In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
The earth was a vast and empty void, and darkness was over the face of the great waters, and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.
And God said, “Let there be light. Let there be light. And there was light. (Genesis 1.1-3)
1 On a proposal to avoid the conflict between evolution and creationism
The New Revised Bible 2017 translates Genesis 1:2 as “The earth was stark and empty, and darkness was over the face of the great waters, and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.” The translation reads, “The earth was stark and empty. The Hebrew word translated “stark and empty” is “Tohu wa Bohu. Since “Tohu” means “formless, vain, empty” and “Bohu” means “empty,” the first and second editions of the New Revised Bible translated “The earth was formless and empty.” The first and second editions of the New Revised Bible translated it as “The earth was without form and void.
On the other hand, the New Common Translation translates “tohu wa bohu” in Genesis 1:2 as “chaos. This translation is based on the hypothesis of pan-Babylonian scholars that the creation myth of the Babylonian myth of “Enuma Elish” is behind the Genesis 1 article. According to Enuma Elish, a male god named Apsu and a female goddess named Tiamat (Chaos) arose in the beginning, and when they merged, the gods were born. Apsu was killed by one of the gods, and his wife Tiamat plotted revenge. However, the god Marduk killed Tiamat and used her remains as material to form the world. But despite the hypotheses of pan-Babylonian scholars, if you actually read the Enuma Elish epic, it is as alien to Genesis 1 as it is to Genesis 2. Even though it is difficult to read the cuneiform script, nowadays one can read a partial Japanese translation on the Internet by searching for “enuma elish,” or a full English translation by searching for “enuma elish. The validity of the translation “chaos” is very doubtful.
We learned earlier that in interpreting God's revelation, the Bible, we should look for parallels with the culture of the time in which the volume was written, but we should also look for differences. Since God reveals through the vessel of the culture and language of the time in which the biblical text was written, there are similarities between the biblical expressions and the language of the time, but God is rather trying to speak a unique message that is foreign to that vessel [“Characteristics and Interpretation of Biblical Revelation: The Two Natures of Christ and the Bible” in Chapter 2 of this book; see also “The Two Natures of Christ and the Bible” in Chapter 3 of this book]. See also]. [“The Two Natures of Christ and the Two Natures of Scripture”].
Another book I would like to highlight is John Walton's “Rediscovering Genesis 1,” which was published in Japanese translation in 2018. In the book, Walton proposes an interpretation of Genesis 1 that fits the “temple theology” framework of the mythological cosmology of the ancient Orient world. According to Walton, the creation myth in ancient cosmology is the process by which the gods impart function to already existing material, and the gods inhabit the universe as a fallen temple. Walton fits the Genesis account into this framework, interpreting the six days as an account of the imparting of functions to pre-existing inanimate and animate materials as elements of a cosmic temple, and the seventh day of God's rest as an indication that God will dwell in a completed temple.
Where, then, does Walton say that the inanimate and animate materials that were already there came from? He assumes that God created the materials from nothing long before the seven days of Genesis 1, and that they had undergone a long period of evolution, say 4.6 billion years, before they were ready to be given roles. He says that dinosaurs and fossil humans predate the seven days of creation [ see John Walton, “Rediscovering Genesis 1: Reading the Bible with an Ancient Worldview,” Inochino Kotoba, 2008, pp. 197,198]. [“The Bible is a book of the Bible,” p. 197, 198, 2008]. Thus, Walton suggests that a confrontation can be avoided by maintaining the doctrine of “creation from nothing,” but by placing evolution before the seven days of creation, thereby segregating evolution and creationism. However, Toshio Tsumura, an expert in Oriental studies, whom Walton mistakenly cites as the basis for his theory, raises a number of doubts about Walton's theory, some of which are excerpted below [“Bible Missionary Society News” No. 174 and “Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology” ” Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology”. By John H. Walton, Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2011.] .
The method of embedding the Bible in the flow of ancient Orient cultures belittles the uniqueness of the Bible.
The claim that the Hebrew word bahrāh means “to give function to” rather than “to create” is based on a misuse of the word study.
It is fatal that it does not deal with the uniquely biblical matter of “creation by the Word of God.
It is impossible to accept the existence of dinosaurs and fossil mankind before the seventh day of creation as a literal interpretation.
From Genesis 1 to 11, there is no mention of God creating this world as His home.
Leaving the response to Tsumura's criticism to Walton, I will explain that, as for us, we are compelled to deal with the issue of evolution. This is because we have no choice but to declare that it is a ridiculous interpretation that defies the principles of biblical interpretation to hold that there was a “creation out of nothing” and a prolonged period of evolution long before the seven days of creation. If such a reading were permissible, anything could be said. There is a theory of “breakdown” popularized by the Scofield Reference Bible in the nineteenth century. According to the Scofield Reference Bible, there was a long break between Genesis 1:1 and 2, during which time there was the fall of the angels. In other words, the disconnection theory attempts to explain that the world, which God supposedly created as good in Genesis 1:1, became stark and covered with darkness in verse 2, and the devil emerged. But this is, in all likelihood, reading too much between the lines. Walton's assumption of the long geological interval required for evolution before Genesis 1:1 is similar to what the Scofield Bible did.
