The book of Genesis not only teachers us about creation and where we came from but about how God brought order to His creation. This order can be seen in the order of creation and how creation work was divided up. At the same time, God said creation was good, not morally neutral.
Let's take a look at what he did.
Day 2
Genesis 1:6-8 says:
And God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. God called the expanse "sky." And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.
On the second day God continues His creative work by creating the sky. But, what does the phrase, "separate water from water" mean? It could, again, be poetic language about the Hebrew idea of water that I talked about in my previous post. Or, could be, as some speculate, that there was a canopy of water that stood outside of the sky until the time of the flood. Though, this is an interesting theory it may take this text farther than we can responsibly go. (Remember, this isn't a science book and it's not hear to answer all of the questions we have today.)
Days 3 - 5
After creating the sky God continues creation, according to Genesis, by creating, defining, and forming the rest of creation. This includes dry ground, vegetation, sun, moon, stars, animals of the sea, birds, and animals on the dry ground. In the creation of these things we can see order. This part of creation was broken up into 3 days. And, while he was creating the vegetation, birds, sea creatures, and land animals he was creating them organized by kind. Here kind is similar, in terms we use today, to species. It does not preclude variation among a species but does create them in an organized way.
It Is Good
A constant through creation is God saying that creation is good. He is not saying that it is morally neutral or bad but rather good. To the Hebrews this would have been a new concept given the rest of humanities belief, at that time, that creation was either an accident, bad, or at least neutral. According to God, His creation was good and not flawed.
This is something we may need to be reminded of and pay attention to still today. Don't we often times talk about or treat the world as a morally neutral place? As though God created a morally neutral place? But, according to God it wasn't created that way.
Now, after the creation of man in verses 26-30 (I'll dig into this next week) God points out that the creation is not just good, but "Very Good", as the Hebrew says. Creation was good before and now with man (humans) in it creation is "Very Good".
The creation of men and women is something the bible slows down in teaching. So, I'm going to hold off until future posts to delve into that.
Any thoughts from the peanut gallery?
The easiest way to read the
The easiest way to read the creation story is to go back to the Hebrew:
"God said, 'There shall be a sky in the middle of the water, and it shall divide between water and water.'"
Which, to me, makes more sense than "between". But reading through the firmament, and the creation of the sky, it's very difficult to map these onto current-day understandings. The Earth seems to be described as rising out of the water, and this thick layer of water is supposed to be surrounding everything, even heaven. And why are plants created before the sun exists for photosynthesis? This is an even bigger problem if one takes the six days of creation as non-literal (which is not supported anywhere--the Hebrew word "yom" is unequivocally a 24-hour period, especially when combined with the phrase "it was evening and then morning". When the word "yom" is used to mean more than a single day, it is combined with other words, or used in the plural), as it then means plants were sitting around photosynthesizing nothing.
Even further, why does it take one whole day to create plants and earth, but only one day to create the sun, the moon, all the planets, all the stars, and all the planets that surround the staras, and all the galaxies, and so on and so forth? (And what was the light that was created on the first day, if not the sun?).
The only way I've been able to read Bereshit and make sense of it is to assume that the Earth is flat, and the stars are fixed points.
The canopy of Heaven is now the space between an infinite ocean of water, wherein lies the Earth. The Earth rises up underneath that canopy. The floodwaters of Heaven were simply allowing water to pour through the firmament. The stars are fixed against it (and thus a third of them can be knocked down in Revelation). The Earth being flat also fixes a number of other odd readings in the Bible, such as the sun standing still for Joshua, a number of references to the "four corners of the Earth", and one or two places where everyone on earth is to look up to the sky and see the same thing (which can be done on a flat earth, but not a round one).
The why's?
You ask a lot of good why questions. Though, the Bible isn't a science book and doesn't tell how or why God did the things He did. Why did God create plants before the sun? He doesn't say. Though, if He was creating something He could have built parts that interact on different days. Take how we build cars. They put the engine in the car before they finish the details on the outside and before they fuel it up. Yet, there is an engine.
Why God does things is something that He doesn't always teach us. While it is something we would like to know it isn't something God feels He needs to teach us. And, if God is the creator of all would we begin to understand what He did?
