Mistakes of Moses Expanded Universe: Genesis 1

As an homage to the Great Agnostic, Robert G. Ingersoll and his work Some Mistakes of Moses, I've decided to publish my own remarks on the Pentateuch under the heading "Mistakes of Moses Expanded Universe." Star Wars fans will get the "expanded universe" reference. This series will begin with Genesis and go through Deuteronomy. I don't pretend to be an expert and this is simply a vehicle for disseminating my personal notes on certain passages in these books of the Bible that I find problematic for those who hold to a doctrine of inerrancy akin to the one put forward in the Chicago Statement. Christians with a more robust view of scripture probably won't have any real problems getting around many of the issues I am likely to point out. Those with a more traditional view will take issue from the outset.

Genesis 1 & 2 (overview)

There are quite a few odd things in the creation account aside from contradictions with current understandings of cosmology and biology. Most of the internal difficulties stem from the fact that there seems to be two separate creation stories that have been placed together. Chapter 1 appears to relate a more detailed “wet” creation narrative that takes place over 6 days in which plants then animals then mankind (both male and female) are brought forth. Chapter 2 is a “dry” creation narrative that appears to take place in a single day, begins with one man, followed by plants and then animals and finally the woman.

The difficulties have been variously dealt with by either glossing over problems, treating the first chapter as a prologue and the second chapter as a more specific account of what took place on the 6^th day, or any number of other creative ways in which the semantic ranges of words are stretched to mean whatever is necessary to provide an interpretation that escapes the difficulties. If one simply acknowledges that there are two separate and distinct origin stories here with different authors and different emphases, the passages start to make sense just fine with a straightforward reading of the text.

Additionally, there are striking similarities in these creation accounts when compared with other Ancient Near Eastern creation myths that likely pre-date Genesis. I suppose one could argue that those other myths contained the “cultural memories” of people that had passed on various details of what really happened and that those retellings had been distorted over time so that only the Genesis author got it right by divine inspiration. One could interpret these similarities as corroborating evidence for the Genesis accounts or one could understand these similarities to be more likely showing how the Genesis stories might just be amalgamations of and/or polemical reactions to the competing myths of other nearby cultures. Either way, the point remains that much of what is portrayed in various books of the Bible can be shown to have similarly existed or originated elsewhere. Its contents are not as unique as many are led to believe.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1 ESV)

This first verse is widely understood to denote creation ex nihilo (out of nothing). Some, like John Calvin, make this argument based on the use of the Hebrew word bara (create). Calvin says that since this verb is used rather than yatsar (formed), it must mean “out of nothing.” However, this is the same word used in 1:27 when Elohim “makes” male and female humankind. So did he speak them into existence and make them out of nothing or did he use the existing materials of the dust of the ground and a rib as the story goes in chapter 2? In 5:1-2 and 6:7 bara is used in reference to all mankind alive at that time. Were the people referred to in chapters 5 and 6 also created out of nothing?

Bara is the same verb used in Ezekiel 21:19 (albeit with a different stem), when Ezekiel is told to “make a signpost.” Did Ezekiel make this signpost ex nihilo or did he use existing matter? Other passages where it’s used with reference to God like Psalm 51:10 (“Create in me a clean heart”) and Isaiah 43:15 (“I am…the one who created Israel”) strongly imply reforming or renewing using something already existing.

Isaiah 45:7 uses three different Hebrew words for making something:  “I form (yatsar) light and create (bara) darkness, I bring (asah) prosperity and create (bara) calamity.” It’s noteworthy that yatsar is almost always used in the sense of forming or fashioning something (often a potter with clay) and in this passage of Isaiah it is referring to light, the very thing that many interpreters would suggest Genesis 1:3 claims was spoken into existence from nothing. This semantic argument simply doesn’t work.

Even the writer of 2 Peter seems to express the idea that creation was formed out of pre-existent water (2 Peter 3:5). Arguably the whole concept of creation ex nihilo comes as a reaction to Greek thought coming in contact with Jewish thought and is later expanded by proto-orthodox Christians reacting to the Gnostic idea of matter being inherently bad. Indeed it seems that it’s not really until Hellenistic culture impacts Judaism that one sees Jewish writings like 2 Maccabees 7:28 that directly imply the concept of creation ex nihilo. Of course one sees this idea expanded in later Jewish and Christian thought, but the fact remains that Genesis 1:1 cannot be said to necessarily imply creation ex nihilo.

