SECTION I

 

God uses a relatively large amount of space in Genesis 1 to make it very clear that *He created the universe in six days. There is no mention of billions-of-years or any great period of time. However, many people still wonder whether or not the modern scientific belief that the earth and universe have existed for billions of years can be harmonized with a literal interpretation of the Bible. {*It is the stance of Beth Adonai Congregations INTL that God has no sexual orientation and is neither female nor male. The term “he” is used here in its generic sense}.

Most people have heard the argument that the word “day” in Genesis does not mean a literal 24 hour type day, but rather that the “days” represent 6 great ages of time. This is often referred to as the day-age theory. Many people have wondered whether this argument is valid. It is true, after all, that the Hebrew word for day (yom) can have several different meanings, depending upon its context. However, it is our opinion that when all the facts are gathered, it is abundantly clear that God communicated with precision that all creation took place during the time period of six, normal, 24-hour type days.
 

Question 2: Who wrote the first book of the Bible - Genesis?

The New Testament writers said that the Law was given by Moses (Mark 10:3; Luke 24:27; John 1:17, and the uniform tradition of the Jewish scribes and early Christian fathers, and the conclusion of conservative scholars to the present day, is that Genesis was written by Moses.

This does not preclude the possibility that Moses had access to patriarchal records, preserved by being written on clay tablets and handed down from father to son via the line of Adam—Seth—Noah—Shem—Abraham—Isaac—Jacob, etc., as there are 11 verses in Genesis which read: “These are the generations [Hebrew: toledoth = 'origins' or by extension 'record of the origins'] of. . .” [vs. 1]. As these statements all come after the events they describe, and the events recorded all took place before rather than after the death of the individuals so named, they may very well be subscripts or closing signatures, i.e. colophons, rather than superscripts or headings. If this is so, the most likely explanation of them is that Adam, Noah, Shem, and the others each wrote down an account of the events which occurred in his lifetime, and Moses, under the guidance of the the Spirit of God, selected and compiled these, along with his own comments, into the book we now know as Genesis.

How we should interpret Genesis 1-11!

The first 11 chapters of Genesis are vitally important for us to obtain a clear grasp of creation. These 11 chapters are the ones that have incurred the most criticism from modern scholars, scientists, and skeptics. Let's take a look at some of the following proposed interpretations of Genesis 1-11: as poetry, parables, prophecy, letters, biography, or autobiography/personal testimony.
 

Question 3: Are any of these chapters poetry?
 

To answer this question we need to examine in a little more depth just what is involved in the parallelism of ideas that constitutes Hebrew poetry.

Let us consider Psalm 1:1, which reads as follows:

“Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.”

Here we see triple parallelism in the nouns and verbs used (reading downwards in the following scheme):
 

Question 4: Are any of these chapters parables?
 

In the New Testament when Jesus told a parable he either said it was a parable, or he introduced it with a simile, so making it plain to the hearers that it was a parable, as on the many occasions when he said, “The kingdom of heaven is like. . .” No such claim is made or style used by the author of Genesis 1-11.
 

Question 5: Are any of these chapters prophecy?
 

Not in their full context, although two promises of God are prophetic in the sense that their fulfillment would be seen in the future. One of these is Genesis 3:15, which was the pronouncement by God to the serpent (Hebrew meaning: lizard, snake, wizard) in metaphorical form: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.” (NASB).

The other is Genesis 8:21-22 and 9:11-17,

“And the LORD said in His heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake… and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.”
 

Question 6: Are any of these chapters letters, biography, or autobiography?
 

This is where we need to consider some of the subscripts mentioned above.

If Adam knew the events of Creation Days 1-6, they must have been revealed to him by God, as Adam was not made until Day 6, and so he could have known them only if God had told him. This view is reinforced by the words, “These are the generations of [NIV: ‘This is the account of’] the heavens and of the earth when they were created…” in Genesis 2:4a.