The essential difference between the creation myth of the Orient and the creation article of the Bible is that the former is fiction, while the latter is divinely revealed fact. If the Genesis 1 article were fiction, we would have no need to take issue with the theory of evolution. Just as biologists need not take issue with the creation of Momotaro. But if the Genesis 1 account of God's creation of the world tells us a fact that occurred in time and space, albeit in a different form of expression than that of modern science, then it is probably an important issue to understand how the Genesis 1 account relates to the theory of evolution. This is because evolution is a theory that claims to tell us facts about the origins of our elaborate world and the origin of the diversity of living species.
The subject of Genesis 1 is, as noted earlier, that the Creator alone is to be worshipped, and that man, made in His image, is to reign righteously, not to worship other creatures. As a corollary, however, we must deal with the theory of evolution as an issue of the modern era.
2 Atheistic Evolution
(1) Overview of Aristotelian Evolutionary Theory
I had been interested in biology and believed in the theory of evolution since junior high school, when I first read the article on Genesis 1 in my late teens, I wondered if the “first day” and “second day” could be interpreted figuratively, and if God created diverse species of living things using the method of evolution. I wondered. I later learned that this way of thinking is called atheistic evolution. Many atheistic evolutionists interpret the seven days of the creation story as referring to the billions of years it took for life in the universe and on earth to evolve. They take a single primate that emerged at the end of a very long period of evolution from the first single-celled organisms, and they say that God breathed into it the first human couple, and so on. It is true that “day” can also mean a long period of time (cf. Isaiah 4.2; Psalm 90.4), and some leading conservative theologians are theistic evolutionists. Whether or not God employed the method of evolution in creation should not be seen as a litmus test for identifying orthodoxy and heresy.
There are two merits to the theistic theory of evolution. The first is that Christians are not labeled as “ignorant people” in today's society, where evolution is considered common knowledge. While I am willing to be humiliated because of the “word of the cross,” it would be a shame if evolution were to make people think that the Bible is too silly to even listen to. The second advantage of atheistic evolution is that it seems to cover the flaws of atheistic evolution. As “the invisible nature of God, that is, His eternal power and divinity, is known and clearly recognized through His creatures from the time the world was created, they are without excuse.” (Rom. 1.20), this world, God's workmanship, points to “God's eternal power and divinity. The Bible asserts that if we take a moment to observe the operation of the vastness of the universe, the beauty of a single wild flower, or the intricacies of the mechanisms of our bodies, it is clear that there is a highly intelligent designer behind them all. Nevertheless, the reason why many people in Japan today do not even know the existence of the Creator is due to the blindness of Satan, the ruler with authority over the air (see Ephesians 2.2), the original sin since the fall of Adam to reject God's rule, and the so-called social common sense that we have been receiving since our childhood through schools and the media. information and the so-called social common sense formed by it [ see chapter 1, section 2 of this book]. (1) The fact that we are not aware of the truth of natural science.
(2) The Nature of Truth in Natural Science
Before dealing with the theistic theory of evolution, I would like to make two points about truth in natural science in advance. The first is that all scientific truths are essentially tentative hypotheses. Pascal's treatise on this subject is entitled “Introduction to the Theory of the Vacuum. At the time of the 17th century, it was a matter of debate whether there could be a vacuum, a state in which nothing exists in space. The ancient philosopher Aristotle believed that there could be no such thing as a vacuum in the natural world, and left the following words: “Nature abhors a vacuum. Eventually, in the Middle Ages, on the basis of Aristotle's authority, it was held that there could be no vacuum in nature. In the 17th century, however, Torricelli demonstrated the existence of a vacuum when he experimented with atmospheric pressure in a column of mercury. In the experiment, a test tube filled to the mouth with mercury was inserted upside down into a vessel filled with mercury, and the column of mercury in the test tube dropped until it reached equilibrium with atmospheric pressure. The space at the bottom of the test tube above the mercury column in the upside-down test tube was then considered to be a vacuum.
Descartes, a generation older than Pascal, denied the existence of a vacuum, claiming that the space above the mercury column of Torricelli's test tube contained “an unprecedented fine matter that cannot be perceived by the senses. Since Descartes' philosophy held that expanse is an attribute of an object, it seems likely that he denied a vacuum because there could be no vacuum state, meaning that there is no matter there even though there is an expanse. However, by conducting experiments on high mountains with low air pressure and at the foot of mountains with high air pressure, Pascal demonstrated that the space above the column of mercury in Torricelli's test tube is still a vacuum. Pascal held that the epistemological principle of natural science is experimentation, and that those who hold, on the authority of Aristotle's writings, that there cannot be a vacuum, are not aware of the epistemological principle of natural science, nor are Descartes, who put his philosophical reasoning before experimental results. Pascal left us with a chapter entitled “Descartes the Futile and Uncertain” (L887).
