GENESIS ONE TO ELEVEN – CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?
Barry and Helen SetterfieldIntroduction
We have presented this as a series of 6 lectures to groups for several years now, and a number of people have asked if it would be available here on our website. It’s probably time…
It is in these eleven chapters where science and the Bible meet, either to clash head-on, or to agree. There are a rather large number of people, both scholars and lay, who try to combine some sort of allegorical or mythical ‘spiritual’ meaning they assign to these eleven chapters with scientific interpretations as they are accepted today. When they force-fit these two together the Bible is invariably the loser, with significant sections ignored, deleted, or excused for one reason or another.
Is there actually a meshing between the data itself, found in nature, and what the Bible tells us happened? We believe there is, and that our research and the research of many others combine to show us how this happens. Nothing has to be ‘force-fit’ and nothing has to be ignored, left out, or excused. We have found that in a great number of areas, the Bible has been ahead of science for thousands of years and that we are just now catching up to some of what it has been trying to tell us all along. For instance, there is indication in Genesis 1 of a single super continent at the beginning, which then broke up. It took science thousands of years to come to that conclusion. In the book of Job, two star groups are mentioned: Orion and the Pleiades. The former is indicated as breaking up and the latter as being held together. It was not until our generation that we found this was so.
With this in mind, we are quite certain that there is still much more to be recognized regarding the truth of and in the Bible. But the incredible thing is that the Bible was written in such a way that the words might have slightly different meanings in different cultures, but they would remain true, nevertheless. A good example of this can be found in Genesis 1, which will be explained in that section. Knowing that we cannot know everything which the Bible is telling us, and probably won’t in this creation, we cannot claim here to have the final and definitive answer. But we can show you where the data we have found in the scientific literature actually leads, and how it truly does show us the Bible can be trusted implicitly to be telling us the truth about Creation, Noah’s Flood, the Tower of Babel, and the division of the earth’s crust at the time of Peleg.
Take your time. Sit back. Enjoy. Feel free to email us with questions or comments.
Barry and Helen Setterfield
The following series will be posted week by week as our Bible study group covers each section. We meet on Thursday evenings and I have promised to post the material the Friday or Saturday after. The last Bible study group continued for almost three years as we went past Genesis 1-11, going through the entire book of Genesis and about half-way through Exodus. We’ll see how far this one goes! However long it lasts, I am hoping to post the material within a day or two after each Bible study.
Helen SetterfieldOctober 23, 2008
Two main subjects covered
- The different texts
- Different ways of viewing Genesis; the Tablet Hypothesis
Different Texts
The different translations, or texts, of the Bible have probably caused as many arguments as anything IN the Bible. First of all, however, with rare exceptions (such as the New World Bible, translated by Watchtower in order to support the Jehovah Witness doctrines) none of the translations change God’s basic message of creation, sin, salvation through Christ, or any of the other basic doctrines. So why do we have different texts?
One reason is simple: we speak different languages. There were hundreds of years when the Roman Catholic church refused to allow the Scriptures to be translated from Latin into any spoken language. When this stranglehold was finally broken, a number of translations were established by various groups and people. Since then, the Bible has been translated into hundreds of languages for people all around the world.
All of the modern translations, from before the King James on, and including the King James, are from some version of something called the Masoretic text. There is an interesting story behind this.
The Jewish people who lived under Roman domination were aware of two very important things: their time was the time of the promised Messiah, and one of the promises about the Messiah was that He would rule as a conquering King. This is what they expected. This is why they turned with such anger on Jesus only a few days after declaring Him King and Messiah on Palm Sunday – He had made no move to throw off the shackles of Rome. So while many Jews did accept Jesus as the promised Messiah, the majority refused to believe that. They had, in essence, ignored the fact that the Messiah would first come as the suffering servant of Isaiah 53.
By 100 A.D., Christianity had a strong foothold in the Mediterranean area. Those who were believers were using the ancient Jewish Scriptures to show that Jesus had indeed fulfilled the prophecies and was truly the Son of God, the Messiah, the Christ. That year, Rabbi Akiba called the Council of Jamnia. There was a Jewish man, bar Kokhba, who was leading a rebellion against Rome. This man, Rabbi Akiba was sure, was the true Messiah. Bar Kokhba received much financial and theological support from the Jewish community.
But there was a remaining problem. The Scriptures were being used by the Christians to try to show that Jesus was the Messiah. What to do? The decision at the Council of Jamnia was to change the Scriptures. Prophecies were changed, some whole sentences eliminated. Interestingly, probably because they could not believe the ancients had children when they were several hundred years old, the cipher for 100 was dropped from a number of genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11.