The details of Day 7, the (Sabbath) rest day, are included before this in Genesis 2:2-3, thereby completing (as we might expect) the record of a full seven-day week, before this subscript or closing signature appears.

Then follow the events of Genesis 2:4b-5:1a. This section tells us about Adam, his wife Eve, and their sons, and reads very much like a personal account of what Adam knew, saw, and experienced concerning the Garden of Eden, and the creation of Eve (chapter 2), their rebellion against God (chapter 3), and the deeds of their descendants (chapter 4 to 5:1), albeit written in the third person. This section ends with the words,  “This is the book of the generations of Adam.”
 

Question 7: Is it feasible that Adam could have written Genesis 1:1-2:4a as the result of his pre-Fall conversation with God, and Genesis 2:4b-5:1 as the record of his own experiences?

There is no problem concerning his ability to have done so. Adam was created a mature man, endowed with all the DNA, knowledge and skill he needed to perform all the tasks assigned him by God. No cave-man he! Adam knew enough horticulture “to dress and to keep” the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:15), and ample intelligence to recognize and name the distinct kinds of animals (Genesis 2:19). He (and Eve) could converse with God without ever having learned an alphabet, and there is no reason to suppose that he was not fully skilled in writing also.

Question 8: But what about the supposed “contradictions” found in these first 11 chapters?
 

REFERENCES

[3] This discussion of Hebrew poetry was adapted from J. Sidlow Baxter, Explore the Book, Vol. 1, pp. 13-16.
[4] Aramaic paraphrases of the OT originating in the last few centuries BC, and committed to writing about 500 AD. See F.F. Bruce, The Books and the Parchments, (Westwood: Fleming H. Revell Co., Rev. Ed. 1963), p. 133.
[5] A. G. Fruchtenbaum, Apologia 2(3):54-58, 1993.
[6] The use of the third person is no problem. Moses wrote the long account of his own life in Exodus to Deuteronomy in the third person, and many classical authors like Julius Caesar also wrote in the third person.
[7] Adam and Eve knew how to sew fig-leaf 'aprons' for themselves (Genesis 3:7). Within a few generations, Adam's descendants founded a city (Genesis 4:17), were tent-makers, cattle farmers, musicians with the ability to make both stringed and wind instruments, and metallurgists with the ability to smelt the ores of copper, tin and iron and then to forge all kinds of bronze and iron tools (Genesis 4:20-24). Dr Henry M. Morris comments in The Genesis Record (Baker Book house, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1976, pp. 146-7):

'It is significant to note that the elements which anthropologists identify as the attributes of the emergence of evolving men from the stone age into true civilization—urbanization, agriculture, animal domestication, and metallurgy—were all accomplished quickly by the early descendants of Adam and did not take hundreds of thousands of years’.

Author: Russell Grigg, M.Sc. (Hons.), Creation Ex Nihilo Dec. 93 - Feb. 1994, Vol. 16 No. 1, pp. 38-41. Supplied by Creation Ministries International.
Parable

Greek: parabole, meaning: a placing beside; a comparison; equivalent to the Hebrew: Mashal, meaning: a similitude
 

Question 9: Are there noted contradictions between the 1st and 2nd chapters of Genesis?
 

We've all heard the claims that there are many contradictions in Genesis. Many people, for instance, believe that there are inconsistencies between the creation accounts of Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2.

Question 10: So what about all of the supposed contradictions? Explain.

There are none!

If, with the NIV, we read “Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east…” (Genesis 2:8) and, 'Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field . . .' (Genesis 2:19 with emphasis added), it is clearly seen that chapter 2 states that the plants and animals were formed before Adam. When Adam named the animals (Genesis 2:20), they obviously were already in existence. There is no contradictory significance in the order of animals listed in Genesis 2:20; it is probably the order in which Adam met the animals, while the order of their creation is given in Genesis 1:20-25. Dr Henry Morris comments:

“It was only the animals in closest proximity and most likely as theoretical candidates for companionship to man that were actually brought to him. These included the birds of the air, the cattle (verse 20—probably the domesticated animals), and the beasts of the field, which were evidently the smaller wild animals that would live near human habitations. Those not included were the fish of the sea, the creeping things, and the beasts of the earth mentioned in Genesis 1:24, which presumably were those wild animals living at considerable distance from man and his cultivated fields.”