Remarkably, however, in his “Introduction to the Theory of the Vacuum,” Pascal says that Aristotle was right in saying that science is correct when he said that “nature abhors a vacuum. Thus, in the matter of the vacuum, they were right when they said that nature does not tolerate a vacuum, since all their experiments have always confirmed that nature abhors a vacuum and cannot tolerate it. （When we say that a diamond is the hardest of all objects, we mean all objects as far as we know them, and we cannot and must not include in that what we do not know. （In other words, since Aristotle and his disciples conducted the possible experiments of their time and the results of their experiments showed that there is no vacuum in nature, it is scientifically true that they concluded that “there is no vacuum. In other words, scientific truth is essentially a matter of truth. In other words, scientific truth is essentially provisional and can be updated as more rigorous experiments are conducted. All scientific truths are essentially tentative hypotheses, since they are theories derived from the results of a series of experiments.
Second, it is important to point out that people construct theories based on certain paradigms (frameworks of thought and fundamental assumptions). However, many people are so convinced that their paradigm is absolute that they are unaware of the paradigm in which they stand. Today, many scientists are unaware that they are building theories based on a particular paradigm, naturalism, and assume that science is only objective and neutral. Naturalism is “a general term for a position that considers nature at the root of existence and value. In general, it is a paradigm that does not recognize the uniqueness of the supernatural (ideals, norms, transcendentals, etc.) and takes things on the basis of natural things (matter, sensation, impulse, life, etc.) [“Daijirin” (3rd edition, Sanseido, 2006)]”. Naturalism is a specific paradigm, not neutral or objective.
Those who look at things from a naturalistic paradigm would say, “There is a stepping stone-like place in the shallows of Lake Galilee,” referring to the Gospel account of the Lord Jesus walking on the lake to the boat in which the disciples were to board. Jesus must have walked around there and approached the boat. The disciples must have seen this and misunderstood.” It is satisfying to find naturalistic explanations such as the following. On the other hand, those who hold to the supernaturalistic paradigm of Christian atheism, believing that Jesus was God's human form coming to rule over all things, would think that it is natural that Jesus would have walked on the water if he wanted to, and that it would be absurd if he could not have done so. From the naturalistic paradigm, it would be “of course by chance” that Jesus commanded the storm on Lake Galilee to “be still,” but from the Christian atheistic paradigm, “It is easy for God to calm the storm because He is the One who became man. If Jesus had commanded the storm and it had not calmed down, it would be rather absurd. This would be the case.
What the Bible teaches about the relationship between God and the created world is that God created all things out of nothing and ordinarily uses natural laws to provide for them, but also works special providences (miracles) when necessary. Therefore, Pascal, who stood on the atheistic paradigm, found the laws of physical phenomena through experimental methods, and in his “Panses,” a draft of Christian apologetics, he distinguishes between biblical prophecies and fulfillments as God's special providence. From a theistic perspective, the physicist's job is to read and formulate in an experimental way the laws that God ordinarily uses in providence, and to explain special providence (miracles) in a naturalistic way, that is, without God, is a cognitive method error. We cannot recognize correctly unless we use the method appropriate to the subject [ Pascal pointed out that there are diverse orders of reality (French: ordre), and that each order has its own principles of recognition. The spirit of geometry (deductive logic) is the principle of recognition for the world of numbers, experimentation for natural science, the spirit of delicacy for human life, and the authority of books for theology and history. Descartes' mistake in the vacuum problem was the application of deductive logic to the objects of natural science. See section 4 of my “Notes on the Biblical Perspective of Modern Thought,” in “History, Thought, and Ethics” in the HP “The Writings of Pastor Waterweed”]. .
So the first thing we should discern about the biblical creation article is whether the Bible teaches the creation event as being due to natural laws that God still uses to run this world, or whether it is due to a special act of God (a miracle). If we read the Bible normally, the creation article in Genesis 1 is described as an unusual and special act of “creation by word. Therefore, the writer of Hebrews teaches that the events of God's creation can be understood by faith, not by natural observation or experimentation. Through faith we realize that this world was made by the Word of God, and consequently that the things which are seen were not made out of things which are visible.” (Hebrews 11.3) In this regard, the atheistic evolutionist who strives to explain the miracle of creation, which occurred in the past, somehow convincingly by natural laws that are in place today seems to miss the point. It is as off the mark as the article about the Lord Jesus walking on the waters of the Lake of Galilee and desperately trying to explain that it was a ford. As a result, various absurdities arise in atheistic evolution.
(3) Difficulties with the Theistic Theory of Evolution
There are at least three drawbacks to atheistic evolution, which interprets the “days” of Genesis 1 as geologically long periods of time required for evolution. The first is that all of the supposed bases for evolution are weak, the second is that it is unreasonable to consider the six “days” of creation as a very long period of time, and the third is the influence of the naturalistic paradigm.
(i) The various bases for the theory of evolution are weak.