The whole area of the sky is view from a Hebrew perspective. It is a Hebrew writing to Hebrews. To them water is what surrounded everything. What would their perspective have been on the separating of the water?
The idea of a day and what could have been meant by the light is something I blogged about yesterday. I'm sorry I didn't make that clear. You can read that post here.
Lets tackle a few things you said. The sun standing still for Joshua does not mean a flat or round Earth. It mean something supernatural happened. This supernatural incident could have happened with a round Earth if God chooses.
As for the 4 corners of the Earth we have to ask what that meant to the writer and audience. If we look at it from a world view today it will be taken out of context. Aren't we after the meaning in the text? The understanding to a Hebrew person back then would have been that this is North, South, East, and West. This fits with their way of thinking visually rather than conceptually.
The reason there are so many odd readings in the bible is really do to the culture gap between us today and a Hebrew person 2,000 years ago or older and because of the language and translation barrier. Things do get 'lost in translation'.
We have to be careful when we read the bible because it isn't a science book and we have a lot of scientific questions. We, also, have to remember that we don't understand Gods power and we have an extremely limited understand of the universe.
As you have pointed out, God
As you have pointed out, God did not write the Torah, the Hebrews did. They have made a number of scientific mistakes. Couldn't they have also made a number of grammatical or spelling mistakes, let alone English translation mistakes? Think of all the witches burned when King James decided to translate the word "well-poisoner" as "witch".
You even go on to point out that there are major scientific and cultural gaps between the ancient Hebrews and ourselves, such as their view of water surrounding everything, the world being flat, and so forth. Couldn't another gap be that they believed in an invisible man in the clouds
As to the use of the word "yom", please note that you do not address the reasons listed in the linked article regarding the fact that "yom" is the literal word day, especially when combined with the phrase "evening and morning". It's hard to get more clear that these are intended as literal, 24-hour days. Your most recent post does not address these problems, such as the fact that there are no such uses of "yom" in the Torah that do not imply 24-hour days (or occasionally 12-hour periods, which is even less!), unless "yom" is pluralized or accompanied by helper phrases to indicate a number of days.
scientific
You are right, there are many cultural gaps between the people in the Hebrews time and the people reading the bible today. That is why it is important to understand what they mean and how they would have understood this. Basically, to break down the cultural gap and understand what was written and not how we want to take it.
Again, you are right about translations being poor. This is why I am a big fan of self study bibles where they attempt to explain what is being said and being taught by a pastor who can read the original Greek and Hebrew texts. We still have the bible in it's native text and many people who can read it and are trained in the culture.
Now, you point out scientific gaps. This is an area where I think further explanation needs to happen. There are not gaps between science and the bible. The gaps are between the theories of scientists and what is written in the bible. This difference in understanding is important. Science itself is, as my dictionary puts it, "The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena." Where the gaps come in is with the theoretical explanations our scientists come up with and what the bible teaches. Now, these gaps don't just come between the bibles teachings and scientists but, also, scientists and each other.
Our scientists are trying to figure out our universe. But, they are doing it with very little information and understanding. I look at it like this. Take a piece of paper and poke a pin hole in that piece of paper. Now, go look at your bedroom through just that tiny hole and in just one direction. Then, describe the bedroom. As time goes on the hole in the paper gets bigger but for now it is still just that tiny little pinhole.
The word yom does mean a day in the Torah and in particular at the beginning of Genesis. It is described with evening and morning to show this 24 hour period. Yep. Can we scientifically say this is not true? No. But, let me clarify. We don't know that the Earth is 4-5 billion years old. Often times scientists talk that way but they don't know it. No one was there. It is an estimate based on what we know and a lot of assumptions. This does not mean it's true. There are new scientific findings that challenge us to reevaluate what we know. For instance, one of the things in physics, under a bit of debate, is that the speed of light in a vacuum may not be a constant after all. It this is the case than a lot of our scientific calculations would need to be updated because they are based on what we currently call a constant.
In the end we don't know how old the Earth or the Universe is. We don't know how God made it. Did the earth look like it was a billion years old when it was really just one day old? Adam was a man on day one and not an infant. A man capable of speaking. We don't know. We have assumptions. Scientists have assumptions and many of them disagree on these things.