Concerning the names of geographical sites, we have no idea what the configuration of the land or the rivers was before the Flood, because the pre-Flood world was completely destroyed. The land areas and rivers named before the Flood do not correspond to similarly named features after the Flood.

The purpose of Genesis 2:18-25 is not to give another account of creation but to show that there was no kinship whatsoever between Adam and the animals. None was like him, and so none could provide fellowship or companionship for him.

Question 11: Why not?

Because Adam had not evolved from them, but was 'a living soul' whom God had created 'in His own image' (Genesis 2:7 and 1:27). This means (among other things) that God created Adam to be a person whom He could address, and who could respond to and interact with Him. Here, as in many other places, the plain statements of the Bible confront and contradict the notion of human evolution.

There is therefore enough evidence for us to conclude that Adam most probably was the author of Genesis 2:4b-5:1, and that this is his record of his own experiences with respect to events in the Garden of Eden, the creation of Eve, the Fall, and in the lives of Cain, Abel, and Seth.

The next section is from 5:1b to 6:9a, and deals with the line from Adam to Noah, ending with, 'These are the generations [or origins] of Noah.'

The next section is from 6:9b to 10:1a, and deals mainly with the Ark and the Flood, ending with, 'Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.' The wording of this subscript suggests that this portion was written by one of Noah's sons, probably Shem, as Moses was descended from Shem. These chapters read very much like an eye-witness account because of the intimacy of detail which they contain. Consider Genesis 8:6-12 and note how this contains that ring of authenticity which is characteristic of an eye-witness account. It may even have been Shem's diary!

Genesis 8:6-12 (KJV):

“. . .And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made: And he sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth. Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground; But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth: then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark. And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark; And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth. And he stayed yet other seven days; and sent forth the dove; which returned not again unto him any more.”

Such meticulous details are the stuff of authentic eye-witness testimony.

There is thus a substantial body of evidence that these portions of Genesis were written by the persons named therein, for the purpose of making and passing on a permanent record.

Question 12: So then, were these first 11 chapters written as a record of authentic historical facts?

Answer: Yes, for several reasons. Explain these reasons.

REFERENCE
Henry Morris The Genesis Record, p. 97

Question 13: What’s the order of events in the Biblical Creation?

The Bible states that the Creation of the entire cosmos (universe) took place in six days.
It is clear from the context that these were literal days, not figurative.
Experts have failed to build a biblically-defensible case otherwise.
 

Order of Creation in Christian and Jewish Biblical Records (book of Genesis 1-2
 

Question 18: So what is the Biblical evidence to show that these first 11 chapters are actually a record of authentic historical facts?

INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF THE BOOK OF GENESIS
 

Mainly because the idea of a very ancient world is so deeply entrenched in our culture, many people, understandably, feel uncomfortable, even embarrassed, when other people claim the Bible teaches a recent  creation in six ordinary days.

It is commonly held that those who insist on a literal six-day creation must surely be an extremist. If someone wants to believe in a young earth created in six ordinary days, OK, but why push it down the throats of other people? After all, many people accept that the days are, or at least could be, symbolic.

One can sympathize with such positions. Except for a few people who thrive on being “anti”, none of us wants to appear out of step with the majority of educated folk.

However, there is a much more important issue here than one's need to feel “socially acceptable”, or to be regarded as moderate and non-extremist. It is, simply speaking, a matter of intellectual and exegetical integrity—even honesty.

I would not dare say this about many other issues on which people disagree. Scripture is not always as plain (at least to our finite minds) as we would wish it to be. Even Peter claimed that parts of Paul's writings were hard to understand.

