Why are you making His words universal?
Whether those He was talking to wrre corrupted or not does not make the whole of humanity the same.
Try again to justify this inhuman assertion.
Richard
It is not me making His word universal. Are you claiming to be perfect? I have never met a perfect person.
There is nothing Jesus says that negates the sermon on the mount. What do you have that negates Jesus’ Word?
There is a difference between being corrupt and not being perfect. God is not wanting perfection only good faith and sociability.
Like I said, there are few really corrupt people. Why do you hate humans. And despise God’s creation, not to mention His creative ability.
Why do you think God made us perfect, of course that relies on a definition of perfect. I actually think God made me about right. Not too good, not too bad and just enough savvy to keep out of trouble.
I am guessing your view of perfection is not the same as mine nor (perhaps) God’s.
Richard
But John 1 says nothing about the devil. The absence of a mention is not evidence of absence.
Likewise, the words “from the beginning” in John 8:44 do not identify that beginning with the second day of Creation.
Genesis 1:2 already says:
And darkness was upon the face of the deep.
Darkness is present in the text before the command “Let there be light.” Nothing in Genesis 1 identifies that darkness with the devil or connects it with the fall of the angels.
Thus, you are offering a sequence of interpretive assumptions, but none of them establishes a textual connection between Genesis 1:6–7 and Revelation 12.
Even a substantial similarity between images does not mean that two texts describe the same event.
Consider Exodus 14:21–22 and Joshua 3:15–17.
In the first passage, the waters are divided as the Israelites cross the sea. In the second, the flow of the Jordan is stopped, and the people again cross on dry ground.
Both passages involve water, divine action, the interruption of the ordinary movement of water, and the passage of a people. The correspondence is considerably more direct than that between the division of the waters in Genesis and the war in heaven in Revelation.
Yet we would not identify the crossing of the sea and the crossing of the Jordan as one historical event.
Why not? Because we consider context, participants, and the sequence of events, rather than similarities of imagery alone.
Your paper also draws a comparison between Poseidon and Lucifer. But similarities between particular motifs, such as the distribution of authority between higher and lower domains, do not by themselves establish that Greek and biblical traditions refer to the same being or event.
And here lies the fundamental problem.
Without definite criteria for determining when two texts describe the same event and when they merely share symbolic motifs, we can construct correspondences between almost any texts.
We can always find common images or motifs of division, conflict, falling, restoration, or transition from one state to another.
But the ability to construct a correspondence is not the same as having grounds for accepting it.
Your argument that Satan existed before the events in Eden does not resolve this problem either. Even if we accept that sequence, it does not follow that his fall and the division of the waters on the second day of Creation were the same event.
But I was not inviting you to engage in “hypothetical excursions.”
I was asking under what textual or theological circumstances you would recognize that your specific identification of Genesis 1:6–7 with Revelation 12 was mistaken.
That is a fundamentally different question.
If every new piece of evidence is treated as confirming an interpretation already adopted, while no conditions for revising that interpretation are identified, it becomes unclear how to distinguish a well-grounded hypothesis from an arbitrary interpretive construction.
Your further claims about human beings originally existing as immortal spiritual beings, their fall, and the material universe as a place of restoration add further elements to your model.
But they do not establish the original correspondence on which that model rests.
For me, there is a substantial difference between being able to construct an internally coherent interpretation and having grounds to believe that it corresponds to what the texts actually describe.
We have returned to these grounds several times. Your answers have not convinced me.
Once again, welcome to BioLogos. I wish you success with your interpretation. I’ll leave our discussion here.
Greetings Shawn and welcome to the forum!
I think you are spot on that the fall of the angels absolutely had to happen before the events in the Garden, and I love that you are pushing the timeline back to account for this deep-time reality. However, I look at the physical and scriptural mechanics a bit differently than mapping it to the parting of the waters in Genesis 1:6–7.
Instead of Day 2, I see the fall occurring on the very first part of Day 1—the “evening” cycle, which aligns perfectly with the chaotic Hadean Eon.
The fall of Satan and his angels isn’t a disembodied event that happened before physical time began; it is physically represented by the Theia impact and the subsequent Late Heavy Bombardment during the “morning” of Day 1. This cataclysmic rain of cosmic debris on the early Earth is the exact thermodynamic timeframe when the raw elemental particles (aphar) of the planet are stirred up and life begins to emerge at the microscopic scale.
This sets up a beautiful, seamless biological sequence for the Garden narrative:
- Day 1: “Adam” is formed as the initial single-celled prokaryotic infrastructure running on raw metabolic light energy amidst the molten, post-impact landscape.
