Tag: creation

Do You Believe Adam and Eve Were Historical Figures, Part 2

On By davidandersontheauthorIn Bible Study, PhilosophyLeave a comment

In response to my last post, I’ve received requests for Biblical references to the details of the cosmology of Genesis. If you haven’t seen it, I made a table of details about the creation of the Universe according to Genesis in one column and science in the other.

The Flammarion engraving is a wood engraving by an unknown artist that first appeared in Camille Flammarion’s L’atmosphère: météorologie populaire (1888). The image depicts a man crawling under the edge of the sky, depicted as if it were a solid hemisphere, to look at the mysterious Empyrean beyond. The caption underneath the engraving (not shown here) translates to “A medieval missionary tells that he has found the point where heaven and Earth meet…”
GenesisScience
The earth is approximately 6000-7000 years oldThe earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old
The universe is approximately 6000-7000 years oldThe universe is about 14 billion years old
There is a dome above the atmosphere and a large body of water above the domeNo water, no dome, just dark empty space (or dark matter) above the atmosphere
The moon, sun, planets, and stars all move under or inside the domeThe moon is about 238,000 miles from earth, the sun 93,000,000 miles, the planets millions/billions of miles, and the stars light years away. Again, no dome.
The moon, sun, planets, and stars all orbit around the earthThe moon orbits the earth, the earth and other planets orbit the sun, and the stars are all outside the solar system
The earth is flat, there are pillars at the ends of the earth that hold up the sky-domeThe earth is a sphere, there are no ends of the earth
The first humans appeared 6,000-7,000 years agoThe first humans appeared anywhere from 300,000 to 700,000 years ago
No other hominid species are mentionedFossils of several other hominid species have been uncovered
The first life was plants. Microorganisms like bacteria, viruses, and amoebae are never mentionedThe first life was microorganisms like bacteria, viruses, and amoebae. Over time, they gained complexity to evolve into the forms of life named in Genesis 1
Adam lived to the ripe old age of 930No 900+ year-old skeletons have ever been uncovered

If you are interested in seeing references for the left column, here they are. I would also recommend this article, which explains the whole cosmology of the Bible pretty well, with diagrams https://www.christianity.com/wiki/bible/what-is-the-firmament-definition-and-meaning-in-the-bible.html

6,000-7,000 years ago for everything.

In a literal reading of Genesis 1, the creation of the universe, i.e., heaven and earth and everything in them, happens in six days. Literalists insist that these are 24-hour days because the activity for each day concludes with “evening and morning,” so all of it was made at the same time. The 6000-7000 year figure is what I’ve heard from people going through the genealogies to calculate the first year.

The dome that holds up the waters above: Genesis 1:6-8

The word in Hebrew is raki`a. Depending on the translation, it might say firmament, vault, or expanse. Whatever term you use, it has to be solid in order to hold up the waters above. It says on the second day of creation, God divided the waters above from the waters below, and commanded a raki`a to hold up the waters above. This was in preparation for dry land to appear.

They also believed there were windows in the vault, so rain or snow could fall (Genesis 7:11; Psalm 148:4; Isaiah 24:18). When I first read the flood story and saw this,

… the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened,

(Genesis 7:11b KJV)

I thought the windows of heaven were metaphorical. No, when Genesis was written, they believed there were literal windows in the “firmament” to send rain on the earth. What happens when you open all the windows at once? How long can you tread water?

Plants were the first life forms on earth (Genesis 1:11). Fish and birds were on the fifth day (Genesis 1:20) while land animals were on the sixth (Genesis 1:25-26).

The sun, moon, stars, and other planets (back then, they didn’t distinguish between planets and stars) were placed “in the vault of the sky” (Genesis 1:15). That’s why they can talk about stars falling from the sky (Mark 13:25; Isaiah 34:4; Revelation 6:13). That’s also why they believed everything orbited around the earth.

Pillars holding up the sky come mostly from general cosmology of the time, but they are mentioned in Job 26:11 (cf. 2 Samuel 22:8).

