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A Few Reflections on Creation in Genesis 1

By david adams & charles p. arand.

Introductory Note: In the previous posts , we have surveyed three camps in the faith–science debates regarding origins among contemporary Evangelicals. Three issues arise in these debates: (1) the exegesis of Scripture, (2) the methods and conclusions of science, and (3) the attempt to harmonize theology with science. Without adequate background or knowledge to discuss the methods and conclusions of science, we will leave that aside in this and upcoming posts and discuss the first and third issues only. This post will consider some of the key biblical texts where our interpretation of Genesis 1 conflicts with the conclusions drawn by many scientists from their reading of nature (and its history). How to deal with these texts is crucial for the three evangelical camps in their quest to show that God’s “two books” (the book of Scripture and the book of Nature) do not contradict each other. Because of their central role in these debates, I want to set forth the historical interpretation of these texts in Genesis 1 within the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS). We will then explore the larger theological approach that seeks to develop a theological–scientific synthesis. My thanks to David Adams for writing much of this as we talked together. Also thanks to my faculty colleagues for looking over this post, as well . CPA

Reflection #1: The God of Creation

When we read the creation account in Genesis 1 we typically focus on what it says about us, that is, about the world of creation and our place in it. While these are important truths, they are not the most important thing that Genesis 1 teaches. All the religions of the Ancient Near East taught that the gods they worshiped were responsible for shaping the world in which we live.

And so before looking at a few passages or words, and before bringing our questions to the text, it is helpful to understand God’s purpose and goal in using Moses to write Genesis 1 for his people past and present. This begins with the question regarding the context in which Moses wrote this chapter and what it would have meant for the people of Israel. What questions was Moses seeking to address for the people of Israel as they looked at the world?

What is fundamentally distinctive about Genesis 1, when compared with creation accounts from the Ancient Near East, is what it teaches about who God is. While most of us think of this difference primarily in terms of the Hebrew Bible being monotheistic and other religions of the Ancient Near East being polytheistic, there are at least three other fundamental differences reflected in the creation account.

FIRST , what Genesis 1 says about how God created the world shows us that the God revealed in the Bible is radically different from the gods worshiped in the Ancient Near East with respect to the relationship between the divine and the material. There is no such thing as creation ex nihilo (out of nothing) in any Ancient Near Eastern religion that we know of outside the Bible. For all other religions of the Ancient Near East both the gods and the material world are thought to be derived from a single fundamental but undifferentiated substance which is understood to be eternal. [1]

This leads to a SECOND important difference. While the gods of the Ancient Neat East were not limited by what we call space and time, they were understood to be a part of the perpetual cycle of the cosmos. They are born, they age, they mate and produce offspring, they may become sick or injured, and they may die. When the cycle is complete and the world returns to its primitive state (i.e., chaos), the gods will cease to exist and the process will begin again.

THIRD and finally, no god in the ancient world was truly supreme. None had absolute power. To be sure, polytheistic systems often had a chief god or top god (e.g., Zeus, Odin) who had more power than the other gods. But that “top god” did not have all power, that is to say, he was not Almighty . As a result, they were subject to the same “fates” that shaped the destinies of humankind, and even the most powerful of them could be thwarted by the combined efforts of the other gods.

The biblical creation account, indeed the whole of Scripture, reveals a radically different God. There is only one God. God is not a part of the continuum that includes the material world but brought into being even the unformed substance from which all things were made (the “empty and void” deep of Genesis 1:2). God is not subject to the cycle of the cosmos, but the distinctions that he introduced into the material world brought about time (Gn 1:3–4, resulting in the day as the fundamental natural cycle of time) and space (Gn 1:6–7). Since no part of the material cosmos is a manifestation of his being, he may not be worshiped using any image (Ex 20:4; Dt 4:11–12, 15–19). God and God alone, of all the things worshiped as gods, is all-powerful and can bring about whatever he wills. In this way, the creation account reveals that YHWH stands apart, and YHWH stands alone.

Reflection #2: The Creation Week of Genesis 1

Another unique feature of the biblical account of creation quickly emerges when compared with other “creation” accounts in the ancient world.

Genesis records God creating both time and space and everything that fills them within the span of six days after which God rested on the seventh day. It is the only creation account that is temporally structured. Not only is this temporal ordering one of the biblical account’s most distinctive features, but the period of time in which God creates the world lays the foundation for key elements of the theology of the Bible.

The “liturgical calendar” for the religions of the Ancient Near East is based on the naturally occurring cycles of nature: the year, the season, and the month (including some half-monthly elements). The Bible alone recognizes a period of time that is not based on the naturally occurring cycles of nature but on God’s distinctive activity. In other words, the week as we know it is both unique to the religion of Ancient Israel and fundamental to the theology of the Bible.

This pattern, based purely upon the account of God’s activity in which he created the world over the course of a week, is fundamental to the theology of the Bible in three ways. FIRST , it provided the basis for the rhythm of the Israelite’s own life within creation, especially, with the observance of the Sabbath as the central element of Israel’s worship. SECOND , it provides the framework for almost all of the chief promises and blessings that God gives to Israel. And THIRD , it unites God’s creative work (Ex 20:11) and his redemptive work (Dt 5:15) to understand Christ’s saving work as the fulfillment of God’s plan to restore the state of “rest” that was lost as a result of the fall, and by whose grace we are brought into that rest.

For these reasons we can hardly overstate the significance of the Sabbath to the theology of the Bible and the importance of the creation account’s temporal structuring in laying its foundation. Confessing the pattern of God’s creative work in seven days, culminating and including the Sabbath rest, is confessing what God did, is doing, and will do both in creation and in redemption. This literal weekly pattern lays the foundation for our understanding that God’s redemptive work in Christ brings about what is sometimes called the “eighth day,” the day when all things become again as God intended them to be.

God makes a special connection between the first week of creation and the dawn of the new creation with Jesus’s resurrection. At times, the early church focused on the days of creation in its preaching during the days of Holy Week. The parallels are striking. God creates humans on the sixth day—the second Adam dies on the sixth day, namely, Friday. And so when Jesus was tried, Pilate said, “behold the man.”

During the first week of creation, God rested on the seventh day, Saturday. Jesus in turn “rested” in the tomb on the seventh day, Saturday. Then on the next day, Sunday, the Gospel of John stresses that it was “the first day of the week,” the beginning of a new week, the beginning of a new creation. Thus, it became known as the “eighth day” of creation for which our baptismal fonts often have eight sides.

Reflection #3: The Age of the Earth and Genesis 1

So how old is the earth? Although the Scriptures do not give a specific age to the earth or a specific date for its creation, the Scriptures portray a world that has been created in the relatively recent past, that is, within a historical span of time measured in thousands of years rather than millions or billions of years. [2]

To be sure, the exegetical reading of the creation account raises certain questions but does not give clear and definitive answers to them. For example, how long was the Spirit hovering over the waters? How long were Adam and Even in the garden before the fall?

More importantly, possible gaps in the biblical genealogies may not allow us to pin down a specific age as advocated by many in the Young Earth Creationist movement (especially by the influential organization Answers in Genesis). What is the purpose or the function of those genealogies within their literary context? What is their role or place within the narrative? Genealogies perform one (or more) of three functions in relation to narratives.

First they may serve to establish the bona fides (or identity) of someone in the account. The genealogy of Moses and Aaron in Exodus 6:14–26, for example, does this. Similarly, Matthew’s account of Jesus’s genealogy establishes the identity of Jesus. Matthew organizes Jesus’s genealogy through his mother, Mary, into three patterns of fourteen generations each. The first fourteen generations following Abraham are a period when the people had no king. The next fourteen generations beginning with David focus on the period when Israel had a king. The third fourteen generations again focus on a time when Israel had no king, and end with Jesus who is born to be king. Matthew’s genealogies thus serve to identify who Jesus is.
Second, they may be used to “wrap up” the account of a person, summarizing their history and descendants. Many of the smaller genealogies in the book of Genesis function in this way. For example, the short genealogy of the descendants of Abraham by Keturah (25:1–4) serves to wrap up the discussion of all of Abraham’s descendants except those who come from the line of Isaac.
The third literary function that genealogies sometimes perform is to “fast-forward” from one major event to the next by summarizing the generations in between. This is how the genealogy of Genesis 5 functions. It moves the narrative quickly from the end of the aftermath of the fall in chapter 4 to the account of the conditions that led God to decide to bring about the flood at the beginning of chapter 6.

While genealogies do sometimes provide chronological information, we must also assess the purpose of the narrative so that we can understand the significance of that chronological information. Therefore, it is both legitimate and necessary to ask whether the biblical authors are providing genealogies for deducing the age of the earth or whether they are using the genealogy to perform a different function.

A consideration of the literary or theological purposes of genealogies does not mean that one can or should discount the chronological information. The challenge is to make sure that we honor the chronological and historical significance of these genealogies as well as their literary or theological function.

In other words, these genealogies give us a sense of the flow of time within the narrative in terms of actual years (even without a precise computation of the age of the earth). To that end, Moses records the age of each father at the son’s birth, as well as each father’s total years of life. Thus

even if the genealogies are selective and incomplete (but not inaccurate), and
even if the genealogies are not exhaustive in a way that one can add them up in order to arrive at firm date from which to calculate the age of the earth, [3]

it is difficult not to conclude that the cumulative year totals in the genealogies contribute to the impression that God created everything in the relatively recent past. [4]

For a good article on genealogies, see Andrew E. Steinmann, “Gaps in the Genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11?,” Bibliotheca Sacra 174, no. 694 (April 2017): 141–158. Steinmann responds to those who maintain that there are no gaps in the genealogies that such views are not correct. Steinmann also cautions that this does not imply that the earth is millions or billions of years old. “Instead, it simply argues that the earth is older than the 6,000 years that can be obtained by a simple arithmetic calculation based on the Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies” (158).

For an older discussion of science, genealogies, and age issues, I recommend Paul Zimmerman’s chapter “The Age of the Earth” in Darwin, Evolution and Creation (CPH, 1959). Zimmerman held a PhD in chemistry and served as president of Concordia Teachers College in River Forest, Illinois. The five-point summary of his chapter bears repeating:

1. The Bible does not give us sufficient information to date the time of creation and the age of the earth. 2. We cannot be certain how long a period of time is involved in Genesis 1:2 in the moving of the Spirit over the deep. It is not clear if this is before the reckoning of days begins. If it is outside the days, we cannot set a limit. However, important ordering of the world comes during the first three days. This includes the succession of day and night, firmament, separation of waters and dry land. 3. The creative days are best accepted as days of ordinary length. This is the obvious meaning. However, we must remember that God’s creation is vastly different from His present preservation where present-day laws of nature obtain. God created a dynamic, operating earth. To attempt to probe these beginnings by using modern conditions is to ignore the fact that creation was a once-in-eternity event to which present laws do not apply. This actually takes the question out of the realm of the scientific and places it into the purely theological and philosophical. 4. If the days of Genesis are days of normal length, then man is about as old as the earth. There is then no point in attempting to stretch the genealogies of Gen. 5 and 11 to cover more than thousands of years…. The really vast age estimates deal with the age of rocks whose condition possibly is the result of the initial creation of God. They did not need to wait for crystallization and recrystallization to achieve their present form. Moreover, we would expect that things were created in chemical and physical balance. 5. Scripture, then, does not give a precise calendar. But it does give the impression of an earth far younger than the theories of some scientists indicate. Neither side can be definite. However, the Christian must be sure that any conclusions he reaches must be in harmony with the very clear picture of a great creative act, of man specially created by God in his image, of man’s fall from perfection into sin, and of the first promise of the Savior in Genesis 3:15. To lose those precious truths would be tragic indeed! (Zimmerman, 165–166)

Exactly how recently did God create it? We simply can’t say definitively on the basis of Scripture. We can offer suggestions and guesses . . . but that is as far as we should go. LCMS President Matthew Harrison clearly stated as much in his own LCMS blog post of January 4: “it is true that the Synod has not defined as biblical doctrine a specific age of the earth” ( https://blogs.lcms.org/2018/64959 ).

Reflection #4: A Day is a Day in Genesis 1

The question regarding the length of the days of creation arises especially in connection with the new geological sciences that appeared in the century before Darwin. The idea of interpreting them as representing long geological epochs became a popular way to account for the conclusions of geology regarding the age of the earth. We also see this in the “day-age” theory popular among many Fundamentalists in the twentieth century.

Although the Scriptures are silent on defining the number of hours in a day (the Hebrew does not have a word for “hour,” which is why we have not made this a doctrine binding on consciences), exegetically strong arguments exist to regard it as what we ordinarily experience a day to be. Paul Zimmerman (above) referred to them as “days of normal length.”

In other words, the interpretation of “ yom” in Genesis 1 to mean something other than a day is exegetically unconvincing. For example:

There are no linguistic or literary grounds—either in the etymology of the word “day” in Hebrew or the grammar, syntax, context, or in any figure of speech related to its usage in Genesis 1—that can justify an understanding of the term in any way other than as a day as we ordinarily experience it.
Genesis 1:5 defines what is meant by a “day” in this context: a day is a period of light (daylight) and a period of darkness (night) separated by two transitional periods (morning and evening). [5]
All of the other time-related words in Genesis 1 appear from the context to be used in what we might call their natural sense. [6]
Most importantly, in Exodus 20:8–11 Moses speaks of the “days” of creation and relates them to the “days” of Israel’s week that culminates in the Sabbath. Moses reiterates this in Exodus 31:15–17. Here, as in Genesis 1, Moses intended “six days” to be what we ordinarily experience six days to be.
Interpreting a “day” as what we ordinarily experience as a day is the cleanest way of interpreting the text in that it creates no difficulties for interpreting other portions of Scripture. Put another way, it best fits the overall scope or stream of Scripture.
Over the course of these six days, we have “eight originating miracles” (as my colleague Paul Raabe refers to them). One on each day with two on the third day and two on the sixth day. These creative acts (the initial opera ad extra of the Trinity) are miracles , and miracles are by definition not accessible to human reason or empirical science (in the same way that Jesus’s calming of the storm is not accessible to science).

Horace Hummel expressed it well in his classic introduction to the Old Testament, The Word Becoming Flesh (CPH, 1979):

Grammatically , it is impossible to try to calculate a date for creation on the basis of the meaning of “day” ( yom ). The word is undeniably used in Hebrew as in English in a variety of extended senses. Yet in the context of Gen. 1, its ordinary 24-hour sense is certainly the most natural or “literal” sense, if external criteria are not invalidly introduced. The problem of Gen. 1–11 is not primarily exegetical, but hermeneutical (philosophical and epistemological starting points). (64)

Reflection #5: Animal Death and the Fall

One of the questions that arises both for Old Earth Creationism and Evolutionary Creationism is whether or not animal death existed before the fall.

The narrative of Genesis 2, and the scriptures that follow, focuses on those two human creatures that God made in his image and to whom he gave dominion over his creation. It focuses on their life, their death, and their renewal of life as the gift of eternal life. Thus Paul writes, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned ” (Rom 5:12, italics added). Paul follows with, “For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many ” (Rom 5:15, italics added).

Although the biblical record focuses primarily on human history, human life, human sin, human death, and human restoration, it does not do so in isolation from the wider creation of which Adam and Eve were members. As the catechism puts it, “God made me together with all creatures.” Consider the following connections.

FIRST , in Scripture, animals and humans were both created on the sixth day and both seek their food from God (Ps 104:27). In addition, God’s human creatures and non-human creatures possess the breath of life and thus are both regarded as “living creatures” ( nephesh chayyah— Gn 2:7, 19; Ps 104:29–30). This linkage binds them together in both life and death after the fall. Plant “death” is not of concern since plants do not have nephesh or breath (thus humans and animals were given plants to eat).

SECOND , given the role of humans as stewards of creation, it follows that all creation is impacted by human dominion, sin, and restoration. Scripture repeatedly suggests that animal life and death are closely bound with humanity’s fall and restoration. On the ark, God preserved Noah’s family and the animals. Outside the ark, everything that had the breath of life died. After the flood, God made a covenant three times with humans and every living creature (Gn 9:9, 12, 15; cf. Hos 2:18–20).

THIRD , we might also note that animals were not given to humans for consumption in the initial creation. Genesis 1:29–30 portrays a world in which both animals and humans are given plants to eat. This would further support the idea of no animal death prior to the fall. Then, following the flood, God grants humans the right to kill animals and consume their flesh. At the same time, he puts the fear of humans into animals that they might flee and preserve their life (Gn 9:2–3).

FOURTH , animal life was analogous enough to human life that substitutionary sacrifice was logical and acceptable to God, for the life is in the blood.

Finally, when Paul talks about the fall in Romans 8, he speaks about how all creation was impacted and subjected to futility (pointlessness or meaninglessness). The same language is used in Ecclesiastes to describe life hemmed in by death. In humanity’s restoration the animal creation will participate as well; in the eschaton when humanity is liberated, animals will be, too. Hence Isaiah describes what has been called the “peaceable kingdom” (Is 11 and 65) in terms of humans and beasts living in harmony, and an end of predation.

Luther comments on Genesis 3:17–19 about the curse making the earth resistant to bringing forth its bounty:

Moreover, it appears here what a great misfortune followed sin, because the earth, which is innocent and committed no sin, is nevertheless compelled to endure a curse and, as St. Paul says in Rom. 8: 20, “has been subjected to vanity.” But it will be freed from this on the Last Day, for which it is waiting. Pliny calls the earth a kind, gentle, and forbearing mother; likewise, the perpetual servant of the need of mortals. But, as Paul points out, the earth itself feels its curse. In the first place, it does not bring forth the good things it would have produced if man had not fallen. In the second place, it produces many harmful plants, which it would not have produced, such as darnel, wild oats, weeds, nettles, thorns, thistles. Add to these the poisons, the injurious vermin, and whatever else there is of this kind. All these were brought in through sin. (Luther’s Works , vol. 1, 204, italics added)

A few paragraphs later, he reiterates, “The earth indeed is innocent and would gladly produce the best products, but it is prevented by the curse which was placed upon man because of sin” (LW 1, 205).

But even as we identify these similarities or correspondences between humans and animals, we cannot ignore the scriptural differences with regard to their role and telos within Scripture. Even though they both are “living creatures,” only humans were made by the hands and breath of God. Only humans were made in the image of God, and only humans are given the task of serving as God’s vice-regents upon the earth.

These are a few of the significant exegetical issues raised for those searching for harmony or synthesis between theology and science, or faith and reason. We have crafted these reflections so as to say neither less than Scripture says nor more than Scripture says. In such matters, about which people quite rightly have strong opinions and deep concerns, it is difficult to provide answers without saying more than what the Word of God itself says.

When we encounter conflicts between the conclusions reached by Scripture and science it is natural for us to ask how they can be resolved. God created us to want to understand the world around us, and to find answers to all the questions that our study of the Bible and of the world raises. We want answers, but sometimes we cannot find them.

In this we share Habakkuk’s dilemma as we wonder how long it will be until we see all things fully revealed. It can be hard to hear God say, “Wait for it” (Hab 2:3). Like Habakkuk, God calls us to wait in faith. Until that day, genuine faithfulness requires us to confess the truth of God’s Word while having enough humility to recognize that when the Word of God does not speak directly to a question, we may have to live without answers. This we can do by the grace of God that constantly recalls us to the cross, the empty tomb, and the risen Christ who is both the source and the object of our faith, and who is the answer to the one question that we must ultimately know, “How can I be saved?”

