What About Origins? (CreationPoints)
Page 5
However, the conclusion that the early chapters of Genesis are straightforward history was reinforced by Dr J. W. Milner in a lecture entitled ‘Creation in Six Days’ given to the Trinitarian Bible Society in Leicester in 1969. He pointed out that the language used in Genesis 1–3 is that of narrative, and that what we read is sober history. Dr Milner reminded his audience that when we read these chapters, we are not reading Hebrew poetry nor the vision of a prophet. He continued,
If we were to read these chapters without bringing to them any preconceived notions of our own and without thinking ‘Well, I believe this and therefore I must turn the Scriptures to fit in with what I believe’—if we set that on one side and come to the Scriptures with an open mind, then we could only come to one conclusion. If we were honest, we would have to admit that the writer, Moses, is describing just what happened … proof, then, that the first chapters of Genesis are to be taken literally, is from the language of the passages. It is the same language which is used when we read about Abraham, when we read about Isaac and Jacob. We are reading about things that actually happened.7
Professor Edward J. Young, who was Professor of Old Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary from 1936 until his death in 1968, reached the same conclusion in his fine monograph Studies in Genesis One, in which he concluded,
Genesis one is not poetry or saga or myth, but straightforward, trustworthy history, and inasmuch as it is a divine revelation, accurately records those matters of which it speaks. That Genesis one is historical may be seen from these considerations:
1) It sustains an intimate relationship with the remainder of the book. The remainder of the book (i.e. The Generations) presupposes the Creation Account, and the Creation Account prepares for what follows. The two portions of Genesis are integral parts of the book and complement one another.
2) The characteristics of Hebrew poetry are lacking. There are poetic accounts of the creation and these form a striking contrast to Genesis one.
3) The New Testament regards certain events mentioned in Genesis one as actually having taken place. We may safely allow the New Testament to be our interpreter of this mighty first chapter of the Bible.8
This last point is crucial. Let us examine the attitude of Jesus Christ and the New Testament writers, not only to Genesis 1, but also to the other early chapters of Genesis. Did they take the early chapters of Genesis literally, or did they treat them as poetic or mythical? By examining their attitudes towards this part of the Bible, we will see what our attitude should be.
In Mark 10:2–9 we read the account of how some Pharisees came to Jesus Christ and asked him the question, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?’ Jesus answered their question by referring them back to the Genesis account of the creation and quoting Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 in his answer recorded for us in Mark 10:6–8: ‘But from the beginning of the creation, God “made them male and female”. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”; so then they are no longer two, but one flesh.’ (The parallel account of this incident is found in Matt. 19:3–9.) Reading this account, it is obvious that the Lord Jesus Christ accepted the Genesis account of the creation of man and woman as being historical rather than figurative. By quoting from Genesis chapters 1 and 2 regarding the creation of Adam and Eve, Jesus showed irrefutably that he accepted these parts of Genesis as being literal. He did not believe them to be symbolic, mythical or allegorical. If this is how the Lord Jesus Christ interpreted the story of the creation of humankind, why should we reject such an interpretation and choose to believe something different?
The fact that the Lord Jesus Christ believed Noah to have been a historical person and the universal Flood described in Genesis to have been a real historical event is established in Matthew’s Gospel. In Matthew 24:37–39, Jesus Christ is recorded as saying,
But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.
In the parallel account given in Luke 17:26–27, the last part of Jesus Christ’s warning is worded ‘… until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all’.
These verses, taken in their contexts, show that Jesus Christ took the account of the Flood recorded in Genesis 6–9 as being historical. He took these chapters literally. He accepted this part of Genesis as fact, not fiction. He did not consider Noah to be a mythical character, nor did he believe that the Flood was a legend. Again, we must ask ourselves: If this is how the Lord Jesus Christ interpreted the story of the Flood, why should we reject such an interpretation and choose to believe something different?
If we turn to the apostle Paul, we see that he, too, accepted the early chapters of Genesis as being literally and historically true. We can see this when he spoke to the Athenians on the Areopagus (Mars Hill)—the account of this is found in Acts 17:16–34. In his sermon, he declared God to be the Creator of ‘the world and everything in it’ (v. 24). Paul also believed in a literal Adam and referred to him on a number of occasions as he hammered out his teachings. For example, in his letter to the Romans he wrote,
Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man’s offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many.
(Rom. 5:14–15)
Similarly, in his first letter to the Corinthians he wrote, ‘For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive’ (1 Cor. 15:22); ‘And so it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit’ (1 Cor. 15:45). And in his first letter to Timothy we read, ‘For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression’ (1 Tim. 2:13–14).
We can see that in his arguments, the apostle Paul accepted not only the fact that Adam was a real historical person, but that all the events surrounding him—Eve, sin, death and so on—were also real. He did not see them as being in any way symbolic, mythical or poetic. For example, Paul did not write, ‘For as in a symbol, myth or allegory all die’, but he wrote, ‘as in Adam’, showing that he believed in a literal, historical Adam—the first human being, the one from whom we are all descended.