Adam died at 930 years old (Genesis 5:5). It seemed most people lived into 700’s to 900’s before the flood, then lifespans gradually came down to “normal.” But as I said, with all the old skeletons we’ve found, none are even close to those early Biblical lifespans.

Fun fact: The oldest person in the Bible was Methuselah, who lived 969 years (Genesis 5:27). No one lived to 1,000. Rabbinic commentaries say this goes back to God’s warning that “in the day you eat it, you will die” (Genesis 2:17). Psalm 90:4 says 1,000 years are a day in God’s sight, so even with their long lives, everyone in those early generations died within “a day” (1.000 years).

***

Questions about the creation account in Genesis are bound to come up when you start learning about what is considered “common knowledge” in the scientific community. Everything in the right column of the table is common knowledge. For some people, that messes with their theology. But what I have found is in science, nothing gets to be “common knowledge” without a whole lot of evidence to back it up. Science doesn’t care about belief. It only cares about evidence, and that’s a good thing. You may have a hard time believing that now, but decades of faith deconstruction followed by reconstruction have convinced me of one thing. Your salvation does not depend on believing everything in the book of Genesis is literal. It is still possible to read it in a nonliteral way and still get meaning out of it.

If you need an example, I wrote more on the heavenly bodies back when we had that eclipse in 2017. I talk about the meaning of the creation of the heavenly bodies beyond a literal reading of Genesis 1:14-19. https://davidandersontheauthor.com/2017/09/05/and-evening-and-morning-were-the-first-day-or-was-it-the-fourth/

Do You Believe Adam and Eve Were Historical Figures?

On By davidandersontheauthorIn Bible Study, Philosophy1 Comment
Earth at center. Mountains to the east and west act like pillars to hold up the "Firmament" ("rokia" in Hebrew). "Stars, Moon, and Sun" are all beneath the firmament. There are "Upper Seas or Waters above the Firmament." "Chambers in Heavens" sit on top of the firmament. "Windows" and "portals" appear at various places in the firmament. Below the earth, there is "Sheol" and "Fountains of the deep." "Tehom or Great Deep" is below that.
Diagram of ancient cosmology from Ralph V. Chamberlin. “The Early Hebrew Conception of the Universe”. The White and Blue. Vol XIII no. 11, Dec. 24 1909. pp. 84-88

A friend in a Facebook group asked this question. I normally try to avoid questions like this, but I gave my answer. The friend wanted to know why. That could take a while, certainly more than an instant message. So I’m going to answer as concisely as possible, keeping in mind when you are messing with people’s theology (as one of my former pastors would say), you need to tread lightly.

They say we have to believe it

I used to believe they were. Not only that, I believed they had to be real people. Within the Bible, the central narrative begins with the creation of the first man and woman in the Garden of Eden. Life was perfect until they ate the forbidden fruit, lost their innocence, and were exiled from the Garden. This one act tainted the entire human race with Original Sin.

But God promised them one day, a Messiah would come who would defeat the serpent who had tempted them into disobedience, and restore God’s favor to the human race (Genesis 3:15). Christians believe Jesus was that Messiah. Jews are still looking for that Messiah. But either way, the promise of a Messiah was first made to Adam and Eve.

As a Christian, the implications of Adam and Eve not being historical were disturbing at first. The reason Jesus came to earth and allowed himself to be crucified was supposed to be to remove Original Sin. If Adam and Eve weren’t “real people,” there was no Fall. If there was no Fall, there was no Original Sin. If there was no Original Sin, why did Jesus have to be crucified? And that begs the question, was Jesus really crucified, and does it matter? Questions like these make some people go through faith deconstruction, so I understand the resistance of some of my fellow Christians to a non-literal reading of Genesis 1-2.

To answer that, I’ll say that whether Adam and Eve were “real people” or not does not change my views about Jesus. I don’t need a literal Adam and Eve in a literal Garden eating a literal fruit to know I am a sinner in need of a savior. I just have to read the teachings of Jesus to see that I fall short of the glory of God. How did I get this way if Adam and Eve were not “real people”? I don’t know. I just know this sin nature is in me, and it’s real. And to me, Jesus offers the only hope of overcoming it. That’s why I’m a Christian.