First, I will briefly list and critique five points on which the theory of biological evolution has been based, based on high school biology and geology textbooks. First, regarding the origin of life, it is incorrect to say that Miller's experiment of passing electric sparks through the “primitive atmosphere” based on Urey's hypothesis is said to have demonstrated the origin of life forms. The amino acids he successfully synthesized are not life forms, but merely materials for proteins. In this experiment, they synthesized four of the 20 amino acids, which are the materials for proteins, by passing electric sparks through the “primordial atmosphere” consisting of hydrogen, methane, ammonia, and water vapor.However, there are right-handed and left-handed types of amino acids, and all proteins in living organisms must be left-handed, not a single right-handed type.However, in the experiment, half of the right-handed and half of the left-handed forms were produced.Why life on Earth uses only left-handed amino acids is still a mystery today [ see “Medicine and Life: The Origin of Life from Precise Measurements of Left- and Right-handed Amino Acids.
http://www.jsac.or.jp/tenbou/TT68/P17.html].So, Miller's experiment proved that rather than an electric spark in the primordial atmosphere, life could not have been created.So, today, in a distressing twist, the panspermia hypothesis is in vogue, that meteorites brought extraterrestrial life to earth. But nothing has been done to solve the problem.Naturally, the question must be asked, how did this extraterrestrial life originate?
Second, if it is true that mutations, called evolution, occurred gradually in the past, then intermediate species, the transitional type from one species to another, which should have been found in countless numbers in the strata, have not been discovered, and the fossils of primitive birds and coelacanths, which were once expected to be intermediate species, have turned out not to be intermediate species at all.It was once taught that the coelacanth was a fish that lived 350 million years ago and became extinct.Based on the morphology of their pectoral fins, evolutionists assumed that they were an intermediate species between fish and amphibians, and they made plausible evolutionary fantasies such as that if they could see their internal organs, their floating pouches would have turned into lungs, or that they came ashore at night to eat insects. However, in 1938, a living coelacanth was discovered in South Africa and found to be just a fish.Living organisms that are still alive in the same form as those found in geological strata that are believed to be from long ago are called “living fossils.” Like the nautilus and horseshoe crab, the cycad, cockroach, and bivalve shells that are very common today are contained in very deep strata.If you keep a cool head, you will realize that these “living fossils” are not evidence that evolution occurred, but evidence that evolution did not occur.Not from a Christian standpoint, but from a medical doctor, Michael Denton, who states the following about fossil evidence: “From the eighteenth century to the present, the gutter has been a place where people have been living for centuries.“The fact that the gulf has not narrowed even slightly from the eighteenth century to the present does not mean that there has been a deficiency in specimen collection, but that it has deprived Darwin of the objectivity of his concept that each segment of nature can be made continuous by a progressively changing array of intermediate types.Darwin's prediction and his hope, noted in The Origin of Species, that future discoveries would bridge the gap, were never realized, as long as the evidence is viewed without prejudice.”[Michael Denton, Anti-Evolution (translated by Seiichiro Kawashima, Dobutsu-sha 1990), p. 451.The translator, Seiichiro Kawashima, was a professor in the Faculty of Science at the University of Tokyo at the time of publication.
The third, homology of vertebrate skeletons, is not objective evidence of evolution, but only a subjective interpretation to the extent that “it might be interpreted that way.The homology of vertebrate skeletons can well be interpreted from a special creationist viewpoint that the same designer made the skeletons of species belonging to the same clade into a common mechanism.Evolutionists in the field of molecular biology, which has been rapidly developing in recent years, also make the same argument for homology. The basic system of life - based on the genetic information of the combination of four nucleotides - is the same, and therefore, without a doubt, we are all a family connected to the same tree.”[ Kiyotaka Koyama, ibid., p. 64]” This can also be interpreted, from a special creationist perspective, that all species have adopted the same basic system of life because the same designer created them.
What about the fourth chromosome number?Like skeletal homology, this too is not objective evidence of evolution, but only a subjective interpretation.Humans have 46 chromosomes and chimpanzees have 48. Cockroaches, however, have 47.Cats and pigs have 38, and mice have 40.In this way, the number of chromosomes is of course not evidence of evolution.Recent advances in molecular biology and DNA analysis have pointed to similarities in the gene sequences of related species, which can also be interpreted in terms of special creationism.
Fifth, the familiar textbook figure that various vertebrates are similar at the embryonic stage of ontogeny is a fabricated figure that Haeckel conveniently redrew to fit his theory, as exposed in a popular book [ Francis Hitching, “The Giraffe's Head: Where Did Darwin(translated by Hiroyoshi Higuchi and Masataka Watanabe, Heibonsha, 1983), pp. 249-252.The author does not take the position of creation science]. .In fact, vertebrates are fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals, each considerably different from the embryonic stage.