The Bible uses Allegory, figures of speech and other literary devices on occasion. Often this is obvious, but occasionally sincere scholars disagree on whether a passage is literal or symbolic. But is this the case in Genesis 1-11? The answer is a resounding “no”. I am making the seemingly bold claim here that there is no way in which the Hebrew text of Genesis 1-11 can mean anything other than what the fresh-faced child, picking it up for the first time without preconceptions, has always seen as obvious.

If I were to quote one scholar to back up this statement, the reader may not be impressed. But what if that scholar was a leading Oxford University professor of Hebrew who claimed that, as far as he knew, all other similar world class Hebrew language scholars were of the same mind?

The following is an extract from a letter written in 1984 by Professor James Barr, who was at the time Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford. Please note that Professor Barr does not claim to believe that Genesis is literally true, he is just telling us, openly and honestly, what the language means.

Professor Barr said:

“Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class Christian university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1-11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience (b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story (c) Noah's flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark. Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the 'days' of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know.”

There are many theologians (as opposed to Hebrew language experts) who insist on long days, for example.
But the above makes it clear that it is hardly likely to be the text itself that leads them to this conclusion. Rather, it is almost certainly the desire to accommodate and harmonize opinions and world views (in this case, the idea of long geological ages) which arise from outside the Bible.

Of course, arising from outside the Bible does not necessarily make anything wrong; but in this case, the clear, unmistakable teaching of the scriptural text is completely incompatible with, even opposed to, the extra Biblical viewpoint we are considering. It is, therefore, in our minds completely unacceptable to claim that the bible may actually be teaching this view!

Faced with such a unanimous consensus of scholarly linguistic opinion (backed by the common sense understanding of countless people through the ages), it is no longer intellectually honest to say that the issue of the time and mode of creation (or the related issue of global versus local flood) is in the same category as disagreements over other basic doctrines. Disagreements over these latter issues arise from different understandings of the Bible itself, not from seeking to accommodate (or to defuse debate over) a world view that directly opposes a teaching of the Bible which is unanimously declared by experts to be the plain meaning of the text!

I suggest that the only intellectually honest approach for a person is either to believe what the writer of Genesis is saying, or reject it as untrue.

To disbelieve it brings the following problems:
 

Question 21: Was the fourth day of creation twenty-four hours long?
 

Genesis 1:14-19 "Then God said, 'Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth'; and it was so. Then 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. …So the evening and the morning were the fourth day."



According to Genesis, the sun, moon, and stars were made on the fourth day of the creation week. There have been many attempts to stretch the creation days into vast periods of time in order to accommodate the bible with secular science. However, the problem is not with the Bible, but with our attempts to rationalize and understand the creation week, something that cannot be done by finite minds! There are many details of God's creative plan that simply cannot be compromised with current scientific opinion. Some of the unanswered questions are:
 

For many people, it is difficult to believe that creation really took place in only 6, normal, 24-hour-type days. They reason that most modern scientists believe that the universe is billions of years old.

Question 29: Additionally, how could God do all that is recorded for each day of creation in such a short period of time?


For instance, the sixth day is especially hard to understand. They suppose that the events between Adam's creation and Eve's would require far more than 24 hours, especially since we are told that Adam named all of the animals on the sixth day.

The reason that many people question this portion of Scripture is that they have misunderstood the biblical account. Not only does Genesis not say that Adam named all the animals, but many people fail to understand the implications of God's purpose in bringing them to Adam. Here is what the main verses involved say, "Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found" (Genesis 2:19-20, NIV -- emphasis added).

THE BIBLE DOES NOT SAY THAT ADAM NAMED ALL THE ANIMALS, or all the birds and mammals. Thus, the first misunderstanding is in the claim that God commanded Adam to "name all the animals". A smaller group of animals was involved: livestock, flying birds, and beasts of the field (Genesis 2:20). Note that Adam was told to name the beasts-of-the-field, not beasts-of-the-earth (evidently the field-beasts were a sub-set of the larger category, beasts-of-the-earth -- Genesis 1:24,25). Various commentators agree that these field-beasts were animals that lived in or near the Garden. Other animals were also excluded from this initial naming event. These include the fish, water-dwelling mammals, and "creatures that move along the ground" (Genesis 1:24, NIV), including most reptiles, insects and many of the small mammals. Thus, a very large n umber of animals are eliminated from naming on Day Six.