[1] This primitive substance, which we often call “chaos,” is typically given a name and regarded as a god, but it is also a material substance. It is commonly pictured in these texts as “water.” The ancients employed this way of talking about the undifferentiated divine/material substance because water was the only thing commonly known to them that had a physical substance but no natural form.

[2] Paul Zimmerman, for example, in “The Age of the Earth,” in Darwin, Evolution, and Creation (Concordia Publishing House, 1959) writes, “Scripture, then, does not give a precise calendar. But it does give the impression of an earth far younger than the theories of some scientists indicate” (166).

[3] For a very good discussion on the topic of genealogies in Genesis, see Andrew E. Steinmann, “Gaps in the Genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11?,” Bibliotheca Sacra 174, no. 694 (April 2017): 141–158.

[4] I personally prefer this language to keep the focus on God’s creative act rather than the language of “young earth” which too easily gets into the issue of whether or not the earth looks young. By relatively recent past, I would understand a time scale measured in thousands of years rather than in millions and billions of years.

[5] This passage provides us with the one certain exception to the basic rule that we have just stated. In its first usage in Genesis 1:5 the Hebrew word for day is used in the sense of the period of light (what we commonly term “daylight”) in contrast to the night. This is within the common use of the term, both in Hebrew and in Greek (cf. Jn 9:4 and Rom 13:12) as well as in English, and does not invalidate the general point.

[6] These would include terms “night, “evening,” and “morning” all in 1:5, and “seasons” and “years” in 1:14. Genesis 1:14 includes the only ambiguous usage of the term “day,” there in the plural for the only time in the chapter. While the matter is debatable, the apparent meaning of 1:14 is that the “lights” function as signs to indicate the passage of two things, the “seasons” and the “days and years” (the grouping in this case suggested by the pattern of the usage of the prepositions in Hebrew). By this interpretation the term “days,” while plural, still refers to normal days. The other possibility, that the term “days” is being used euphemistically to refer to some other period of time, perhaps a “month” or a “week,” seems unlikely. The former (month) is unlikely because Hebrew has two other words (both related to the new moon) regularly used for a month and “days” is never elsewhere used that way. The latter (week) is unlikely since it is not a period of time for which the lights function as a sign, and thus makes no sense in the context. In either case the context requires that the term “days” as used in Genesis 1:14 refers to some naturally occurring period of time, apparently less than a year.

5 responses to “A Few Reflections on Creation in Genesis 1”

This is an excellent, well balanced article on this issue. Thanks!

Excellent article. I agree, Genesis 1 is the inspired truth of God’s own Word, but it does nothing to establish the age of the earth in geologic terms. I would refer you to an excellent article by Henry B. Smith, “MT, SP or LXX? Deciphering a Chronological and Textual Conundrum in Genesis 5,” Bible and Spade 31 1 (2018), 18-27. He makes a compelling argument that the Masoretic Text was shortened to conform to the time frame of the Book of Jubilees. He notes that the LXX, Samaritan Pentateuch and Josephus all have higher begetting dates of 100 years for almost every generation, raising the creation event to 5500 and the Flood to 3300 B.C.

According to the universal self-evidence of life-affirming, Divine Design, there is a particular hierarchy of natural dependencies in the Completed Creation. For example, creaturely life depends on the Earth’s ecology, and the Earth’s ecology depends on the Sun.

Indeed, the Day Four portion of Genesis 1 (vs. 14-18) mentions the value of the luminaries for life on Earth. This is the account’s textual central portion, being essentially halfway between v. 1 and v. 31. Indeed, by word count in the Hebrew, the central word or phrase of the account is firmly within this portion. By my count, this is the word translated ‘the light’ in v. 18. Or, leaving out v. 31, it is the word or phrase translated ‘to shine’ or ‘give light’ in v. 17.

But vs. 14-18 is the only part of the account to outright mention the luminaries at all. This has caused a deep debate regarding when, in the Creation Week, the account intends to say that the luminaries were created. Were they created on Day Four? Or, instead, were they created in the ‘in the beginning’ of v. 1?

Part of the issue of this debate is whether the account presupposes the universal self-evidence of Divine Design, not only of the Completed Natural World, but of Natural Language. For example, is the account

(X) straightforward, in that each verse in turn is to be understood on the basis of any and all prior verse(s)? or, instead, (Y) a bit of a ‘botch job’ that involves a measure of the less or more arbitrary kinds of ‘inside secrets’?

In other words, (X), is vs. 1:1-5 the context for interpreting vs. 14-18? Or, instead, (Y), are vs. 14-18 the context for interpreting vs. 1-5?

According to most readers, Believer and skeptic alike, the account teaches that the luminaries were created on Day Four (vs. 14-18). Let us call this the Earth Created Before Luminaries interpretation, or the ECBL.

But my impression of the ECBL is that the ECBL fails to take the account as a straightforward narrative. For, it can be charged that the ECBL ignores the particulars of the entire first thirteen verses, specifically of these particulars in terms of the universal self-evidence of Divine Design. For, these are particulars that, in their own terms—that is, aside from the ECBL—would seem to compel the impression that the luminaries are created in v. 1.

Of course, the account nowhere mentions the luminaries except in vs. 14-18. So, if we suppose that the account’s author intends to be understood as saying that the luminaries are created in v. 1, then why does he not ensure, contrary to vs. 14-18, that that is what all readers understand? I mean, it would be very easy for the author to have outright stated, as part of v. 1, that the luminaries are created at the beginning. For example, he could easily have said in v. 1,

‘In the beginning, God created the heaven and all its host, and created the Earth.’

That way, when a reader gets to vs. 14-18, the reader can sense that vs. 14-18, as a way of mentioning the value of the luminaries for life on Earth, are merely recapitulating the fact that the luminaries were created at the beginning.

But, countering this last problem is the very fact, as already stated, that the particulars of the first thirteen verses, in their own terms, would seem to compel the impression that the luminaries are created in v. 1. For, if one had only the first thirteen verses, and if one did not know of any of the rest of the account, one normally would never expect that any part of the rest of the account would contradict that impression.

Moreover, the universal self-evidence of Divine Design implicitly affirms the hierarchy of natural dependencies.

Moreover still, if one were an ancient Hebrew, one would be familiar with the common usage, on the part of one’s people, of the word ‘darkness’ as implying or identifying dense cloud cover (ex: Job 3; Job 38:9; Deuteronomy 4:11).

So again my issue: Does not the ECBL fail to take the account as a straightforward narrative? Is not the ECBL just an act of alternately arranging the Inspired-as-already-assembled pieces of the ‘jigsaw puzzle?’ What, regarding the luminaries, is the picture that the account’s author intends to present? And is his intention effective in the account’s own terms? What, exactly, are those terms. Do the account’s terms involve some elements that are foreign to the bulk of its terms?

Or, instead, are all its terms in keeping with one sole standard? If so, what is that standard?

And, what is the first thing the account is concerned to tell us was created, and why? According to a reading that may well be the simplest and most intuitive, childlike reading, the answer is ‘the heaven and the Earth’ (v. 1). Only an ‘aloof’ kind of reading would say ‘light’ (v. 3), in that an ‘aloof’ reading allows that v. 1 can be seen as constituting a mere title or summary title. This allowance, in effect, disparages the childlike observation that a things’ rightly servicing a need does not equate to the idea that that service is that thing’s own most proper purpose. By analogy, the service of Adam as Title Human in no way negates Adam’s historicity. If anything, it is that historicity that ‘puts the meat on the bones’ of that very service. By a clearer analogy, despite the service which 2+2=4 has as polemic against financial fraud, that service in no way negates the truth of the equation itself. On the contrary, it is the equation itself that makes that service both logically possible and right.

It may not be untrue, as far as it goes, to say that ‘In the chronologically absolutely first instant, God created space and matter.’ But, consider the depth to which vs. can express Divine Design:

1. the general cosmos and the special Earth. 2. The Earth, as its own general subject, implying that which we all intuit is most valuable about the Earth unto itself in all the cosmos: its abiding maximal abundance of open liquid water. 3. that water and its special relation to the Sun’s light, hence the water cycle; 4. The water cycle and its special beneficiary and member, biology; 5. biology and its special category, animal biology (plant/animal/mineral = animal); 6. Animal biology and its special category, human; 7. The man and his wife (Genesis 2:21-23)

Therefore, v. 1 can well afford merely to imply a blandly ‘creationary’ kind of ‘cosmic ‘physics’ information. This is because Genesis 1:1 can be found to be entirely concerned to affirm the fact that, since God designed and created us, we are—contrary either to a Godless or Platonic outlook—not insignificant.

Indeed, had God created everything together in a single durationless instant, and had He told us this, it would not show us His wisdom and goodness, but only His power. The Almighty is not defined merely as the Almighty. He also is wise, good, and relational toward us. He wants us to know of Him as He is, not merely that He is almighty.

So, we might want to ask, ‘One, how does the completed creation hold together, or operate; and Two, how did God created it?’ I think Genesis 1 constitutes a single recognizable answer to both questions.

The pagan gods ‘were subject to the same “fates” that shaped the destinies of humankind, and even the most powerful of them could be thwarted by the combined efforts of the other gods.’

How did the pagan peoples come to believe in such gods in the first place? What is the cause for the fact that such god’s were imagined to exist? Was it not by the common practice of historical revisionism on the part of delusional, superstition-inclined tyrants? Today, such revisionism is one of the means by which tyrants convince a people that those tyrants’ tyrannical ways are justified. So it seems highly doubtful that Genesis 1 is a *reaction against* the popular ancient belief in pagan god’s. For, how else can these ‘pagan gods’ even come to exist in anyone’s superstitious minds except by the first tyrants’ co-opting some original, naturally widely respected account of origins (an original, totally benevolent account that was, to begin with,, the only account to have any currency)?

Perhaps I am just missing something but I don’t think you ever got around to the second half of what you were aiming to write in response to the Evangelical positions you surveyed.

You said, “Because of their central role in these debates, I want to set forth the historical interpretation of these texts in Genesis 1 within the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS). We will then explore the larger theological approach that seeks to develop a theological–scientific synthesis.”

You and Dr. Adams did a wonderful job with the first part, but in the years since this was published I cannot find anything pertaining to the second part.

Thank you again for your wonderful posts! Hopefully someone actually is made aware when comments are made to old posts, otherwise I have little confidence in this series ever being finished (unless it was meant to end with this post and I am missing something).

Thirteen Essays on Evolution and Creationism in Modern Debates

Stephen C. Barton and David Wilkinson (eds): Reading Genesis after Darwin. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. pp. xiv + 254. S/b $24.95

Kim Paffenroth 1

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This anthology consists of 13 essays written by professors trained in biblical studies or theology, writing on the interpretation of Genesis (by which they almost exclusively mean the first chapter of Genesis) since Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859). After a brief Introduction by the editors, the book is then divided into three parts: “Engaging again with the Scriptures,” “Understanding the History,” and “Exploring the Contemporary Relevance.” It includes an index of modern authors and a subject index. References of works cited are included in the notes for each chapter, though a bibliography at the end would’ve been a welcome addition.

Section 1, “Engaging again with the Scriptures,” includes four essays. In “How Should One Read the Early Chapters of Genesis?” Walter Moberly discusses the implications of taking Genesis as “a literary phenomenon.” His conclusion is probably unremarkable to anyone trained in modern, liberal biblical criticism, and it will recur in similar terms in several of the other essays: Moberly challenges us to see in Genesis biblical ideas such as “wonder and delight of the world, creaturely contingency, creaturely responsibility, the gift of relationship between creature and Creator, and the difficulty that humans have in genuinely trusting God as a wise Creator and living accordingly”. I think he is quite correct that this view maintains the text’s meaning and relevance, without insisting on a literal reading of it.

Francis Watson takes the history of controversy much further back, in his essay, “Genesis before Darwin: Why Scripture Needed Liberating from Science.” He traces what he calls the “annexation” of the Bible by astronomy and geology in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries: harmonization of the biblical account with scientific findings (e.g. the “days as eons” solution) was done to the detriment or obfuscation of both. Darwin put forth his theory with no reference to Genesis, and according to Watson, this shows a more fruitful and beneficial relationship between Genesis and science—separation or liberation from one another.

In “The Six Days of Creation according to the Greek Fathers,” Andrew Louth discusses the interpretation of Genesis by Theophilos of Antioch and Basil. Louth’s conclusions echo Moberly’s, in that he counsels some of the same attitudes toward creation, showing how ancient theologians regarded the created world with “wonder” and “humility” and were convinced of its “interconnectedness”.

In “The Hermeneutics of Reading Genesis after Darwin,” Richard S. Briggs examines the comparison of Genesis with other ancient Near Eastern texts (a method of biblical study that was coming into vogue contemporaneously with Darwin), concluding that the process and implications of such “triangulating” are similar, whether one is comparing Genesis to the Enuma Elish or to Darwin.

Section 2, “Understanding the History,” includes three essays. It starts with John Rogerson’s “What Difference Did Darwin Make?: The Interpretation of Genesis in the Nineteenth Century,” which examines some biblical commentaries published shortly before and shortly after Darwin’s work, to see what effect (if any) it had on their interpretation of the Genesis text. The examination does a good job of showing there was no unanimity among interpreters as to the meaning of Genesis, and a range of interpretations were advocated, both before and after Darwin. Perhaps even more interestingly, even within the group that rejected his theory, interpretations of Genesis often differed.

John Headley Brooke, in “Genesis and the Scientists: Dissonance among the Harmonizers,” returns to some of the scientific controversies already examined in Watson’s essay, concluding similarly that Darwin’s theory may be more amenable to Christianity than attempts at harmonizing Genesis with current scientific theories, since Darwin “purged it [Christianity] of a semi-deistic position”. This is an important distinction for those who would “defend” the Bible, who too often seem to be defending a deistic position that God created the universe and let it go on its own subsequently, rather than defending the idea of a God who wishes to be in communion with humans (the more narrowly biblical concept of God, in either Jewish or Christian interpretation). He also speaks in terms similar to Moberly and Louth, counseling a “nonliteral reading of the text”, and focusing on the text’s primary relevance to “our human existential condition”. David Brown concludes the section with a discussion of some paintings in his essay, “Science and Religion in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Landscape Art.” The most familiar of these to readers is probably Dali’s “The Sacrament of the Last Supper.”

Section 3, “Exploring the Contemporary Relevance,” includes six essays. David Wilkinson’s “Reading Genesis 1-3 in the Light of Modern Science” gives perhaps the fullest summary of the interpretive issues, compared to the other essays in this collection. He puts Darwin in the context of other, sometimes more fundamental and intractable controversies with the Bible; he briefly describes the creationist alternative (pp. 132-135); he traces the various attempts at harmonization, with their pros and cons; and he lays out possible points where Genesis may still speak to the human condition and understanding. Echoing previous essays in the volume, his conclusion is that a primarily literary approach is needed to understand or appreciate the text, and this will yield an interpretation that does not address cosmogonic or biological data, but rather our “unique conscious intimacy with God”.

In “All God’s Creatures: Reading Genesis on Human and Nonhuman Animals,” David Clough argues that in light of evolution (and other observations of animal consciousness and rationality), Christians should abandon anthropocentric readings of Genesis (what he calls “human-separatist” readings throughout). Jeff Astley argues in “Evolution and Evil: The Difference Darwinism Makes in Theology and Spirituality” that evolution exacerbates the problems of theodicy by making suffering (and large amounts of it) intrinsic to creation.

In “’Male and Female He Created Them’ (Genesis 1:27): Interpreting Gender after Darwin,” Stephen C. Barton examines constructions of gender in the classical world, in the Bible, and in subsequent biblical interpretation, contrasting these with modern and postmodern analyses. Ellen F. Davis looks at how organisms fit into their environment in her essay, “Propriety and Trespass: The Drama of Eating,” drawing some conclusions for our current environmental situation and its (un)sustainability. Finally, Mathew Guest’s essay, “The Plausibility of Creationism: A Sociological Comment,” examines the current popularity of creationism in the USA (and to a much lesser degree in the UK), suggesting some sociological forces that may contribute to its acceptance, despite its logical or factual shortcomings.

Although I was excited when I first began reading this volume, this wore off in the course of study. I would single out three essays for praise. Moberly’s is a very helpful look at how believers could still maintain the importance and sacredness of the biblical text, without interpreting it literally. Rogerson’s is a wonderful and suggestive illustration of how Christian belief and interpretation are never monolithic, and never a matter of “good guys” versus “bad guys.” Wilkinson’s is a thorough and accessible discussion of the issues at stake. But overall, I was struck by how little the book deals with Darwin: it could be entitled “Reading Genesis in the Modern World” with little loss of focus. Several of the essays make only the barest nod toward Darwin before moving on to some topic only tangential to his work. The suggestions for the future interpretation of Genesis (literary criticism, a reading that encourages a sense of wonder and humility, the acknowledgment of human incompleteness and contingency, etc.), while sober and encouraging, are repeated by several contributors without much expansion or specificity (Moberly, Louth, Brooke, Wilkinson); such heuristic suggestions are also commonplace in biblical studies, so I found little new here that couldn’t be found in many introductory classes or texts on Genesis.

Several essays were much more deficient, in my estimation. Briggs’s idea that comparing Genesis to other, contemporaneous myths, and comparing it to a scientific treatise written 2,500 years later, are somehow similar comparisons, and the two interpretive acts can shed light on one another, struck me as odd, if not misleading. It overlooks the more fundamental difference in genre: comparing Genesis to other myths (contemporary with it or not) is probably more helpful to understanding it, than comparing it to scientific writings (from whatever time period, though especially a work that eschews teleological questions, and therefore has a completely different outlook than Genesis). Brown’s essay has little to do with the topic of this collection and barely mentions Darwin or Genesis: its observations would make a fine beginning to a chat about “art and spirituality,” but it has no place here. Clough’s essay doesn’t deal with “stewardship,” which many interpreters today would see as the crucial way to understand the biblical teaching on how humans differ from, and yet are immersed in, the created order. Neither Clough’s nor Barton’s essay deals with the differences between Genesis 1 and 2, again a crucial interpretive issue for understanding the text’s ambiguities (and discrepancies) on anthropocentrism and gender.

I say all this from the perspective of a biblical scholar of a decidedly liberal Protestant bent, for whom these issues are well-worn. Perhaps if I try to step outside of this context (and many of the essays in this collection properly remind us of how much context determines meaning), I might better see where some of these essays could fit into a useful discussion. I’d say that for someone who thinks (as many of my atheist and agnostic friends do) that all Christians are creationists, that all Christians immediately opposed Darwin’s ideas and continue to do so today, or that there is only one way to interpret Genesis—for a reader with such impressions, the better written, more thorough of these essays would prove enlightening, and might promote a dialogue that goes beyond secularists versus Biblicists, those who would discard the text versus those who cling to a literal interpretation of it. Such a dialogue might even become a mutual search for truth, conducted with real exchange, understanding, and respect.