When the Scriptures were changed enough to suit them without disturbing the majority of the Jewish population or the leaders, other copies of the Scriptures were collected and burned.
This new version became called the Masoretic text.
And this is why many of the quotes used by the New Testament authors, and Jesus Himself, which referenced Old Testament material simply do not match what we see in our Old Testaments. The changes were deliberately done by the Council of Jamnia. This very much includes the King James version.
So is there any way we can have access to the Scriptures which DO match the Old Testament quotes? Is there any reference around in our time which was not changed by this council?
Yes, there is. About 300 B.C. Egypt controlled most of the Middle East. At that time classical Greek was the language of the common man throughout most of the area. At the request of the ruler of Egypt, Ptolemy, seventy (this is the traditional number) Hebrew scholars were assembled in Alexandria and they translated the ancient Hebrew Scriptures into classical Greek. This became what we know today as the Alexandrian Septuagint, or LXX.
Since that time, there have been many translations called “Septuagint,” in which Hebrew has been translated to Greek, but the ONLY one done before the time of Christ, or even before 100 A.D. and the Council of Jamnia, is the Alexandrian Septuagint. It is in this version we find exact matches for all the quotes our Lord and the Apostles used when referring to the Hebrew Scriptures, which we call the Old Testament. The other Septuagints are all based on the Masoretic text.
There is one example in particular which illustrates the quote problem. In Hebrews 1:6 we find “And again, when God brings his firstborn into the world, he says, ‘Let all God’s angels worship him.’” That is from the NIV there, but all the versions contain this quote. What is being quoted? Deuteronomy 32:43. But if you go to that verse in the Old Testament the quote is simply not there. Not in any form at all. Unless you go to the Alexandrian LXX. And there it is. It is also in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
A word about the Dead Sea Scrolls. There are two groups of them: those written and hidden before 70 A.D. (when the Romans conquered Jerusalem) and those written and hidden after 100 A.D. Those written before 70 A.D. contain the exact wording we find in the Alexandrian LXX. Those written after 100 A.D. contain a different wording: that chosen by the Council of Jamnia and in accord with the Masoretic text, which was the result of their work.
There was another problem introduced by the Council of Jamnia. Ancient, or paleo Hebrew is a type of script writing. Compared to modern Hebrew, its appearance is a bit like comparing writing vs. printing in English. There is an even more profound difference between the two types of Hebrew, however. In paleo Hebrew, the vowels were part of the letters and included in the script itself. However in modern, square type Hebrew, the vowels are not letters, but dots, or points, under the words. And when the men at the Council of Jamnia came out with their new translation, they used the more modern square Hebrew characters which we have today…..and they left out the vowel points.
For eight hundred years, until 900 A.D., the words in the Hebrew Masoretic text were passed down via oral tradition. Think about it. Consider the letters HLL. They could be ‘hill,’ ‘hall,’ ‘hell,’ ‘hull,’…or a number of other words. Thus, while we have very reliable sources for our New Testament material, there are two major sources of possible corruption in our current versions of the Old Testament: the Masoretic changes and the 800 year gap before the vowel points were put back in.
And yet, God being God, the basic message has remained uncorrupted by man. A few verses here, numbers there, phrases another place got messed with a bit, but essentially we can still count on the Old Testament in most places to be telling us what happened.
There is one other point that needs to be made about ALL translations. It is very difficult translating from one language to another. Israelite culture and the Hebrew language itself are full of puns, double entendres, and idioms. What is a translator to do? Go with the words? Go with the meaning? Add to the text by explaining the idiom (if known)? So we are NOT about to criticize the various translations. We do know that many of the more modern translations have the benefit of some older texts than some of the earlier translations (including the King James), but, on the other hand, they seem to depend a lot more on modern scientific understandings in some areas and thus change the meaning of what the olsewr text was saying. The older translations tend to be more literal in their translations in that area. So there are positives and negatives with all translations. This is why, in our home Bible studies, we encourage our friends to bring any translation they choose. Then we can not only compare, but also compare with a Hebrew interlinear which we have as well as our copy of Alexandrian Septuagint, which contains not only the English translation, but the original Greek translation as well (which is available on the net, by the way).
This is also why you will find us cross-referencing many word translations and passages with the Alexandrian LXX as we go through this study.
reference for Bar Kokhba's rebellion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_Kokhba_revolt
reference regarding the Council of Jamnia and the LXX: Siegfried H. Horn (Professor emeritus of archeology at Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan), "the Old Testament text in antiquity," Ministry, November 1987
Different Ways of Viewing Genesis; the Tablet Hypothesis
The book of Genesis and modern science are at intense odds with each other. There are a number of folk who want to believe in the Bible and also want to believe what modern science says and so try to deal with Genesis in a number of ways. Here are the main ones:
The Gap theory.
