Clash of the Creationists

When you hear the word “creationist” do you think of a person who believes the earth was created less than 10,000 years ago in six 24-hour days? Properly speaking, that person would be a Young Earth Creationist (YEC). There are actually Old Earth Creationists (OEC) who believe the earth was created millions – if not billions – of years ago. OECs can be further sub-divided based on belief in a global flood or whether humans were directly created by God. A handy chart can be found here.

Until 50 years ago, most Bible-believing Christians were OECs. The YEC movement is a fairly recent phenomenon. The father of the movement was a Seventh-Day Adventist named George McCready Price (1870-1963), but it is only since the 1960s that YEC views became the dominant doctrine among evangelicals. (A brief history of how that came to be can be found here.) Many Christians still hold one of the many variations of OEC, but they are nowhere near as vocal or visible as the YEC adherents.

So it’s not at all surprising that creationists of all stripes hold conflicting views on how to interpret the first two chapters of Genesis. In a previous article I discussed how inconsistencies between the two creation accounts in Gen 1 and Gen 2 revealed the work as coming from different authors. Those among the creationists who assert that Moses was the author of the first five books of the Bible deny this. The YECs assert that the second chapter is simply a more-detailed explanation of what happened on Day 6 of creation week. The OECs hold different opinions on how to interpret Gen 1 and its relation to Gen 2.

The inconsistencies between the two chapters have to do with when plants and animals were created. According to Gen 1, vegetation was created on Day 3 after dry land was made to appear, and the birds of the air and the fishes of the seas were created on Day 5. Yet, when the second creation account begins (Gen 2:5-7), we are told that there were no “plants of the field” (wild plants) or “herb of the field” (cultivated plants) because there had been neither rain (which is all the wild plants need) nor humans to work the earth (what the cultivated plants need).

Why does the second creation account say there are no plants if they were created on Day 3? The YEC explanation is that in Gen 1:11 all grasses and herbs and trees were created except for the “wild plants” and “cultivated grains.” Those types of plants couldn’t exist before the creation of humans because wild plants have thorns (and thorns were a product of God’s curse in Gen 3:18) and cultivated grains require irrigation.

There are problems with this explanation. The plain sense of the text says there were no plants at all, wild or cultivated, in the beginning. And part of the reason for that was YHWH God had not yet sent rain. This itself raises another question because the land was covered with water just three days before and now it is so dry that plants can’t grow? Anyhow, in this barren wasteland, YHWH God plants a garden with fruit trees as an oasis for his newly created human to live. But if, according to Gen 1:11, the earth was covered with green plants and fruit trees since Day 3, why create a garden at all when the human could have simply been moved to a more verdant site?

How do YECs explain the birds? Although Gen 1:20-21 recounts God creating the birds on Day 5, Gen 2:19 says that “YHWH God formed from the ground every beast of the field and every bird of the heaven” as possible companions for Adam. YECs resolve the contradiction by translating “formed” as “had formed”. That is, God had already formed the birds on Day 5 and the land animals earlier on Day 6 but he’s just presenting them now to Adam to be named and considered as possible companions.


"Adam Naming the Animals" by Jan Saenredam (c. 1565-1607)

There’s a bit of special pleading in the assertion that the Hebrew word for “formed” should be interpreted in this instance as “had formed.” Every major translation (KJV, RSV, NRSV, NAB, NEB, JPSV, NJB) translates the word as “formed” because the context doesn’t meet the criteria for translating it as “had formed.” Only the NIV translates “had formed” because the translators wanted the second creation story to harmonize with the first.

This quibbling on the obvious meaning of the words or their translations is a typical ploy by biblical literalists. They insist the Bible is inerrant and must be interpreted literally, but when two passages contradict each other, they will read them in such a way that they don’t contradict, even when it requires that you have to ignore the plain meaning of the text, read something into the text that isn’t there, or re-translate the text to mean what they need it to say.

The OECs, on the other hand, don’t have to resort to such contortions. Although asserting Mosaic authorship of all of Genesis, they can allow that Moses is using an analogy of six creation days to teach the theological basis of the Sabbath day rest and, therefore, would not view Gen 1 as a literal account of how creation happened. Interpreting the six days of creation as topical, instead of chronological, they can more easily harmonize the scriptures with the findings of science.