The last fact against evolutionary theory that I would like to point out is the fact that, because of the diversity of the gene pool, variation within a “species” pact can occur to adapt to the environment in any number of ways, such as a St. Bernard, a Chihuahua, and a Shiba Inu being one species of dog, but crossing species and species pacts, or evolution, can never occur.Evolution, in other words, does not occur.Since mutation within the species paw and mutation across the species paw are two completely different dimensions, it is deceptive for evolutionists to call mutation within the species paw “minor evolution” and pretend that it is evidence of “major evolution. The study of mutations that were once expected to promote evolution instead demonstrates how fixed the species is.Toshitaka Hidaka, a professor at Kyoto University and former president of the Entomological Society of Japan, is not a Christian, but he says the following about the difficulty of crossing the species barrier: “Each species has its own distinct identity.This means that no matter how many different mutations occur, they can never escape from the clear creek.[The firmness of the species program has become increasingly clear through studies in experimental ecology and embryology.[“Hidaka, ibid., p. 118]” “We have a strong feeling that species are unchanging things, quite the opposite of the impression that biology has given us in the first half of the 20th century, that is, until now.Biology tends to emphasize only evolution, that species change one after another in pursuit of progress and development, but this seems to have been mistaken.We should have paid more attention to the constancy of species.[Hidaka, ibid. p. 124]”
(ii) Interpretation of the “Days” of the Six Days of Creation [ Mitsuru Nishi, “The Six Days of Creation: Various Interpretations on the ‘Days’ of Genesis 1,” Inochino Kotoba, 1995, introduces various theories on the issue of “days”].
Next, I would like to point out two difficulties that arise when interpreting the six days of Genesis 1 in evolutionary terms as a geological long period of time.The first is that since the elements that make up this world form an interdependent system, from the macro to the micro, if “day (yom)” means a long period of millions of years, then the world cannot function as a system. To take one of the simplest examples, plants that require pollination were created on the “third day,” but bees and butterflies were created on the “sixth day. If “days” were millions or hundreds of millions of years long, plants would have become extinct in one season.
Second point. There are two kinds of works of God: ordinary and extraordinary. For example, when God heals a sick person, he heals him using the natural healing power of the human body, an encounter with a good doctor, the doctor's knowledge and skill, prescribed drugs, and lifestyle guidance, which is normal providence. On the other hand, healing by special providence, so-called miracles, are cases where, for example, the Lord Jesus instantly created the missing auditory nerve by commanding the deaf man to “epatha” [ see Mark 7:24-37]. [cf. Mark 7:24-37]. Moreover, in the case of the healing of the Deaf man, He also instantly gave him the vocabulary, grammar, and other language skills that he would have acquired through his life experiences over the following decades, beginning with the speech from his mother that he would have received as an infant if he had been normal. This miracle was an amazing feat of instantaneous creation of decades of life experience that he could not have experienced due to his disability. In other words, special providence is a miraculous way of “creation from nothing,” which includes historicity.
Naturalists, by the way, use evolution as a theory to explain by natural law the emergence of the diverse species that exist in the world today without God. For the atheistic evolutionist, this means that the diversity of species came about through God's ordinary providence. So, does the Bible teach that God used either a normal or a special method of creation? The “creation by word” of Genesis 1 is a special method. That is why Hebrews tells us, “By faith we realize that this world was made by the Word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made out of things which are visible.” (Hebrews 11.3). The event of creation by word can only be understood by faith, not by ordinary means of perception. The interpretation of Genesis 1 by atheistic evolutionists is that those who hold to naturalism would say that the Lord Jesus walked on the surface of the lake, “It was a ford that Jesus walked on.” or the feeding of the 5,000: “The boy generously offered two loaves of bread and two fish, and the adults were embarrassed and offered their own lunches, so that everyone ate to their fill and there was even a surplus. This is similar to the painstaking efforts to reinterpret the situation rationally and morally, such as “The adults were embarrassed and gave their lunch boxes to each of them, so that everyone had enough to eat and there was a surplus.
(iii) Impact on the interpretation of the naturalistic paradigm
The Lord Jesus freed the deaf man from his deaf condition by declaring to him, “Epatha.The fact that he was able to speak normally meant that he had instantly acquired a language that would normally have taken decades to learn.Now, if Mr. A met the former deaf person for the first time a few hours after this healing miracle, he would not believe that the person was deaf and unable to speak until a few hours ago.If Mr. A were of the atheistic paradigm, he would begin to think that Jesus might have performed such a healing miracle.However, if Mr. A is from a naturalistic paradigm, he would consider the testimonies of himself, his family, friends, and acquaintances to be false.Depending on the paradigm one holds, the same phenomenon can be interpreted differently.
Evolutionists often naively believe that evolution is a neutral scientific theory, when in fact it is not. Evolutionists do not question the validity of the naturalistic paradigm, but rather build their theory on it.They do not recognize any special intervention (miracles) of supernatural wisdom or power in the development of the first life and its mutation into extremely diverse species.That is the paradigm of naturalism.Since no special intervention of God is allowed, everything must be regarded as an accidental phenomenon, and therefore the theory holds that it must have taken a tremendously long time to happen.Aristotelian evolution appears to commit the contradiction of believing in an evolutionary theory built on a naturalistic paradigm that does not recognize God's intervention in nature, while believing in an atheistic theory that does recognize God's special providential intervention in nature.
3 Special Creationism
Special creationism is the theory that God created the world not according to the so-called natural laws of ordinary providence, but by a special method, the Word of God.Even on this premise, there is naturally a wide range of biblical interpretation, but here is what I understand.