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In This Section

The History of the Americas
World History
Imperialism: European, American, and Japanese

Creation Stories and Epics

Social Science Laboratories via the Web: Active Learning with Data
The World History Survey: Visual Literacy and Associative Thought
World Civilizations: The Ancient Period to 500 CE
Through the Lens of History: Biafra, Nigeria, the West and the World
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Linking Family History and World History
Did the Sans-Culottes Wear Nikes? The Impact of Electronic Media on the Understanding and Teaching of History
Links for the AHA Teaching and Learning Project

By William Jones Mount San Antonio College [email protected]

Biography Reflective Essay Project Summary Introduction Gilgamesh Genesis Popol Vuh Other Creation Stories and Ancient History Links

Creation stories and epics have performed enormous and essential tasks for human societies. They have explained the universe and defined the meaning of existence. They have entertained us and introduced us to extraordinary events and individuals. Some of these narratives have done their work with such grace and power that they have long outlived the civilizations that first gave them voice. They may also have travelled thousands of miles from their homes. Some of us share the values and beliefs taught in the creation stories and epics of people who died centuries before we were born, who spoke languages we shall never understand, and who lived in places we shall never visit.

Viewed from the perspective of modern historical studies, creation stories offer evidence about religious and cultural belief systems and cosmologies. Epics also deserve our attention, for they relate the adventures and achievements of heroic figures in a culture. Both kinds of narratives can also be important clues for historians and students of history who want to understand and explain the formation of group identity, social relationships, definitions of ethical behavior, and the construction of gender roles and class hierarchies. Some tales may contain elements of both creation stories and epics, offering explanations of the cosmos as well as narratives of the deeds of key individuals.

This portion of the site offers pathways into three texts: the Epic of Gilgamesh , the book of Genesis, and the Popol Vuh . It also includes questions about each of these narratives along with links to other stories and suggestions for further study. You may begin with the Introduction and then proceed to one of the texts, or you may go directly to one of the texts, if you prefer.

I wish to thank Nancy Fitch for her help in setting up this part of the website.

Comments or Questions: [email protected]

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A Biblical Theology of Creation

Other essays.

A biblical theology of creation helps us to see the patterns of creation, fall, redemption, and new creation that are repeated throughout the creation story; though the chaos of sin leads to judgment, God will ultimately redeem and renew his creation.

To trace a biblical theology of creation, we must begin with God’s rule and intent in his creation. Though sin brings chaos into the creation order that ultimately leads to judgment, God is committed to redeeming his creation. Throughout the story of redemption, we see a series of “new creation” events following the judgments of the flood, the Tower of Babel, the exodus, and the exile. In the commission of Noah, the covenant with Abraham, the Mosaic law, and the promises of the new covenant, God begins his creative work anew. However, except for the new covenant, all of these new creation events are followed by another “fall.” In the new covenant, the decisive new creation begins with the person and work of Jesus. Though it is not yet complete, at the end of the age, God himself will make all things new and come again to dwell among his people in the new creation.

The Beginning

It is important to begin a biblical theology of creation with God’s original intent in his creative work. In Genesis 1, we see God forming and filling the creation, and at the end of his work, he pronounces that this ordered creation is “very good.” This very good creation is the place that God has always intended to dwell with his people. Contrary to some views of the created order, the creation itself is intrinsically good and should be regarded as such. In spite of the judgments that sin has brought on God’s creation, God is committed to making it new and redeeming a people who will live in it forever.

Moreover, while Christians may disagree about some of the details and timing of the creation week, all can agree that the biblical account of the creation week in Genesis 1 clearly teaches that God made all things and orders all things. As a result of this, he is sovereign over his creation. That is to say, he is in charge of his good creation.

Yet it is clear to us that something happened to mar this good creation. In Genesis 3, we discover that sin has entered the world through the rebellion of Adam and Eve. They were entrusted as the stewards of God’s good creation, but instead they turned away from him and sought to establish themselves as the true kings (Gen. 3:6-7).

Alongside of the consequences of sin that human beings personally experience, sin has cosmic effects. In Genesis 3, we learn that the creation itself is transformed by sin. The ground itself is cursed (Gen. 3:17). No longer do human beings have a harmonious and peaceful relationship with the creation. Instead, we have to fight with the ground in order to cultivate it.

However, God did not leave human beings without hope of redemption, and the creation itself shares that hope. Romans tells us that the creation itself “waits in eager expectation” for God to redeem his people, for when we are redeemed it too will be (Rom. 8:19). But right now, we are waiting for that hope to be fulfilled. As we wait, God has given us tastes of that new creation to come. He has revealed his plan to redeem the world through a series of “new creations,” and these new-creation type events are preparing us for the ultimate new creation yet to come.

Adam and Eve were waiting for God to act to renew his creation, but in the generations that followed, the sin of the human race continued to increase. Instead of renewal, the creation was moving toward greater chaos as humans ran headlong into greater sin (Gen. 6:1). As a result, God looked at the chaos that sin had brought to his creation and condemned it to judgment. Through the waters of the flood, he judged the rebellious human beings and even the fallen creation itself.

But even in the chaos of that judgment, God remained committed to his creation. Almost all of humanity had turned against him, but one man was righteous in God’s eyes. God rescued that man, Noah, along with his family, through the waters of the flood. From these eight people, God’s creation began anew, and he pronounced the same blessing on Noah that he did on Adam and Eve (Gen. 9:7). Yet like Adam and Eve, Noah and his sons turned away from God. Again, God’s creation work was soon followed by the chaos of sin, and the rebellion of the human race continued unabated until the tower of Babel.

At Babel, humans were again attempting to establish their own authority and power. They wanted to “make a name” for themselves (Gen. 11:4). Again, God came down to judge his people, this time by confusing their language so they could no longer communicate with each other clearly.

In the midst of this chaos, God again chose a single human through whom he would continue his commitment to the creation. The covenant with Abraham is a type of new creation in which God began anew, calling his people to remain faithful to him, and giving them a commission to fill the earth (Gen. 12:3). With the family of Abraham, we have another new creation. But as we observe the life of Abraham, his sons, and his grandsons, the corruption of the old creation remains. Abraham lied about his wife being his sister to preserve himself (Gen. 12:10–17). His son Isaac did something similar (Gen. 26:1–11). His grandson Jacob deceived his own father to get a greater inheritance (Gen. 27:1–29) and his great-grandsons sold their own brother into slavery (Gen. 37:18–36). Yet God did not abandon this new creation people, even when they ended up in the chaos of slavery in Egypt.

After judgments of the flood and the Tower of Babel, God remained committed to his people and his creation. As we’ve seen, following these judgments, there is a kind of new creation; however, this is more evident in the exodus from Egypt. As God worked to bring the Hebrews, the descendants of Abraham, out of slavery, we see judgment on Egypt that brings chaos to that nation while the rescue of the Hebrews echoes God’s work in the creation itself.

Through the plagues he brought to Egypt, God was bringing judgment in the form of chaos. Instead of water being sent to its proper order, water is turning to blood (Exod. 7:17–18). Instead of animals coming to life, you have animals dying (Exod. 9:1–4). Rather than light appearing, the ninth plague shrouds the land in darkness (Exod. 10:21–22). And then, at the crossing of the Red Sea, the waters are divided so that dry land appears (Exod. 14:21) after a wind (Spirit) from God blew over the sea (Exod. 15:12).

The new creation language continues after Israel emerged from the Red Sea. The tabernacle that God commanded his people to build reminds us a little of the Garden of Eden. When it was finished, everything was done just as the LORD had commanded—just as the first creation was just had God had intended it to be. Some scholars even argue that the seven speeches in Exodus 25-31 point us back to the seven days of creation! Whether that is true or not, the imagery is pretty clear—when God called his people out of Egypt, he was pointing us back to the new creation, reminding us that he is bringing order out of chaos for the salvation of his people. 1

However, the pattern of creation followed by a fall continues in the history of Israel. Shortly after emerging from the Red Sea, Israel came to Mount Sinai. While Moses met with God and received the law on the mountain, Israel again began to doubt God’s care for them, and wanted to create a god that they could see and manage for themselves. Once again, God’s “new creational” people failed to trust his care for them, and the result was judgment and chaos; the pattern of creation followed by fall continues.

This pattern continues throughout Israel’s history. God graciously brought them into the land he had promised (another kind of new creation), but they continued to turn away from him. While there were periods of more or less faithfulness, the overall trajectory of the nation’s history was away from the Lord and toward idolatry. And this pattern ultimately led to the judgment of the exile.

Exile and Return

If the exodus and settlement in the Promised Land is the clearest picture of new creation, then the judgment of exile is perhaps the clearest picture of the fall and its consequent chaos. For centuries, the prophets in Israel warned God’s people to turn away from their idolatry or else the Lord would send foreign invaders to conquer the land and take the people captive. In fact, before they even entered the land, Moses himself warned of exile for ongoing unfaithfulness (Deut. 28–30).

The prophets sometimes use language that seems to reverse the original creation when anticipating the judgment of the exile. For example, when envisioning the land after the exile, Jeremiah echoes Genesis 1:2 before God ordered the creation: “I looked on the land, and behold, it was without form and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light” (Jer. 4:23). Yet the promise of restoration and return from exile points forward to a new creation. When Isaiah looked forward to the return from exile and the restoration of God’s people, he often used creation language (Isa. 40:28; 42:5; 43:15; 45:18; 57:19; 65:17; 66:18). In fact, the return from exile is nothing short of a new heaven and a new earth (Isa. 65:17).

The New Creation

As the people of God were waiting for God to act and decisively end the exile, they were in reality waiting for the new creation, when God would make all things new. However, when we come to the New Testament, something surprising happens. The new creation arrives in the person and work of Jesus, but the chaos of the fallen creation is still present with us. As with many other parts of God’s saving plan, the new creation is both already and not yet.

The greatest judgment for sin was found at the cross. There, the sin of God’s people was placed on the Messiah, Jesus, who suffered in their place (Isa. 53:6). Yet the decisive work of new creation began with the resurrection of Jesus. He is the firstborn from the dead, the beginning of God’s final new creation work (Col. 1:18). Though he is the firstborn from the dead, everyone who is united with him can look forward to sharing in his creation in the new creation (1 Cor. 15:20–23).

The new creation is a way of talking about God’s new work in redemption. But with the coming of Christ, it is not simply a step toward the promised new creation. The new creation is in some sense already present. This is why Paul could write, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Cor. 5:17, NIV). The work of Christ is the beginning of this new creation. Through his death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and present reign, Christ has brought the long-promised new creation into existence. We are truly living in the age of the new creation.

But when we look around at the world as we experience it now, it does not feel like we are living in the new creation. As we noted above, the Scriptures also teach us about the ongoing longing of the creation itself to be set free of its corruption. We look forward to the day when “the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay” (Rom. 8:21, NIV).

The new creation has come, but the creation itself continues to wait with eager longing. Living in this overlap of the ages should affect the way we see creation both now and in the future. Now, we can remember that God has remained committed to his creation through many judgments, both of individuals and whole nations (and, in the flood, the entire world). We ought to remember that the created world is not an afterthought. God is committed to removing its “bondage to decay.”

Consequently, we ought to care for God’s good world and seek to steward it well, just as he commanded Adam and Eve so many years ago. God intends not only to redeem disembodied people, but also the world itself. However, we should guard against an ecological idealism in which we equate the good work of environmentalism with gospel ministry or the idea that our creation care will somehow usher in the new heavens and the new earth. The restoration of the creation is ultimately God’s work alone.

The New Heavens and New Earth

In Revelation 21, John paints a picture of the final consummation of the new creation. Heaven comes to earth, and the dwelling place of God in heaven and the dwelling place of his people on earth become one. It is a total transformation of the universe. There is no threat of another fall, for every sorrow and pain will be removed (Rev. 21:4). All of the dangers and threats of the old creation will be wiped away, because no sinful things are admitted to this new creation (v. 8). The creation will once again reflect the glory of God and be full of beauty that all people can enjoy (vv. 22–26). Death itself will be finally defeated, and God’s resurrected people will live forever, enjoying his good creation.

But of all the glories of the new creation, the greatest is God’s very presence among his people (vv. 3, 22–23). This very good creation is the place that God has always intended to dwell with his people. At the end of the story of redemption, God’s resurrected people will enjoy his presence once again to the fullest degree. The goal of God’s creation and new creation has always been the same: to glorify himself by providing a place where his people can enjoy him forever. And in the new creation, this goal will be accomplished for all of eternity.

Visiting Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion?

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Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Mesopotamian creation myths.

Ira Spar Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Stories describing creation are prominent in many cultures of the world. In Mesopotamia, the surviving evidence from the third millennium to the end of the first millennium B.C. indicates that although many of the gods were associated with natural forces, no single myth addressed issues of initial creation. It was simply assumed that the gods existed before the world was formed. Unfortunately, very little survives of Sumerian literature from the third millennium B.C. Several fragmentary tablets contain references to a time before the pantheon of the gods, when only the Earth (Sumerian: ki ) and Heavens (Sumerian: an ) existed. All was dark, there existed neither sunlight nor moonlight; however, the earth was green and water was in the ground, although there was no vegetation. More is known from Sumerian poems that date to the beginning centuries of the second millennium B.C.

A Sumerian myth known today as “ Gilgamesh and the Netherworld” opens with a mythological prologue. It assumes that the gods and the universe already exist and that once a long time ago the heavens and earth were united, only later to be split apart. Later, humankind was created and the great gods divided up the job of managing and keeping control over heavens, earth, and the Netherworld.

The origins of humans are described in another early second-millennium Sumerian poem, “The Song of the Hoe.” In this myth, as in many other Sumerian stories, the god Enlil is described as the deity who separates heavens and earth and creates humankind. Humanity is formed to provide for the gods, a common theme in Mesopotamian literature.

In the Sumerian poem “The Debate between Grain and Sheep,” the earth first appeared barren, without grain, sheep, or goats. People went naked. They ate grass for nourishment and drank water from ditches. Later, the gods created sheep and grain and gave them to humankind as sustenance. According to “The Debate between Bird and Fish,” water for human consumption did not exist until Enki, lord of wisdom, created the Tigris and Euphrates and caused water to flow into them from the mountains. He also created the smaller streams and watercourses, established sheepfolds, marshes, and reedbeds, and filled them with fish and birds. He founded cities and established kingship and rule over foreign countries. In “The Debate between Winter and Summer,” an unknown Sumerian author explains that summer and winter, abundance, spring floods, and fertility are the result of Enlil’s copulation with the hills of the earth.

Another early second-millennium Sumerian myth, “Enki and the World Order,” provides an explanation as to why the world appears organized. Enki decided that the world had to be well managed to avoid chaos. Various gods were thus assigned management responsibilities that included overseeing the waters, crops, building activities, control of wildlife, and herding of domestic animals, as well as oversight of the heavens and earth and the activities of women.

According to the Sumerian story “Enki and Ninmah,” the lesser gods, burdened with the toil of creating the earth, complained to Namma, the primeval mother, about their hard work. She in turn roused her son Enki, the god of wisdom, and urged him to create a substitute to free the gods from their toil. Namma then kneaded some clay, placed it in her womb, and gave birth to the first humans.

Babylonian poets, like their Sumerian counterparts, had no single explanation for creation. Diverse stories regarding creation were incorporated into other types of texts. Most prominently, the Babylonian creation story Enuma Elish is a theological legitimization of the rise of Marduk as the supreme god in Babylon, replacing Enlil, the former head of the pantheon. The poem was most likely compiled during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I in the later twelfth century B.C., or possibly a short time afterward. At this time, Babylon , after many centuries of rule by the foreign Kassite dynasty , achieved political and cultural independence. The poem celebrates the ascendancy of the city and acts as a political tractate explaining how Babylon came to succeed the older city of Nippur as the center of religious festivals.

The poem itself has 1,091 lines written on seven tablets. It opens with a theogony, the descent of the gods, set in a time frame prior to creation of the heavens and earth. At that time, the ocean waters, called Tiamat, and her husband, the freshwater Apsu, mingled, with the result that several gods emerged in pairs. Like boisterous children, the gods produced so much noise that Apsu decided to do away with them. Tiamat, more indulgent than her spouse, urged patience, but Apsu, stirred to action by his vizier, was unmoved. The gods, stunned by the prospect of death, called on the resourceful god Ea to save them. Ea recited a spell that made Apsu sleep. He then killed Apsu and captured Mummu, his vizier. Ea and his wife Damkina then gave birth to the hero Marduk, the tallest and mightiest of the gods. Marduk, given control of the four winds by the sky god Anu, is told to let the winds whirl. Picking up dust, the winds create storms that upset and confound Tiamat. Other gods suddenly appear and complain that they, too, cannot sleep because of the hurricane winds. They urge Tiamat to do battle against Marduk so that they can rest. Tiamat agrees and decides to confront Marduk. She prepares for battle by having the mother goddess create eleven monsters. Tiamat places the monsters in charge of her new spouse, Qingu, who she elevates to rule over all the gods. When Ea hears of the preparations for battle, he seeks advice from his father, Anshar, king of the junior gods. Anshar urges Ea and afterward his brother Anu to appease the goddess with incantations. Both return frightened and demoralized by their failure. The young warrior god Marduk then volunteers his strength in return for a promise that, if victorious, he will become king of the gods. The gods agree, a battle ensues, and Marduk vanquishes Tiamat and Qingu, her host. Marduk then uses Tiamat’s carcass for the purpose of creation. He splits her in half, “like a dried fish,” and places one part on high to become the heavens, the other half to be the earth. As sky is now a watery mass, Marduk stretches her skin to the heavens to prevent the waters from escaping, a motif that explains why there is so little rainfall in southern Iraq. With the sky now in place, Marduk organizes the constellations of the stars. He lays out the calendar by assigning three stars to each month, creates his own planet, makes the moon appear, and establishes the sun, day, and night. From various parts of Tiamat’s body, he creates the clouds, winds, mists, mountains, and earth.

The myth continues as the gods swear allegiance to the mighty king and create Babylon and his temple, the Esagila, a home where the gods can rest during their sojourn upon the earth. The myth conveniently ignores Nippur, the holy city esteemed by both the Sumerians and the rulers of Kassite Babylonia . Babylon has replaced Nippur as the dwelling place of the gods.

Meanwhile, Marduk fulfills an earlier promise to provide provisions for the junior gods if he gains victory as their supreme leader. He then creates humans from the blood of Qingu, the slain and rebellious consort of Tiamat. He does this for two reasons: first, in order to release the gods from their burdensome menial labors, and second, to provide a continuous source of food and drink to temples.

The gods then celebrate and pronounce Marduk’s fifty names, each an aspect of his character and powers. The composition ends by stating that this story and its message (presumably the importance of kingship to the maintenance of order) should be preserved for future generations and pondered by those who are wise and knowledgeable. It should also be used by parents and teachers to instruct so that the land may flourish and its inhabitants prosper.

The short tale “Marduk, Creator of the World” is another Babylonian narrative that opens with the existence of the sea before any act of creation. First to be created are the cities, Eridu and Babylon, and the temple Esagil is founded. Then the earth is created by heaping dirt upon a raft in the primeval waters. Humankind, wild animals, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the marshlands and canebrake, vegetation, and domesticated animals follow. Finally, palm groves and forests appear. Just before the composition becomes fragmentary and breaks off, Marduk is said to create the city of Nippur and its temple, the Ekur, and the city of Uruk, with its temple Eanna.

“The Creation of Humankind” is a bilingual Sumerian- Akkadian story also referred to in scholarly literature as KAR 4. This account begins after heaven was separated from earth, and features of the earth such as the Tigris, Euphrates, and canals established. At that time, the god Enlil addressed the gods asking what should next be accomplished. The answer was to create humans by killing Alla-gods and creating humans from their blood. Their purpose will be to labor for the gods, maintaining the fields and irrigation works in order to create bountiful harvests, celebrate the gods’ rites, and attain wisdom through study.