I’ve been through a whole lot of deconstruction and reconstruction. I know how scary it can be when you’re in the middle of it. Along the way, I’ve learned not everything in the Bible should be read literally. Reluctantly, I had to acknowledge that scientific evidence does not support a literal reading of Genesis 1-2. I’m also afraid that unless we make peace with science, the church will not last through the end of the century. So I’ll start with the scientific evidence and why I could and needed to accept evidence over dogma.

Scientific evidence

Perhaps the biggest challenge to Adam and Eve is the Theory of Evolution, which many Christians just flat out reject. An entire industry has been built around denying evolution. I remember in college someone telling me how the suborbital ridges of Neanderthals, or something like that, proved evolution. I said, “So you’re saying I’m supposed to believe in suborbital ridges more than the Bible?” If it had been only suborbital ridges (don’t quote me on that term), I could have kept my belief.

But even if you remove the Theory of Evolution, there are more differences between science and Genesis you have to contend with. Here are a few.

GenesisScience
The earth is approximately 6000-7000 years oldThe earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old
The universe is approximately 6000-7000 years oldThe universe is about 14 billion years old
There is a dome above the atmosphere and a large body of water above the domeNo water, no dome, just dark empty space (or dark matter) above the atmosphere
The moon, sun, planets, and stars all move under or inside the domeThe moon is about 238,000 miles from earth, the sun 93,000,000 miles, the planets millions/billions of miles, and the stars light years away. Again, no dome.
The moon, sun, planets, and stars all orbit around the earthThe moon orbits the earth, the earth and other planets orbit the sun, and the stars are all outside the solar system
The earth is flat, there are pillars at the ends of the earth that hold up the sky-domeThe earth is a sphere, there are no ends of the earth
The first humans appeared 6,000-7,000 years agoThe first humans appeared anywhere from 300,000 to 700,000 years ago
No other hominid species are mentionedFossils of several other hominid species have been uncovered
The first life was plants. Microorganisms like bacteria, viruses, and amoebae are never mentionedThe first life was microorganisms like bacteria, viruses, and amoebae. Over time, they gained complexity to evolve into the forms of life named in Genesis 1
Adam lived to the ripe old age of 930No 900+ year-old skeletons have ever been uncovered

That’s a whole lot more than suborbital ridges. Add all of this up (this is actually just skimming the surface) and I just can’t accept a literal reading of Genesis 1-11 anymore. I tried. I really did. I thought if anyone or anything contradicted the Bible in any way, I had to believe the Bible, no matter what. But while the Bible is based on belief, science is based on evidence. That is why science works.

Everything in the right column of the table above is based on evidence, not belief. Anyone who wants to investigate the evidence can do so. If anyone has evidence to change anything in the right column, and not just Bible verses, show it. The scientific community has adjusted its views whenever evidence demanded it. The way they view dinosaurs today is not the same as what I learned in school. Why? New evidence demanded they adjust their views. Scientists can adjust their views in light of new evidence, and the church needs to do the same. If we don’t, I believe we will lose credibility with future generations.

But the Bible says …

Why is there such a discrepancy between the Biblical account of creation and science? The Bible was written at a time before telescopes, microscopes, the fossil record, the scientific method, or the thousands of satellites we have put into orbit that did not crash into a giant dome and are not swimming through water. It was written before knowledge of DNA, the speed of light, tectonic plates, and atomic theory. The way they described the structure of the heavens and the earth was basically “common knowledge” at the time. If we had lived back then, no one would have had any problem believing the Genesis account of creation.

At some point, that began to change. It probably started when Galileo looked through the telescope and said, “Hey, we were wrong. The earth revolves around the sun, not the other way around.” For that, he was threatened with excommunication for contradicting the Bible. He officially recanted because he couldn’t stand being separated from the church, but he could not unsee what he saw. And millions of people since have looked through telescopes and confirmed he was right.

Galileo’s view of the Bible had to adjust to account for this new evidence. And so did everyone else, because anyone could look through the telescope and see what Galileo saw. Today, we readily accept that the earth revolves around the sun, so it’s hard to understand just how upsetting this was to people at the time. If you try to debate evolution with a creationist, you’ll get an idea.