So, this begs the question of who are you going to believe. Fallible people who don't agree with each other or what God gave us?
> We don't know that the
> We don't know that the Earth is 4-5 billion years old.
Yes, we do, through science. Correct, scientists were not there to see it. But making such an argument, though nitpickingly correct, is worse for the position of G-d, whom no one today can see, nor can point to and say "look, over there, a guy in a beard". Saying that we don't "know" it is 4.567 billion is as intellectually bankrupt and empty as saying "we don't know that this color is blue, it might be that we are all seeing our own self-consistent set of colors" or "We don't know that other people exist, as opposed to this all being a dream from my point of view". These statements are empty of any curiosity about the world around us, a dead-end of inquiry. Bonus question: Do you know how we measure the age of the Earth, scientifically? Can you explain it in your own words?
Worse still, this logic applies to G-d. We don't know he exists. You might, sure. But to others, it's like the person pretending that everyone else is a dream. The delusional can describe how it feels, but there's nothing to back it up. This is in even worse shape than evolution and the age of the earth, which have new evidence we can look at every day that strengthens the theories, but the theory of G-d, and his sphere of influence, just get smaller and smaller as we discover more and more.
Please be polite
Please be polite in your posts. Your comment has a definite tone of attacking. I can see that I touched a nerve and am sure that has to do with touching a topic close to your core beliefs. This should not preclude us from being civil.
The truth is that we don't know the age of the Earth. I do know how dating works and it is much to long to describe in a comment post. Our dating process is based on a number of assumptions. If one of those assumptions is wrong than our dating is off. I know how the dating process give us ratios and not dates. I know how we have dated things that we have seen happen, like lava flows, incorrectly by thousands of years. In the end we don't know the age of the Earth. If you believe the Earth is that old than you don't know it but have faith in the people doing the dating based on their assumptions. Did you see that... faith. You have faith in them and their findings because we don't know.
You are right, we don't scientifically know that God exists. The problem here is that if there is a creator and this is the creation... well a system cannot measure or detect things outside said system. If God is outside of creation than He is out of the realm that science can deal with. Now, we can see the affects where God does something in creation.
What strengthens many of the unproven theories in science is teaching. Most people don't know much about science. Yet, in school and in the media they are feed a lot of info. For example, science books are under the hot seat, by both creationists and evolutionists, for teaching things we know are wrong. But, those kids leave school with a belief that it's true while the basis for that belief is not rooted in what we know much less in accurately taught theories. Notice, I said belief. If we don't know it's true than when we think it's true that is belief. We have faith in those scientists, their assumptions, and their conclusions based on our limited knowledge. And, we have faith that their view of the evidence is painting an accurate picture.
Take for example a statue. If you view if from the right you see one view. If you view it from the left you see something different. It's the same statue but your different view spells out what you see when you see it. This is the same thing with us as people. Our views (sometimes called biases) affect the way we view information. If we believe what they have to say we have faith that they had the proper view and biases when they viewed the information.
science divided
i find it interesting that even "science" as we refer to it is not a monolith...though sometimes we pretend it is. But even in science you have different disciplines that use the same basic principles and methods, but arrive at different conclusions-not just different though... sometimes CONFLICTING conclusions.
I take this to the realm of human behavior, which may seem more subjective than the origin of the universe, but in reality it is more measurable, observable (even repeatable) than many of the things about which we now speculate.
Anyway, human behavior and the explanations of it vary drastically based on which discipline controls your world view. Psychology caught our attention for a long time, which has become a very bio-chemically oriented discipline. It explains that human behavior is shaped by brain chemistry, formative experiences (which in turn effect our chemistry), and intangibles like id-ego-superego...
but sociology which IMHO is another very scientific discipline looks at human behavior as a result of social influences, norms, relational and social systems, etc... in short the human person is the sum of their relationships.