It seems instead that Genesis 1:1 is merely an opening summation of what was to follow, similar to the opening of the Enuma Elish. Interestingly, just like in the Enuma Elish, there is no mention of the waters being created. Of course, in that myth the waters are represented by the primeval gods Abzu (fresh water) and Tiamat (ocean water/chaos) from whom all the other gods are brought forth. Marduk shows up on the scene later and uses the already-existing chaos water that he has conquered to make everything else, similar to what Elohim does in Genesis 1, but in a truncated and less dramatic fashion.

Genesis 1:2

The second part of this verse is usually translated something like “the Spirit (ruwach) of God was moving (rachaph) over the face of the water. Ruwach is interchangeable with “wind/breath.” The NRSV even translates it as, “…a wind from God swept over the face of the waters”. When Marduk takes prominence as the chief god in the narrative of the Enuma Elish, he blows his breath across the face of Tiamat the goddess of chaos and the watery deep and eventually overthrows her by splitting her in two (Tablet IV lines 96-100). Of note is that the Akkadian word "tiamat" is a cognate to the Hebrew word for deep (tÿhom) used here in Genesis.

Interestingly, Tiamat is represented as a sea monster, kind of like Leviathan, Rahab or Yam. I mention this because Psalm 74:12-17 recounts a strikingly similar event in which Elohim is portrayed splitting the head of a sea monster as a first act of creation and then carrying on with other creative acts much like Marduk does in the Enuma Elish. Why would Moses (and especially the the Pslamist) so clearly allude to the same motifs found in Sumerian, Canaanite and even Greek creation myths if his goal is to try and show how the God of Israel is so different from these other gods?

Genesis 1:6-8

In the Enuma Elish, after Marduk slays Tiamat, he bisects her body (the waters) and pushes one half up to fashion the sky and leaves the other to make what is below (Tablet IV line 138 to Tablet V line 62). This is very similar to what Elohim does in these verses when he takes the already existing water and moves some of it up behind a solid dome (firmament) to make the sky (after all, the sky is blue so there must be water up there, right?) and leaves some below for the ocean.

Genesis 1:11-13

Something of note that is often overlooked is that Elohim directs the land to produce vegetation. He does not create it himself, he orders the land to produce it. Interestingly, Marduk does not create plant life in the Enuma Elish either, but rather it is brought forth from Asarre, the land god under Marduk’s direction.

Genesis 1:14-19

In this passage Elohim makes the heavenly bodies and places them within the solid dome to establish a calendar and the greater and lesser lights are to rule over the day and night. If the point here is that these are mere inanimate created objects, then why are they given authority to govern? If Moses really wants to differentiate from the pagan concept of deifying the sun and moon then why even go that far? Why perpetuate the idea of lesser celestial authorities governing anything at all when this is exactly the kind of concept shared by the neighboring heathens? Tablet VI of the Enuma Elish is mostly an account of Marduk doing just what is being described in this passage of Genesis. Instead of being distinct, Elohim comes across as just another creator god with lesser gods doing his bidding.

As an aside, why is the moon one of the two great lights? We now know it's not a source of light, but rather reflects it. Playing games with the supposed semantic range of the Hebrew word for light (ma'owr) does not get apologists out of this problem given the context. The moon, along with the sun, is clearly referred to as one of the two great lights. Oddly enough, the stars (some of them larger than our sun by substantial magnitudes), which do emit their own light, are mentioned in passing. The Bible consistently speaks of the moon in a way that assumes it emits rather than reflects light independent of the sun, which is, of course, exactly how it would have appeared to ancient people. See Eccl. 12:2; Is. 13:10, 30:26; Ez. 32:7; Joel 2:10 & 3:15; Matt. 24:29; Mark 13:24. Yet no one today seems to have a problem with reconciling this with what we now know to be the case through scientific evidence even though it directly contradicts the Bible's portrayal of the way things are.

Don't misunderstand. I'm not arguing this is something that completely invalidates the Bible. I'm simply suggesting that any interpretive rationale required to arrive at the conclusion that there is no real contradiction with reality here could be equally applied to other scientific facts that seem to contradict the Bible. It's just a matter of degree. However, unlike some other scientific facts about cosmology, geology and biology that contradict the Bible, no one is going to accuse Christians that deny that the moon emits is own light of adopting a “compromise position.” Nor would they be considered heretics for rejecting the idea that that the moon along with the sun and stars has been placed in a solid dome with flood gates holding back the waters of heaven stretching across the sky over a flat, disc-shaped earth that sits on pillars suspended in space, yet that is the biblical portrayal of the cosmos.

It's quite clear that whoever wrote Genesis didn't have an accurate view of the cosmos at their disposal. Instead they had the knowledge that everyone else in the Ancient Near East had at their disposal. They apparently weren't tapping into some omniscient source that could've revealed these things to them, otherwise it stands to reason that they would have provided a more accurate picture of the way things really are instead of carrying on the incorrect notions of their time. What better way to bring the sun and moon down from the heights of deification than to more accurately present them as merely a giant ball of fire and a rock? Instead they're presented as these mystical, albeit subordinate, great luminaries that "govern" things.