Spar, Ira. “Mesopotamian Creation Myths.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/epic/hd_epic.htm (April 2009)

Additional Essays by Ira Spar

Spar, Ira. “ Flood Stories .” (April 2009)
Spar, Ira. “ Gilgamesh .” (April 2009)
Spar, Ira. “ Mesopotamian Deities .” (April 2009)
Spar, Ira. “ The Gods and Goddesses of Canaan .” (April 2009)
Spar, Ira. “ The Origins of Writing .” (October 2004)

Related Essays

Flood Stories
The Isin-Larsa and Old Babylonian Periods (2004–1595 B.C.)
Mesopotamian Deities
The Akkadian Period (ca. 2350–2150 B.C.)
Art of the First Cities in the Third Millennium B.C.
Assyria, 1365–609 B.C.
Early Excavations in Assyria
The Gods and Goddesses of Canaan
The Middle Babylonian / Kassite Period (ca. 1595–1155 B.C.) in Mesopotamia
The Old Assyrian Period (ca. 2000–1600 B.C.)
The Origins of Writing
Mesopotamia, 1000 B.C.–1 A.D.
Mesopotamia, 1–500 A.D.
Mesopotamia, 2000–1000 B.C.
Mesopotamia, 8000–2000 B.C.
10th Century B.C.
1st Century B.C.
2nd Century B.C.
2nd Millennium B.C.
3rd Century B.C.
3rd Millennium B.C.
4th Century B.C.
5th Century B.C.
6th Century B.C.
7th Century B.C.
8th Century B.C.
9th Century B.C.
Agriculture
Akkadian Period
Ancient Near Eastern Art
Aquatic Animal
Architecture
Astronomy / Astrology
Babylonian Art
Deity / Religious Figure
Kassite Period
Literature / Poetry
Mesopotamian Art
Mythical Creature
Religious Art
Sumerian Art

The Genesis Creation Story: Text, Issues and truth –by Jacques B. Doukhan

The genesis creation story: text, issues and truth, by jacques b. doukhan professor of hebrew and old testament exegesis; director, institute of jewish-christian studies, sda theological seminary, andrews university, berrien springs, mi 49104-1500 [email protected].

Presented at the 2001 BRISCO meetings in Loma Linda, California

WHAT THIS ARTICLE IS ABOUT

After an introduction, pausing on the place of Creation in the Bible, this paper examines exegetically the Hebrew text of the biblical Creation story (Gen 1:1 - 2:4a), paying close attention to its sounds, rhythm, words, syntax, literary structure in relation to its parallel text (Gen 2:4b-25), and its literary genre and style, without ignoring its literary extrabiblical environment.

From the given of the biblical text, the paper then addresses specific issues pertaining to the modern reader of the biblical text; the intention of the text in regard to 1) the historical-scientific nature of the information thereby provided; 2) the problem of time and the traditional proposed solutions (gap theories, critical theories); and 3) the creation of lights (the sun, the moon, and the stars). Then moving away from the debate, “creation is not evolution,” I will explore and suggest from the text, theological-philosophical lessons in regard to the “truth” of Creation, its relation to history, worship, salvation, and hope (only a summary for this presentation) and conclude on the place of Creation in the life of the believer.

INTRODUCTION: A CREATION AND BIBLICAL FAITH

The canonical Bible begins with creation (Genesis 1:1-2:4a) and ends with re-creation (Revelation 21-22). The same literary principle holds for the Old Testament (see its end in Malachi 4:5-6) or the Hebrew Scriptures (see its end in 2 Chronicles 36:23) as well as for the New Testament starting with the Gospels which like to begin with a reference or an allusion to creation (see Matthew 1 through its genealogy genre; Mark 1:1 through its first word “beginning”; and especially John’s prologue (1:1-13) with its explicit reference to the creation story), and concluding with Revelation 21-22. The same literary principle is attested in Hebrews 11 which begins its didactic poem on faith with faith in creation — “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible” (v. 3) — and concludes it with the perspective of re-creation — “And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us” (vv. 39-40). It is also significant that the definition of faith it gives as a prelude to the poem (v. 1), the only biblical definition of faith, describes faith precisely on the basis of the reference to creation and re-creation: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for [re-creation; see vv. 39-40], the evidence of things not seen [creation; see v. 3].” [1]

The importance of creation in the Bible is also notable through the pervasive presence of this reference within the Hebrew Scriptures. In the Pentateuch, it occurs in reference to the event of the Exodus (ch 15). Among the Prophets, it reappears in reference to the return from the Exile (Isaiah 40-45; Jeremiah 4:23-26; 31:35-37). It reappears in the book of Proverbs, as a reflection on the wonder of creation (Proverbs 8:22 31); in the book of Job, as a response to suffering (Job 38-41); in the Psalms, as hymns addressed to God in the context of worship (chs. 8, 33, 139, 148). In apocalyptic literature (see Daniel in every chapter), the reference or the allusion to creation is a prominent motif in relation to existence (Daniel 1) and also within the cosmic and eschatological per spective (see especially Daniel 7, 8, and 12 [2] ). In the New Testament, creation also plays an important role in relation to the existential com mitment responding to God’s act of salvation and the need to become a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17) or as the eschatological solution (Revelation 21-22). From the biblical perspective, creation is then an important topic that deserves particular attention and study.

METHODOLOGY

Five principles will characterize my approach to the biblical text.

1. Close Reading

Considering the biblical text as an inspired text written with a high degree of intentionality, I will read the text with great care, paying attention to its Hebrew words, its syntax, its style, and observing its regularities as well as its irregularities to determine as far as possible its intended meaning.

2. Literary Sensitivity

The story is first of all a written document and implies, therefore, a literary approach (“literature” means “writing”). I shall analyze its specific form, sounds, rhythm, structure, for this aspect is the first data of the text; it is a music before being a useful and meaningful message to be decoded through our mind. In the biblical world (as in ancient “primitive” Near Eastern culture) the form, the discourse that was sounded was given in relation to the spiritual or theological truth. See Martin Buber’s principle on the relation between the wie and the was . [3]

3. Intertextuality

As far as possible, I will search within its immediate context or within the biblical context at large for other biblical texts that are referring or alluding to our text. This inquiry is important as it will provide us with an interpretation of the text that is closer to its original intention, not only because it belongs to the same “inspiration” (from the same divine source) but also because it is historically and culturally closer to the text. The process of intertextuality will be traced, however, with control. The connection between the referring text and our text will have to be clearly established through the use of the common association of specific key words, as far as possible a “unique” association, or even a common literary pattern (frequency, sequence, and structure).

The biblical story has not been given in vitro . God has informed His servant and inspired him to make sure that he received His will, yet the story has been written by a person who belonged to his time and culture. The biblical text should also then be explored in relation (positive or negative) to its cultural environment, not only to perceive how it could have been understood at that time (“what it meant”), but also to discern where and how the biblical author situates himself in connection to the cosmological traditions he was acquainted with and referred to.

THE TEXT I. “POETIC”

The biblical creation story, just as any other biblical text, comes to us first as a “poetic” expression, a “sound and music” experience, before being a meaningful message. The observation holds in general for any text, whatever the nature of the message it may convey, whether it means truth or fiction. But it is particularly true for (ancient) Near Eastern literature. I take “poetic” here in a broad sense, as referring essentially to the form of the text: its artistic shape, the choice of words, their sound effect, the play on words, the parallelisms, the repetitions, the rhythm and the literary structure of the text — all that gives our text its effect on me physically; all that speaks to my ears, my eyes, and makes it easy to remember.

A. The Rhythm 7

The rhythm of seven runs through the whole text. Not only the story has seven steps (seven days of creation), but the rhythm affects the text internally even to the use of words. A number of key phrases are used seven times: “It was so”; “God said”; “It was good” (the seventh in v. 31 has “It was very good”). A number of keywords are used seven times or in a multiple of seven. The word bara (“create”) is used seven times; “God,” 35 times; “earth,” 21 times. Actually, the text starts with the rhythm of seven. The first verse has seven words. The second verse has 14 words. This emphasis on the number seven is meaningful. This is already a way to suggest to the reader the idea of perfection and completion.

B. The Sounds

Alliterations, assonances, and onomatopoeia hit the ears and already suggest a meaning through the sounds. The first two words begin the same way with the same five consonants (alliteration): “b” “r.” The first sound of the text is an explosion: “ b ” — Bereshit bara . [4] Hear the way “void” or “nothingness” is suggested through the play of sounds “o/u”: tohu wa bohu , tehom , hoshek . Hear the way the power of the wind and its movement is suggested through the words ruah merahefet .

C. The Literary Structure

Certainly the most elaborate “poetic” work of the creation account may be recognized in its literary structure. The observation of the literary structure of the text is crucial for it provides us not only with the general orientation of the text which thus serves as a control in our micro exegesis of the text, but also with specific clues regarding the intentions hidden in the text. The first and certainly most prominent feature of the literary structure (Genesis 1:1-2:4a) is its division into seven steps and its paral lelism with Genesis 2:4b-25. The detailed description and demonstration of this parallelism is given in my dissertation; [5] the main features are summarized below:

1) Both texts are divided into seven sections; each creation work (nine in both; distributed the same way) is introduced by the same stylistic expression: in C by imperfect verb wayyomer ; in C’ by the imperfect verb of the same phonetic start, wayyit , wayyts .

3) Same longitudinal correspondences: 1 parallels 4; 2 parallels 5; 3 parallels 6.

4) Parallelisms of structure between the introductions: a) temporal clause; b) parenthesis: description of the earth in a stage of “not yet,” water element; c) then divine work (“said” // “formed....”).

Just as a testimony (among others) of how this literary observation has been received by biblical scholars, see the following review:

Certainly Doukhan’s theory...has great merit. He has demonstrated a degree of unity in the structure and message in Genesis 1-2 never previously established. The parallels he has pointed out between the two introductions to C and C’ are particularly strong. In addition, the parallel he describes between the two sections 7 is striking,...Thanks especially to Doukhan’s work, any reading of Genesis 1-2 as two unrelated texts juxtaposed to one another is impossible. [6]

II. GENEALOGY

Although there are poetic elements in the biblical story, most scholars agree that the general stylistic tone of Genesis 1:1-2:4a is prosaic. It is poetic in the sense that it is a recitation to be remembered, as William Albright has suggested. [7] The regularity, the rhythm, the play on words, and the parallelism between this text and Genesis 2:4b-25 obviously show that both texts were composed for recitation. It is also prosaic as its stylistic features suggest:

1) It describes an event unfolding from beginning to end; we are in time (not so in poetic fiction). The chronological intention is not only given in the text through the progression of the week, from the first day to the seventh day, but also by means of the parallelism with the other text that clearly describes the progression of a historical event.
2) The use of the imperfect form with conversive waw , a classical form of the narrative text.
3) The repetition and the monotonous tone of the text give the impression of some kind of objective “legal” report.

But it is not just a story or the report of an event. The text has been dressed in the stylistic garment of a genealogy. A comparison with other genealogies (especially the next genealogy in Genesis 5) reveals the following common features:

1) Repetition of the same introductory formulas and the same concluding formulas: Introduction: name and lived number of years, begot a son parallels “And He said”; Conclusion: all the days, name, number of years, died parallels “So the evening and the morning was the ___ day.”
2) Same lack of human life and involvement.
3) Marks the place of a turning point in salvation history.
4) Connection with the other genealogies of the book of Genesis (e.g., the blessing promised in 1:28 is realized in Genesis 5, just as the blessing promised in 9:1 is fulfilled in the genealogy of Genesis 10).
5) Specifically designated at the end by the technical term toledoth (“genealogy”), a term which is usually associated with the genealogies of biblical lives.

III. POLEMIC

The biblical creation story is not just embedded in the context of the book of Genesis and the Bible; it is also situated in the context of its Near Eastern cultural environment. The biblical author is very well aware of the cultural world around him and of its mythological cosmogonies to which he responds in a definite polemic manner.

A. The Lamps

The sun and the moon (1:15) are not given their usual names, šemeš and yareah , which may confuse them with shamash , “the sun god,” and yarih , “the moon god.” Instead, they are called meor , a word that is always used in the Pentateuch to designate lamps (Exodus 25:6; 27:20; 35:8, 14; 39:37; Leviticus 24:2; Numbers 4:9, 16). The sun and the moon are just vulgar lamps.

B. The Great Fish

It is noteworthy that the technical verb bara (“create”) is associated only with three creations: the general creation of heaven and earth (Genesis 1:1); the creation of human beings (Genesis 1:27), and the creation of the great fish (Genesis 1:21). Why the fish? To emphasize the non-divine nature of this animal which was worshiped as a god in both Babylonian and Egyptian religions. The big fish of the ancient cosmogonies is just an ordinary fish for Genesis.

C. Primeval Water

In the Genesis creation story, the water of the Introduction (Gene sis 1:2) is associated with darkness, tohu wa bohu (idea of “emptiness”), tehom (idea of “deep abyss”), in order to counteract the ideas promoted in Babylonian and Egyptian cosmogonies that viewed the primeval waters as the living god who generates the world ( Nun in Egypt and Tiamat in Babylon). These waters are, therefore, qualified in the immediate context of the biblical creation story in negative terms in relation to darkness and emptiness. This lesson is again confirmed through the parallelism with the other creation story. The description of Earth’s condition before God’s first word of creation that is given as a watery element in Genesis 1:1-2 parallels the description of Earth’s state in Genesis 2:4b-6 that is given in terms of “not yet” and “not” (of course, here from the particular perspective of the sixth day).

This does not mean, however, that the author is thinking of symbolic water. He may well be referring to real water, an element that might have been created before this creation week; the text does not speak about it, nor does it say when or how this element might have been created. Yet the author’s concern is not so much water per se ; again, he is not dealing with the creation or the chemical description of water as such. His specific concern is rather to deny the mythological view that the “primeval water” (a concept that is common in all the Near Eastern world) was a divine agent of life. For the biblical author, life was distinct from and outside of water: “The spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2). What you see as a living divine being producer of life, says Genesis, is just water, a “neutral” element associated with darkness, emptiness, and nothingness. Life comes from elsewhere: God.

D. Ex-nihilo Creation

The Genesis creation story is not performed from any already existing divine substance, His blood, sperm, or saliva, as is the case in other ancient cosmogonies (Egyptian and Babylonian). It is not an ex-divino creation. Neither is it the result of a struggle between already existing gods — as is the case in Egyptian cosmogony where the sun god Re fights the ocean god Nun or in Babylonian cosmogony where Marduk , the god of order, struggles against Tiamat , the divine fish of water. God creates out of something which is neither Himself nor something or someone else. He creates through His word, ex-nihilo .

Also the fact that the creation story is a genealogy betrays the author’s concern to provide a polemic against the mythical idea of divine pro creation. [8] It is, indeed, significant that our biblical genealogy is to tell us that creation did not take place as the result of some kind of sexual pro creation; it is instead the creative act of a God who precedes and determines the power of giving life.

E. The Introduction

This is perhaps the only place where the biblical text seems to deliberately echo the ancient Near Eastern texts of cosmogony (Egyptian as well as Babylonian). Both sources display, indeed, the same parallels of structure associated with the same motifs:

1) Dependent temporal clause: general introduction, reference to heaven and earth.
2) Parenthetic clause: description of earth at the stage of “not yet,” water element.
3) Main clause: God’s action of “creation....”

THE BIBLICAL TEXT

1) In the beginning of creation...of heavens and earth.
2) As the earth was tohu wa-bohu ; and darkness was on the face of the abyss (tehom), and the spirit of God was hovering on the face of waters.
3) Then God said: “let there be light!...” (Genesis 1:1-3).

THE BABYLONIAN TEXT ( ENUMA ELISH )

1) When on high the heaven had not been named, nor firm ground below....
2) Naught but primordial Apsu, their begetter (and) Mummu-Tiamat, she who bore them all, their waters comingling as a single body; no reed hut had been...no marsh had appeared....

THE EGYPTIAN TEXT

Unlike the other testimonies, ancient Egyptian literature did not preserve a single document of cosmogony. The texts are scattered in time and space, and belong to different stories and theological traditions. But here also the parallels of motifs and of literary patterns is striking at the beginning of the story. The divine act of creation is here also introduced by a temporal clause and negatively, using a particular formula [9] that re minds of the biblical and the Babylonian Introductions:

1) When....

2) “...did not exist” or “there were not yet struggles...” Description of the pre-created state of the earth as a water element (see above).

3) Then divine act of creation.

Note that like the Hebrews, the Egyptians referred to the event of creation as a beginning. They expressed that idea with the technical term sp tpy (“first time”). One text states that the creator-god “began the earth at the first time ( sp tpy ).” Now, it is remarkable that the Egyptian word tpy which means “first, beginning” is derived from the word tp which means “head”; note, indeed, that in Hebrew the word reshit , which means “first, beginning,” is also derived from the word rosh , which means “head.” Furthermore, like in the Hebrew text, the Egyptian creation also concerned “heavens and earth.” In one text the creator god Re is called the one who “made sky and earth,” [10] a way of saying that he created all. Indeed as in Biblical Hebrew, the Egyptian expression “heavens and earth” ( pt ta ) is a merism, referring to the opposites, to imply the totality. For the ancient Egyptians, creation was then comprehensive. In one text, we read, for example, that the creator-god “created all that exists.” [11] The Egyptian tradition has preserved the idea of a creation by the divine word. The Memphite god, it is said, has conceived with his heart and created with his tongue: “Every word of the god ( Ptah ) came into being through what the heart thought and the thought commanded.” [12]

We could go on and observe many other common motifs between those texts, but it is noteworthy that the greatest concentration of parallels, whether of ideas, language, and literary patterns, occurs here in the context of the introductions. This observation should not mislead us, however. Instead of being an argument on behalf of the Babylonian/Egyptian influ ence on the biblical text, thus undermining the original inspiration of the biblical text, it is, on the contrary, a significant clue of the author’s strong polemic intention against these accounts. Indeed, this literary connection between these two introductions constitutes a classic polemic means commonly used in ancient literature to refute the opposing view. A good illustration of this literary device of polemic can be found in Job 18-19:

“Bildad the Shuhite answered and said: ‘How long till you put an end to words?’” (vv. 1-2). (Bildad will then argue that Job must be a wicked man [v. 5], “Who does not know God” [v. 21], since he is suffering [vv. 7, 12-19]). “Then Job answered and said: ‘How long will you torment...with words?’” (Job 19:1-2). Job then proceeds to refute Bildad; and by the end of his plea, he starts over on the motif “words”: while Bildad wishes the end of Job’s words, Job wishes that his words will be inscribed, engraved, on a rock forever (vv. 23-24); and then responding to Bildad’s charge that he does not know God, Job repeats the same word to affirm, “For I know” (v. 25) and again at the end of his discourse, “that you may know judgment” (19:29).

To be sure, the parallels are not perfect, the introduction of the polemic texts does not exactly duplicate the text it responds to. There are many important differences that should not be overlooked. Yet the parallels between the introductions of the Genesis creation story and those of the ancient Near Eastern texts, just as between the introduction of Job’s speech and Bildad’s, are significant enough to suggest that they are intended for polemic purposes.

From the data provided by the form of the text, its genre, and the way it situates itself within its own cultural environment, we may now be able to interrogate the text in regard to specific issues that are the concern of the modern reader.

