from the other days: he made it holy, sanctified
it (Genesis 2:3).
The corresponding Hebrew word means that something is
separated (from the other things) and consecrated for a divine purpuse (kbl
825; Gesenius702). This confirms that God had something special in mind for the
seventh day!
For each of the previous six days, the Biblical text
clearly states that it ended. But concerning the seventh day no such statement
is made! With other words:
Whosoever claims that the seventh day has ended
reads something into the Bible which cannot be found therein!
But if we abide by the Biblical text as written, we have
to suppose that the seventh day has not ended until today. And indeed, the
letter to the Hebrews states that the “day of rest” is continuing until
“today”:
Encourage yourselves
daily while it is still “today”, so that none of you may grow hardened
by the deceit of sin ...
For we who believed enter into (that) rest, just as he has said:
"As I swore in my wrath, “They shall not enter into my rest,”"
and yet his works were accomplished at the foundation of the world. For he has
spoken somewhere about the seventh day in this manner, "And God
rested on the seventh day from all his works"; and again, in the
previously mentioned place, "They shall not enter into my rest."
... Therefore, a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God ... Therefore,
let us strive to enter into that rest! Hebrews 3:13; 4:3-11
Where can we learn more about this mysterious day? By reading on, because
Genesis 1:1-2:4 is designed to indicate a continuation, and that what
follows will reveal more about the mystery of God's plan for the rescue of the
fallen creation: The best still lies ahead!
The sub-title of the Creation
Report
The subtitle of the creation report
There are several reasons which make it clear that
Genesis 2:4 concludes the report of Genesis 1 and is part of it. Text
structure is one of them. Often, in the Bible, and end titles resembles the
beginning of the text, so that the two form a frame around the text. Let's have
a look at one example:
And these are the genealogies
of the sons of Noah: Shem, Ham and Japheth ... Genesis 10:1
These are the groupings of the sons of Noah according to their
genealogies ... Genesis 10:32
Likewise the end title of Genesis 2:4 corresponds to Genesis 1:1 and
forms a frame around the whole report:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Genesis 1:1
These are the genealogies of the heavens and the earth in their
being created ... Genesis 2:4
A "In the beginning God created the
heavens and the earth." (1:1)
B The condition before the six days:
Tohuwabohu! (1:2)
C The first three days (1:3-13)
Day 1: Light:
- Separation between light and darkness
- Separation between day and night
Day 2: Waters of the ocean and of the air-heavens:
Separation.
Day 3 The land:
- Coming up out of the ocean
- The spreading of plants
C The last three days (1:14-31)
Day 4: The lights:
- Dominion over day and night
- Separation of light and darkness
Day 5: Waters of the oceans and the air-heavens:
Inhabitants
Day 6: The land:
- Animals of the land
- Spreading of humanity
B The condition after the six days: Very
good! (2:1-3)