I’ve decided that “Biblically Concordant Theistic Evolution” more accurately describes what I am suggesting. But the acronym is not as good, and probably all theistic evolutionists think that their viewpoint is biblically concordant. So, bummer.
As far as I know, the hazy-atmosphere theory is much further from the text than the solid firmament interpretation. It’s also shown in other parts of the Bible how the biblical writers thought about the sky. Consider, for example, when Elihu spoke to Job in the Book of Job 37:18:
“Can you join him in spreading out the skies, hard as a mirror of cast bronze?”
How can a hazy atmosphere be hard as a mirror of cast bronze?
I think this could be a good article to read if you’re interested: The Waters Above The Firmament (By Ben Vandergugten) | PDF | Genesis Creation Narrative | Religion And Belief.
The author treats a variety of topics, how the Hebrews and early Christians thought about the sky. One quote from this article is:
If God wanted to wrest the ancient physical cosmology from the minds of the Israelites, he of course could do that. If he desired to “correct them” and replace their ancient notions with something more akin to our modern cosmological understanding, there is no stopping him. But if God did overhaul their understanding of the physical cosmos, it would be clearly apparent in Scripture. In my view, it is not. Every book and letter of the Bible has far more pressing concerns to communicate to the people of God.
Why is it hard to except that the author of Genesis 1 chose for a phenomenological description of the cosmos as he understood it? In my expertise, astronomy, we still often talk about pointing our telescopes at “objects on the sky”. This implies that the sky where some kind of billboard on which the objects were pinned. However, none of us has any problems with this description because it is perfectly clear. From a phenomenological point of view, this is an appropriate description.
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I do not subscribe to the vapor canopy. I am a local flood guy. I am also a local Eden guy. The links I posted explain the appearance (visibility from the surface of the earth) of the sun and moon on the fourth era of creation.
How about “Biblically Accurate Old Earth”. The acronym is then BAOE.
I’m sorry, I guess I didn’t use the right term because vapor canopy refers to a certain YEC attempt to explain the occurrence of a global flood. Instead, I meant to refer to the following statement in the article of RTB from the link that you posted:
“Yet one additional component on the early Earth may have led to a hazy, translucent atmosphere.”
It does not change the point of my previous reply (I have edited that reply to reflect this). You proposed the “hazy, translucent atmosphere” to be the firmament, right? That interpretation seems to be very far from the text compared to ancient cosmology interpretations. Also, how do you square it with passages like Job 37:18 “Can you join him in spreading out the skies, hard as a mirror of cast bronze?”
Context in Job. God is speaking to Job. Job has questioned the wisdom and fairness of God. God is dressing down Job for presumption. God is doing so in the cosmological parlance of the day precisely because he is speaking directly to Job and Job would not understand what God was talking about if God had used scientifically correct concepts. There is irony in that this further illustrates the knowledge of God when compared to Job’s limited knowledge. This irony is lost on Job.
Context in Genesis. God is communicating to people in antiquity how he created the earth. There is no need for irony, only for drastic simplification.
Genesis is a simplified account of God’s creation of the earth. Job is God declaring his power to Job in terms and concepts that Job can understand.
It was Elihu (although of course inspired by the Holy Spirit) speaking to Job, not God Himself. God started speaking one chapter later.
So you do agree that the common worldview of the Ancients (such as Job) was that the sky was a dome, a solid firmament? Then, given that point of view, doesn’t it seem more natural to interpret the word “vault” or “dome” in Genesis 1 as referring to that commonly held perspective?
It seems perfectly appropriate for God to communicate that He created everything and for what purpose He created everything, using the worldview that the people understood. Can’t the ancient cosmology be used as a vehicle to express God’s Creation story?
Given that the straightforward reading of Genesis 1 corresponds very well with ancient cosmology, why would you extract a “hazy atmosphere” out of it? If the intention was to communicate a completely different cosmology, you would at least expect it to be explicitly presented as such. On another topic you wrote the following advice:
I think that’s a good advice. So it would be good to apply it consistently. I don’t see any indications of a radically different cosmology being presented in Genesis 1.
Maybe, but if what it is expressing is not how God created the world, then it is not God’s creation story. The word raqia in Genesis 1:6 can easily refer both to the ancient Hebrew conception of the sky as a solid dome and the actual primordial atmosphere. The answer is as simple as not understanding what you are looking at. The ancient Hebrews looked up through ten miles of gas and thought they saw a roof. That is what Elihu was referring to. An unnamed prophet had a vision of the sun and moon shining through the clouds for the first time ever, and that prophet started an oral tradition that carried on until Moses. Thanks for pointing out that your verse was Elihu speaking. I completely missed that while I was eating my McNuggets in my truck at lunch. When God speaks in Chapter 38 he says:
8 “Who shut up the sea behind doors
when it burst forth from the womb,
9 when I made the clouds its garment
and wrapped it in thick darkness,
10 when I fixed limits for it
and set its doors and bars in place,
11 when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt’?