But Galileo never stopped believing the basics of his Christian faith. Go through the tenets of the Apostle’s Creed, and he would have checked every box. I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. Check. And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord. Check. Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary. Check. Suffered under Pontius Pilate. Check. And so on. Go through the whole list, and he would have said, “I believe all of that. All I’m saying is when I look through the telescope, I see something different from what you’re telling me.”

The church’s response was, “Don’t look through the telescope.” That approach did not work then, and it won’t work now.

A view of space, one star illuminating a nebula, another bigger star illuminating a nebula, other stars appearing as tiny dots
The Universe post-Galileo. Photo by Frank Cone on Pexels.com

Conclusion

There is a lot more I could say, but I’ll try to sum things up. Some people cling to the left side of the table because they are afraid if it is not true, then nothing else in the Bible is true. Some people think because the left side is not true, nothing else in the Bible is true. I think they are both making the same mistake.

The Bible is not and should never be used as a science textbook. It is a book to help us begin to understand the nature of God and teach us how to love our neighbor as ourselves. Questions about the origins and nature of the Universe should be left to science. Scientists have much better tools for answering those questions than any religious texts. If science says the earth revolves around the sun, believe it because they have the evidence to back it up.

If science disproves a particular religious belief about the physical universe, then I recommend following Galileo’s example. Take in the new information and determine if it is compatible with your old beliefs. If not, then adjust accordingly. Maybe it simply means you don’t read it literally but metaphorically. I think the story of Adam and Eve is true in its portrayal of human nature. You tell your children not to go somewhere, and suddenly they want to go there. What do they do when they screw up? Cover their butts and blame someone else. And when you compare it with other creation myths in that part of the world, you learn a lot about how they viewed their relationship to God.

The good news is science has never disproved anything in the Apostle’s Creed, at least as far as I can tell. So let science do what science does. The Bible is not a substitute for a telescope.

I know it sounds good to say you believe the Bible over science or evidence. But denying evidence is denying reality, and I don’t think that’s how God wants us to live. Our medical technology is so much better today than in Biblical times. Why is that? Because modern medicine is based on science.

Would you trust a doctor whose medical textbook was written before the discovery of viruses, bacteria, or other microscopic pathogens? I guarantee if they tell me they don’t believe in viruses or bacteria because they aren’t mentioned in the Bible, I’m walking out.

earth with starry background and hands sheltering over and under

New Medium Blog Post: Created God the Heaven(s) and the Earth

On By davidandersontheauthorIn Bible StudyLeave a comment

I finished my translation of Genesis 1:1. Follow the link to see.

Created God the Heaven(s) and the Earth.

Or here is the conclusion.

Now for the moment of truth. How would I translate this verse if I were on some committee of translators? Here it is.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

Incidentally, this is the same as the English Standard Version (ESV). You might be thinking, “Well, that was much ado about nothing.”

I know it might look that way. I ended up translating it almost the same as the King James, which has been around for over 400 years. The only change I made was to make heaven plural. Maybe you think Bible translation is like making sausage. Don’t show me the process. Just give me the end result. The thing is, we still need some people who know how to make sausage.

At an early age, I learned that there are some things in our English Bibles that were lost in translation, and I wanted to investigate them. In just this one verse, I found some things that could not be translated into English or even the ancient Septuagint.

  1. Created comes before God to show something God did for us before revealing God’s name.
  2. An untranslated word et reinforces important ideas: that the heavens and the earth are not deities but created by God, and that God created not only the heavens and the earth but everything in between and everything that exists in them.
  3. The heavens is preferable to heaven or the heaven, because it includes every possible meaning of the Hebrew word ha-shamayim.

And even though I ultimately did not agree with the Masoretic Text (Hebrew) which said, “When God began to create heaven and earth,” that reading needed to be considered, and the reasons for changing it needed to be compelling. When the scribes and Rabbis who copied, preserved, and taught these scriptures in their original language for thousands of years tell you what they think it means, you need to at least listen, even if you disagree.