Actually, there are two current gap theories. Each posits a significant ‘gap’ in time at some point during Genesis 1. The most common one is the ‘gap’ between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. By putting a gap here of millions or billions of years, it seems to accommodate the ancient ages declared by radiometric dating and seems to give time for evolution. The Gap theory as it is usually known says there was a creation which was destroyed either by Satan or because of Satan and was then recreated at Genesis 1:2. There are several problems with this theory: 1) if all or most the strata came before the Deluge then there is no evidence for anything from Noah’s flood; 2) at the end of creation week, God declares the entire creation ‘very good,’ which means Lucifer/Satan had not yet rebelled/sinned; and 3) the Hebrew grammatical structure does not allow for a time gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2.
The second gap theory is not recognized as a gap theory, but inserts billions of years ‘out there’ in space anyway. Russ Humphreys is a creation physicist. His white hole cosmology says the entire creation was spewed forth from a ‘white hole’ but that the earth was held at the event horizon while billions of years passed in the processes of the stars and the galaxies which had already passed the event horizon. This effectively inserts an enormous type of gap in day 4 of creation week. The problems with this are several: 1) although there is no real evidence for a horizon event with a black hole and no evidence for a white hole at all (even a ‘black hole’ has no real evidence, just the interpretation of some things that are seen), and therefore there is no evidence of anything pausing, let alone halting for billions of years at any horizon event; 2) even in the mathematical models dealing with black and white holes, any pause at the horizon is simply that – a pause. It is not a halting for any length of time; 3) the white hole cosmology clearly contradicts the declarations in Exodus 20 and 31 that the entire creation was made in six literal days.
The Day-Age theory
The Day-Age theory states that each of the ‘days’ of Genesis 1 is really an era of indeterminate length. This idea accommodates the ancient ages indicated by radiometric dates as well as, again, allowing time for evolution. There are, however, significant problems with this idea, too: 1) the order of creation in Genesis 1 does not allow for eras between events. For instance, plants are formed on day three, but the sun is not lit until day 4. Day 5 sees the creation of the great animals in the sea and the animals that fly. This disagrees strongly with the evolutionary order of land animals before flying animals. 2) There is also a problem with the clear, straightforward reading of the text of Genesis 1, where each day is defined by an evening and a morning. Eras do not have evenings and mornings.
Allegory
There are many who have relegated Genesis, especially the first eleven chapters, to the category of allegory. This means that there is a core truth presented, but the story around it is false. In other words, God is responsible for creation, but the ideas of creation week, antediluvian ages, Noah’s flood, Babel, and the splitting of the continents at the time of Peleg are simply fictitious and only meant to demonstrate the truth that God is responsible for creation. There is a significant problem for any Christians who try to take this approach, for they are then faced with the fact that the other writers in the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, as well as Jesus Himself, all referred to the events in early Genesis as true historical events. There is also the difficulty that every major doctrine in the Bible has its origins in these chapters. If the material presented therein is not true, then there is no reason to accept the rest of the Bible as true either.
Myth
Those who consider Genesis myth consider it to have been simply copied from other creation myths of the Middle East. This approach discounts any validity it may have at all. A major problem with this approach is that Genesis does not present itself as a myth, but as history. Literary honesty demands it be accepted or rejected on its own terms.
JEPD Hypothesis
Because there are some interesting anomalies in Genesis, scholars recognized about 150 years ago that it appears to be the work of more than one author. There was also evidence of some Egyptian borrowed words and phrasing in Genesis in some places, so these scholars felt sure that Genesis was written much later in time than originally supposed and by at least four authors, whom they titled “J, E, P, and D.” This approach answered the problem of Genesis referring to God in different ways. It appeared to answer the problem of the inserted borrowed Egyptian words as well. There were some problems with this approach immediately, however: 1) Genesis itself purports to be the original history and 2) it contained exact conversations and details which later writers would not have known or had to make up. In addition, in the years that followed, this hypothesis was discounted and then disproved both historically and theologically.
Genesis as True History
Thus, with all the other problems in the other approaches, this one must be considered. Within this area, though, there are two distinct possibilities
1. The most accepted by those who consider it true history is that Moses wrote it under divine inspiration. Genesis has historically been considered one of the five books of Moses, along with Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Because he (or his scribe under his direction) is considered the author of the other four, his authorship of the first book is often not questioned. This would certainly account for any borrowed Egyptian words, but it still leaves the different writing styles evident in the book as a question.
2. The Tablet Hypothesis. This puts forward the idea that Genesis is a series of eyewitness accounts with some editorial comments and names inserted later by Moses as points of explanation. This attributes the collation of the books to Moses and considers Moses as editor, thus also explaining why Genesis is considered the first book of Moses, even if he was not one of the original authors.
