I think your reading modern questions and assumptions back into the text.
Ancient near easterners were pre-scientific revolution thinkers. They were much more concerned with questions of purpose and divine activity than understanding the scientific process by which the earth came into being, projecting those questions back into the text is anachronistic.
Of course being made into the image of God is a process, Christ is the Image of God and we are still evolving in a sense into his image, we wonāt see this reality in full until the resurrection. All of Godās design in creation was leading up to his climax of creating humans in his creation, so not just the common ancestor we share with monkeys but the common ancestor we share all the way back to the first life form. God didnāt just at the point of our common ancestor with monkeys say āI think humans might evolve at this pointā, he new it from the start otherwise heās not really the God of the Bible.
but things like:
When were people first considered human and held accountable for their actions in a way that animals arenāt?When were humans entrusted with the task of ruling his creation?
At what point did humans have the potential for eternal life?
Are interesting to speculate about but we just arenāt given answers in Scripture, we are only told that humans currently are held accountable in a way animals arenāt and entrusted with ruling his creation in a way other animals arenāt and that we currently do have the potential for eternal life through Christ, and that those in Christ currently are being formed into the image of Christ, the rest we have to give up our Greek mind that doesnāt like mystery and say itās unknowable to us.
āif you buy into the whole evolution thing, then monkeys evolved from something else, which evolved from something elseā¦ which ultimately came from single cell organisms, and prior to that amino acids.ā
Do you assume that it must be all evolution or all creation? What if God created a monkey at some point in time, and it then evolved into a human? That is what I have proposed.
It is what the evidence tells us. I see no more reason for believing in God or demons concocting lying evidence to hide a special creation of monkeys than to hide a special creation of homo sapiens.
As a Christian who believes in a God who participates in our lives, I see no reason to think that this does not extend to the whole history of the development of life. I would reserve the word āinterventionā for things like the flood or an asteroid wiping out the dinosaurs.
I think your again reading in modern categories of natural/supernatural.
John Walton uses the analogy in Lost World of Genesis 1, of the difference between a pizza or a double layered cake. Intelligent Design people view the world as a pizza divided into ānatural slicesā and āsupernatural slicesā. The problem is that this creates a āGod of the gapsā and God keeps getting smaller the more we understand about science. Just because God has set up an orderly universe and acts in a consistent manner doesnāt mean heās āletting his creation to beā.
A double layered-cake on the other hand sees the natural as the top layer and the āsupernaturalā or ādivine purposeā as the bottom layer. The top layer is what science can explain, it is what we can taste, touch, feel, and see, The bottom layer represents invisible divine activity and divine purpose that we can not see, but thereās no reason to see them as contradictory. Gravity is every bit a divine activity as when I lay my hands on someone and see them miraculously healed instantaneously.
We can speak the birth of a child in a biological process and explain a great deal, yet I pity the fool who thinks that because we understand the biological process of a child being born that it is not a miraculous event or that somehow invalidates the truth that āGod nit them together in their mothers womb.ā
So no I donāt believe God āset up the world and then just let it beā, heās sovereignty in control of everything thatās why I think creation should be talked of as an ongoing process that is still in progress.
Now if your asking how the apparent contradiction of human free will and divine sovereignty work then your again asking a question that is fun to speculate about but no one will ever fully comprehend outside of God. We just now that he is sovereign and yet heās still given us free will.
God operates very often via delegation, both in the visible and invisible realms, yet that doesnāt mean heās passively letting things be.
Why are you proposing that? On what basis are you making this suggestion?
Most of the controversy regarding the theory of evolution pits a creationist view of nature versus an evolutionary one. Personally I do not find this particularly controversial but I can see that an evolutionist view of creation (which requires death as part of how species randomly mutate and find a best fit) is at odds with Genesis which suggests that Sin and Death were introduced by Adamās rebellion (or rather this is the debate between mainstream theologians rather than the more eccentric ones found on this strange blog).
So you suggestion that God created a monkey - which then turned into a man -
Is a bit weird.
Firstly there is absolutely zero scriptural basis for that. Evolutionists believe that all more advanced life forms evolved from much simpler ones, so your suggestion goes against
Received scientific opinion.
Finally, your suggestion implies that either the ape was made In lGodās Image, or perhaps God created something else and then turned the ape into man. But if this latter case is true, how do we know that the metamorphosis is complete? Maybe we are still changing into the likeness of God - in which case Christās incarnation was marred - he might as well have come as an ape.
Your suggestion just doesnāt make sense on any level.
There is a problem with the origin of monkeys and other placental mammals at the point of the End Cretaceous Extinction, which took place 65 Ma. Several different orders of placental mammals (carnivores, herbivores, and insectivores) appear at the beginning of the Cenozoic Eon, but there are no placental mammals in the Cretaceous.