Baraminology—classification of created organisms

How many animals were involved in this lesser group?

Dr. Henry Morris suggests perhaps 3,000 kinds. [Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Record (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1976), p. 97] Progressive Creationist Dr. Hugh Ross assumes a far larger number, probably hundreds of thousands. However, it is interesting to note that not all Progressive Creationists agree with Ross on this point. For example, theologian Dr. Gleason Archer estimated that "many hundreds of species must have been involved" in the original creation, not thousands as others propose. [Gleason L. Archer, Jr., Hermeneutics, Inerrancy and the Bible, edited by Earl Radmacher and Robert Preus (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1984), p. 326 -- emphasis added]

It should be noted that the modern term "species" is foreign to the context of the Bible. Genesis tells us that God created every animal according to its own "kind." It is probable that there were far fewer "kinds" at the time of Creation than there are "species" today. Progressive Creationist Walter Bradley agrees that "God created the major types of animals and plant life and then used process to develop the tremendous variety of life forms we observe today." [Walter L. Bradley, Hermeneutics, Inerrancy and the Bible, edited by Earl Radmacher and Robert Preus (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1984), p. 290 -- emphasis added] How many animal kinds were in this lesser group? It is impossible to know.

“All” does not necessarily mean each and every one

Hebrew grammars and lexicons demonstrate that the word "all" can have numerous applications and points of emphasis. The Bible sometimes uses "all" when referring to "each and every" member of the modified subject, as in Romans 3:23: "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (NASB). In this case, it is obvious that "all" refers to every human who has ever existed -- each and every person. However, concerning John the Baptist, the Bible uses "all" differently. "Then Jerusalem was going out to him, and all Judea, and all the district around the Jordan" (Matthew 3:5, NASB). In this case, few would argue that "all" refers to each and every man, woman and child. Thus we find that "all" may be used in many different ways in Hebrew and Greek, just as in English. Within the syntax of Genesis 2:20, we note that the author uses "all" with singular nouns ("cattle" and "beast").

Various Hebrew scholars confirm that this construction emphasizes the collective usage of the noun, rather than each individual in that category. This argument does not deny that group categories are made up of individual kinds of animals, yet it is the collective nature of these categories which is emphasized. [Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar, pp. 410-11 (127b-c); Francis Brown, et al, The New Brown-Driver-Briggs-Gesenius Hebrew and English Lexicon (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1979), p. 481] Therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude that in Genesis 2:20, "all" could refer to the collective nature of God's creation. Thus, Adam would only have named the number of animals required to fulfill God's purpose for this task.
Question 30 : What was the purpose of Adam’s task?

The main purpose seems to make Adam discover his unique aloneness. He was the only one without a mate. This is suggested by the entire context of these verses. The naming process was surely not meant to be a lesson in taxonomy. Neither did God bring the animals to Adam to temporarily eliminate any feelings of loneliness. The Bible emphasizes that the main point of this lesson was learned by Adam, "but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him" (Genesis 2:20, NASB).

Question 31: Understanding the purpose, how much time was necessary?
 

Understanding the purpose of this naming exercise is important to estimating how long the process might have taken. The number of animals would be determined by how long it would take Adam to fully get the point. Since Adam was created in God's image, the image of One who communicates and shares in loving relationships, it seems doubtful that Adam would have needed years, months, weeks, or even days to understand the importance of companionship. It is probable that Adam, placed in the midst of such an excellent illustration, would have realized his own need for a helper in only a matter of hours.
Having seen that the naming process of the animals would not necessarily require the 6th day to be an extended period of time, many still wonder if too many other things happened on Day Six for it to be a normal length day. What events does Genesis 1-2 list for Day Six?
 

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