- Day 2: The cellular leap to complex eukaryotes happens via endosymbiosis (the protective membrane enclosure of the Garden). It is here that Satan takes the form of the serpent—operating as a biological parasite, a literal microscopic “beast of the field” or soil organism.
- Day 3: “Eve” is split from Adam’s side via cellular binary fission, creating continuous corporate filaments.
- Day 4: The cellular temptation occurs as the atmosphere clears and early organisms develop the genetic radar to finally “open their eyes” and read the light data stream.
By anchoring the angelic fall to the physical bombardment of Day 1, we don’t have to separate spiritual history from planetary history. The adversarial, parasitic “serpent” behavior is introduced into the code early on, perfectly explaining why the natural world carries this deep-time survival baseline from the very start of biological common descent.
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I think you’ve hit on a really profound observation here about the psychology of these discussions. You’re spot on that there’s often a jarring shift where people try intensely to map Genesis 1 to science, but then completely switch science off the moment they step into the Garden in Genesis 2–3 to protect specific theological dogmas.
From my perspective, that split is exactly where the traditional models break down. I don’t think science has to be put aside in the Garden at all. The only reason we feel forced to ignore the biological incongruities of the Garden is because we’ve been conditioned to read it on a macro-human scale.
If you look at the text sequentially, the Garden isn’t a magical, isolated enclosure for two modern humans—it is the literal, physical history of the microscopic, prebiotic world. When you realize that Adam forming from aphar (pulverized particles) matches the initial corporate pooling of single-celled life, and the “deep sleep” and split of Eve from his side perfectly mirrors the mechanics of cellular binary fission, the science doesn’t disappear. It actually holds completely firm right through the Garden, bridging the microscopic cellular foundation to the eventual macro-biological explosion of animal life down the line.
You’re completely right that trying to force-fit ancient literature into modern scientific boxes can belittle what the text is actually trying to do. But for me, exploring these literal root definitions isn’t about “reimagining” the text to satisfy modern science—it’s about showing that the structural blueprint embedded in the Hebrew can naturally accommodate the history of the universe without requiring an intellectual double standard between Chapter 1 and Chapter 2.
In answer to what the environment was like right before the Theia impact: there was no life then.
This was in response to your Day 1 theory. So yes, there was no life present. To refresh your memory, what you said was:
I was just pointing out that your theory about Day 1 is incorrect. There was no “dark, chaotic primordial atmosphere” before the Theia impact. That atmosphere came about several billion years later. You know, a billion years here and a billion years there and soon you get to a large time discrepancy.
Except that the whole thing is artificial. It’s like the Bible Code and all these other secret meanings. They were never there.
Much as I would like Scripture to be all knowing and smarter than the average bear it is not.
Early Genesis is how humans viewed themselves and God. Humanity was the greatest and because that didn’t match reality there must have been a human reason. God must have made humans in His image, to rule for eternity but something went wrong. it can’t be God so it must have been us.
Why do we not live in Paradise? Because that was never God’s intention? No that can’t be right, so it must have been us
Why is the world cruel and unfair? That can’t be God either so it must have been us.
,And who is God? Well He’s a lot like us. Looks like us. behaves like us but is super powerful. But He has one heck of a temper if crossed. There is no love other than for a pet. No forgiveness. No tolerance. And the Devil is an equal and opposite force, but because he is evil he is an animal.
Can’t you see a basic human view of itself and God.
It precedes any revelation of God Himself. It is the starting point of human (mis)understanding not the pinnacle or definitive one. Scripture then slowly reveals God’s true nature and humanity’s reluctance to accept it.
And stupidly, stubbornly that still continues!
Richard
That is a good catch Bill, you are completely right that there wasn’t a dark, chaotic primordial atmosphere blocking out space before the collision.
The “darkness on the face of the deep” in Genesis 1:2 wasn’t an atmospheric cloud shroud at all. It was the cold, dead, rocky surface of the proto-Earth itself—which looked much like the cratered, dark surface of the moon today. That dead stone shell completely blanketed, trapped, and obscured the blinding, roaring light of the planet’s deep magma interior.
The Theia impact is what changes everything on Day 1. That cataclysmic planetary collision completely shattered that dark, moon-like outer rock shell. It liquefied the entire planet, causing the roaring, blinding light of the deep magmatic interior to explosively erupt and engulf the surface. That is the physical reality behind “Let there be light.”
However, because the impact left the Earth completely liquefied and uniformly glowing as a molten mass, a day/night cycle couldn’t exist yet—there was no dark side to rotate into, even though the planet was spinning.
The planet needed a massive cooling period. It wasn’t until later during the morning period of Day 1 (as the Earth cooled, the outer crust solidified/darkened, and early methanogens arrived between 3.5 and 2.5 billion years ago) that a distinct dark side was established. As the surface cooled and went dark, the planet’s rotation could finally separate the external light of the sun from the darkness of the planet’s shadow. That is the exact geological milestone where “God separated the light from the darkness.”