In a paper that generated an extreme level of controversy, paleontogist Maureen OāLeary and about 20 other paleontologists stated the following in their 2013 Science Journal publication. āThe hypothesis that the oldest members of crown Placentalia [the clade of all living placental mammals (6)] were present by ~100 Ma in the Mesozoic Era has been supported by molecular clock analyses (7ā9), which suggest that at least 29 mammalian lineages (7), including the stem lineages of Primates and Rodentia, appeared in Late Cretaceous ecosystems (8) and survived the massive K-Pg extinction event. However, fossil evidence has not corroborated this hypothesis, despite discovery of abundant, well-preserved, small vertebrates (10). By contrast, phenomic phylogenies incorporating fossils have placed ordinal and intraordinal speciation of Placentalia after the K-Pg extinction event (11).ā
Oāleary, Maureen A., Jonathan I. Bloch, John J. Flynn, Timothy J. Gaudin, Andres Giallombardo, Norberto P. Giannini, Suzann L. Goldberg et al. āThe placental mammal ancestor and the postāK-Pg radiation of placentals.ā Science 339, no. 6120 (2013): 662-667.
DNA molecular scientists have reacted strongly against this paper.
The reason that paleontologists do not think that there were placental mammals in the Cretaceous is that fossils have epipubic bones, which placental mammals do not have.
Actually, there are a few significant gaps in the fossil record of animals, and scientists acknowledge them although they do not consider the possibility of supernatural intervention. For example, Henry Gee, Senior editor of Nature Journal stated the following about the origin of vertebrates, āAt first sight, many of the characteristic features of vertebrates appear to have evolved all at once. This explains why vertebrates appear so different from anything else in the animal world. However, it is legitimate to ask whether the apparently unique features of vertebrates evolved not simultaneously, but one at a time, and, if so, in which order; and whether some of them might be found, even if in some more modest form, among invertebrates.ā
Gee, Henry. Across the Bridge: Understanding the Origin of the Vertebrates . University of Chicago Press, 2018.
I am not sure that you are right about this. For example, the beginning of the universe appears more finely tuned than ever. Thus, there is no shrinking gap there. The solar system, which was assumed to be mediocre (not unusual), is appearing less and less usual, as more exoplanet data comes in. This is actually a widening gap. I think that Drake and Sagan calculated that there are 100 billion civilizations in the Milky Way (or some huge number). Now, many scientists doubt that there is another civilization that is close enough for us to contact, or even that there is another civilization in the universe.
So are you proposing that monkeys (I assume your talking of a common ancestor we have with modern monkeys) were created āex nihiloā at some point and didnāt evolve from any previous life form, yet humans still eventually evolved from this creature?
I canāt see that thereād be any support from Scripture or science for that assertion.
The first description of modern mammals is in Genesis 1:24. āAnd God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.ā The three types of animals are basically large herbivores, rodent or insectivore (also lizards) type animals, and carnivores, respectively. My interpretation is that this verse (Let the earth) speaks of a natural process of evolution on earth, that brought forth the mammal type. Notice that they are all one kind. Just before the End Cretaceous Extinction, the mammal ancestors of placental mammals were all little insectivores.
Then God did something to those mammals. Genesis 1:25. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. From the scientific perspective, several orders of placental mammals suddenly appear after the End Cretaceous extinction, but they have nonplacental analogs in the Cretaceous. Halliday characterized the three types as carnivores, herbivores, and insectivores (funny). Primates (Purgatorius) also appeared, but I donāt think that they have any analogs in the Cretaceous (thus created, vs. 26). Placental mammals have a superior gestation process, brain, and if you want to call it superior, sexual and emission system, from nonplacental mammals. So my interpretation of the verse is that God āmadeā (modified) the placental mammals ancestors and made them into placental mammals. I am just working on this idea so I readily acknowledge that I could be wrong.
Halliday, Thomas JD, Paul Upchurch, and Anjali Goswami. āResolving the relationships of Paleocene placental mammals.ā Biological Reviews 92, no. 1 (2017): 521-550.
how bout in genesis 1:21, did God when God created the sea dragons (tanniniym), whats was the natural process that creates these mythical chaos creatures?
How about the glass dome created to,hold back the heavely ocean in day 2?
The Bibke wasnt written to impsrt secret scientific knowledge thousands of years before it was known to us.
It is actually not a sea dragon. The most common meaning is crocodile although this term could refer to a large fish. The other created creatures in v. 21 are birds and fish. These are all vertebrates and they were the primary vertebrates of the Mesozoic Eon. Notice in a previous post that there is no scientific explanation for the origin of the vertebrates.
With respect to the supposed dome, see the analysis by Gorg in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, which indicates that the most probable interpretation is disk. I think it was the circumsolar disk of the solar system.
look up all the passages where tannin is used, crocodile is an absurd translation, its used in exodus to describe Aaron staff turning into s serpent l, its used in Isaiah to describe a Dragon risinf out of the sea l, and its used in the osalms to describe a multi headed chaos creature that God slayed when he created the earth. the psalms passage and Isaiah are likely allusions to genesis 1 and revelation 13 is also an allusion to genesis 1 when they 7 headed beast rises out of the sea and is slain.