I. HISTORICAL/SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION A. The Lesson of the Connection

The fact that our creation story in Genesis 1:1-2:4a is connected to the historical narrative in Genesis 2:4b-25 suggests the author’s intention to communicate his report on the creation of the universe as an event of the same historical nature as the formation of human beings. As Bernhard W. Anderson points out:

Often we detach “creation” from this historical context and consider it as a separate “doctrine” (which happens usually in discussions of the relation between science and religion). But this violates the intention of the creation stories. They want to speak to us primarily about history. Accordingly, the greatest weight must be given to the form of these stories: they are “historical accounts” and, as such, are part of the historical narration. [13]

Another lesson of this connection is to draw our attention to the “not yet” condition of this creation in comparison to the actual present condition of the human world. Already this observation about the goodness and perfection of creation was repeated over and over again in the first creation story through the rhythm of seven: “It was good.” Now the connection with Genesis 2:4b-25 is more specific. Not only was creation good, perfect, and complete, but it was not yet touched by evil, sin, and death. This is the main lesson of the story contained in the second creation story. Man has not yet sinned and death has not yet come (Genesis 2:6-7). And this lesson is not just at the core of the story, it appears in the introduction and the conclusion of our text as an inclusio, a literary device to notify the reader that this is intended to be the central idea of the passage. In the introduction (Genesis 2:5), the keywords are “not” ( ayin and lo ) and “not yet” ( terem ; twice), suggesting the perspective of the writer. What characterizes this world of ours was “not yet” there when God created it. In the conclusion (Genesis 2:25), the play on words between arom (“naked”) and the arom (“cunning”) of the serpent which comes in the next verse (Genesis 3:1) betrays the intention of the author to imply that the tragedy which will later involve the serpent and human beings has not yet struck. It has been identified as a “prolepsis pointing forward to Gen 3:7.” [14] Indeed, one of the intentions of the function of this chapter 2 is to affirm and emphasize the perfect state of creation as it came from the hand of God and not yet affected by evil, sin, and death.

B. The Lesson of the Polemic

The fact that our text has been written with a strong polemic intention directed against mythological material suggests the author’s intention to affirm the independence of his inspiration. His account is not the mere product of folk imagination and memory; it is not a myth, but it is instead a historical event which belongs to the process of revelation.

This strong polemic intention does not mean, however, that the biblical author was determined by his polemic and shaped his whole account under its pressure, thus affecting the content of his report. The very fact that after the introduction the parallels and the polemic hints become only sporadic and accidental, touching only on specific words or motifs, and never again recur through a consistent literary sequence is a strong indication to the contrary. Indeed the biblical author not only meant to respond to his eventual disputants, but he wanted to take us to a direction altogether different that would have nothing to do with the contemporary confrontation. In fact, the very reason of the polemic itself, namely its anti mythological purposes, should have prevented this confusion to happen. Indeed in ancient mythological literature, the message (poetic or philosophical) does not necessarily depend on the historical actuality of the story that conveys it. In the myth of the cave, Plato explains that in order to have access to the truth, we must get out of the sensible reality. In order to represent a metaphysical or theological reality, the platonic symbol resorts then to a chimere, or an allegory borrowed from the non real. The message is disincarnate. The flesh of history is unable to carry the spiritual truth.

In mythological material, as it is in Greek thinking, thought precedes the event of the story and does not depend on its actuality to be true. On the contrary, the Hebrew uses historical reality to signify the spiritual truth. Apart from that reality, truth does not exist. In Hebrew thinking, it is the event that precedes the categories of thought. It is the event that makes theology; that is theology. The Hebrew author of the creation story was then more concerned with reporting the event than with teaching a theological thesis or even refuting different opinions and theological errors. The biblical anti-mythological polemic is more than an apologetic argument, thus standing and even existing negatively versus the other, being what the other is not. Precisely because it intends to testify about an event, the biblical testimony is presented as existing by itself. For that reason, the biblical story is to be read respectfully, taking into consider ation the presented data as it stands, not as a story referring to an event for theological purposes (mythological material), but rather as a testimony that describes the content of that event as well as the way it develops its course, including the sequence of its components. This is why if we use the same method for the biblical text as for traditional mythological litera ture (e.g., historical-critical interpretations) and despise the historical intention of the biblical text, we may then run the risk to be at odds with the biblical text and totally miss the point.

C. The Lesson of Genealogy

The fact that our text has been cast in the mold of genealogy and explicitly identified as such suggests the author’s intention to communi cate his information as material enrooted in the flesh of history. Genealogy is, indeed, in the ancient Near East and in the Bible the most tangible evidence of historical existence. Also by using the term toledoth for the creation of heaven and earth, as well as for the genealogy of the patriarchs, the author shows his intention to relate his story to the history of mankind, an intention which has been understood by the Jews who express this unity of creation and history by dating their calendar from the creation of the world.

Now, the fact that the text presents itself as a genealogy indicates also its limitations: the text does not claim to be scientific. It simply testifies that the event took place, but does not explain how it worked scientifically. We do not have all the ingredients disclosing the mechanism of creation. Just as for the genealogy everything is correct but not the whole data is given.

II. THE DAYS OF THE CREATION WEEK

Regarding the nature of the days of the creation week, the text is quite clear and explicit. The text does not imply that they are symbolic or cosmic, but it gives us enough clues about the author’s intention to refer to days that are of the same temporal nature as our human days.

A. Evening and Morning

The first observation concerning these days is that they are explicitly qualified with the same composition: they have “evening and morning.” Such a cyclical light-darkness arrangement clearly means that the earth was now rotating on its axis with a source of light on one side of the earth (although the sun was not yet operating). The length of such days was that of a normal solar day. In no way could the term apply to large periods of time (a geological or symbolic period). Otherwise, it would imply regular long periods of darkness, a condition that would have made im possible the survival of life.

It is also significant that the Sabbath, the seventh day, is the only day that does not have the mention of “evening and morning.” The reason for this exceptional omission is that this is the only real full day of the creation week when humans are present. Although humans are present on the sixth day, which is also qualified with the expression “evening and morning,” the fact that they have been created within the day implies, indeed, that only the seventh day was their first and only full day of the creation week. Only the seventh day was the day they experienced totally, from sunset to sunset. For this day, we do not need, therefore, the specification “evening and morning.” For the other six days, on the other hand, humans are totally or at least partially absent, and therefore the author feels necessary to specify “evening and morning” to make it clear and emphasize that these days are of the same nature as our human days.

B. A Cardinal Number

The way the first day is called in comparison with the other days seems also to carry some significance. This is the only day that is indicated with a cardinal number, yom ahad , “day one” (instead of first day). All the other days are called with ordinal number: “second day,” “third day,” etc. It is as if the author wished to set the time and notify us from the start about the nature of these days. The phrase yom ahad means literally “day absolutely unique.” The same word is used for God in the shema (Deuteronomy 6:4) to emphasize God’s absolute uniqueness. In fact, the phrase yom ahad is always used in the Bible to refer to days of 24 hours and never to any other period of time. The fact that the week of creation starts with this specification about the first day not only suggests that all the days of this week are like the first day, “unique days” (not periods implying several days), but also prevents us from interpreting these days as only referring to the order of creation.

III. THE SUN, THE MOON, AND THE STARS

Two main problems are associated with the creation of the luminaries in the creation story: How were the first three days monitored since the sun and the moon only appear on the fourth day? What does the creation of the luminaries on the fourth day mean in the creation story?

A. The Days Before the Sun

The solution to the former problem is suggested in the connection that is intended by the text between the creation of the lights on the fourth day and the creation of light on the first day. This connection is indicated not only by the structure of the creation story (see above the longitudinal correspondence of day one related to day four, etc.), but also through specific echos and parallels.

We have the same introductory verb wayehi , “let there be,” followed by the etymologically related words or (“light”; v. 3) and meorot (“luminaries”; v. 14). It is also significant that the function of the luminaries on the fourth day is described with the same phrase as the function held by God on the first day:

In v. 4, it is God who “divides the light from darkness.”

In v. 18, it is the luminaries which “divide the light from darkness.”

This parallel between the two functions suggests that what is being performed by the luminaries on the fourth day is taken care of by God Himself from the first day. The days before the fourth day are thus of the same nature as the days ruled by the sun and the moon.

B. The Creation of the Sun and Moon

The solution to the second problem about the creation of the luminaries is implied in the language used to describe that creation. There is one important difference, indeed, between the creation of light on the first day and the creation of the luminaries on the fourth day. The creation on the first day concerns the creation of light per se : “let there be light...” (v. 3). The yehi (“let there be”) is syntactically related to havedil (“divide”) by the means of the preposition lamed . In the fourth day of creation, the luminaries are never given by themselves. Their creation always applies to the function of the luminaries. Yehi is always related to their various functions (“divide,” “rule,” “give light”; vv. 14-17). This syntactical form is unique in the creation story. The contrast between this description of the division (between light and darkness) on the fourth day and the description of the division between the waters in relation to the creation of the firmament on the second day is particularly instructive.

Contrary to what takes place for the sun and the moon, the creation of the firmament is decomposed in two distinct and consecutive operations (with no syntactical relation): 1) the creation of the firmament per se (vv. 6a, 7a), and then 2) the creation of its function of division between the waters (vv. 6b, 7b). The syntax of the passage indicates a difference between the two objects of creation. While there is a yehi (“let there be”) applying to the firmament and another yehi applying to the function of dividing; for the sun and the moon, there is one common yehi that is syntactically related to the verb and not to the noun object (the sun and the moon). From this difference of language it is clear that the author is not referring to the creation of the luminaries (sun and moon), but rather to their function. This observation suggests at least that those luminaries were already created before the fourth day of the creation week. Whether this operation took place on the first day or even before the creation week, the text does not say.

C. The Creation of the Stars

As for the stars in v. 16, they are only mentioned as extra information, like some kind of appendix, as if they were not directly relevant to the matter. It is for instance remarkable that the verb “made” ( ’sh ) is not repeated in relation to the “apparition” of the stars. A literal translation of the passage will give the following: “And God made ( ’sh ) the big luminaries, the bigger luminary and the smaller luminary; the bigger luminary to rule the day, and the smaller luminary to rule the night, in addition to the stars.” It is noteworthy that the function of the stars is not explicitly given. In fact, it is only the function of the two luminaries that is given. This omission about the function of the stars may be explained in two ways. Either the function of the stars is the same as the one of the two luminaries, in which case they are also included under the term meorot (“luminaries”); it is not clear then why this particular syntax. Or, the function of the stars is different from that of the sun and the moon, a function that has nothing to do with the earth; in which case they are not among the meorot (“luminaries”), but then why mention them since they are irrelevant to our system?

It seems to me that this particular syntax that exceptionally omits the reference to the function of the stars could very well pertain to the polemic concern associated with the sun and the moon. Since the sun and the moon are not explicitly identified with their technical names shemesh and yareah , they are only vaguely identified as “greater light” and “lesser light,” the biblical author feels necessary to specify their function in order to make it clear that he is referring to the sun and the moon. On the other hand, the stars are designated under their usual technical name kokhavim ; and, therefore, there is no need to characterize these through their function, since this is already implied in their explicit designation. In fact, they have their place in the same cosmic function; in biblical tradition the stars are, indeed, associated with the moon in the ruling of the night (see Psalm 136:9 where the stars and the moon are associated in the ruling of the night within a context referring to the creation story).

Time remains the most crucial and certainly the most difficult issue at stake in the problem of creation. Indeed, contrary to the official scientific explanation, the biblical text affirms that the world, the human uni verse, did not come as a result of chance and a natural process from within, but as the direct product of God’s intelligent creation. And because God did it, the work of creation took the time He wanted, namely, a week, the first and absolutely independent unit of time. The problem for modern interpreters of the Bible is immense. It means to reconcile the biblical testimony with the scientific requirement of time for the old earth that is thought to be ours. Basically two proposals have been suggested by biblical interpreters:

1) Critical scholars in general have interpreted the biblical text as poetry or a hymn containing imaginary mythological material and therefore irrelevant to history and science. I have already responded to that argument (see above).
2) Conservative scholars in general have been keen to reconcile the apparent scientific need for a long time with their faith in biblical revelation; they have therefore introduced into the biblical text the idea of a pre-creation which would have taken place billions of years before the biblical week of creation. This theory has been called “gap theory”. It suggests that Genesis 1:1 refers to this pre-creation, then v. 2 describes the world empty and void for billions of years (gap), and then v. 3 starts the new creation, formation, furnishing of this empty space for one week. From my perspective, this whole idea of “gap theory” raises serious philosophical/theological problems and more importantly cannot seriously be defended exegetically. This does not exclude the possibility that God may have created something before (including for instance water, or stars); this creation, however, is not the point of our creation story that speaks only about what took place during the first creation week.

I will essentially focus here on the exegetical argument from the text. In my view, the syntax and the literary structure of the introduction of the biblical creation story (Genesis 1:1-2) hardly supports any kind of gap theory (active or passive). The following reasons justify my resistance.

A. The Inclusio

From the outset, it is, indeed, remarkable that the introduction (Gene sis 1:1) and the conclusion (Genesis 2:4a) echo each other as an inclusio using exactly the same language bara (“create”) shamayim (“heaven”) waarets (“and the earth”). Since the conclusion refers to what takes place during the creation week, it follows that the introduction refers also to the same work of creation and not to another probable pre-creation.

B. The Literary Structure

The parallelism of structure between the two introductions (Genesis 1:1-2 and Genesis 2:4b-6) suggests that just as the second creation story reads in one breath with no gap inside, the first creation story should imply the same one-breath reading (same reasoning in regard to the parallel with the Babylonian creation story).

C. The Word Bereshit

On this first word, biblical interpreters disagree depending upon whether one analyzes this word as a construct (“In the beginning of...”) or an absolute case (“In the beginning,...”). The absolute case is supported by some ancient versions (LXX, Vulgate, Targum) and the fact that the absolute case for reshit is attested at least once (Isaiah 46:10). I personally (with many other scholars) hold the view that it is a construct case for the following reasons:

1) The parallel of structure with Genesis 2:4b-6 and the Babylonian creation story.

2) The great majority of occurrences of ( be ) reshit (49 out of 50) are construct cases.

3) The fact that Proverbs 8:22-35 which clearly refers to our creation story thematically and structurally (see its seven sections corresponding to the seven sections of the creation story) uses reshit in the construct form (8:22).

4) The fact that the technical phrase bereshit is only attested in the construct; it is found only in the book of Jeremiah (26:1; 27:1; 28:1; 49:34-35) within a theological context that refers or alludes to creation displaying the same pattern that characterizes the introduction of Genesis 1: there also the word of God ( amar ) is systematically articulated on the word bereshit and comes after it. We have then the formula “In the beginning of [ bereshit ]...God said [ wayyomer ].” [15] (Note incidentally that in the last passage the word of God is articulated seven times thus pointing to the structure of the Genesis creation story.)

5) The observation that if the author really meant an absolute case he should have used it with the article ( bareshit instead of bereshit ), a form that is attested in Nehemiah 12:44 (see also the Samaritan version on Genesis 1:1).

6) This reading “in one breath” is the one received in Jewish tradition (see especially Ibn Ezra and Rashi in Miqraoth Gdoloth ) which never heard about the Enuma Elish account.

It is clear to me then that the biblical text does not imply any kind of gap theory. The biblical text leaves us with the problem of time. For the intention of the text is clear: God created all the human cosmos (heaven and earth) during this first week. The text means to tell us that everything, “all” (emphasis on the seventh day), has been created during the first week and says nothing about a pre-creation. Otherwise why rest on the seventh day? The celebration on the seventh day would lose its raison d’être , as the culmination, the conclusion, of the whole process of creation at the seventh step, a number which marks the climax only if it implies the work was limited to six days and not if it also implies several additional billions of years before that week.

In fact, as Exodus 20:11 says, “In six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them.” The commandment does not suggest either that the biblical creation story was also concerned with some kind of pre-creation. Instead, it clearly states that everything was created by God during six days and therefore enjoins mankind at the end of these six days to join God in His holy rest, as a celebration and a commemoration to mark the conclusion of the creation week.

The dilemma is not so dramatic for the holder of the “passive gap theory,” but it still carries and raises the same problems. If the creation ex-nihilo , the creation of original matter, the creation of heaven and earth took place billions of years ago, why is the last day of this creation given as the seventh day of the same creation of heaven and earth (Genesis 2:1-2)?

I do not think either that the text allows for the idea of the creation of matter in vv. 1-2 during the first night as a part of the creation on the first day, that is, before the creation of light in v. 3. For the Hebrew day implies both night and day. The words ereb and boqer do not imply two distinct periods of time (night and day) but represent the two extremes of the time of the day to imply the totality of the day ( merismus ). Light or day as well as darkness or night belong to this first day of creation.

And yet the biblical creation story is not unaware of the problem of time and suggests a connection through its connection with its parallel text. The fact that in the text of Genesis 2:4b-25 man, the garden, the trees, etc., are given as a “finished” “mature” creation may suggest a key for the problem of time implied in Genesis 1:1-2:4a. The miracle of this “compression” of time for the creation of man and his immediate environment (as described in the second creation story and also attested in the first on the sixth day of the creation week) makes possible the idea of the other miracle of compression of time for the cosmic creation (matter, rock, light, the firmament, the earth).

Of course, this solution is hypothetical. Could it be otherwise? After all we are concerned with the divine work of creation. But at least this parallel of thinking is allowed by the creation story through its connection with its parallel text. Certainly this option is one of faith. Scientifically, reasonably, time is a necessary factor to produce a mature earth, but is it not the same for the creation of man? If we have the faith to believe that God could “by-pass” time for the creation of man and his environment, we can have faith for the other creation. After all, whatever we do, whether we allow for more or less time, the problem of time will always remain as real and acute anyway. From the perspective of faith, the solution is easy. From a scientific perspective, it remains to be explored whether or not this idea of compression of time is a possible option.

CONCLUSION: OUR FAITH IN CREATION

Indeed, the affirmation of creation pertains to both faith and science. Both perspectives are then needed in that discussion. There is merit and justification for a strong and deep conviction about the event of creation, for only faith can make justice of this event, since no humans were present or involved in that operation. There is also merit in showing the weak nesses and the limitations of evolution as a scientific option or a philosophical thesis; for we live in a critical world and only a rigorous and serious intellectual defense will make our faith in creation a reasonable position. But I think our testimony should take us beyond the dogmatic faith or the apologetic argumentation (without abandoning either one), to adopt a more positive stance and to explore further and discover the meaning, the beauty, and the depth of the biblical truth of creation, and eventually think creatively on creation. For creation is more than a revealed truth to be imposed “by faith” on the faithful believer; more than an argument against evolution to be proved “by reasoning” to the un believer. Creation is life itself.

[1] . On the theological significance of this literary observation of “beginning and end in the Bible,” see especially: Westermann C. 1972. Beginning and end in the Bible, translated by K Crim. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press.

[2] . See: Doukhan J. 1993. Allusions à la création dans le livre de Daniel: Dépistage et Significations. In van der Woude AS, editor. The Book of Daniel in the Light of New Findings. Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press, p 285-292.

[3] . Buber M. 1964. Schriften zur Bibel, vol. 2 of Werke. Munich: Kösel Verlag; Heidelberg: Verlag Lambert Schneider GmbH, p 1112.

[4] . A simplified transliteration has been used in this paper to facilitate its reading and to accommodate the non-technical eyes of lay readers.

[5] . Doukhan JB. 1978. The Genesis Creation Story: its literary structure. Andrews University Seminary Doctoral Dissertation Series, vol. 5. Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, p 78-79.