We hold to the Tablet Hypothesis and we would like to explain why.
In the 1930’s, P.J. Wiseman, a scholar, was examining some of the most ancient clay tablets in Ur, one of the most ancient cities in the country now known as Iraq. He noticed something interesting about the oldest ones there. Whereas most of the later tablets were like our ‘essays’ today, with the title and author at the top, the most ancient were different: the ‘title’ and author were at the bottom, somewhat like signing a letter. In other words, the written material preceded the author’s name.
He looked at Genesis. There, eleven times, was the same phrase he was seeing as the ‘sign off’ of the most ancient tablets, the phrase often translated as “these are the generations of…..” or “this is the history of”, depending on the translation you are reading. If these phrases were the CLOSING lines of tablets, how would Genesis read?
Here are the first six times this happens, as a point of reference:
Genesis 1:1 – In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth
Genesis 2:4a – This is the history of the origin of the heavens and the earth when they were created.Genesis 2:4b – When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens….
Genesis 5:1a – this is the written account [sepher] of the history of the origin of Adam.Genesis 5:1b – When God created man, He made him in the likeness of God
Genesis 6:9a – This is the history of NoahGenesis 6:9b – Noah was a righteous man….
Genesis 10:1 – This is the history of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, Noah’s sons, who themselves had sons after the flood.Genesis 10:2 – The sons of Japheth….
Genesis 11:10a – This is the history of ShemGenesis 11:10b – Two years after the flood, when Shem was 100 years old…
Genesis 11:27a – This is the history of Terah.What needs to be noticed first is that men later combined verses so that the ‘this is the history of’ was used at the beginning of a passage when, actually, it may have been the ending of a tablet instead. This is why so many verses are divided as indicated by the “a” and “b” following the verse number.
Another thing that should be noted is the interesting opening of each tablet: it refers directly to the tablet immediately preceding it. There is no doubt about the order the tablets were to be read in.
So, could Adam write? If these are the tablets they seem to be, then yes. He, himself mentioned that when he used the Hebrew word ‘sepher’ in his closing line, as noted above. The word indicates something written, not something passed down as a story or oral tradition.
So , if these are eyewitness accounts, what about Genesis 1:1-2:4a? Who wrote that? The only eyewitness to that entire process would have been God Himself. There is recorded in Exodus that God wrote the Ten Commandments Himself on tablets of stone. He was certainly capable of recording the first week of creation for us the same way.
If Genesis is truly a series of eyewitness accounts, written by those who signed off on each of the tablets, we have the answer for the different styles of writing noticed in the book. We have an answer for the different name of God from Genesis 2:4b on (it is actually not a different name, but an added name). We have an answer for the recording of exact conversations and details.
But we do not have the answer, immediately, for the borrowed Egyptian words and phrasing in a few areas. The answer lies in what happened to the tablets. Only one existed before Noah: Adam’s. Because Noah is recorded by his son’s as being a righteous man, and by the Apostle Peter as a ‘preacher of righteousness’ (2 Peter 2:5), it would have been logical for Noah to have been given the tablet for safekeeping. He also wrote his own tablet and his sons added theirs. As the tablets of eyewitness history accumulated over time, they remained in the hands of the leader(s), finally ending up in the royal library in Egypt, as Joseph, whose family would have been in possession of them, was very highly regarded by the Pharoah. Over four hundred years those tablets then would have been kept safely there until there was another Jewish prince in Egypt: Moses. Moses had access to them, but he had been raised in an Egyptian household. Thus Egyptian words and phrasing came naturally to him. When he collated the tablets and had them copied onto a scroll, possibly even before the Exodus, he inserted a few modern names and some quick explanations in a few areas, which have given us some valuable information.
The Tablet Hypothesis makes sense; it fits the known data; it fits the acceptance of Genesis by other Scripture writers; it explains the differences in writing styles; it explains the borrowed Egyptian terms; and it matches what we see in the most ancient of tablets in Sumeria. It also explains why Genesis is considered one of the books of Moses: he was not only responsible for converting the tablets to scrolls (we do not know where the tablets are now, if they still exist), but he did the collating and editing. Thus, like any editor of a book which includes the words of different authors, the book is associated with the name of the editor.
references for more material on the Tablet Hypothesis
The Tablet Theory of Genesis Authorship
Oswald T. Allis (of Princeton and later of Westminster Theological Seminary), The Five Books of Moses, Presbyterian & Reformed, 1964
R.K. Harrison (Professor of Old Testament, Wycliffe college, University of Toronto), Introduction to the Old Testament, Eerdsmans, 1969