(1) Historical Preface of God's Covenant
Basically, what is the nature of the book of Genesis?How should we read Genesis?In view of the manner in which God chose to describe it, it seems appropriate to read it as a historical preface to the covenant document that God gave to His people.Studies of covenant documents in the ancient Orient have shown formal similarities between the covenant below Exodus 20 and the international treaties of the 14th and 13th centuries B.C. found in the Hittite texts of the Bogazkiye.It is also known that there are important formal differences between these late millennium B.C. treaties and those of the first millennium B.C. [see K.A. Kitchen, ibid. pp. 119-134].In other words, God adopted the form of the suzerainty treaties of the 14th and 13th centuries B.C. in making a covenant with the Israelites.Since Deuteronomy is also written in the form of a late millennium B.C. treaty, the theory since De Wette that places the establishment of Deuteronomy in the period of King Josiah's reformation (7th century B.C.) is an anachronism. The outline of the Treaty of Sovereignty and the outline of Deuteronomy correspond as follows.
（The Sovereignty Treaty and Deuteronomy correspond to each other as follows
Preamble and Historical Introduction Chapters 1-4
General provisions of the covenant Chapters 5-11
Theoretical provisions of the covenant Chapters 12 - 26
Blessings and Curses Chapters 27-28
Meredith G. Klein draws further inferences from this fact to discuss the nature of the Pentateuch of Moses, the Old Testament, and the Bible as a whole as covenant documents.Note especially the historical preface.The combination of historical statements and legal articles is characteristic of the treaty documents of the second millennium B.C. The historical statements are the preface to the treaty.The historical preface describes the circumstances that led to the making of the covenant and the relationship between the suzerain and the subject peoples.If the Pentateuch of Moses is considered a unified set of covenant documents given by God the Sovereign to the Israelites, then Genesis and Exodus, chapters 1-19, are considered the historical preface to the covenant below chapter 20 [ M.G.Kline, The Structure of Biblical Authority, Eerdmans, 1972, p. 53]. .If we are allowed to apply Kline's relationship between historical preface and treaty, then Genesis 1-16 would be considered the historical preface to the Abrahamic Covenant of chapter 17, and Genesis 1-8 would be considered the historical preface to God's Noahic Covenant with all creation in chapter 9.Genesis 1-8 is positioned as the historical preface to the Noahic Covenant to God's entire creation in chapter 9.The article in Genesis 1 can be interpreted as the historical preface to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil Covenant in chapter 2, which describes the creation event that is the foundation of God's creation covenant with mankind and creation.
(2) Creation from nothing (Genesis 1.1)
What does Genesis 1:1 mean when it says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.This is a declaration that God created everything from nothing.The expression “heaven and earth” is a Hebrew expression, melismus, which indicates all that is in them by putting opposites side by side.When Christ says in Revelation, “I am the Alpha and the Omega” (Revelation 1.8, 22.13), it is also melismus, which probably means that Christ is everything from beginning to end.Similarly, “heaven and earth” in Genesis 1:1 means the heavens and the earth and everything in them.In other words, “God created the heavens and the earth” means that God created all things out of nothing.
(3) Meaning of “Tohu wa bohu” (Genesis 1.2)
Then, what does Genesis 1:2, “And the earth was a vast waste, and darkness was over the face of the great waters, and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.”What does theIn the New Revised Translation 2017, “The earth was stupendous and nothing” is the Hebrew tohu wa bohu.Since Hermann Gunkel, pan-Babylonian scholars who believe that behind this text is the Babylonian mythology of the Enuma Elish epic, whose motif is the battle of the male god Marduk against the goddess who brings “chaos” translate “Tohu wa Bohu” as “chaos.” But in fact, “Enuma Elish [”The War of the Gods,” in H. Gaster, The World's Oldest Story: The Babylonian Hatti Kanaan, translated by Fumio Yajima, Liberal Arts Library, 1973, pp. 75-99]” If you read the “Genesis 1,” it is as dissimilar to Genesis 1.If it is said that they are similar, “Enuma Elish” is rather similar to the beginning of “Kojiki,” in which the gods appear one after another.
To begin with, “Tohu” originally means “wilderness,” and “Bohu” means “empty” or “nothing,” not “chaos.As Toshio Tsumura says, “to-fu wa bo-fu”
rather indicates “the initial state of the created earth,” like a wilderness where no plants, animals, or people still live [see Toshio Tsumura, “On the Earth and Water in Genesis 1 and 2,” in Evangelical Theology, No. 20, 1989, p. 125].It is reasonable to interpret this as follows.I think it is appropriate to interpret that God first prepared the earth in a state of “tohu wa bohu” and then constructed the world in six days, the first day and the second day .......
In the book of II Peter, we read, “The heavens were from of old, and the earth was formed by the word of God, out of water and through water” (II Peter 3.5).The Bible teaches that the creation of “heaven” was long before the creation of “earth.It is possible that this “heaven” includes the heavenly bodies and that they were assigned their roles on the fourth day.However, if this is the case, then verse 16, “God made two great shining things.（And he made the stars.” The word “arthur” translated “make” in verse 16 is “do” and “make,” according to Strong's, but this could be interpreted as “gave a role to ~.