I can’t help but notice that God does not say of the sea that he made a big hard dome it’s garment and wrapped it in a mirror-like bronze substance. Sometimes poetry is descriptive of actual events. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t poetry or that the events did not happen.
So, what I am hearing is that, because the early Hebrews had incorrect ideas about the natural world which they reference later in the Bible, some of the folks on this forum have made a strategic decision to not acknowledge concordance in the early verses of Genesis so as to dissuade readers from taking later portions of the Bible too literally. This seems disingenuous to me.
Not really. It’s more that we deny that concordance you may find was put there by God to speak exclusively to future audiences with modern scientific knowledge. That’s different than what you are saying. It has nothing to do with “strategy.” It has to do with exegetical approach. In our exegetical approach, determining the intended meaning of the original composer and the probable interpretations of the original audience in the original cultural context are of paramount importance. Anachronistic meanings and interpretations are suspect.
I agree that the condordance was not put there by God to speak exclusively to future audiences. It was also put there to speak to the audience who received it thousands of years ago. The concordance shows that it is accurate, and if it is accurate, though simplified, then it can speak to all audiences. Anachronistic meanings are indeed suspect, but a fact is a fact no matter the time period of the reader. There is zero benefit in asserting that the cosmology of Genesis 1 is not meant to communicate the sequence of the natural history of the earth. There is great benefit in asserting that Genesis 2 is meant to communicate God’s creation of a garden, in the land of Eden, wherein it was proven that all people would prefer to be culpable for their actions rather than live in an ideal environment and not know right from wrong or be able to make their own decisions. There is great benefit in recognizing that being able to make your own decisions implies being in an environment where one is presented with challenges to overcome and opportunities to fail. You can talk about the probable interpretations of the original audience in the original cultural context, but your interpretation will be suspect because it is human nature to want to know where we came from. Genesis 1 tells us where we came from. Genesis 2 tells us about human nature and why it is necessary for us to live on a planet that is challenging, unfair and difficult. @Casper_Hesp
@Christy
By this you mean the actual order in which everything on earth was materially created? If so, one glaringly obvious benefit of asserting that Genesis 1 is not meant to communicate the sequence of the natural history of earth would be you aren’t forced to contend that God actually did create in a way that science and natural history disputes and disproves.
Here is an interesting timeline of the formation of the universe. timeline and Here is the text of Genesis 1 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=genesis+1&version=NIV If you integrate the two, then you get:
4.55 billion years ago - Formation of the Solar System.
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
4.45 billion years ago - Formation of Earth complete; storm of asteroid impacts.
3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.
4.5 billion years ago - Formation of the Moon: according to the Giant Impact Hypothesis, this happened when Theia collided with proto-Earth.
6 And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” 7 So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.
3 billion years ago - Formation of the first known continent, Ur.
9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place,and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.
1.3 billion years ago - First plants.
1.6 billion years ago - First blue-green algae.
11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.
2.4 billion years ago - The Great Oxidation Event: the Earth’s atmosphere gets oxygen.
14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.
670 million years ago - First animals.
150 million years ago - First birds.
20 And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” 21 So God createdthe great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” 23 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.
114 million years ago - First modern mammals. World begins to cool
24 And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
5 million years ago - Humans split off from other apes (gorillas and chimpanzees).
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
27 So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.
31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
Ok, so when we look at this timeline we see that God begins by forming the sun and planets from a swirling disc of gas, rocks and ice collapsing in on itself. Once the earth finishes pulling gas to itself the atmosphere is thick, permanently overcast, but permeable to light of the dim sun. http://www.amnh.org/learn/pd/earth/pdf/evolution_earth_atmosphere.pdf
Then the earth gets whacked by Theia and a moon’s worth of ejecta gets hurled into orbit. More Evidence That Early Earth Collided Head-On With Another Planet
After the excitement of Theia dies down you get the earth’s water cycle, evaporation, precipitation etc.
Then we get the first plants.
Then we get the great oxidation event and the sky clears such that the moon and sun are visible from the surface of the earth for the first time. Note that these two milestones appear to be transposed with oxidation at 2.4 billion and then plants at 1.3 billion years ago. But, the oxidation is thought to have been caused by cyanobacteria, which are green, and which plants are decended from, and which actually are the chloroplasts found within the cells of modern plants Introduction to the Cyanobacteria Great Oxidation Event: More oxygen through multicellularity -- ScienceDaily Therefore we really have at 2.4 million years ago the beginning of plants (with cyanobacteria on yom 3) and then later we get the great oxidation event and visibility of the moon and sun from the earth’s surface on yom 4.
Then we get fish and birds (which evolved from dinosaurs which again ancient peoples would not know from an airplane).