In the final analysis, an OEC interpretation of the meaning and intention of Gen 1-2 may not be all that different from that of a biblical scholar who attributes the chapters to different authors, but it will be wildly different from the YEC interpretation. And the YEC apologists will attack the OEC proponents with the same vigor they would use against a proponent of atheism such as Richard Dawkins. OECs try to reconcile conflicts between scripture and the sciences of astronomy, physics and geology (if maybe not biology), but when confronted with a conflict between the Bible and science, YECs will always choose the Bible and will twist their understanding of science “facts” to fit their biblical interpretation.

If nothing else, OECs prove that it is possible to believe that the scriptures are inspired, yet do not need to be taken literally. Cardinal Baronius – not Galileo – once said, “The Bible teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.” Allow me to make a slight modification of that: Genesis 1 and 2 teach us why God created, but not how God created. The “how” is answered by science.

Under the Dome

Young earth creationists are believers in biblical literalism; that is, interpreting the Bible according to a literal meaning of its words, not allowing for a figurative or metaphorical understanding. To know what the scripture text says is to know what it means. So when Genesis 1 says that God created the heavens and the earth in six days, that’s exactly how long it took. When they add up the dates from genealogies and other biblical chronological references, they come up with a date of 4000 BCE for the creation of the world, so the world must therefore be no older than 6000 years. Since for them the Bible is also inerrant, when science or history are in conflict with the Bible, science or history must conform to what the Bible says. Any facts have to be interpreted in light of the Bible’s clear meaning.

With this in mind, what are the implications of a literal interpretation of Genesis 1? When God set about creating the cosmos, there was nothing but chaos: “the earth was a formless waste and darkness covered the abyss and a mighty wind swept over the waters” (v. 2). One pictures a vast, wind-tossed sea covering the earth in utter darkness. It doesn’t say God created the primeval sea. It was already there. God’s first order of business is to create light (v. 3) to separate day from night.

God’s second creative act is to make a dome to separate “the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome” (v. 7). The Hebrew word raqiya (translated as “dome” or “firmament”) derives from a verb meaning to flatten or stamp down, suggesting a metal sheet that physically separates the upper waters from the lower waters. Later on (Gen 7:11), the Flood will be partially brought about by opening the “windows of the heavens”. In other words, openings in the solid firmament will allow the waters above the dome to flood the earth.

God’s third order of business is to gather the lower waters together in one place, allowing dry land to appear (v. 9). With this completed, the chaotic conditions present at the start of the first day have been reversed. The earth now has a form. It is bound by the sea, but the sea no longer covers it. Darkness is tamed by light and the chaotic waters of the abyss have been separated by a dome to prevent them from overcoming the earth.

With dry land in place, God can now bring forth vegetation (vv. 11-12). God will then go on to create the sun, moon and stars and place them in the dome of sky (vv. 14-18), as well as creating sea creatures and birds (vv. 20-22), land animals (vv. 24-25), and finally humans (vv. 26-27). In case you noticed, yes, light is created three days before the sun. And, yes, the sun and moon and stars are placed in, not above the dome. We’ll have to address those topics another time.




The heavens and earth according to the Bible



The ancient Near Eastern concept of the earth is not that of a sphere revolving around the sun, but more like a snow globe, except the water is above the dome and not contained within it. The land is a flat expanse surrounded by the primeval sea (Job 26:10; Prov 8:27) and is held up by pillars (1 Sam 2:8) to keep it from sinking into the waters. The dome of heaven is set upon the earth (Amos 9:6;), held up by mighty mountains, and the sun, moon and stars were placed within the dome. Together, the heavens above the dome and the earth below comprise the entire universe.

A literal reading of Genesis 1 is consistent with this view. However, I don’t think even the hardest-core young earth creationist would attempt to argue this literal reading of the text. Why is that? Because only the most deluded of people would try to argue that the earth is really flat with a metal dome for a sky. That might have worked for someone living in the Bronze Age, but anyone who has seen weather satellite photos taken from orbit knows that is absurd.

So the creationist will have to insist the true meaning of the text in Genesis 1 is something other than the obvious, literal meaning. They will insist that nothing in Genesis 1 is inconsistent with a spherical earth. The firmament is not a solid dome or, if it was at one time, that was before the Flood when it was destroyed, allowing the waters above it to drown the earth. Or maybe it was a vapor canopy or made of ice. If they get really desperate, they will claim that the words of the text are undefined or figurative in nature, even though we need to believe the universe was created in six 24-hour days, because that part has to be taken literally. How’s that for cognitive dissonance?

