Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian
From: ncramer@bbn.com (Nichael Cramer)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: inconsistencies in the Bible (digest of postings)
Message-ID: <Jan.4.03.20.43.1990.13996@athos.rutgers.edu>
Date: 4 Jan 90 08:20:51 GMT
Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge MA
Lines: 74
Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu

Scott_Gulland writes:
>I myself believe in the Biblical account of creation as stated and that 
>this account is scientifically correct....
[I have removed extensive quotations from his original article.  --clh]

It appears that what Scott is proposing here is a variation on what has
been called, among other things, "gapism".  In short, this is an attempt
to explain differences between the Genesis creation stories and modern
science by supposing an (implicit) time-gap somewhere in the first few
verses of Genesis.  Where the gap is supposed to occur in the story
varies, but the intended result is to increase the time-scale of the
biblical creation story by an unspecified, but nevertheless long, period
thereby bringing it into harmony with modern astronomy and physics.

A major problem with this line of argument is that it is not supported by
the actual text.  Specifically it is based on the standard, but poor,
translation of Gen 1.1-4 that is given in the KJV and most subsequent
popular translations (i.e. translations that start "In the beginning...").

Most modern translations now understand the first sentence to comprise
*all* of the first *three* verses on Gen 1 in a very interesting --and
surprisingly characteristic-- way.

  (For anyone interested in examining these arguments in more detail, 
   good sources are the notes and commentary for the corresponding verses
   of A. E. Speiser's translation of _Genesis_ for the Anchor Bible series,
   the Doubleday Biblical Commentary and Friedman's _Who Wrote the Bible_.)

The first sentence breaks down as follows (translation by Speiser):

     Opening temporal clause.
  1] "When God set about to create the heaven and earth ..."
 
     Parenthetical aside.
  2] "... --the world being then a formless waste, with darkness over 
      the seas and an awesome wind sweeping over the water-- ..."

     Main clause
  3] "... God said, 'Let there be light.' And there was light."

The first point to be made here is that the main body of the above makes
up one, indivisible, sentence.  That is, the *very* first act of God in
Genesis is the Creation of Light.

A second --and to me somewhat more interesting--- point is that this
sentence structure ([1] opening, temporal clause, [2] parenthesis, 
[3] final main clause) appears to be a standard formula for the opening
of creation stories in the literature of the ancient near east.

The nearest example at hand is the second Genesis creation story at 2.4b-
2.7 (translation again by Speiser):

  1] "At the time when God Yahweh made earth and heaven ..."

  2] "... --no shrub of the field being yet in the earth and no grain
      of the field having sprouted, for God Yahweh had not sent rain
      upon the earth and no man was there to till the soil; instead a
      flow would well up from the ground and water the whole surface
      of the soil-- ..."
 
  3] "... God Yahweh formed man from clods of soil and blew into his 
     nostrils the breath of life.  Thus man became a living being."

Similarly, the opening of the so-called Babylonian Creation Epic, ENUMA
ELIS ("When on High...") has the same structure.  Moreover the opening
word of the second Genesis story is B(e)YOM (literally, "on the day(!!)
when") is cognate with the Akkadian ENUMA (i.e. the opening word of the
ENUMA ELIS).

Finally, it should be noted that this last --the distinct parallelism of
syntax and vocabulary-- supplies very strong internal, textual evidence
for the existence of the two separate creation stories in Genesis.)

NICHAEL