(4) Understanding “day” (yom)
How should we understand the seven “days” (Hebrew yom) of Genesis 1?There are three theories.First, some believe that “day” refers to a geologically long period of time, but we have already discussed the impossibility of this.The second is that a “day” is 24 hours long.The third theory does not specify the length of a “day,” but rather says that it indicates the framework of the stages of creation.
The second, the “24-hour theory,” is simple and has probably had the most supporters in the 2,000 years of Church history. The twenty-four-hour theory suggests that the earth is at most 6,000 to 10,000 years old, which is an order of magnitude greater than the 45.5 billion years of the “old earth theory,” which is the conventional wisdom of evolutionists.According to the book, the 45.5 billion year figure is calculated from the half-life of radioisotopes, and is based on the mineral ages of meteorites using either the uranium-lead, potassium-argon, rubidium-strontium, samarium-neodymium, or other dating methods.The reason is that any of these methods, including the uranium-lead, potassium-argon, rubidium-strontium, and samarium-neodymium methods, calculate the age to be 45.5 millenniums [ see Mineo Imamura, “Aging” (Japanese Standards Association, 1991), pp. 67-69].In contrast, the Institute for Creation Science's “New Earth Theory,” which is labeled pseudoscience by evolutionists, criticizes the radioisotope dating method.Its criticisms include the followingIf a candle melts one centimeter per hour and is now five centimeters old, how can you tell how long it has been burning? How can we know? We do not know the length of the first candle, because we do not know the length of the first candle.Similarly, radioisotope dating is inherently flawed as a method, as the results can be quite different depending on how the initial values are assumed.
Another thing to note is that methods of measuring the half-life of radioisotopes, such as the uranium-lead and potassium-argon methods, are not applicable to measuring the antiquity of fossils. This is noted in high school geology textbooks.Fossils are found in aqueous rocks, but radioisotope dating cannot be applied to aqueous rocks because aqueous rocks are igneous.This is because aqueous rocks are igneous rocks that have been solidified by the action of water, so this method can only determine the age of the igneous grains in aqueous rocks, not the age at which the rocks were formed.
The only radioisotope method that can be used to measure the age of biological remains is the carbon-14 method.Here is a summary of how the method works from the website of Kunio Yoshida, an expert in dating and a professor at the University of Tokyo's National Research MuseumThe half-life of radiocarbon is 5730 years.It is assumed that only a trillionth of a trillionth of a carbon atom is always present in the atmosphere.Plants take in carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, and animals take in carbon dioxide through breathing and eating, so as long as the organism is alive, its body contains the same proportion of carbon 14 atoms. However, when an organism dies, it no longer takes in new carbon, and from that time on, carbon 14 begins to decay, halving in 5,730 years, so if a trillionth of carbon 14 in a relic is reduced to a trillionth, it means that the organism died 5,730 years ago [ HP See Kunio Yoshida, “Dating with Radiocarbon (Carbon-14).
http://umdb.um.u-tokyo.ac.jp/DKankoub/Publish_db/2000dm2k/japanese/02/02-12.html]. This is why the carbon-14 method is useful for measuring the age of Jomon artifacts from when the wood and other materials were cut. However, with a half-life of 5,730 years, this method is said to be valid for at most 26,000 years, making it impossible to measure hundreds of millions of years. Nevertheless, the geological columnar map created by evolutionists, for example, shows that fossils from the Jurassic period are 200 million years old.The source of these figures is a mystery, as far as I have been able to ascertain.By the way, the late Reverend Nobuharu Horikoshi introduced a dialogue he had when he visited Dr. N, who is an authority enough to give scientific names, at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Ueno on a young day.Let me quote a few words.
Dr. N. knew what my friend was talking about, and when I went to see him, he showed me into a room in the institute. After I introduced myself, I immediately asked him a question.
I am interested in fossils, but I have a lot of questions.One is whether there is anything that can be used as an objective calendar to determine the age of fossils.
Dr. N. says quite clearly, 'No, there is no such thing.
Then what is it that determines the age of the fossil,' I asked.
He replied, “That is my subjective answer.
Do you have any objective data?
No.'” [See Nobuharu Horikoshi, The Day Man Was Born, Inochino Kotobuki-sha, 1983, p. 32].[“The data are not objective,” p. 32].
It is an appalling story.However, in fact, the dating method using the half-life of radioisotopes is problematic in principle, and the method using the half-life of radioisotopes cannot be applied to the age of rocks containing fossils in principle, and the only method available for the age of living organisms is the carbon-14 method, which has a measurement limit of 26,000 years, so it is impossible to determine the age of a geological columnar map of hundreds of millions of years.years, the only available measurement limit of the carbon-14 method for biological antiquity is 26,000 years, so it stands to reason that the geologic columnar figure of hundreds of millions of years is subjective to the authoritative scholars. The “Dr. N” is an honest man.