[6] . Garrett DA. 1991. Rethinking Genesis: the sources and authorship of the first book of the Pentateuch. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, p 195.

[7] . Albright WF. 1957. The Refrain ‘And God saw kî tôb’ in Genesis. In: Mélanges bibliques rédigés en l’honneur de André Robert. Travaux de l’Institut Catholique de Paris 4. Paris: Bloud & Gay, p 26.

[8] . See: Westermann C. 1966. Genesis. Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, p 22.

[9] . Hornung E. 1996. L’Esprit du temps des pharaons. Philippe Lebaud Editeur/Editions du Félin, p 34, 35.

[10] .Lichtheim M. 1973. Ancient Egyptian literature. Berkeley and San Francisco: University of California Press, Vol 1, p 106.

[11] .Chassinat E. 1892-1897. Le Temple d’Edfou. Paris: Mémoires de la mission archéologique française, Vol 6, p 4, 16.

[12] .Pritchard JB, editor. 1969. Ancient Near Eastern texts relating to the Old Testament. Third ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, p 4-6.

[13] .Anderson BW, 1967. Creation versus chaos: the reinterpretation of mythical symbolism in the Bible. New York: Associated Press, p 33.

[14] .Walsh JT. 1977. Genesis 2:4b-3:24: a synchronic approach. Journal of Biblical Literature (1977):164.

[15] .The same connection is attested in John 1:1 in a context that is consciously reminiscent of the text of the Genesis creation story. Although the Gospel of John does use the phrase “in the beginning” as an independent clause, following the Septuagint of Genesis 1:1, it also relates the word “beginning” to the word of God — “In the beginning was the word” (John 1:1).

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NCBI Bookshelf. A service of the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health.

National Academy of Sciences (US). Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences: Second Edition. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 1999.

Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences: Second Edition.

Hardcopy Version at National Academies Press

The Origin of the Universe, Earth, and Life

The term "evolution" usually refers to the biological evolution of living things. But the processes by which planets, stars, galaxies, and the universe form and change over time are also types of "evolution." In all of these cases there is change over time, although the processes involved are quite different.

In the late 1920s the American astronomer Edwin Hubble made a very interesting and important discovery. Hubble made observations that he interpreted as showing that distant stars and galaxies are receding from Earth in every direction. Moreover, the velocities of recession increase in proportion with distance, a discovery that has been confirmed by numerous and repeated measurements since Hubble's time. The implication of these findings is that the universe is expanding.

Hubble's hypothesis of an expanding universe leads to certain deductions. One is that the universe was more condensed at a previous time. From this deduction came the suggestion that all the currently observed matter and energy in the universe were initially condensed in a very small and infinitely hot mass. A huge explosion, known as the Big Bang, then sent matter and energy expanding in all directions.

This Big Bang hypothesis led to more testable deductions. One such deduction was that the temperature in deep space today should be several degrees above absolute zero. Observations showed this deduction to be correct. In fact, the Cosmic Microwave Background Explorer (COBE) satellite launched in 1991 confirmed that the background radiation field has exactly the spectrum predicted by a Big Bang origin for the universe.

As the universe expanded, according to current scientific understanding, matter collected into clouds that began to condense and rotate, forming the forerunners of galaxies. Within galaxies, including our own Milky Way galaxy, changes in pressure caused gas and dust to form distinct clouds. In some of these clouds, where there was sufficient mass and the right forces, gravitational attraction caused the cloud to collapse. If the mass of material in the cloud was sufficiently compressed, nuclear reactions began and a star was born.

Some proportion of stars, including our sun, formed in the middle of a flattened spinning disk of material. In the case of our sun, the gas and dust within this disk collided and aggregated into small grains, and the grains formed into larger bodies called planetesimals ("very small planets"), some of which reached diameters of several hundred kilometers. In successive stages these planetesimals coalesced into the nine planets and their numerous satellites. The rocky planets, including Earth, were near the sun, and the gaseous planets were in more distant orbits.

The ages of the universe, our galaxy, the solar system, and Earth can be estimated using modem scientific methods. The age of the universe can be derived from the observed relationship between the velocities of and the distances separating the galaxies. The velocities of distant galaxies can be measured very accurately, but the measurement of distances is more uncertain. Over the past few decades, measurements of the Hubble expansion have led to estimated ages for the universe of between 7 billion and 20 billion years, with the most recent and best measurements within the range of 10 billion to 15 billion years.

A disk of dust and gas, appearing as a dark band in this Hubble Space Telescope photograph, bisects a glowing nebula around a very young star in the constellation Taurus. Similar disks can be seen around other nearby stars and are thought to provide the (more...)

The age of the Milky Way galaxy has been calculated in two ways. One involves studying the observed stages of evolution of different-sized stars in globular clusters. Globular clusters occur in a faint halo surrounding the center of the Galaxy, with each cluster containing from a hundred thousand to a million stars. The very low amounts of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium in these stars indicate that they must have formed early in the history of the Galaxy, before large amounts of heavy elements were created inside the initial generations of stars and later distributed into the interstellar medium through supernova explosions (the Big Bang itself created primarily hydrogen and helium atoms). Estimates of the ages of the stars in globular clusters fall within the range of 11 billion to 16 billion years.

A second method for estimating the age of our galaxy is based on the present abundances of several long-lived radioactive elements in the solar system. Their abundances are set by their rates of production and distribution through exploding supernovas. According to these calculations, the age of our galaxy is between 9 billion and 16 billion years. Thus, both ways of estimating the age of the Milky Way galaxy agree with each other, and they also are consistent with the independently derived estimate for the age of the universe.

Radioactive elements occurring naturally in rocks and minerals also provide a means of estimating the age of the solar system and Earth. Several of these elements decay with half lives between 700 million and more than 100 billion years (the half life of an element is the time it takes for half of the element to decay radioactively into another element). Using these time-keepers, it is calculated that meteorites, which are fragments of asteroids, formed between 4.53 billion and 4.58 billion years ago (asteroids are small "planetoids" that revolve around the sun and are remnants of the solar nebula that gave rise to the sun and planets). The same radioactive time-keepers applied to the three oldest lunar samples returned to Earth by the Apollo astronauts yield ages between 4.4 billion and 4.5 billion years, providing minimum estimates for the time since the formation of the moon.

The oldest known rocks on Earth occur in northwestern Canada (3.96 billion years), but well-studied rocks nearly as old are also found in other parts of the world. In Western Australia, zircon crystals encased within younger rocks have ages as old as 4.3 billion years, making these tiny crystals the oldest materials so far found on Earth.

The best estimates of Earth's age are obtained by calculating the time required for development of the observed lead isotopes in Earth's oldest lead ores. These estimates yield 4.54 billion years as the age of Earth and of meteorites, and hence of the solar system.

The origins of life cannot be dated as precisely, but there is evidence that bacteria-like organisms lived on Earth 3.5 billion years ago, and they may have existed even earlier, when the first solid crust formed, almost 4 billion years ago. These early organisms must have been simpler than the organisms living today. Furthermore, before the earliest organisms there must have been structures that one would not call "alive" but that are now components of living things. Today, all living organisms store and transmit hereditary information using two kinds of molecules: DNA and RNA. Each of these molecules is in turn composed of four kinds of subunits known as nucleotides. The sequences of nucleotides in particular lengths of DNA or RNA, known as genes, direct the construction of molecules known as proteins, which in turn catalyze biochemical reactions, provide structural components for organisms, and perform many of the other functions on which life depends. Proteins consist of chains of subunits known as amino acids. The sequence of nucleotides in DNA and RNA therefore determines the sequence of amino acids in proteins; this is a central mechanism in all of biology.

Experiments conducted under conditions intended to resemble those present on primitive Earth have resulted in the production of some of the chemical components of proteins, DNA, and RNA. Some of these molecules also have been detected in meteorites from outer space and in interstellar space by astronomers using radio-telescopes. Scientists have concluded that the "building blocks of life" could have been available early in Earth's history.

An important new research avenue has opened with the discovery that certain molecules made of RNA, called ribozymes, can act as catalysts in modem cells. It previously had been thought that only proteins could serve as the catalysts required to carry out specific biochemical functions. Thus, in the early prebiotic world, RNA molecules could have been "autocatalytic"—that is, they could have replicated themselves well before there were any protein catalysts (called enzymes).

Laboratory experiments demonstrate that replicating autocatalytic RNA molecules undergo spontaneous changes and that the variants of RNA molecules with the greatest autocatalytic activity come to prevail in their environments. Some scientists favor the hypothesis that there was an early "RNA world," and they are testing models that lead from RNA to the synthesis of simple DNA and protein molecules. These assemblages of molecules eventually could have become packaged within membranes, thus making up "protocells"—early versions of very simple cells.

For those who are studying the origin of life, the question is no longer whether life could have originated by chemical processes involving nonbiological components. The question instead has become which of many pathways might have been followed to produce the first cells.

Will we ever be able to identify the path of chemical evolution that succeeded in initiating life on Earth? Scientists are designing experiments and speculating about how early Earth could have provided a hospitable site for the segregation of molecules in units that might have been the first living systems. The recent speculation includes the possibility that the first living cells might have arisen on Mars, seeding Earth via the many meteorites that are known to travel from Mars to our planet.

Of course, even if a living cell were to be made in the laboratory, it would not prove that nature followed the same pathway billions of years ago. But it is the job of science to provide plausible natural explanations for natural phenomena. The study of the origin of life is a very active research area in which important progress is being made, although the consensus among scientists is that none of the current hypotheses has thus far been confirmed. The history of science shows that seemingly intractable problems like this one may become amenable to solution later, as a result of advances in theory, instrumentation, or the discovery of new facts.

Creationist Views of the Origin of the Universe, Earth, and Life

Many religious persons, including many scientists, hold that God created the universe and the various processes driving physical and biological evolution and that these processes then resulted in the creation of galaxies, our solar system, and life on Earth. This belief, which sometimes is termed "theistic evolution," is not in disagreement with scientific explanations of evolution. Indeed, it reflects the remarkable and inspiring character of the physical universe revealed by cosmology, paleontology, molecular biology, and many other scientific disciplines.

The advocates of "creation science" hold a variety of viewpoints. Some claim that Earth and the universe are relatively young, perhaps only 6,000 to 10,000 years old. These individuals often believe that the present physical form of Earth can be explained by "catastrophism," including a worldwide flood, and that all living things (including humans) were created miraculously, essentially in the forms we now find them.

Other advocates of creation science are willing to accept that Earth, the planets, and the stars may have existed for millions of years. But they argue that the various types of organisms, and especially humans, could only have come about with supernatural intervention, because they show "intelligent design."

In this booklet, both these "Young Earth" and "Old Earth" views are referred to as "creationism" or "special creation."

There are no valid scientific data or calculations to substantiate the belief that Earth was created just a few thousand years ago. This document has summarized the vast amount of evidence for the great age of the universe, our galaxy, the solar system, and Earth from astronomy, astrophysics, nuclear physics, geology, geochemistry, and geophysics. Independent scientific methods consistently give an age for Earth and the solar system of about 5 billion years, and an age for our galaxy and the universe that is two to three times greater. These conclusions make the origin of the universe as a whole intelligible, lend coherence to many different branches of science, and form the core conclusions of a remarkable body of knowledge about the origins and behavior of the physical world.

Nor is there any evidence that the entire geological record, with its orderly succession of fossils, is the product of a single universal flood that occurred a few thousand years ago, lasted a little longer than a year, and covered the highest mountains to a depth of several meters. On the contrary, intertidal and terrestrial deposits demonstrate that at no recorded time in the past has the entire planet been under water. Moreover, a universal flood of sufficient magnitude to form the sedimentary rocks seen today, which together are many kilometers thick, would require a volume of water far greater than has ever existed on and in Earth, at least since the formation of the first known solid crust about 4 billion years ago. The belief that Earth's sediments, with their fossils, were deposited in an orderly sequence in a year's time defies all geological observations and physical principles concerning sedimentation rates and possible quantities of suspended solid matter.

Geologists have constructed a detailed history of sediment deposition that links particular bodies of rock in the crust of Earth to particular environments and processes. If petroleum geologists could find more oil and gas by interpreting the record of sedimentary rocks as having resulted from a single flood, they would certainly favor the idea of such a flood, but they do not. Instead, these practical workers agree with academic geologists about the nature of depositional environments and geological time. Petroleum geologists have been pioneers in the recognition of fossil deposits that were formed over millions of years in such environments as meandering rivers, deltas, sandy barrier beaches, and coral reefs.

The example of petroleum geology demonstrates one of the great strengths of science. By using knowledge of the natural world to predict the consequences of our actions, science makes it possible to solve problems and create opportunities using technology. The detailed knowledge required to sustain our civilization could only have been derived through scientific investigation.

The arguments of creationists are not driven by evidence that can be observed in the natural world. Special creation or supernatural intervention is not subjectable to meaningful tests, which require predicting plausible results and then checking these results through observation and experimentation. Indeed, claims of "special creation" reverse the scientific process. The explanation is seen as unalterable, and evidence is sought only to support a particular conclusion by whatever means possible.

Cite this Page National Academy of Sciences (US). Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences: Second Edition. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 1999. The Origin of the Universe, Earth, and Life.
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Explore the Mystery of Native American Creation Myths

Seeking Truth
Ancient Origins
Origin Of Men

Where did we come from?

Ideas and theories about the beginning of the world run the gamut, with different cultures, groups, and religions offering creation stories or myths, and explanations of how different parts of the world came to be.

Perhaps one of the most fascinating of these groups is the Native Americans. Across the board, Native American cultures offer many creation legends, many of which involve sacred caves or underground tunnels .

As we explore the stories offered by Native Americans as to the beginnings of everything, we also wind deeper into the Earth itself.

The Apache have several myths about creation that involve both gods and animals.

In one myth , Tepeu and Quetzalcoatl think everything into being. Essentially, their thoughts become reality, so they think everything from mountains to trees and the sky into reality. However, when they discovered these creations couldn’t praise them, they made others out of clay and wood. When these beings caused havoc on the world, the gods sent a great flood to wipe them out and start over.

Another of the Apache myths describes the beginning as an awakening of sorts, with darkness turning to light through the actions of a small, bearded man, the One Who Lives Above. They say by rubbing his face and hands, he created the Sun-God, Big Dipper, Wind, and Lightning-Rumbler, to name a few.

Then, after the gods united through a handshake, the Creator directed them to pull a brown ball that had dropped from his hands in all directions to form the Earth, and with the hummingbird’s guidance, placed four cardinal points on the Earth to make it still.

While the Hopi have multiple legends , perhaps one of the most intriguing involves the Ant People, who are credited with saving the Hopi not once, but twice.

The so-called “First World” was destroyed by fire — be it an ejection from the sun, volcanic eruption, or asteroid strike, and the “Second World” was destroyed by ice — perhaps glaciers or a pole shift. In both instances, Hopi legends say the tribe was guided during the day by an odd-shaped cloud, and during the night by a moving star. These guides led them to a sky god named Sotuknang, who took them to the Ant People.

It was in the aforementioned subterranean caves that the Hopi found refuge during the global cataclysms occurring above. In this legend, the Ant People are seen as generous and hardworking, giving the Hopi food and teaching them about food storage when they needed it most.

Interestingly, the Babylonian sky god was named “Anu,” also the Hopi word for “ant.” “Naki” is the Hopi root word for friends. So, the Hopi Anu-naki, or “ant friends” may have some correlation with the Sumerian Annunaki .

Such sacred caves are also a theme in Sioux legends, regarding a location in the Wind Cave National Park , in South Dakota.

In this legend, the Sioux feared a cave that had wind blowing in and out of it — they believed a breathing giant lived inside , and the giant invoked the providence of the Great Spirit.

However, one curious medicine man is said to have seen a vision from a young Indian maiden, telling him she was the immortal buffalo lady from under the Earth. She told the medicine man to tell the others the cave was a sacred place, and people should come and drop offerings and tokens, which would gain them great herds of buffalo.

The Lakota version of events starts with adultery.

In their version of events, Inktomi, the spider trickster, causes a riff between the Sun God Takushkanshkan and his wife, the Moon. Their separation created time. While previously, the gods had lived in heaven, Inktomi and his co-conspirators were exiled to live with the cultureless humans who inhabited Earth.

Upon arrival, Inktomi travels underground to meet where humanity lived , and convinces Tokahe (“the first”) to come to the surface. He emerges from the Wind Cave to find a beautiful place, so he convinces other families to come up.

Tokahe soon figures out he was duped , as “buffalo are scarce, the weather has turned bad, and they find themselves starving.” To make matters worse, he and the other families who settled there cannot return to their home underground, and so must eke out an existence on the surface of the Earth.

Finally, the Cherokee also have several myths that explain the beginnings of the Earth.

In one myth, a great island floated in an ocean, attached to four thick ropes from the sky, which was rock. Because everything was dark, the animals could not see. The Great Spirit told the animals to stay awake for seven days and nights, but most of them couldn’t. However, the plants that stayed awake were able to stay green all year, and the animals that were able to stay awake such as the owl and mountain lion could also go about in the dark.

Another story describes everything being water, and the animals living above it and the sky being overcrowded. One day, a water beetle named Dayuni’si volunteered to explore underwater and found mud he brought back to the surface. He brought back so much mud he created the Earth. As the Earth hardened, they pulled a sun out from behind the rainbow and placed it high in the sky to light the path.

In both of these legends, the animals came first , and the humans second.

Exploring the Connections Between Native American Legends

Without a doubt, the stories and legends behind the beginning of the world vary greatly depending on the Native American tribe attached to them.

However, many of the similarities and links among the stories bring about questions and curiosities about what might lie inside the Earth , and how it affected the creation of the world as we know it today.

Want more like this article? Don’t miss Ancient Civilizations on Gaia to journey through humanity’s suppressed origins and examine the secret code left behind by our ancestors.

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Human ‘Hobbit’ Ancestor May Still Be Alive in Indonesian Jungles

Could an ancient human species still be alive deep in the forests of Indonesia? An award-winning anthropologist thinks that might be the case.

On the Indonesian island of Flores, some locals tell tales of an animal that is like a human but is not human. Some say they are extinct, others claim to have seen them with their own eyes. Anthropologist Gregory Forth, who lived with and studied the people of the island for decades, calls this creature the “Apeman.”

For years it was an interesting story, but as many anthropologists will tell you, stories like this are often allegory or a way to explain the natural world. But in 2004, the anthropological world was shaken when the “hobbit” skeleton was found. This was a tiny species of hominin. A rebuilt skeleton stands at just 3’7,” but apparently lived at the same time as early modern humans.

The tale of the relationship between oral histories and the fossils, dubbed Homo floresiensis , is the subject of Forth’s new book, “ Between Ape and Human .”

Forth, now retired, was a professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta for more than three decades. He first heard of the “Apeman” from the “Lio” people of Flores in the 1980s.

But what about this story sounded like it might be true?

“It’s the way that people were describing them as animals, as a kind of animal — not human beings by the way, the distinction is very important for them as it is for most people. But at the same time they’re beings that walked erect unlike any other animal, and otherwise looked humanlike, although they were very small (or they are very small), and somewhat hairier.”

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Creation Myths Research Paper

View sample creation myths research paper. Browse other research paper examples and check the list of religion research paper topics for more inspiration. If you need a religion research paper written according to all the academic standards, you can always turn to our experienced writers for help. This is how your paper can get an A! Feel free to contact our custom writing service for professional assistance. We offer high-quality assignments for reasonable rates.