While we’re on the subject of the moon reflecting rather than emitting its own light, wouldn’t it have been nice if God would’ve revealed things like this thousands of years ago? We could now point to that passage and say, “Look! There is something that only an omniscient deity could’ve known and he revealed it thousands of years before mankind could verify it.” I suppose if that would’ve happened a skeptic could claim that some ancient could’ve easily just guessed that the moon was reflecting light from the sun. Of course, that would still be better than having his supposedly inspired, inerrant and infallible word simply repeating the accepted erroneous views of the day and going along with the notion that the moon gives off its own light in virtually every instance in the Bible which the subject comes up.

Genesis 1:26

Some will point to the “us” in this passage as early evidence of the Trinity. Others will say it refers to a plurality of majesty. Still others will suggest it refers to the heavenly court of angelic beings (the creation of which has yet to be even hinted at). But what if it’s just the first of many vestiges of the polytheism of early Israelite religion that progressed over time? What if it’s merely the reflection of a development from polytheism with a pantheon of a high god and lesser gods to tribal henotheism with Yahweh as Israel’s god, but still recognizing the existence of the gods of other nations and finally moving to strict monotheism with all those other gods being relegated to the status of angelic beings? What if that is the reason why the word “god” is in the plural form (elohim) and only later did the Jewish monotheists reinterpret it to mean something other than what it appears to mean on the surface? What if it really does imply that there is more than one god as the text so obviously seems to suggest?

Something often overlooked is the fact that when the passage speaks of mankind, male and female, it does not necessitate understanding this to mean it was the creation of only two people, especially given that other animals are said to be swarming and teeming. It’s only when looking back from the account recorded in chapter 2 that we are led to assume that it was only two people that were created here and not a group of humans, both male and female. However, treating this account as separate from the account in chapter 2 does not rule out the idea that the author had a bunch of anonymous human beings in mind and not merely two.

Genesis 1:28-29

Elohim addresses mankind, male and female, charges them to reproduce, rule the earth and all that’s in it and then gives them every seed-bearing plant and every tree that has fruit with seed in it as food. There is nothing about tending a garden or making an exception for any particular tree. The fact that this proclamation is made to both male and female would seem to indicate that it should be placed chronologically after chapter 2 verse 23 when Yahweh makes the woman from the rib of the man, if we are to take the passages literally and harmonize them. The problem is that the commands about the garden and which fruit not to eat of along with other events like the man naming every living animal of the field and every bird of the air had to all take place before both the man and the woman could be addressed together in 1:28-29 and all on the sixth day.

Let’s recap the events combining the accounts from both chapters. On the sixth day God makes land animals and in his final act of creation, God makes Adam from the dust. God plants a garden/orchard and puts Adam in it. God gives Adam the instructions in 2:17 not to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Then God brings “every living beast of the field and bird of the air” to Adam to see what he would name them. After that’s done, God makes Adam fall asleep and forms Eve from his rib. Then he tells both of them to multiply, rule the earth, etc. He tells them they can eat from every tree that has fruit with seed in it for food and makes no mention with Eve present of an exception that could potentially negatively alter the entire universe and damn countless numbers of their children to unimaginable torture for all eternity. All of this happens in one single day.

Naming all the land animals in a single day is quite a feat, as this would presumably include all now-extinct species as well as currently existing ones. Currently there are 10,000 known species of birds, 5,490 known species of mammals and 9,084 known species of reptiles. For argument's sake we’ll leave off all amphibians and every species of land-based invertebrate, which would number well over 1 million known species (including over 400,000 known species of beetle). The numbers we have included thus far, of course, don’t include the rather numerous and still growing list of now-extinct species of mammals, birds, reptiles and all of the more than 527 distinct genera (not species) of dinosaurs that have since been discovered.

In a laughable article, Creation Ministries International attempts to deal with the problem by using an undefined system of taxonomy and arbitrarily slashing the number to 2,500 "proto-species” and positing that if Adam named one “proto-species” every five seconds with a five minute break every hour he could have accomplished the task in under four hours. Think about that. The claim is that the hours-old Adam has the astounding mental and linguistic capacity to take a mere five seconds, construct a unique verbal utterance and assign it to something he’s never seen before and understands virtually nothing about; he’s able to do this thousands of times over without name repetition or slowing down due to either physical or mental fatigue. Do they really think that solves the problem? People are satisfied with that explanation?

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