Also, the idea behind that reading is that creation did not happen all at once. It was a process of bringing order to chaos. That idea is important not only for the Bible but for life. God ordered everything about this world—light, darkness, water, land, sky, plants, and animals—just by commanding their patterns of organization, and I can’t even bring order to my office. But if God is so good at ordering chaos, maybe somehow God can impart just a little of that to me.

In the end, though, I think what is most important about this verse is it declares boldly that God not only created the heavens and the earth, but everything in between and everything that exists in them. The entire universe and all that is in it. That is why—with all due respect to Rashi and the Masoretes—I have to part ways with them here. But they took me on a fascinating journey, and I hope to have many more opportunities to explore with them on this wild, wild world of Hebrew scriptures.

Map of earth painted on two hands with blue sky and white clouds in background

Two New Posts on Medium: How to Translate the First Word of the Bible

On By davidandersontheauthorIn Bible StudyLeave a comment

This may sound weird, but one of my favorite hobbies is Bible translation. If you’ve ever wondered what it takes to translate Hebrew to English, you can check out these posts on my Medium blog. I just did the first word, bereishit, and it took two posts. All that just for the first word? Yep. If you have a modern study Bible, you might see the verse read, “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” But there might be a footnote saying, “Hebrew reads, ‘When God began to create the heaven and the earth'”.

In the Beginning … Or Not? This post will be enough for you to understand why this controversy exists.

In the Beginning, Part 2, and Justice for the Aleph. I get into some of the more technical aspects of translating bereishit. Then you can get some insight into the Rabbis who preserved and taught these scriptures over the millennia through a story of why they say creation begins with the second letter of the alphabet and not the first.

If you are following my blog on Medium, let me know in the comments if you like having a blog dedicated to religious topics. I will start posting some of my ideas on writing soon. After all, this is supposed to be an author’s blog.

Thanks for reading. Until next time, remember these words from Matthew 7:12. “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets” (NRSV).

And Evening and Morning Were the First Day… Or Was It the Fourth?

On By davidandersontheauthorIn First Drafts, Pre-publication1 Comment

The Foothills Writers Guild has started something called the First Draft Society (FDS). It is strictly in-house. Members can submit short pieces to be distributed to everyone in the guild through email for a first reading and feedback. Most of these submissions come in response to challenges from the president. Of course, last month there was an Eclipse Challenge. There were at least half a dozen submissions before the eclipse. I started mine on the day and just submitted it. Since it took this long, you probably already guessed it’s not really a first draft. So sue me.

Still, I understand it’s pretty late for this topic. So if you can take one more commentary on Eclipse 8-21-17, I really appreciate you stopping by and reading this, my first FDS submission.

*****

I bet when Bonnie Tyler recorded “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” she had no idea it would be the biggest hit of 1983. Even more so, I bet she had no idea that 34 years later, it would become number 1 again, and everyone would be talking about it. Or that a cruise ship would hire her to sing it as they sailed into the path of a Solar Eclipse. I didn’t make it to that cruise, but I was one of the lucky ones who only had to step into my back yard to see it. I didn’t really want to get caught up in Eclipse-mania, but when a wonder of the heavens is observable right where you live, you know you will never forgive yourself if you miss it.

imperfect image of solar eclipse of 2017
I tried to photograph the eclipse. But without the protective lenses, you don’t actually see the moon starting to block the sun. But you can see one star.

The sun is the very model of consistency and dependability. The earth keeps spinning on its axis, and the sun holds its position, so every part of the globe experiences daytime and nighttime. Sunrise and sunset happen at totally predictable times each and every day. You can literally set your calendar and watch by it. It shines on everyone on the face of the earth… except during a total eclipse.

The newspapers said Greenville (South Carolina) got 2 minutes, 10 seconds of totality, while Anderson got 2 minutes, 34 seconds. I couldn’t watch the event and start a timer, so I wasn’t able to track the timing. Thanks to the website www.eclipse2017.org, I found out the eclipse I watched started at 1:09:15 PM. I saw totality for 2 minutes, 35 seconds, starting at 2:37:57 PM. And “total” is important. The difference between 99% and 100% is never more striking than when you are watching an eclipse.