Then we get animals.
Then we get people.
Ta Da! Concordance.
@Christy
@Casper_Hesp
.
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Why do you believe that it’s not God’s creation story if it does not involve natural history? There are also other “hows” involved.
To put it in the words of John Walton, God’s Creation story can be about the origins of the “home” of humanity, not of the “house” of humanity. An inauguration ceremony of a sacred space, so to speak. Or even, by one conception of the creation of human beings, the status of “furniture” changing to the status of “guest”. That’s a wonderful Creation story apart from natural history. Even if (in some futuristic scenario) our current cosmology / timeline of the Universe turns out to be extremely mistaken, the Creation account of Genesis 1 will speak to people forever.
It’s from blog series by John Walton here on biologos:
http://biologos.org/blogs/archive/reflections-on-reading-genesis-1-3-john-waltons-world-tour-part-1 :
John Walton: “What is happening [in Genesis 1] is that people and God are moving into the home they will share. It all begins to function when people in God’s image come on the scene and when people “move in”—as an origins account, this is the story of the origins of the home, not the origins of the house. So it is more than just praise—it is inauguration of sacred space. It is much more than a psalm though it involves praise. For people, they are either the first ever in God’s image, or, by another model, their status is changing from furniture to guests. For God, though he is technically already there (his omnipresence), something has changed. Yes, God is everywhere, but it is a different thing to have his presence manifested such that sacred space is created. Later in history, something happened when God’s Presence came into the tabernacle or Temple and this would be similar.”
Genesis is both the story of the creation of the house and the creation of the home. Exodus 36 through 40 describes the physical creation of the Tabernacle and Exodus 40:34-38 describes the indwelling. 1 Kings 7 and 8 describe the physical creation of the Temple by Solomon. Genesis 1 describes the physical creation of the earth, in a style that is similar to the temple consecration, but it is still a description of the physical creation. There is no either/or dichotomy here. It is both the physical creation followed by the consecration.
I don’t really understand how your timeline maps onto what the verses actually say. The verses actually say you have a watery expanse before the earth. You have the earth before the sun and the moon. You have plants before the sun. You have birds before ‘animals.’ That does not match up with the timeline and it requires so much creativity and artistic license to make it ‘fit,’ it makes me ask, why bother?
I think that these sorts of timelines are interesting, and I enjoyed looking at it, but ultimately, I think that those of us who accept evolution and feel the proper interpretation of Genesis is that it does not contain scientific information, tend to fall into the same trap that our YEC brothers are in. We tend to look and want to find confirmation in the story, when we have already stated that confirmation of scientific knowledge is not there. I have done so frequently, looking at the issues of Cain’s situation of being fearful of living outside Adam’s family as confirming a larger population of humanoids etc. as being confirmation by the scriptures, then having to remind myself it is not, or at least may not be confirmation.
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Think about how the timeline maps onto what an observer would have seen if observing natural history unfold from the surface of the planet. Think about what a vision of the evolution of the planet would look like to an unsophisticated observer being given a vision of the scope of the development of the earth, from the viewpoint of the surface. @jpm
Hello Nick,
I’ve been following this post and I don’t see how the concordance you speak of in Genesis 1 can be thought of as, “accurate” in any way, or even a simplified version of the timeline of origin events, though I myself held your views for most of my Christian life. It seems that in your efforts to harmonize modern science with passages in Genesis 1 that you’ve obfuscated things a little bit and have left other things out. Genesis 1 has the earth as an existing entity on (or before) day 1 with the Spirit of God, “hovering over the waters”. However, you failed to mention that water on earth didn’t appear for 500 million years after the earth had cooled and steam gas condensed and fell to earth, eventually forming a large, shallow ocean. For the sun, we know that it was created before the earth from science and you have the sun, “igniting” per verse three, apparently creating the light in that passage and implying that the sun had already existed and was now lighting up. A clump did ignite in nuclear explosions when it forming in the middle of the solar nebular, but that actually created the sun and that happened before the earth was formed formed, contradicting the sun being, “created” on the fourth day, which is 2/3 the way through the creation acts of Genesis 1. This seems to much more than a simplification of the actual events of creation - it’s a major mistake in the timeline.
Your description of the raqia also is missing details. The, “vault” as described in verses 6-8 is surely describing the atmosphere that was on the earth at the time of the writing of Genesis 1 and God called it the, “sky”, when ancient near-east peoples thought that there was a solid dome holding up the waters of heaven. However, it took 2 billion years for this type of blue-sky atmosphere to develop. The early earth atmosphere came from gases spewed out of volcanoes - mostly hydrogen sulfide, methane, steam and carbon dioxide as far as we know. This was a dense, steamy atmosphere, not like today’s. Water then formed on the surface and at that time methane droplets formed in the air and covered the world in a methane haze. The water collected and in time became oceans and life formed in them, cyanobacteria, which released gaseous oxygen into the atmosphere. This started ~2.7 billion years ago and the oxygen reacted with the methane and eventually cleared out the methane haze and created the blue sky we have now. This was ~2.5 billion years ago. You wrote, “the earth, compressed further, with heavy elements such as iron and radioactive isotopes sinking to the center, and lighter elements such as water and gasses floating out to the exterior.” This describes the, “1st atmosphere”, in earth’s earliest period, dense and steamy, but with no, “vault”. The second atmosphere was the methane haze atmosphere then the blue sky atmosphere some 2.5 billion years ago.