In what sense is that evidence of anything? Or in what sense do we say these scientific papers are all doomed to never figure anything out: https://www.nature.com/collections/nytsdbdfdt
So maybe God created vertebrates in a short period of time (including monkeys) and then created mankind as entirely distinct from the other animals.
That would be a reading that most closely tallies with Genesis and which would be least problematic from a theological perspective.
I am not saying that this is what happened - we simply do not know enough about the origins of life on Earth to give an authoritative account, and I for one do not find it a problem to keep an open mind about it.
But speculating that God started at some random point in the evolutionary chain and then created man from a monkey (having previously and supernaturally created every other life form) seems about as productive as speculating on whether at the same time God created a chocolate tea pot that is in orbit around Pluto.
I agree with you that it can be used in a mythological sense; however, I think crocodiles or large fish such as sharks or whales is a better translation in this case. I have two reasons, commentaries on the meaning of the word and context.
The phrase that describes the great sea monster in v. 21 is hattanniĢnim haggeĢdoĢliĢm . TannĆ®nim means āmonster,ā and geĢdÅlĆ®m means āgreat.ā TannĆ®nim probably comes from a root word that means āto elongate.ā The complete phrase is only used one other time in the Bible. "Speak and say, āThus says the Lord GOD, āBehold, I am against you, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great monster that lies in the midst of his rivers, that has said, āMy Nile is mine, and I myself have made it.ā ā ā (Ez. 29:3)
Commentaries
Ellicot commentary on Ezekiel 29:3
The great dragon.āThis word is usually translated dragon in the English version, but sometimes whale , and serpent. It unquestionably means crocodile, the characteristic animal of Egypt, in some parts hated and destroyed, in some worshipped as a deity, but in all alike feared, and regarded as the most powerful and destructive creature of their country.
Lieth in the midst of his rivers.āEgypt, a creation of the Nile, and dependent entirely upon it for its productiveness, is personified by the crocodile, its characteristic animal, basking upon the sand-banks of its waters. The expression āhis rivers,ā used of the branches of the Nile near its mouth, is peculiarly appropriate to the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, to which Pharaoh-Hophra belonged, whose capital was Sais, in the midst of the Delta.
Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
the great dragon] i.e. the crocodile. Conversely the present Arabs with some humour name the crocodile āPharaoh.ā
Pulpit commentary
The great dragon. The word is cognate with that used in [Genesis 1:21] for the great āwhales,ā monsters of the deep. The ādragon,ā probably the crocodile of the Nile (compare the description of āleviathanā in [Job 41]
Barnes notes on the Bible
Dragon - Here the crocodile, the great monster of the Nile, which was regarded very differently in different parts of Egypt.
Jameson-Fausset-Brown commentary
dragonāHebrew, tanim, any large aquatic animal, here the crocodile, which on Roman coins is the emblem of Egypt
End of commentaries
The word had the same meaning in ancient Israel. For example, Tel Tanninim (Krokodeilon Polis) is an archaeological site where there had been crocodiles on the Tanninim River near the ancient city of Ceasarea. The cityās name specifically referred to the crocodiles (Nile crocodiles) in the area.
The next verse (Ezekiel 29:4) refers to the scales of crocodiles.
Context. There are many animals listed in Genesis 1:20 and following verses. None of them have any relationship to mythical creatures. Why would this one animal, which has a mythological and nonmythological meaning, refer to a mythical creature, when none of the other descriptions of animals refer to a mythical creature?
I am not saying that it is necessarily crocodiles or whales or sharks I actually think that the primary intent is large elongated animals. One of the characteristics of vertebrates is that they can become large and long. For example compare the size of humans with the size of insects, which are not vertebrates.
Actually, there are a few significant gaps in the fossil record of animals, and scientists acknowledge them although they do not consider the possibility of supernatural intervention. For example, Henry Gee, Senior editor of Nature Journal stated the following about the origin of vertebrates, āAt first sight, many of the characteristic features of vertebrates appear to have evolved all at once. This explains why vertebrates appear so different from anything else in the animal world. However, it is legitimate to ask whether the apparently unique features of vertebrates evolved not simultaneously, but one at a time, and, if so, in which order; and whether some of them might be found, even if in some more modest form, among invertebrates.ā
Gee, Henry. Across the Bridge: Understanding the Origin of the Vertebrates . University of Chicago Press, 2018.
Scientists have wondered about the origin of the vertebrates for the last 200 years. Gee wrote his book after hosting conferences or special topic volumes such as the one you reference. Thus, his book is a summary of the issue. If you buy Geeās book on Google Play, then you can appreciate the magnitude of the problem with the origin of the vertebrates.