There is plenty of scriptural support for the ANE concept of a flat, immovable earth with a solid dome and waters above the dome. (This brief article sums up the biblical evidence for a flat earth.) It is every bit as “scientific” as a 6000-year old earth and creation of the universe in six days. But creationists deny the Bible describes the former and affirms it describes the latter. Furthermore, they will insist that we must believe this to be true because to deny any single part of the Bible is to deny all of the Bible. But aren't they denying a part of the Bible when they deny the scriptural view of a flat, immovable earth?

Memories of Pearl Harbor

My father was at Pearl Harbor when it was attacked by the Japanese on December 7, 1941. In fact, it was his 25th birthday. He had just finished Mass when the bombing started and he took refuge underneath a truck. He told me about other events that happened to him during World War II, but I never wrote them down or made a voice recording of them. Dad died some years back, so I only have what I remember of his war stories to share with my own son. Maybe one day I’ll write them down, but they’ll be only fragmentary and won't be accurate because Dad’s experiences were not my experiences.

That progression from a lived experience to oral history and finally to written history describes how the individual books of the Bible came to be written. Taking the gospels as an example, we begin with the lived experience of people encountering Jesus of Nazareth, particularly those who became his followers. After his crucifixion, they began preaching and telling others about him and his message. As the generation of those who knew Jesus in the flesh began to die off, it became necessary to record those events in writing.

But there’s no guarantee that two people experiencing the same event will remember it in the same way. During his days in the Army, my dad’s best friend was a man named Jacques. Decades after the war, Jacques looked up Dad and they had a reunion. Jacques recalls taking refuge from the bombing with Dad and Dad was certain that Jacques was not with him when he was hiding under the truck. Who was right?



Dad (on left) and Jacques during WWII

In the Gospel of John, the evangelist points out that when Jesus was condemned by Pontius Pilate, it was Preparation Day, the day before the start of Passover when the lambs were being slaughtered in the Temple. The other gospel authors say that the Last Supper on the previous evening was the Passover seder, so the crucifixion occurred on Passover Day. A biblical literalist who can admit of no contradictions in scripture would argue – without any evidence, I might add -- that it was Passover according to one calendar but Preparation Day according to a different calendar. But if we don’t make it an article of faith that there are no errors in scripture, then this inconsistency in separate accounts of the Passion story is easily understandable as a lived event filtered through two different faith traditions. They agree on the larger picture, but not on every single detail.

Similarly with the stories of the Old Testament, although it must be said that the further back you go, the longer the period of time between a faith event and its subsequent written narrative becomes. Just because Genesis is the first book of the Bible and describes the creation of the world does not mean that it was the first book to be written down. Genesis has some old traditions in it, but in its current form, it was finalized around the time of the Babylonian Captivity. And that was centuries after the time of the patriarchs.

The thinking used to be that there was a kernel of historical truth in the stories of Israel’s formation (Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, etc.) but archaeological discoveries over the past 50 years have not only failed to find evidence to support that, but have actually found evidence in the opposite direction. Instead of being a pastoral group who escaped slavery in Egypt and infiltrated a Canaanite civilization, it seems that the people of Israel were Canaanite all along. They overthrew the ruling class and invented a foundation narrative centering around a God to whom they gave credit for their origins.

Indeed, there were probably multiple origin narratives and, at some point, these were edited together to form the first books of the Bible that we have today. A classic example of that are the first two chapters of Genesis. In the first chapter, God (Elohim in Hebrew) creates the world in six days with human beings being the last to be created, yet in the second chapter the Lord God (Yahweh Elohim) creates man first, and then the animals, and finally woman. Different names for God are one clue for identifying the varying source material forming the biblical work.

This editorial process went on for many centuries. A third-century BCE Greek translation of the Old Testament (called the Septuagint) shows a number of significant differences from the Hebrew text we have today, shorter in some places and longer in others. This is evidence that the source material was still being shaped by editors.

The takeaway from this is that the Bible did not come about because God whispered into the ears of Moses and others, who then dutifully wrote down the words to form the texts we have today. Neither did inspired authors record historical events as it happened or shortly after the fact. Instead, it is a more complicated process of oral transmission, theological reflection and editing. If we want to refer to the Bible as “the Word of God”, we also have to recognize that it comes to us in human words, subject to the foibles and limitations of human minds.