So Genesis 1 has the, “heavens and the earth” created at the beginning and God’s Spirit hovering over the waters, before the 1st day. The 1st day had light created, the 2nd had the raqia (vault) created and God called this, "sky’. The 3rd day God had the water, "gathered to one place, creating, “land” and, “seas”. No sun yet. So the timeline is Earth covered by water, light, sky, then water coalescing creating land then the sun.
From modern science we know that the universe was created at the Big Bang, 9.3 billion years later the sun formed, then the earth, then water then the sky. So some big discrepancies between the timelines of Genesis 1 and modern science.
Genesis 1 also has vegetation created in the 3rd day, the sun and moon in the 4th day, then fish and birds in the 5th day, land creatures in the 6th day and man later in the 6th day.
You wrote, “Science teaches that some of the microbes that evolved stopped getting their energy from the surrounding environment, and instead started getting their energy by consuming other microbes. These microbes further evolved into early animals such as fish, amphibians, and dinosaurs which further evolved into Birds. Coincidence?” I don’t know if one can really harmonize days 3-6 with the evolution since the writer is clearly talking about species that lived on earth when he wrote, which was probably about 4,000 years ago. If you want to go that route, though, basically for biologic complex,multicellular life fish evolved first, then land-based plants, then land-based animals then birds then man. Genesis 1 has plants, fish and birds the same day, land base creatures then man.
So as you can see Genesis contains huge mistakes in the cosmological and biological timelines that I think prohibit it to be considered a condensed version or a simplification of the timeline of creation that we know from modern science. Also, another reason that I don’t like the day-age theory any longer is that the writer clearly makes the case that the days are actual, 24 hour days, since he writes, “there was evening, and there was morning, the [ ] day.” Overall the evidence is pretty clear that Genesis 1 is a theology, and not a scientific lesson.
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I make five assumptions (at least). The first is that if you go outside in a pouring rain at twilight, the sky won’t look much like a dome, until the rain stops, at which time it will appear that the sky has been partitioned by a firmament (try it for yourself, I’ll hold the umbrella). The second assumption is that the earth’s atmosphere was overcast until the Great Oxidation Event and therefore, to an observer on the earth, the sun, moon and stars would not be visible until such an event (this is why it took so long for Galileo to catch on in London, they had never seen the sun). Third is that the 7 “days” described in Genesis 1 are actually 7 separate visions, given by God, to some nameless prophet, each of which emphasized or showed a different part of the development of our planet, and that this prophet then passed this information down in the ancient Hebrew oral tradition until it was written down by Moses. Fourth is that the prophet viewed these visions from the surface of the earth. Fifth is that the prophet had imperfect understanding (like everyone else in the Bible outside the Trinity) of what he saw in these visions and God did not narrate or explain to this prophet what it actually was that the prophet was seeing. Thus we get:
First vision. 4.55 billion years ago - Formation of the Solar System. “void”
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/timeline.html
First vision. 4.55 billion years agoSunlight first reaches the surface of the rotating earth through the thick atmosphere. “Light”
http://www.windows2universe.org/jupiter/atmosphere/J_evolution_4.html
Second Vision. 3.8 billion years ago, it finally stops raining at the end of the Late Heavy Bombardment. “vault” BBC Earth | Home
Third Vision. 3 billion years ago - Formation of the first known continent, Ur. “land”
Third Vision. 2.7 billion years ago the earliest photosynthetic cyanobacteria appear. “plants” BBC Earth | Home
Fourth Vision. 2.4 billion years ago - The Great Oxidation Event: the Earth’s atmosphere gets oxygen. The sun, moon and stars are clearly visible for the first time from the surface of the earth. “lights”
Fifth Vision. 670 million years ago - First animals. 490 million years ago, jawless fish, To 150 million years ago - First birds. “fish and birds”
Sixth Vision. 114 million years ago - First modern mammals. “animals”
Seventh Vision. 5 million years ago - Humans split off from other apes (gorillas and chimpanzees). “male and female he created them”
@Nick_Allen What indication is there in Scripture or comparative lit studies that we should interpret Genesis 1 as someone reporting a vision of the whole of natural history unfolding? That is a huge reach with no textual or cultural justification, as far as I can see.