Turning to the Gospel of Luke, we find a similar testimony to the literal truth of Genesis. In Luke 3:23–38 the genealogy of Jesus Christ through Mary, his mother, is meticulously recorded. From the end of verse 34 to verse 38, Luke gives the genealogy from Abraham back to Adam, following the genealogies given in Genesis 11 (for the genealogy of Abraham back to Noah) and Genesis 5 (for the genealogy of Noah back to Adam). In other words, Luke accepted that the people recorded in those chapters were real people who lived real lives and had real families. These people lived in history—they were not mythical or legendary. When Luke had traced Jesus’s genealogy to Adam, the first man, he was moved by the Holy Spirit to write that Adam was ‘the son of God’ (Luke 2:38), for God had indeed given birth to him when he fashioned and formed him from the dust of the ground and breathed into him ‘the breath of life’ (Gen. 2:7).
Finally, the apostle Peter revealed his belief in a literal universal Flood when he wrote in his second epistle that ‘the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water’ (2 Peter 3:6).
All the verses cited above demonstrate the attitude of the Lord Jesus Christ, Paul, Luke and Peter to the early chapters of Genesis. They show that they interpreted them literally and historically—there is not even a hint that any one of them considered the Genesis account of the creation and early history of the earth to be in any wa
y poetic, mythical or allegorical. This, then, must be our attitude to these chapters—we too are to regard Genesis 1–11 as a true historical record of what actually happened, written under the inspiration of Almighty God. The account was written as history, for it is history.
Is Genesis evolutionary?
Can the early chapters of Genesis be interpreted as a record of the alleged evolutionary history of the cosmos and of the development of life on earth? There are two main reasons why people believe that the early chapters of Genesis can be interpreted in terms of evolution. The first reason is that many have been brainwashed into believing that evolution is a fact, and they do not wish to appear to be foolish or ignorant by rejecting the ‘fact’ of evolution. We will address the scientific arguments about evolution in later chapters; readers will then be able to see whether they are indeed foolish or ignorant to reject evolution.
The second major reason why people believe that the early chapters of Genesis can be interpreted in terms of evolution is because they think that the biblical account of origins occurs in the same order as the order proposed by the evolutionists. They will argue, for example, that both accounts begin with the words ‘In the beginning’. They will also argue that each of the days in Genesis 1 are not to be interpreted as literal days, but are in fact long periods of time which correspond to one or more of the Geological Periods.
Although there is much speculation about which Geological Period(s) corresponds to which day, some argue that the first day of Genesis 1 corresponds to the time when the earth was going through the long geological processes that formed it. The events of Day Two are sometimes seen as the events that occurred on the earth during the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian Periods, and that the abundant plant life described as created on Day Three in Genesis 1 is a description of what is called the Carboniferous Period in Europe (or the Mississippian and Pennsylvanian Periods in the USA), when most coal was deposited. The creation of the heavenly bodies on Day Four is interpreted as being a description of the desert conditions that occurred in the Permo-Triassic Period, while the creation of the birds and fish on Day Five is seen to be a description of their evolution during the Jurassic and Cretaceous times. Day Six of Genesis 1, when the mammals and finally humans were created, is made to correspond to the Tertiary and Quaternary times. And yes, of course, we are now living in Day Seven!
However, on closer inspection, it can be seen that there is no real correlation between the order of events outlined in Genesis 1 and the order proposed by evolutionists. The discrepancies are elucidated very clearly in Table 1, which has been taken from an article entitled ‘Evolution vs. Creation: The Order of Events Matters!’ by Dr Terry Mortensen.9 This table shows that there is no harmony between creation and evolution, and that theistic evolution is based on the false premise that the Genesis account of origins occurs in the same order as that proposed by evolutionists.
A careful study of the order of the events in Genesis 1 therefore shows the impossibility of theistic evolution being reconciled with Scripture. Those who believe in theistic evolution should be aware that they do so, not because the Bible teaches it, but because they prefer to accept the teachings of evolutionists rather than the Word of God.
