Genesis 1
SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE
By Bruce Gerig
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Hebrew
Text and the First Creation Account
Chapter 2: The Evolutionary
View and Genesis 1
Chapter 3: Five Approaches
to Reconciling Science and Genesis 1
Footnotes, References
and Translations
INTRODUCTION
Time
magazine not long ago (11/13/06) carried a summary of a debate held between
Richard Dawkins, a professor for the public understanding of science at Oxford
University and a chief defender of evolution, and Francis Collins, director
of the U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute, who headed a 2,400-member
scientific team that co-mapped a blueprint of all 3 billion human genetic
biochemical letters, and who believes in Creation.1
Dawkins in his book The God Delusion (2006) attacks Christianity and
calls for everyone to embrace atheism,2 while Collins
in The Language of God (2006) tells how he came to a deep personal
faith in God as well as being a scientist.3 As books
continue to appear from both atheist and Christian scholars, what is the Christian
supposed to make of all this? For one who believes that the Bible and science
are both pathways to truth, it will not do simply to dismiss every scientific
statement that disagrees with traditional Biblical teaching or to accept everything
that science says, either, which is often (dis)colored by atheist presuppositions.
Two ideas are helpful: (1) to seek out the thinking of Christian
scientists who have a sound technical understanding as well as an interest
to seek to combine Biblical revelation and scientific evidence, and (2) to
revisit the Bible in the face of scientific contradiction to see how well
key texts have been interpreted in the past and also whether they might be
open to other readings.
Astronomers now hold that a Big Bang occurred some 13.7 billion years ago
(bya). Then 400,000 years later, the young universe went black, ushering in
a cosmic Dark Ages. During this 200 million year period, beginning after the
last flash of light from the Big Bang faded, new chemicals were formed out
of the primordial hydrogen and helium; huge stars and vast galaxies began
to appear; and then over many millions of years the sky expanded into the
spectacular universe we know today, which displays billions of magnificent
galaxies, shimmering gas clouds, fiery stars, tiny planets, and mammoth black
holes.4 Recently, Japan’s Subaru telescope captured
light from six galaxies that began its journey to earth only a billion years
after the Big Bang.5 Meanwhile, geologists calculate
the earth (and our planetary system) to be some 4.6 billion years old, based
on radioactive dating of certain lead and argon isotopes (forms of those chemicals)
found in meteorites and lunar rocks.6 Biologists say
that life (single-cell organisms) first appeared in the sea around 3.8 bya;
and life forms dramatically increased in the sea especially during the “Cambrian
explosion” 543-490 million years ago (mya), when all (or most) of the
major animal forms living today appeared. Many plant and animal groups seem
to have developed side by side. It is believed that plant life first appeared
on land around 420 mya.7 Anthropologists believe that
the Homo genus (apes who increasingly displayed humanlike skills
and traits) first appeared about 2 mya.8
So, what about
the calculations of James Ussher (1581-1656), the Irish archbishop of Armagh
who determined the date of Creation to be 4004 B.C., and of John Lightfoot
(1602-75), the Cambridge don who also viewed the creative ‘days’
in Gen 1 as 24-hour days and who decided that Creation took place, more precisely,
during the week of October 18-24, 4004 B.C., with Adam created on Oct. 23
at 9:00 a.m., forty-fifth meridian time? E.T. Brewster would later remark
sarcastically that: “Closer than this, as a cautious scholar, [Lightfoot,]
the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University did not venture to commit himself.”9
The year 4004 B.C. for the Creation was then taken over and popularized in
various editions of the Scofield Reference Bible (1909 on).10
As scientific evidence accumulated in multiple disciplines, debate increasingly
swirled between those conservative Christian scholars who believed that Gen
1 represented a “young earth” (created around 4000 B.C. or so),
who generally are theologians, and other Christian scholars who hold to an
“old earth” (accepting the scientific dating), who now include
most scientists.11 Without denying that theological
input is important here, one still cannot forget the sad case of Galileo (1564-1642),
who was tried for heresy by the Church in 1633 for announcing his observation
that the sun is the center of our planetary world and that the earth moves
around it, not the other way around – which the Inquisitors simply declared
was “contrary to the Holy Scripture” and so sentenced him to a
life of imprisonment and penance.12 In fact, Greg Moore,
one Christian scholar, recently wrote: “The evidence for an old earth
is overwhelming and incontrovertible. Multitudes of dating methods –
both radiometric and non-radiometric – present a consistent picture…”13
(Certain chemical forms are radioactive [but not dangerous] and they decay
at a certain rate over long periods of time; therefore, by measuring the proportion
of these to other stable forms of the same chemical present in a sample, scientists
can calculate the estimated age of that sample.14) Some
earlier Christians believed that fossils were creations of the devil, made
to destroy people’s faith, while many current one-week Creationists
hold that they are relics from the Flood. Yet, a substantial number of conservative
Christian scholars now accept that the earth and the universe are around 4
billion years old.15 Accepting this later assessment
as correct, this article then seeks to discover if and how this might be related
to and reconciled with Genesis 1.
