THE CREATION ACCOUNT

Happy Birthday Beyond the Blog

I’ve been fascinated with Genesis for many years. Over that time I’ve asked myself a simple question: is it mere myth, or is there real knowledge to be found within the poetic nature of the words?
I’ve decided there is. I offer no justification, here, for any arguments for or against the account. I merely lay out the facts as I see them. One point, however. In this analysis, I only cover Chapter One, which does not go into great detail about Adam and Eve. An analysis of this will follow in a later essay.

A MATTER OF DAYS

At the time in which the Creation Account was written, the only element of reality with which man could interact was the known Earth itself. The universe above his head was the home of supernatural influences and didn’t enter his world view.
Hence, there is the direct assertion at the beginning of the account that: ‘In the beginning God created the Heavens and the earth’. The actual construction of the heavens was literally of no value to them.
This said, the actual Creation occurred in Six Days. I would immediately agree with the Comte de Buffon, who argued that the Six Days were, infact, vast amounts of time. This is understandable in terms of the people at the time of the account. Their only easily measurable length of time was that dictated by the sun and moon – i.e. the day.

THE SIX DAYS

The first major assertion of the account relating to Earth is that the Earth:

‘was without form and void; and a darkness was upon the face of the deep’

The most generally accepted theory for the formulation of planet Earth is that gravity affected gas clouds of particles, attracting them into an etheric whole that would eventually condense into the planet as we know it.
Hence, at the beginning of Earth’s existence, it WAS without form, and void. At such an early period in Earth’s formulation, the solar system would also have been in a more primeval state, the gases being attracted to form the sun not yet densely packed enough to form nuclear reaction.
It is therefore valid to say that darkness was upon the face of the deep. And lo and behold:

‘God said, Let there be light, and there was light’

The sun had compacted to a point to allow nuclear reaction. And by the end of the first day, Cod had created night and day.

‘And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
‘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.
‘And God called the firmament Heaven …’

At the beginning of this period, the condensing gases would be changing constitution the closer such gases were to the central point of gravity. Hence, towards the centre of the cloud, the gases would be beginning to liquify. On the outer edges of the cloud the gases, however, would still be in a gaseous state.
In the centre of this reaction would be a point where liquid and gas would be breaking away from each other, forming the actual construction of the hard planet, and its circling atmosphere.
Hence, the waters under the firmament would be divided from the waters above, eventually becoming the planet and sky. And so endeth the second day.
God was particularly busy on the third day.

‘Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear … ‘

The atmosphere, having been created on the second day, the condensing of the actual planet had begun, and before long we see the construction of the land and the sea. Hence, the waters were gathered unto one place, other than upon land.
But God didn’t rest, for on the same day we find:

‘Let the Earth bring forth grass … ‘

As the Earth was forming the land and sea, it also formulated a concept known as the ‘primordial soup’ – a kind of cooking pot, wherefrom came life. And on the third day we clearly see these two processes going on almost simultaneously.
Admittedly, grass did not suddenly sprout of this ’soup’ – rather, the first form of life would be bacteria – but the writer of the account identified the first living thing as the genetically most basic form of life he could see about him. He had no knowledge of bacteria or microscopic creepy-crawlies, but intuition and scientific integrity remain sound.

The scientific hits within the Creation Account are becoming quite staggering. But God slept until the fourth day. Then:

‘ … and God said, Let there be lights in the firmament to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons and for days, and years …
‘ … And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: He made the stars also.’

We can immediately see an apparent problem here. It is ridiculous to see the sun, moon and stars only being created at this point in planet Earth’s evolution. But we must remember from what frame of reference the Creation Account is written.
Mortal existence could only be viewed in terms of the Earth itself. So to understand the fourth day, we must view it in terms of what the writer could have experienced had he been on Earth at the time of the fourth day.
The Earth had produced its initial life, the sea and land were existant, and it had an atmosphere. The concept of day and night would also exist. But of what order? For instance, would Earth have had an atmosphere as we know it today?
Science says not. Rather, the atmosphere would have been extremely volatile and gaseous, to such an extent that the whole Earth would have been shrouded in dense cloud. Light and dark would be appreciable on the Earth’s surface, but it would be a fused light, unlike day and night as we know it today. And as for celestial bodies, they would have been veiled from view.
Hence, from the Earth’s surface, the sun, moon and stars would not be visible. So on the fourth day, the atmosphere thinned out to become the atmosphere we appreciate today; exactly in line with scientific theory the sun, moon and stars would suddenly appear.
And so to the fifth day.

‘And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven’.

On the fourth day we saw the correct identification of vegetation before the evolution of actual creatures. Now, on the fifth day, we also see the correct process of creatures being first evolved in the sea.
So far so good. But within evolution theory, sea creatures must then crawl out of the sea to become land creatures, BEFORE they take to the sky. The Creation Account seems to get it completely wrong by saying creatures appeared, first, in the sea, and then in the sky.
Do we at last have an error in the creation account? No. Not necessarily.
Scientific methodology can be best identified as data collection, or observation, intermingled with intuitiveness. And in this apparent error we can see proof of the ‘observation’ element of scientific methodology.
Imagine you are a scientist in the second millennium BC. You have intuitively decided that creatures first came from the sea. So you look at the kinds of creatures you have around you – land animals such as sheep and dogs, birds, small reptiles and insects.
Which of them appears to resemble the next stage on from the fish? A sheep or dog shows no resemblance at all. They have well developed, muscular legs and hairy coats. Nothing like a fish. Insects are out – too many legs and too small.
So what about reptile? He can also be discounted. Although he is scaly, he has well developed legs and teeth. Even the fact that he can exist in water need not necessarily lead to the conclusion that he came from fish.
But what about the bird? Here we have a creature with rudimentary legs, suggestive of the next step forward from fish. He has a beak rather than well designed teeth. He has wings, which could be construed as a development of the fin. And as any fisherman will tell you, birds are clearly visible flying over the water when bringing in the catch.
Hence, it is feasible to argue that our second millennium BC scientist would opt for bird as the evolutionary outcome of fish. However, there is a more intuitive possibility here, too.
The actual evolutionary process from the fish is most likely the reptile. But the point is, the evolutionary line, leading to the present-day reptile, was not around to be observed by our ancient scientist. It had become extinct.
He could not, therefore, have seen this transition phase in action. Yet, as becomes obvious from the Adam and Eve Narrative, which will be discussed in the future, something intuitive within our scientist had suspicions regarding the reptile.
For it was the ’serpent’ – an ungodly creation – that tempted Eve, being condemned to crawl along the ground on its belly, as a snake.
And so to the Sixth Day.

‘And God said, Let the Earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping things, and the beast of the earth after His kind: and it was so.’

Thus we have the evolution of present day creatures, created ‘after His kind’, which itself can be termed to mean the next stage on from the previously evolved cousin; a direct hint at the acceptance of evolutionary principles at work in the account. All that is missing is man. But later that day …

‘ …God said, Let us make man in own image … ‘

And later:

‘God created man in his own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.’

And by the end of the Sixth Day evolution is complete.

(c) Anthony North, January 2008

Happy Birthday Beyond the Blog