A new discipline trying to explain human behavior is actually genetics. Who I am and what i do is genetically determined in the womb.
so what is the true reason someone might be bi-polar, is it because they've learned it thru a disfunctional system (or not learned how to be moderate in behavior from a lack good examples)? Is it because they are genetically pre-disposed to it? It is because of mental or developmental trauma that subconsciously haunts them and even alters their brain chemistry? Depending on which scientific discipline you look thru the answer is yes. And yet can all be right?
i realize all this might be oversimplistic but i think this points out that even "science" can't agree with itself on many things. Another example would be medicine. For a long time now medicine has been ruled by chemistry. I get a cold and so i go to my doctor and he tells me it's a sinus infection and gives me antibiotics. But if i were to go to my chiropractor (which gains more credibility thru medical journals all the time) he might tell me that I'm misaligned and the "physics" of my body are causing my sickness. Now maybe there is room for overlap in these things, but even so the discipline by which you look at the world will dictate the explanation, and sometimes the explanations don't mesh.
I guess all this is to say that "science" isn't the singular voice we pretend it is. But it is made up of many, many voices all using the same basic method but coming up with very different (sometimes conflicting) explanations.
but honestly i'm not a science guy like the two commenters here are. SO i'm interested what you think... i'll take my comments off the air :) thanks for reading
good explanation
That's a great explanation of science. I think that all to often we look at it as a group of disciplines that agree with each other. They don't in so many ways.
Genesis creation account and the age of the Earth
Hi Matt, I was just reading the posts by anonymous and thoughtI might have something to contribute. This will probably not begin to convince Anonomous, as he/she seems to have issues with God. Anywho, about 6 years ago I began to wrestle with questions regarding the creation account in Genesis. Having went to a private Christian high school where long ago we were taught the gap interpretation, I had always been told that there is absolutely no conflict between Genesis 1 and an ancient date of the earth. I eventually forgot about this angle on the creation account until the mid 1990s when I read about DNA tests results that were performed on Neandertal remains. According to the test results it appears Neandertals were not human.
This did not shake my faith in the least as I thought back to my high school classes and the gap of billions of years left out of the Genesis account. Ironically it wasn't primarily science that caused me to intensively study Genesis for the following 4 years but rather it was the fierce debate raging among Christians as to the age of the earth and the interpretation of yom in the original Hebrew. Christians were attacking Christians with a level of hostility that would make Anonomous look like a teddy bear.
When it came to my old standby the "gap theory" both sides attacked it even worse than they attacked each other. The gap view was seen as an outdated compromise that neither ancient-earthers or young-earthers would even seriously consider except to briefly refute. Problem, for them is that these supposed refutations are shallow and easily answered with careful study.
This view of Genesis chapter 1 espouses a literal interpretation of Genesis right down to the 24 hour solar days and yet also stays out of the realm of scientific inquiry, allowing for an age of the universe and the earth in the billions of years. I am convinced after much prayer and study that this view of Genesis 1 is the most likely interpretation to be true to the original Hebrew and the Greek Septuagaint. It also keeps us from being led down the rabbit trail of long drawn out debates that will likely never be satisfactorily resolved between believers and skeptics. This view allows us to focus on proper translation/interpretation of the Genesis text rather than on science, which many of us have no training or experience in. Just an opinion for what it's worth. Thanks for hearing me out. In Christ, Charles
creation
Thanks for your comments. I appreciate reading what people think and why.
The science theories, the gap theories, and what Genesis says is something that really interests me. A big part of that, like you, was what Christians were saying. I was curious what was true, what we really know, and what does it all mean.
What I found was that what many scientists are saying is based on their belief. Hawking (famous astrophysicist) has even pointed it out in his books. The theories that lead us to an old Earth, for example, are based on Einsteins relativity. Take relativity, put a bunch of info in, and out pops an old Earth. But, it's not that simple. There are a number of inputs we need to get an output that we just don't have the answers to. So, as Hawking put it, scientists fill in these unknowns with what they believe. If we change these unknowns to other possibilities we get creations other than a big bang.
So, what I get out of this is that the old Earth ideas are still rooted in belief. They are rooted in the belief a number of scientists have. They are not rooted in knowns.
I, also, realize that many Christians are trying to get the bible to work with what scientists are saying, and have it all play nice. There are times when this just doesn't happen. And, many people don't know how to handle that.
In the end, I know that much of the popular science is based on belief not rooted in God. When in doubt I go with what the bible says. I believe it. The theories of men may not always match up. But, there have been alternative theories almost as long as we have recorded history.