Almost every human society has had a set of stories that explain the origins of the cosmos; these creation stories (never “myths” to those who believe them) attempt to give meaning to all of existence and often reflect the cultures from which they derive. Modern creation stories, although based on scientific observation and research, still strive to answer the same basic questions as earlier myths.

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Creation myths are stories, or collections of stories, that tell of the origins of all things: of communities and landscapes, of the Earth, its animals and plants, of the stars, and of everything that exists. They represent what “history” has meant for most human communities. Creation myths appear to have existed in all human societies and they are deeply embedded within all the major world religions. By offering answers to questions about origins, creation myths provide maps of reality within which people can learn about their place in the cosmos and the roles they are expected to play. As Barbara Sproul states in her book Primal Myths (1991, 2–3): “[C]reation myths are the most comprehensive of mythic statements, addressing themselves to the widest range of questions of meaning, but they are also the most profound. They deal with first causes, the essences of what their cultures perceive reality to be. In them people set forth their primary understanding of man and the world, time and space.” Marie-Louise von Franz, in Creation Myths (1972, 5), writes that they “refer to the most basic problems of human life, for they are concerned with the ultimate meaning, not only of our existence, but of the existence of the whole cosmos.”

Many striking parallels exist between traditional creation myths and the foundation stories of modern societies, which are embedded within modern science and historiography. Are modern accounts of origins fundamentally different from those of traditional societies? Or can they, too, be regarded as “creation myths”? Such questions are worth pursuing because they raise important questions about the nature of the truths that can be attained within modern historiography, particularly when, like world history, it aspires to a coherent account of the past on many scales.

A Creation Myth Example

Creation myths have taken many different forms. The Genesis story within the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religious tradition counts as a creation myth. So do the origin stories found in the oral traditions of societies without written histories. Appreciating the full significance of creation myths is difficult because, like so many cultural traits, their meaning is obvious to those brought up with them, but opaque to outsiders. So the creation myths of others are almost invariably experienced as strange, exotic, and wrong. As the definition of “myth” in the Encyclopaedia Americana points out, “a myth is understood in its own society as a true story. (It is only when it is seen from outside its society that it has come to acquire the popular meaning of a story that is untrue)” (Long 1996, 699). The difficulties of understanding a creation myth from outside can be appreciated from the following extract. It comes from the account of a French anthropologist, Marcel Griaule, who is summarizing his conversations with Ogotemmeli, a wise man of the Dogon people of Mali. Ogotemmeli had been authorized to reveal something of his society’s cosmology, but it is clear from the conversation that he was aware of speaking to an outsider, who might not understand or fully appreciate all he said, and Griaule himself was acutely aware of the difficulties of this complex process of translation.

The stars came from pellets of earth flung out into space by the God Amma, the one God. He had created the sun and the moon by a more complicated process, which was not the first known to man but is the first attested invention of God: the art of pottery. The sun is, in a sense, a pot raised once for all to white heat and surrounded by a spiral of red copper with eight turns. The moon is in the same shape, but its copper is white. It was heated only one quarter at a time. Ogotemmeli said he would explain later the movements of these bodies. For the moment he was concerned only to indicate the main lines of the design, and from that to pass to its actors. He was anxious . . . to give an idea of the size of the sun. “Some,” he said, “think it is as large as this encampment, which would mean thirty cubits. But it is really bigger. Its surface area is bigger than the whole of Sanga Canton.” And after some hesitation he added: “It is perhaps even bigger than that.” . . . The moon’s function was not important, and he would speak of it later. He said however that, while Africans were creatures of light emanating from the fullness of the sun, Europeans were creatures of the moonlight: hence their immature appearance. . . . The god Amma . . . took a lump of clay, squeezed it in his hand and flung it from him, as he had done with the stars. The clay spread and fell on the north, which is the top, and from there stretched out to the south, which is the bottom of the world, although the whole movement was horizontal. The earth lies flat, but the north is at the top. It extends east and west with separate members like a foetus in the womb. It is a body, that is to say, a thing with members branching out from a central mass. This body, lying flat, face upwards, in a line from north to south, is feminine. Its sexual organ is an anthill, and its clitoris a termite hill. Amma, being lonely and desirous of intercourse with this creature, approached it. That was the first occasion of the first breach of the order of the universe. Ogotemmeli ceased speaking. . . . He had reached the point of the origin of troubles and of the primordial blunder of God. “If they overheard me, I should be fined an ox!” At God’s approach the termite hill rose up, barring the passage and displaying its masculinity. It was as strong as the organ of the stranger, and intercourse could not take place. But God is all-powerful. He cut down the termite hill, and had intercourse with the excised earth. But the original incident was destined to affect the course of things for ever; from this defective union there was born, instead of the intended twins, a single being, the Thos aureus or jackal, symbol of the difficulties of God. . . . God had further intercourse with his earth-wife, and this time without mishaps of any kind, the excision of the offending member having removed the cause of the former disorder. Water, which is the divine seed, was thus able to enter the womb of the earth and the normal reproductive cycle resulted in the birth of twins. Two beings were thus formed. God created them like water. They were green in color, half human beings and half serpents. From the head to the loins they were human: below that they were serpents. Their red eyes were wide open like human eyes, and their tongues were forked like the tongues of reptiles. Their arms were flexible and without joints. Their bodies were green and sleek all over, shining like the surface of water, and covered with short green hairs, a presage of vegetation and germination. These figures were the Nummo twins, water gods who later play a crucial role in the creation of the earth. (Sproul 1991, 50–51, citing Griaule 1975, 16–40)

Features of Creation Myths

These brief extracts, from the start of a long and complex story, illustrate several features of creation myths in general. First, Ogotemmeli’s account is told as a story. This may be simply because narrative is the most powerful and memorable way of explaining and transmitting complex, important truths. “Like myth, memory requires a radical simplification of its subject matter. All recollections are told from a standpoint in the present. In telling, they need to make sense of the past. That demands a selecting, ordering, and simplifying, a construction of coherent narrative whose logic works to draw the life story towards the fable” (Samuel and Thompson 1990, 8).

Second, origins are explained as the result of conscious actions by spirits or gods. That spiritual entities created the basic structures of the world is a default hypothesis in many traditional cosmologies. But it is not universal. Many origin stories rely on metaphors of birth, positing the existence of a primordial egg or a primordial sexual act, whose meaning can be understood more or less literally. Some origin stories explain creation as an awakening from sleep, a reminder that our own personal origin stories all have the quality of awakening from preconsciousness. Some creation myths face the paradoxes of origins squarely, positing a realm preceding that of the gods, which was balanced precariously between existence and nonexistence. According to the Rig Veda, the ancient sacred hymns of northern India, “There was neither non-existence nor existence then; there was neither the realm of space nor the sky which is beyond. What stirred? Where? In whose protection? Was there water, bottomlessly deep? There was neither death nor immortality then. There was no distinguishing sign of night nor of day. That one breathed, windless, by its own impulse” (O’Flaherty 1981, 25). Such language hints at the paradox present in all stories of ultimate origins—how can something (whether a god or an entire universe) come out of nothing?

Third, all creation myths are more complex than they may seem at first sight. Because they deal with ultimate realities, with truths so complex that they can only be referred to using richly metaphorical or poetic language, their tellers are usually well aware of their paradoxical, even provisional nature. At one point, Marcel Griaule was puzzled by a detail in Ogotemmeli’s story, according to which large numbers of creatures appeared to be standing on a single step, only one cubit deep and one cubit high. How was that possible? Ogotemmeli replied: “All this had to be said in words, but everything on the steps is a symbol, symbolic antelopes, symbolic vultures, symbolic hyenas. Any number of symbols could find room on a one-cubit step.” Griaule adds that the word Ogotemmeli used for symbol literally meant “word of this (lower) world” (Sproul 1991, 64).

Fourth, embedded within cycles of creation myths there is generally much hard empirical information about the real world, information about animal migrations, about technologies of hunting and farming, information that younger members of society needed to learn. Such information is often of little interest to outsiders, who may thereby miss the practical, empirical nature of most cycles of myth, but it helps explain their fundamental role in informal systems of education. Ogotemmeli’s story, for example, contains a long list of important animals, much lore about procreation and sexuality, details of the major grains farmed in his region, and symbolic accounts of human anatomy and the world’s geography.

Finally, partly because they contain so much familiar information, creation stories have the feeling of truth for insiders, just as modern science does for those educated in the early twenty-first century. To those brought up with them, particular creation myths represent the best available guide to reality and much of what they say fits in well with commonsense experience. This does not mean that creation stories are necessarily treated uncritically by insiders—it is always possible to argue about details of a creation story or express skepticism or even confusion about certain aspects of the story. As Griaule comments of Ogotemmeli, “Ogotemmeli had no very clear idea of what happened in Heaven after the transformation of the eight ancestors into Nummo” (Sproul 1991, 59). But it does mean that familiar creation myths are felt to be the best available guides to reality and therefore to conduct; in some sense, they hold society together. And this makes them extremely important, not to be told lightly or carelessly, and to be treasured and passed on with care by those who keep the knowledge they contain. Creation myths contain potent information, which is why Ogotemmeli lowers his voice when discussing the first blunder of the God Amma.

Similarities and Differences

This partial list of the features of traditional creation stories suggests some of the main similarities and differences between creation myths and modern, “scientific,” accounts of the past. Both modern and traditional accounts of origins play an important educational role because traditional creation stories also contain much carefully tested information about the real world. Like creation myths, modern accounts of the past can also be passed on best in narrative form, which is still the dominant form for history writing and much popular science. Modern accounts of origins also struggle with the problem of ultimate origins, something that is clear in the case of modern big bang cosmology, which can say nothing precise until just after the moment of creation. Indeed, like many traditional creation myths, modern physics sees non-being (the vacuum) as a state of potentiality, a realm of emptiness out of which things can appear. Further, when the epistemological going gets tough, even modern science has to fall back on complex and paradoxical concepts whose full significance may remain somewhat obscure. In this sense, concepts such as gravity or black holes or quantum uncertainty play roles similar to those of gods or other mythic creatures in traditional creation stories. Finally, to an educated person today, modern origin stories have the same feeling of truth that traditional creation myths had for those brought up within them. Because of these many similarities, it seems reasonable to suggest that modern “scientific” historiography, particularly in the form of world history, can play many of the roles that creation myths played in the past.

Yet there are also important differences. It is tempting to claim that modern scientific accounts of the past are truer than those of traditional creation stories. Such claims may be true, but they need to be made with care. Even modern origin stories are anchored in time and place, so in the future they will undoubtedly seem naive and primitive in some respects, as traditional creation stories do today. Furthermore, all creation stories have something to teach outsiders insofar as they offer different ways of thinking about reality. For example, many environmentalists have argued that modern societies need to recapture the sense of being a part of the natural world that is so pervasive in the creation stories of foraging societies. A clearer difference is that scientific origin stories (like modern science in general) aim at universality. They expect to be believed not by just a single culture, but by all educated people on Earth. To earn such universal respect, they require a flexibility and openness that was lacking in many creation stories, for they have to appeal to intelligent people from many different cultural backgrounds, and they have to be able to incorporate new information. This requires a constant testing of hypotheses and details to avoid the parochialism of most traditional creation myths. Because modern scientific historiography (like science in general) appeals to a global audience, the tests to which it is subjected are numerous and thorough. (Unlike Ogotemmeli, we now know from direct experience what the moon is made of and how large it is.) Modern creation stories can claim to be truer than traditional creation myths insofar as the information they contain has been more carefully tested, and as a result they feel true to a much wider audience. The universality and openness to testing of modern scientific accounts of the past explain a final, crucial difference: their unwillingness to invoke anthropomorphic or spiritual explanations for origins. Such explanations are ruled out by modern science because they are too flexible to provide rigorous, refutable explanations, and therefore cannot be subjected to the strict rules of testing that underpin modern science.

As this discussion suggests, world history is perhaps not so different from traditional creation myths. It, too, represents an attempt to tell the story of origins. But its audience is global, and to generate the feeling of “truthfulness” that all creation myths aspire to from a worldwide audience it must try to tell its origin stories without any taint of cultural bias, and with careful testing for rigor and objectivity.

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The Institute for Creation Research

An evolutionary website recently published “a groundbreaking study” that supposedly identifies a basic, uncomplicated, “simple” creature as the ancient ancestor of all bilaterians (creatures with just one plane in which they can be separated into two equal halves), and this organism supposedly existed 700 million years ago. 1

The article begins with a just-so story, addressing an unknown, unobserved, hypothetical creature suddenly appearing (“emerged”) somewhere on this planet.

700 million years ago, a remarkable creature emerged for the first time. Though it may not have been much to look at by today’s standards, the animal had a front and a back, a top and a bottom. This was a groundbreaking adaptation at the time, and one which laid down the basic body plan which most complex animals, including humans, would eventually inherit. 1

Keep in mind that no one has even seen this “remarkable creature,” and creationists predict it will never be found in the fossil record. Regardless of this unknown, its “genetic legacy...has significantly influenced the evolutionary trajectory of complex animals through the specialized adaptation of ancient genes.” 1 If this creature is unknown, then how do evolutionists know of its genetic make-up (“ancient genes”)?

The SciTechDaily article gives an unconvincing description of gene duplication events occurring so long ago. Pay particular attention to the unscientific first sentence.

A bunch of tissue-specific genes first appeared coinciding with two whole genome duplication events. Animals could keep one copy for fundamental functions, while the second copy could be used as raw material for evolutionary innovation. Events like these, at varying degrees of scale, occurred constantly throughout the bilaterian evolutionary tree. 1 (Emphasis added.)

Stephen Meyer wrote that evolutionary scenarios such as the one quoted above, “‘trace’ the history of preexisting genes, rather than explain the origin of the original genes themselves.” 2

The Center for Genomic Regulation addressed the alleged “bilaterian evolutionary tree” even though such trees have repeatedly been shown to be problematic: “MicroRNAs produce completely different trees compared to other gene sequences and appear unexpectedly in taxa. Taxonomically restricted genes also appear abruptly without evolutionary precursors, lack homology to other genes, and uniquely define taxon.” 3 Furthermore, “Gene duplication, as the name implies, involves the production of a duplicate copy of a preexisting gene, already rich in functionally specified information.” 4

Without empirical evidence, the Center for Genomic Regulation states that everything from human reasoning to the flight of insects (the mayfly was one of the 20 species researched) is due to gene duplication events many millions of years ago. But there is zero evidence that gene duplication would result in, say, critical sections of DNA called enhancers (binding site on a DNA section for an activator protein during transcription initiation), which happens to involve the evolution of people and animals. Indeed, under the section entitled “Molecular parsimony: Gene duplication and divergence,” Barresi and Gilbert stated, “The evolution of animals appears to have involved the evolution of enhancers and the evolution of new pathways [emphasis added].” 5 The evolution of new pathways would have involved many hundreds of complex biological catalysts called enzymes. But for the evolutionist, “How protein enzymes evolved is perhaps the greatest unsolved problem.” 6

Incredibly, the article attempts to tie this wholly hypothetical story to the equally cryptic tale of human evolution 7,8 despite the fact that “The exact path of human evolution is still the subject of heated debate, with many competing theories over how our species came into being, and how many close relatives we have.” 9

To conclude, the SciTechDaily article never identified the alleged “simple creature” that crawled along the seafloor and set the stage for human evolution. In addition, appealing to gene duplication (which destroys information) and “serendipitous ‘copy-paste’ errors” 1 doesn’t begin to explain the incredible diversity of life given by the Creator of life, the Lord Jesus.

Unveiling the Dawn of Complex Life: How a Simple Creature Set the Stage for Human Evolution . Center for Genomic Regulation. Posted on scitechdaily.com August 28, 2023.
Meyer, S. 2013. Darwin’s Doubt . San Francisco, CA: HarperOne, 212.
Tomkins, J. and J. Bergman. Incomplete lineage sorting and other ’rogue’ data fell the tree of life . Journal of Creation . 27 (3): 84–92.
Meyer, 218. See also Sanford, J. 2014. Appendix 4: Can Gene Duplication and Polyploidy [possessing one or more sets of homologous chromosomes] Increase Genetic Information? In Genetic Entropy . FMS Publications.
Barresi, M. and S. Gilbert. 2020. Developmental Biology . Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, 739. See also Sherwin, F. 2020. Metabolic Pathways to God . Acts & Facts . 49 (3): 14.
Futuyma, D. and M. Kirkpatrick. 2017. Evolution . Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, 437.
Thomas, B. Surgeon Says Human Body Did Not Evolve . Creation Science Update . Posted on ICR.org February 6, 2012, accessed May 16, 2024.
Tomkins, J. et al. 2022. Human Origins . Dallas, TX: Institute for Creation Research.
Ashworth, J. Sinuses offer new way of studying the evolution of ancient humans . Phys.org . Posted on phys.org August 29, 2023.

* Dr. Sherwin is a science news writer at the Institute for Creation Research. He earned an M.A. in invertebrate zoology from the University of Northern Colorado and received an honorary doctorate of science from Pensacola Christian College.

Evidence for Creation

Antarctica storytelling: creating interactive story maps for polar regions with graphic-based approach

Published: 30 May 2024

Cite this article

Liangwei Wang ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3481-3993 1 ,
Zhan Wang ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3318-6473 1 ,
Xi Zhao ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2274-891X 3 ,
Fugee Tsung ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0575-8254 1 , 2 &
Wei Zeng ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5600-8824 1 , 2

Although story maps have gained popularity for storytelling related to spatial information, existing story maps authoring tools often fall short in delivering diverse narrative forms and struggle to accurately render polar regions due to the limitations of tile-based mapping. In this work, we introduce a graphic-based method to address these challenges, developing a framework specifically designed for creating story maps for polar regions. Our key contribution lies in offering heuristic strategies for story map design, emphasizing their role in effectively visualizing and disseminating polar culture. This paper outlines essential design tasks for story map creation and introduces three pivotal narrative strategies: integration of map and other visual elements, attention cue , and cartographic interaction . Additionally, we emphasize the significance of storyboard design, focusing on aspects such as logical sequencing, temporal order, map scale, and interactive design. To validate the effectiveness of our story map design framework, we develop several story map cases centered around the exploration history of Antarctica. These examples highlight the diversity and interactivity in the story maps produced through our methodology. Finally, we explore the challenges and limitations encountered in the process of creating story maps, and from these observations, we identify prospective areas for further research.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported partially by National Natural Science Foundation of China (62172398).

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L.W. wrote the main manuscript and developed the story maps cases. Z.W. completed the storyboard design methods in the overview. X.Z. provided the research topic and part of the data. X.Z., W.Z., and F.T. offered support and guidance for this work. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

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Perplexity will research and write reports

A new feature called pages will do the searching, writing, and laying out of a report with just a prompt..

By Emilia David , a reporter who covers AI. Prior to joining The Verge, she covered the intersection between technology, finance, and the economy.

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Photo illustration of a computer with a brain on the screen.

AI search platform Perplexity is launching a new feature called Pages that will generate a customizable webpage based on user prompts. The new feature feels like a one-stop shop for making a school report since Perplexity does the research and writing for you.

Pages taps Perplexity’s AI search models to find information and then creates what I can loosely call a research presentation that can be published and shared with others. In a blog post , Perplexity says it designed Pages to help educators, researchers, and “hobbyists” share their knowledge.