It amazes me how today, scientists can calculate exactly where the path of totality will travel, and based on your location, tell you exactly when the eclipse will begin, exactly when and for how long you will see totality, and exactly when it will end, down to the second. But what if you were living at a time before that kind of mathematical precision? What if you were a caveman, and you saw a total eclipse for the first time? You know it’s supposed to be day, and then all of a sudden it’s night. You look up, and it looks like the sun has been swallowed by the moon, which now has this fiery halo all around it. Day has turned to night. Nocturnal birds are waking up. Crickets and cicadas are chirping. What’s happening??? But after about two and a half minutes, the sun returns, and you’ve learned an important lesson. The sun can be hidden, but it is always where it should be in the sky.

The sun, moon, and stars, were created on the fourth day of Creation. I thought about this, because the only time you can see the sun, moon, and stars all together is during a total eclipse. Unfortunately, when it turned dark, the automatic streetlights in my neighborhood turned on. The ambient light hid all but a handful of stars. Still, it was enough to make me marvel that for the first time in my life, I could see all the heavenly bodies represented at once. It made me appreciate that fourth day of creation in a new way.

Fourth Day vs. First Day

Did you notice that in Genesis, light was created before the sun, moon, and stars? Light was created on the first day, but then God waited three more days to create the sun, moon and stars. I’m not arguing for a literal 6-day creation here, but I do believe the author of that particular passage did this deliberately. Whether the author was Moses (as tradition says) or the unknown author known as the Elohist (as scholars say), by separating the creation of light from the familiar lights in the sky, he wanted to tell us something much more profound than how old the heavens and earth are, or how many days did it all come together, and were they actually the 24-hour days we know, or were they 1000 years as the Psalmist said, “A thousand years are but a day in Thy sight”? Or were they billions of years, as evidence now indicates the universe is approximately 13.8 billion years old? I find all this fascinating to study. But at the end of the day, I don’t know, and I don’t care.

What the author was trying to tell us is this. It is not the sun, moon, and stars that are the source of light. It is God, who made all of them. Most people at that time worshiped the sun, moon, and stars as gods. The account of creation says those bodies we see in the sky give light for only one reason. God said it, and it was so. And so they are not gods. They are natural phenomena that operate under the sovereignty of God. God is light and the source of all light. God’s light pre-existed and is independent of the light we see with our eyes.

But sometimes even that light may be blocked from our vision. Many saints of old said they experienced a few dark nights of the soul. Sometimes we find ourselves in circumstances that hide God’s light like the moon hides the sun during an eclipse. I’ve experienced a few times in life when God’s clear light of day suddenly turned to night, and they lasted a lot longer than the roughly two and a half minutes I experienced under a total eclipse. If Bonnie Tyler’s song was called “Total Eclipse of the Soul,” would you have known what she meant? I would.

Maybe you have experienced some of your own dark nights. Maybe you are going through one now. If so, one bit of good news I can offer is you are not alone. Name any Biblical hero (and in some cases, I use that term loosely), and I guarantee you the Bible includes accounts of their dark nights of the soul. God’s light was hidden, and it was as strange for them as that caveman I mentioned seeing day turn to night. All the caveman had to do was wait, and the sun would reappear again. God, however, does not move as predictably as the sun, moon, and stars. No one can give you a timetable for when your dark night will end, but it will end.

The moon appears to swallow and devour the sun, but really the sun is still there all along. In the same way, no matter how long God’s light remains hidden from you, it is always there. Neither life nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come can destroy it. They can only hide it for a time.

When the moon moves, as it always will, the light you see will most likely look different than before. Don’t worry. That is a good thing. Our dark nights of the soul remove our illusions and delusions we once held so dear, so that we can see the true light more clearly.

References

http://www.eclipse2017.org/2017/communities/states/SC/Anderson_1401.htm

http://www.eclipse2017.org/2017/communities/states/SC/Greenville_1483.htm

http://www.eclipse2017.org/2017/communities/states/SC/West%20Pelzer_1654.htm