And I always enjoy how you “spin” the problem. So you drop the reference to the light breaking through the atmosphere.
You do know the sun was shining, even if it was dimmer than now, so there would be a light and dark (relative to the other side) side.
Doesn’t this throw off all that beautiful math you used to talk about? You know the reason you started on this speculative form of interpretation.
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That’s an assumption introduced from outside the text.
That’s because it isn’t saying “God created light”, it is saying that YHWH-Elohim spoke to light and commanded it to be. Bara can’t be used for that.
YEC nonsense.
Nope – הָיָה doesn’t mean “to shine”; now you’re changing meanings thoroughly to fit your scheme.
Only in a context where it’s clear that something already burning is transferring flame to something else that can burn. Eretz can’t burn, and there’s nothing already in the narrative that’s burning.
You’re cherry-picking meanings, which is not how translation works.
You’re forcing them to speak in a different worldview than the original, which means you’re inventing new meaning, not using the original.
That is not looking at the actual meaning, it is manufacturing one by imposing an alien worldview – something revealed by your use of “mechanical”.
You’re abusing the idea of translation and thus abusing the text to force it to mean something that isn’t there. It’s no different than a guy grabbing a gal and lifting her off the ground because she said, “Pick me up at the office”.
You are completely right that the sun was shining in space. But from the perspective of an observer on the Earth’s surface, a day/night cycle requires a functional, experiential contrast between light and darkness (choshek).
Immediately after the Theia impact, the Earth’s surface was a molten magma ocean with temperatures exceeding 2,000 to 3,000 Kelvin. Physics tells us that a material at that temperature glows blindingly in the visible spectrum (yellow-white light).
Because the young sun was roughly 30% dimmer than it is today, the amount of visible light hitting the Earth from the sun was completely overwhelmed by the intense, self-luminous radiation blasting off the planet’s own molten surface. Until the planet cooled below the Draper point (around 800 Kelvin / 525°C), where materials stop emitting visible light, both sides of the spinning planet were blindingly bright. There physically was no dark side to rotate into yet. The sunlit side and the shadow side looked exactly the same—molten and glowing.
Not in the least! The paleorotation clock (initially set by the Theia impact) calculates the duration of the entire Day 1 block based on the Earth’s spin rate of 4 hours in a day at its opening boundary (~4.53 billion years ago).
The text doesn’t say the separation happened before Day 1 began; it says the evening and the morning were the first day. The cooling period, the solidification of the dark crust, and the arrival of early methanogens all happen inside that single, massive Day 1 block as it progresses through deep time.
The division of light from darkness isn’t an instant event at the starting line; it’s a natural process that matures later in the “morning” half of Day 1 as the planet cools past the Draper point and establishes a dark crust. Only then can the planet’s physical rotation finally separate the external light of the sun from a true, dark planetary night.
So the math holds perfectly firm, and the physics of a self-luminous magma ocean explains exactly why the active separation of light and dark had to wait for a cooling period later in the day!
The text does not say God created darkness.
According to Jesus, Satan wasn’t cast out until His ministry.
No it wasn’t – it was created to show that no synthesis is necessary because they are not two separate realms in the first place.
By the time of the fire at Alexandria, it had nothing unique left. It makes a nice story that gobs of knowledge was lost, but by the time of the so-called great fire Alexandria was already a backwater.
No work can chip away at the foundation of Christianity, because Christianity does not rely on human wisdom or knowledge in the first place. If a system of thought can be chipped away by works ancient or modern, that system is not Christianity.
A fool’s errand: no harmonization is necessary, first because there is no conflict, and second because scripture doesn’t ever talk science.
Also, a harmonization assumes that two things have independent authority – but science has no authority on spiritual matters.
That’s talking about the birth of Messiah. You’re putting it about 13 billion years early.
According to Genesis 1 we were and still are – only humans are the image in Yahweh’s own Temple.
IIRC that’s been condemned as heresy. It’s also not possible because according to John and Jesus, the fallen angels weren’t cast out until Jesus arrived in the flesh.
Definitely. The darkness is assumed; it is a member of chaos and is presented as a defeated enemy.
This is silliness guaranteed to make non-believers laugh.
You shift the text’s perspective at a whim!
Not exactly the same. The sunlit side had the glow of the rocks and the incoming solar radiation. Your hypothetical observer who could survive at these temperatures would still observe a difference in light levels and therefore a “day” and “night”. Feel free to add on some more restrictions to get history to match your model.
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And redefinitions to get the text to fit the model.