Having established this, let us now look at the meaning of the Hebrew word yom (and its plural form yamim), which is translated ‘day’ (and its plural form ‘days’) in order to show the inaccuracy of theistic evolutionists’ attempts to translate it in such a way as to justify their belief in reconciling the days of Genesis 1 with the Geological Periods and times. At the beginning of Chapter 1, we looked very briefly at the meaning and usage of the Hebrew word yom and showed that the days in Genesis 1 can only be literal days. This conclusion was reinforced by the late Dr Henry Morris, who was the founder of the Institute for Creation Research:
Table 1: Twenty-three differences between the evolutionary account of the history of the earth and the biblical account of creation
Evolution Creation
1 Sun before earth Earth before sun
2 Dry land before sea Sea before dry land
3 Atmosphere before sea Sea before atmosphere
4 Sun before light on earth Light on earth before sun
5 Stars before earth Earth before stars
6 Earth at same time as planets Earth before other planets
7 Sea creatures before land plants Land plants before sea creatures
8 Earthworms before starfish Starfish before earthworms
9 Land animals before trees Trees before land animals
10 Death before man Man before death
11 Thorns and thistles before man Man before thorns and thistles
12 TB pathogens & cancer before man
(dinosaurs had TB and cancer) Man before TB pathogens and cancer
13 Reptiles before birds Birds before reptiles
14 Land mammals before whales Whales before land animals
15 Simple plants before fruit trees Fruit trees before other plants*
16 Insects before mammals Mammals (cattle) before ‘creeping things’*
17 Land mammals before bats Bats before land animals
18 Dinosaurs before birds Birds before dinosaurs
19 Insects before flowering plants Flowering plants before insects
20 Sun before plants Plants before sun
21 Dinosaurs before dolphins Dolphins before dinosaurs
22 Land reptiles before pterosaurs Pterosaurs before land reptiles
23 Land insects before flying insects Flying insects before land insects
* The order maintained in Scripture suggests a slight difference in the timing of their appearance—i.e. they were created on the same day, possibly moments or hours apart.pp
There is no doubt that the Hebrew word [yom] can be used to express time in a general sense. In fact it is actually translated by ‘time’ 65 times in the King James translation. On the other hand, it is translated by ‘day’ almost 1200 times. In addition, in the plural, yamim, it is translated by ‘days’ approximately 700 times. It is obvious therefore that the normal meanings of yom and yamim are ‘day’ and ‘days’, respectively.10
In the Genesis account of the creation (that is, Gen. 1:1–2:3), the word ‘day’ occurs thirteen times (and ‘days’ once). The word ‘day’ is always the translation of the Hebrew word yom. The question that therefore needs to be asked is this: Does the usual meaning of the word apply here, or are the days long periods of time?
It can be shown that the word yom means ‘day’ from the following considerations of the Hebrew:
The numerical adjective (first, second, third, etc.) indicates that the writer meant a literal day. Similar wording in Numbers 7 can be used for comparison.
The Hebrew expression ‘evening and morning’ actually defines what yom means—an ordinary day. This same phrase is used in Daniel 8:26, where it clearly means an ordinary day.
The creation week is used as the basis of the six-days’-work-and-one-day-rest week in the fourth commandment. The words used throughout the text for ‘day’ and ‘days’ in the commandment are yom and its plural yamim:
Remember the Sabbath day [yom], to keep it holy. Six days [yamim] you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day [yom] is the Sabbath of the LORD your God … For in six days [yamim] the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day [yamim]. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day [yom] and hallowed it.
(Exod. 20:8–11)
Hence a six-day creation is taught not only in Genesis 1, but also in Exodus—in the middle of the fourth commandment, words of Scripture that were written with the finger of God (Exod. 31:18). In the fourth commandment, nothing could be clearer than that the six creation days and the one rest day of the Lord God are identical in duration with the six work days and one rest day of our seven-day week that he commands us to have. Dr Henry Morris has aptly pointed out that ‘the basis for this very precise commandment is
trivial and vacuous otherwise’.11
Yet, in spite of all this textual evidence, some will still argue by pointing to Genesis 2:4, where the Hebrew word yom is translated by the word ‘day’ but here means a longer period of time than a day—in this case, the whole creation week. They then argue that, because it means a long period of time here, it must also mean a long period of time each time it occurs in Genesis 1. However, in Genesis 2:4 it is obvious from the context that the writer is referring to the creation week: ‘This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, before any plant of the field was in the earth and before any herb of the field had grown’ (Gen. 2:4–5a).
A parallel construction is found in Numbers 7:84 in the King James Version, when ‘day’ refers to the twelve previous days referred to in the earlier verses of the chapter: ‘This was the dedication of the altar, in the day when it was anointed, by the princes of Israel …’ No one insists on understanding the first ‘day’, second ‘day’, and so on and all the way up to the twelfth ‘day’ in Numbers 7, as long periods of time just because of the use of the word ‘day’ in Numbers 7:84. So why do so in Genesis 1 because of Genesis 2:4? When ‘day’ means a long period of time in the Bible, it is obvious from the context; otherwise it means a literal day. The days in Genesis 1 are not periods of time—they are literal days.
Yet, in spite of all the linguistic and contextual arguments, some insist that the days in Genesis 1 are not literal days but are periods of a thousand years because of 2 Peter 3:8: ‘But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.’ But arguing that each day in Genesis 1 is a thousand years is not of any use to those wishing to reconcile the Genesis account of creation with evolution, for evolutionists insist that they need thousands of millions of years—4,600 million years, to be precise—for the earth to have formed and life on earth to have developed. The ‘each day is a thousand years’ argument will only give a mere 7,000 years—that is, 4,599,993,000 years fewer than the evolutionists want! The ‘each day is a thousand years’ argument also falls flat because the last part of the verse reverses the argument; it says that, with the Lord, a thousand years is as a day! So really we are back where we started.