Genesis begins with the dramatic declaration: “In the beginning
God created the heavens and the earth.” (1:1, NIV). However,
the earth is then described as a barren, dark, ocean-covered place (1:2).
Then, over a series of ‘days,’ God refashions the earth. On day
1, he separates day from night, described from a viewpoint on earth (1:3-5).
On day 2, he separates waters above from waters below (1:6-8). On day 3, he
causes dry land to rise from the ocean and then for plant life to appear (1:9-13).
On day 4, he makes heavenly lights visible in the sky to mark the seasons,
days and years (1:14-19). On day 5, he creates large and small creatures to
fill the oceans, and birds to fly in the sky (1:20-23). On day 6, he makes
animals to live on land, and then the first humans, “created …
in his image” (1:24-31). Then, on day 7 God “rested,” and
he especially blessed this day (2:1-4a).16 Now, some
interpreters consider this Creation account to be simply a myth, because it
contains supernatural elements (and/or for other reasons)17
– although Christ accepted both creation accounts (Gen 1:1–2:4a
and 2:4b-25) as historical,18 telling the Jewish leaders
when they questioned him about divorce: “But from the beginning
of creation, ‘God made them male and female [cf. Gen 1:27].’
‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined
to his wife…’ [cf. Gen 2:24].” (Mark 10:6-7, NRSV;
par. Matt 19:4-5). Paul also viewed the beginning of Genesis as referring
to real events and actual people; and he contrasted the first Adam (bringing
with him original sin and human death) with Jesus, the new life-giving ‘Adam’
(1 Cor 15:45, Rom 5:12-14). Other interpreters claim that Gen 1 was derived
from the Enuma Elish (“When on High”), the Babylonian
creation epic19 – although the Biblical tradition
claims to be a Divine product (cf. Gk. theopneustos,
NRSV: “inspired,” Green [lit.]: “God-breathed,” 2
Tim 3:16).20 It is difficult to believe that Gen 1 was
built on pagan mythology, especially since it denigrates the heavenly lights,
which the pagans worshipped as divinities; and the majesty of the Biblical
account stands in stark contrast to the silly convolutions of the Babylonian
account, in which e.g. the lord Marduk splits up the dead body of the evil
goddess Tiamat, like a shellfish, and lifts up one half of her corpse to become
sky, while the rest remained below as dry land.21 Instead,
the Bible begins, in Gen 1:1, with a single God, who is a self-sufficient
and self-existing intelligent Being, transcendent outside of nature and sovereign
in space and time.22 Yet, can Gen 1 be reconciled with
modern scientific thinking about the age and development of the earth and
of life on earth? To explore this, we need first to take a new and careful
look at the Biblical text of Gen 1:1–2:4a.
Continue to:
CHAPTER 1: THE HEBREW TEXT AND THE FIRST CREATION ACCOUNT
© 2007 Bruce Gerig
The Tadpole Galaxy / Hubble Telescope
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