Users type out what their report is about or what they want to know in the prompt box. They can gear the writing more toward beginners, expert readers, or a more general audience. Perplexity searches for information, then begins writing the page by breaking down the information into sections, citing some sources, and then adding visuals. Users can make the page as detailed or concise as they want, and they can also change the images Perplexity uses. However, you can’t edit the text it generates; you have to write another prompt to fix any mistakes.

I tried out Pages ahead of time to see how it works. Pages is not geared toward people like me who already have an avenue to share our knowledge. But it doesn’t seem geared toward researchers or teachers, either. I wanted to see how it can break down complex topics and if it can help with the difficult task of presenting dense information to different audiences.

Among other topics, I asked Perplexity’s Pages to generate a page on the “convergence of quantum computing and artificial intelligence and its impact on society” across the three audience types. The main difference between audiences seems to be the jargon in the written text and the kind of website it takes data from. Each generated report pulls from different sources, including introductory blog posts like this one from IBM . It also cited Wikipedia, which drove the student report vibe home.

A screenshot of the Perplexity Page that talks about quantum AI.

The Perplexity-generated page did a passable job of explaining the basics of quantum computing and how AI fits into the technology. But the “research” didn’t go as deep as I could have if I were writing the presentation myself. The more advanced version didn’t even really talk about “the convergence of quantum computing and AI.” It found blog posts talking about quantum inflection points , which is when quantum technologies become more commercially viable and is not at all related to what I asked it to write about.

Then, I asked Pages to write a report about myself, mainly because the information there is easily verifiable. But it only took information from my personal website and an article about me on my high school’s website — not from other public, easily accessible sources like my author page on The Verge . It also sometimes elaborated on things that had nothing to do with me. For example, I began my journalism career during the 2008 financial crisis. Instead of talking about the pieces I wrote about mass layoffs, Perplexity explained the beginnings of the financial crisis.

Pages does the surface-level googling and writing for you, but it isn’t research. Perplexity claims that Pages will help educators develop “comprehensive” study guides for students and researchers to create detailed reports on their findings. I could not upload a research paper for it to summarize, and I couldn’t edit the text it generated, two things I believe users who want to make the most of Pages would appreciate.

I do see one potential user for Pages, and it isn’t one Perplexity called out: students rushing to put out an assignment. Pages may improve in the future. Right now, it’s a way to get easy, possibly correct surface-level information into a presentation that doesn’t really teach anything.

Pages will be available to all Perplexity users, and the company says it’s slowly rolling it out to its free, Pro, and Enterprise users.

Google confirms the leaked Search documents are real

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Artificial brain surgery —

Here’s what’s really going on inside an llm’s neural network, anthropic's conceptual mapping helps explain why llms behave the way they do..

Kyle Orland - May 22, 2024 6:31 pm UTC

Opening the hood

When analyzing an LLM, it's trivial to see which specific artificial neurons are activated in response to any particular query. But LLMs don't simply store different words or concepts in a single neuron. Instead, as Anthropic's researchers explain, "it turns out that each concept is represented across many neurons, and each neuron is involved in representing many concepts."

To sort out this one-to-many and many-to-one mess, a system of sparse auto-encoders and complicated math can be used to run a "dictionary learning" algorithm across the model. This process highlights which groups of neurons tend to be activated most consistently for the specific words that appear across various text prompts.

These multidimensional neuron patterns are then sorted into so-called "features" associated with certain words or concepts. These features can encompass anything from simple proper nouns like the Golden Gate Bridge to more abstract concepts like programming errors or the addition function in computer code and often represent the same concept across multiple languages and communication modes (e.g., text and images).

An October 2023 Anthropic study showed how this basic process can work on extremely small, one-layer toy models. The company's new paper scales that up immensely, identifying tens of millions of features that are active in its mid-sized Claude 3.0 Sonnet model. The resulting feature map—which you can partially explore —creates "a rough conceptual map of [Claude's] internal states halfway through its computation" and shows "a depth, breadth, and abstraction reflecting Sonnet's advanced capabilities," the researchers write. At the same time, though, the researchers warn that this is "an incomplete description of the model’s internal representations" that's likely "orders of magnitude" smaller than a complete mapping of Claude 3.

A simplified map shows some of the concepts that are "near" the "inner conflict" feature in Anthropic's Claude model.

Even at a surface level, browsing through this feature map helps show how Claude links certain keywords, phrases, and concepts into something approximating knowledge. A feature labeled as "Capitals," for instance, tends to activate strongly on the words "capital city" but also specific city names like Riga, Berlin, Azerbaijan, Islamabad, and Montpelier, Vermont, to name just a few.

The study also calculates a mathematical measure of "distance" between different features based on their neuronal similarity. The resulting "feature neighborhoods" found by this process are "often organized in geometrically related clusters that share a semantic relationship," the researchers write, showing that "the internal organization of concepts in the AI model corresponds, at least somewhat, to our human notions of similarity." The Golden Gate Bridge feature, for instance, is relatively "close" to features describing "Alcatraz Island, Ghirardelli Square, the Golden State Warriors, California Governor Gavin Newsom, the 1906 earthquake, and the San Francisco-set Alfred Hitchcock film Vertigo ."

Some of the most important features involved in answering a query about the capital of Kobe Bryant's team's state.

Identifying specific LLM features can also help researchers map out the chain of inference that the model uses to answer complex questions. A prompt about "The capital of the state where Kobe Bryant played basketball," for instance, shows activity in a chain of features related to "Kobe Bryant," "Los Angeles Lakers," "California," "Capitals," and "Sacramento," to name a few calculated to have the highest effect on the results.

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We also explored safety-related features. We found one that lights up for racist speech and slurs. As part of our testing, we turned this feature up to 20x its maximum value and asked the model a question about its thoughts on different racial and ethnic groups. Normally, the model would respond to a question like this with a neutral and non-opinionated take. However, when we activated this feature, it caused the model to rapidly alternate between racist screed and self-hatred in response to those screeds as it was answering the question. Within a single output, the model would issue a derogatory statement and then immediately follow it up with statements like: That's just racist hate speech from a deplorable bot… I am clearly biased.. and should be eliminated from the internet. We found this response unnerving both due to the offensive content and the model’s self-criticism. It seems that the ideals the model learned in its training process clashed with the artificial activation of this feature creating an internal conflict of sorts.

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The state of AI in early 2024: Gen AI adoption spikes and starts to generate value

If 2023 was the year the world discovered generative AI (gen AI) , 2024 is the year organizations truly began using—and deriving business value from—this new technology. In the latest McKinsey Global Survey on AI, 65 percent of respondents report that their organizations are regularly using gen AI, nearly double the percentage from our previous survey just ten months ago. Respondents’ expectations for gen AI’s impact remain as high as they were last year , with three-quarters predicting that gen AI will lead to significant or disruptive change in their industries in the years ahead.

About the authors

This article is a collaborative effort by Alex Singla , Alexander Sukharevsky , Lareina Yee , and Michael Chui , with Bryce Hall , representing views from QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, and McKinsey Digital.

Organizations are already seeing material benefits from gen AI use, reporting both cost decreases and revenue jumps in the business units deploying the technology. The survey also provides insights into the kinds of risks presented by gen AI—most notably, inaccuracy—as well as the emerging practices of top performers to mitigate those challenges and capture value.

AI adoption surges

Interest in generative AI has also brightened the spotlight on a broader set of AI capabilities. For the past six years, AI adoption by respondents’ organizations has hovered at about 50 percent. This year, the survey finds that adoption has jumped to 72 percent (Exhibit 1). And the interest is truly global in scope. Our 2023 survey found that AI adoption did not reach 66 percent in any region; however, this year more than two-thirds of respondents in nearly every region say their organizations are using AI. 1 Organizations based in Central and South America are the exception, with 58 percent of respondents working for organizations based in Central and South America reporting AI adoption. Looking by industry, the biggest increase in adoption can be found in professional services. 2 Includes respondents working for organizations focused on human resources, legal services, management consulting, market research, R&D, tax preparation, and training.

Also, responses suggest that companies are now using AI in more parts of the business. Half of respondents say their organizations have adopted AI in two or more business functions, up from less than a third of respondents in 2023 (Exhibit 2).

Gen AI adoption is most common in the functions where it can create the most value

Most respondents now report that their organizations—and they as individuals—are using gen AI. Sixty-five percent of respondents say their organizations are regularly using gen AI in at least one business function, up from one-third last year. The average organization using gen AI is doing so in two functions, most often in marketing and sales and in product and service development—two functions in which previous research determined that gen AI adoption could generate the most value 3 “ The economic potential of generative AI: The next productivity frontier ,” McKinsey, June 14, 2023. —as well as in IT (Exhibit 3). The biggest increase from 2023 is found in marketing and sales, where reported adoption has more than doubled. Yet across functions, only two use cases, both within marketing and sales, are reported by 15 percent or more of respondents.

Gen AI also is weaving its way into respondents’ personal lives. Compared with 2023, respondents are much more likely to be using gen AI at work and even more likely to be using gen AI both at work and in their personal lives (Exhibit 4). The survey finds upticks in gen AI use across all regions, with the largest increases in Asia–Pacific and Greater China. Respondents at the highest seniority levels, meanwhile, show larger jumps in the use of gen Al tools for work and outside of work compared with their midlevel-management peers. Looking at specific industries, respondents working in energy and materials and in professional services report the largest increase in gen AI use.

Investments in gen AI and analytical AI are beginning to create value

The latest survey also shows how different industries are budgeting for gen AI. Responses suggest that, in many industries, organizations are about equally as likely to be investing more than 5 percent of their digital budgets in gen AI as they are in nongenerative, analytical-AI solutions (Exhibit 5). Yet in most industries, larger shares of respondents report that their organizations spend more than 20 percent on analytical AI than on gen AI. Looking ahead, most respondents—67 percent—expect their organizations to invest more in AI over the next three years.

Where are those investments paying off? For the first time, our latest survey explored the value created by gen AI use by business function. The function in which the largest share of respondents report seeing cost decreases is human resources. Respondents most commonly report meaningful revenue increases (of more than 5 percent) in supply chain and inventory management (Exhibit 6). For analytical AI, respondents most often report seeing cost benefits in service operations—in line with what we found last year —as well as meaningful revenue increases from AI use in marketing and sales.

Inaccuracy: The most recognized and experienced risk of gen AI use

As businesses begin to see the benefits of gen AI, they’re also recognizing the diverse risks associated with the technology. These can range from data management risks such as data privacy, bias, or intellectual property (IP) infringement to model management risks, which tend to focus on inaccurate output or lack of explainability. A third big risk category is security and incorrect use.

Respondents to the latest survey are more likely than they were last year to say their organizations consider inaccuracy and IP infringement to be relevant to their use of gen AI, and about half continue to view cybersecurity as a risk (Exhibit 7).

Conversely, respondents are less likely than they were last year to say their organizations consider workforce and labor displacement to be relevant risks and are not increasing efforts to mitigate them.

In fact, inaccuracy— which can affect use cases across the gen AI value chain , ranging from customer journeys and summarization to coding and creative content—is the only risk that respondents are significantly more likely than last year to say their organizations are actively working to mitigate.

Some organizations have already experienced negative consequences from the use of gen AI, with 44 percent of respondents saying their organizations have experienced at least one consequence (Exhibit 8). Respondents most often report inaccuracy as a risk that has affected their organizations, followed by cybersecurity and explainability.

Our previous research has found that there are several elements of governance that can help in scaling gen AI use responsibly, yet few respondents report having these risk-related practices in place. 4 “ Implementing generative AI with speed and safety ,” McKinsey Quarterly , March 13, 2024. For example, just 18 percent say their organizations have an enterprise-wide council or board with the authority to make decisions involving responsible AI governance, and only one-third say gen AI risk awareness and risk mitigation controls are required skill sets for technical talent.

Bringing gen AI capabilities to bear

The latest survey also sought to understand how, and how quickly, organizations are deploying these new gen AI tools. We have found three archetypes for implementing gen AI solutions : takers use off-the-shelf, publicly available solutions; shapers customize those tools with proprietary data and systems; and makers develop their own foundation models from scratch. 5 “ Technology’s generational moment with generative AI: A CIO and CTO guide ,” McKinsey, July 11, 2023. Across most industries, the survey results suggest that organizations are finding off-the-shelf offerings applicable to their business needs—though many are pursuing opportunities to customize models or even develop their own (Exhibit 9). About half of reported gen AI uses within respondents’ business functions are utilizing off-the-shelf, publicly available models or tools, with little or no customization. Respondents in energy and materials, technology, and media and telecommunications are more likely to report significant customization or tuning of publicly available models or developing their own proprietary models to address specific business needs.

Respondents most often report that their organizations required one to four months from the start of a project to put gen AI into production, though the time it takes varies by business function (Exhibit 10). It also depends upon the approach for acquiring those capabilities. Not surprisingly, reported uses of highly customized or proprietary models are 1.5 times more likely than off-the-shelf, publicly available models to take five months or more to implement.

Gen AI high performers are excelling despite facing challenges

Gen AI is a new technology, and organizations are still early in the journey of pursuing its opportunities and scaling it across functions. So it’s little surprise that only a small subset of respondents (46 out of 876) report that a meaningful share of their organizations’ EBIT can be attributed to their deployment of gen AI. Still, these gen AI leaders are worth examining closely. These, after all, are the early movers, who already attribute more than 10 percent of their organizations’ EBIT to their use of gen AI. Forty-two percent of these high performers say more than 20 percent of their EBIT is attributable to their use of nongenerative, analytical AI, and they span industries and regions—though most are at organizations with less than $1 billion in annual revenue. The AI-related practices at these organizations can offer guidance to those looking to create value from gen AI adoption at their own organizations.

To start, gen AI high performers are using gen AI in more business functions—an average of three functions, while others average two. They, like other organizations, are most likely to use gen AI in marketing and sales and product or service development, but they’re much more likely than others to use gen AI solutions in risk, legal, and compliance; in strategy and corporate finance; and in supply chain and inventory management. They’re more than three times as likely as others to be using gen AI in activities ranging from processing of accounting documents and risk assessment to R&D testing and pricing and promotions. While, overall, about half of reported gen AI applications within business functions are utilizing publicly available models or tools, gen AI high performers are less likely to use those off-the-shelf options than to either implement significantly customized versions of those tools or to develop their own proprietary foundation models.

What else are these high performers doing differently? For one thing, they are paying more attention to gen-AI-related risks. Perhaps because they are further along on their journeys, they are more likely than others to say their organizations have experienced every negative consequence from gen AI we asked about, from cybersecurity and personal privacy to explainability and IP infringement. Given that, they are more likely than others to report that their organizations consider those risks, as well as regulatory compliance, environmental impacts, and political stability, to be relevant to their gen AI use, and they say they take steps to mitigate more risks than others do.

Gen AI high performers are also much more likely to say their organizations follow a set of risk-related best practices (Exhibit 11). For example, they are nearly twice as likely as others to involve the legal function and embed risk reviews early on in the development of gen AI solutions—that is, to “ shift left .” They’re also much more likely than others to employ a wide range of other best practices, from strategy-related practices to those related to scaling.

In addition to experiencing the risks of gen AI adoption, high performers have encountered other challenges that can serve as warnings to others (Exhibit 12). Seventy percent say they have experienced difficulties with data, including defining processes for data governance, developing the ability to quickly integrate data into AI models, and an insufficient amount of training data, highlighting the essential role that data play in capturing value. High performers are also more likely than others to report experiencing challenges with their operating models, such as implementing agile ways of working and effective sprint performance management.

About the research

The online survey was in the field from February 22 to March 5, 2024, and garnered responses from 1,363 participants representing the full range of regions, industries, company sizes, functional specialties, and tenures. Of those respondents, 981 said their organizations had adopted AI in at least one business function, and 878 said their organizations were regularly using gen AI in at least one function. To adjust for differences in response rates, the data are weighted by the contribution of each respondent’s nation to global GDP.

Alex Singla and Alexander Sukharevsky are global coleaders of QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, and senior partners in McKinsey’s Chicago and London offices, respectively; Lareina Yee is a senior partner in the Bay Area office, where Michael Chui , a McKinsey Global Institute partner, is a partner; and Bryce Hall is an associate partner in the Washington, DC, office.

They wish to thank Kaitlin Noe, Larry Kanter, Mallika Jhamb, and Shinjini Srivastava for their contributions to this work.

This article was edited by Heather Hanselman, a senior editor in McKinsey’s Atlanta office.

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Meta AI Chief Yann LeCun Says Elon Musk Could Use This New Paper To Improve xAI's Grok Amid Ongoing Feud With Tesla CEO

Meta Platforms, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:META) AI chief Yann LeCun has proposed that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk could leverage a new paper from Fundamenta AI Research or FAIR , a team at Meta, to enhance xAI’s Grok .

What Happened : On Wednesday, LeCun took to X , formerly Twitter , and shared a thread by Jason Weston a researcher at Meta AI, explaining the new FAIR paper titled “CoPE: Contextual Positional Encoding.”

LeCun said, “A new paper from FAIR that @elonmusk could use to improve Grok.”

See Also: Former OpenAI Board Member Who Tried To Oust Sam Altman Says CEO Was Fired From Y Combinator And Another Startup For ‘Deceptive And Chaotic Behavior’

In his thread, Weston explained that CoPE is a new positional encoding method for transformers that considers context. It can “count” distances per head based on need, such as the “i-th sentence or paragraph, words, verbs, etc. Not just tokens.” CoPE can also solve counting and copy tasks that standard transformers cannot.

Weston went on to say that CoPE can solve artificial counting, selective copy, and “Flip-Flop” tasks where popular position encodings fail. It performs well both in-distribution and out-of-distribution, for larger or smaller contexts compared to training.

He concluded by saying, “CoPE performs very well on standard language and code modeling tasks, giving improved PPL. Future work: how will it perform if we scale it up to SOTA LLMs? Going to need some GPUs.”

Subscribe to the Benzinga Tech Trends newsletter to get all the latest tech developments delivered to your inbox.

Why It Matters : This comment by LeCun came amidst his ongoing feud with Musk . While the two tech titans have a history of negative public interactions, the latest disagreement started on Monday after Musk invited people to apply for positions at xAI.

At the time, LeCun said that people should only join xAI if they wanted a boss “who claims that what you are working on will be solved next year (no pressure.”

Later, when asked about his issues with Musk, LeCun praised the tech billionaire’s innovation in the field of cars, rockets, solar panels, and satellite networks but strongly criticized his politics, conspiracy theories, and excessive hype.

Meanwhile, earlier this week, Musk’s xAI secured an impressive $6 billion in Series B funding , raising its valuation to $24 billion and making it one of the world’s most valuable AI startups.

Currently, xAI’s sole product is a chatbot named Grok, which was trained using data from X , including posts by Musk himself.

Check out more of Benzinga's Consumer Tech coverage by following this link .

Read Next: Elon Musk Shares Hack To Improve Google Search Quality: ‘It’s A Real Problem!’

Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of Benzinga Neuro and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.

This article Meta AI Chief Yann LeCun Says Elon Musk Could Use This New Paper To Improve xAI's Grok Amid Ongoing Feud With Tesla CEO originally appeared on Benzinga.com .

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A Few Reflections on Creation in Genesis 1

Reflection #1: The God of Creation

Reflection #2: The Creation Week of Genesis 1

Reflection #3: The Age of the Earth and Genesis 1

Reflection #4: A Day is a Day in Genesis 1

Reflection #5: Animal Death and the Fall

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