The “new earth” theorists have introduced several other dating methods.For example, in a slightly older book, Sylvia Baker introduces some as followsEven assuming that the oceans were freshwater in the beginning, the amount of salt in seawater today is only 200 million years maximum.Old earth theorists kick off by saying that we cannot rely on the salt concentration in seawater because of crustal movement, but it is doubtful that this is enough to refute the theory.They also point out that even assuming that there was no helium in the atmosphere at the beginning, the maximum age of the earth is only 26 million years, based on the current helium content in the atmosphere.Other examples include that there is no evidence of annual accumulation of meteorite dust on the earth's surface for 4.5 billion years, and that if the rate of geomagnetic decay is constant, the earth would be much younger [ see Sylvia Baker, Controversies in Evolution, Bible and Science, 1983, pp. 76 -96].[see “The Controversy of Evolution,” The Bible and Science, 1983, pp. 76 -96]. Various methods have been used to attempt to date the earth, but the fact seems to be that the results are actually disparate.No objective method for measuring the antiquity of fossils back in time seems to have been established.
Be that as it may, if, as Christ explained in the miracle where he commanded the deaf man to “Epatha,” God performed a series of creation that began when he commanded “Let there be light,” and there was light, in a short period of miracles, then the pace of operation of the universe by the natural laws that are currently functioning can be used as a yardstickas a measure of the pace of the operation of the universe by the natural laws that are currently functioning, it is nonsense to estimate the timing of the beginning of the earth.This is because, as is the case with the miracle of Epatha, God's miracles are instantaneous creations of long-temporal states. The person who was freed from that deafness symptom was given instantaneous language and vocabulary skills that would normally be acquired through decades of experience.The first Adam and his wife were created not as one-day-old babies, but as adult men and women who appeared to be about twenty years old.Naturally, we must assume that the entire world in which they lived was also created as a perfected state with a seemingly “old” appearance, imbued with a long timelessness.Otherwise, they would not be able to live.The Andromeda Nebula is said to exist 253,700 light years away, so it would take 253,700 years for light to reach the earth from the nebula.M. Erikson calls this view the “ideal point in time theory,” which “clearly regards God as a deceiver [ M. Erikson, Christian Theology, vol. 2 (Inochino Kotoba, 2004), p. 151; see also M. Erikson, ”Theology of Christianity, vol. 2 (Inochino Kotoba, 2004), p. 151. ]” But it is not that God is deceiving, but that man, who does not believe in the creation of a short time period by the Word, has simply misunderstood that it must have taken billions of years on his own.It is a disrespectful misunderstanding of God to say that “God is deceiving.
Nevertheless, since the sun, moon, and stars were given the role of marking the calendar on the fourth day, it is unreasonable to assert that the first three days were also 24 hours a day.Moreover, the Bible itself teaches that “the heavens were of old, and the earth was formed by the word of God, out of and through water” (II Peter 3.5), so the first day was a very long period of time.We do not know how long the second day was when the sky and the sea were created, and the third day when the land and plants were created, but considering the interdependence between the plants of the third day and the animals of the fifth and sixth days, it is unreasonable to consider them as geologically long periods of time. Since the celestial body begins to function as a calendar on the fourth day, it would be reasonable to view it as a 24-hour period.Note that the seventh day is not concluded with the phrase “there was evening and there was morning” as the other six days are, and it was Augustine who interpreted this rest to mean an endless blessing with God [ see Augustine, Confessions, Book 13, Chapter 36, 51].[see Augustine, Confessions, Book 13, Chapter 36, 51].
Thus, since the Bible teaches that the length of each of the seven “days” of creation is a very long period of time for the first day, and it seems reasonable to view the other “days” as twenty-four hours, it is unreasonable to assert, as the Institute for Creation Science does, that the claim that all “days” are twenty-four hours is the only Biblical truth It is not reasonable to assert, as the Institute for Creation Science does, that all “days” are 24 hours long. Rather, it seems more consistent with the biblical account to understand the “seven days of creation” as a framework or stage in the creation process. Some people argue that the first three days of the six-day period correspond to the first three days of the second three days of creation. In other words, the first day of the creation of light corresponds to the fourth day of the creation of the celestial bodies that govern the calendar, the second day of the creation of the sky and the sea corresponds to the fifth day of the creation of flying animals and animals living in the sea, and the third day of the creation of land and plants corresponds to the sixth day of the creation of land animals and humans living there. However, there is no proof that this is the case. However, as a kind of framework theory, it would be going too far to say that the order of the “seven days” does not reflect the creation process at all. The description of the first, second, and third days ......, when read honestly, clearly indicates an order, even if the length of each day varies.
(4) “Every kind”.
Genesis 1, in describing the creation of plants and animals, repeats the expression “in kind” (see Genesis 1.11, 12, 21, 24, 25).The Bible teaches that God did not create a single species by chance through ordinary providence, as evolutionary theory suggests, and then accidentally branch out into a variety of species over a very long period of time, but that God created a variety of species from the beginning.The apple is the apple from the beginning, the tangerine is the tangerine from the beginning, the vine is the vine from the beginning, the sparrow is the sparrow from the beginning, the sardine is the sardine from the beginning, the tuna is the tuna from the beginning, the dog is the dog from the beginning, the cat is the cat from the beginning, and the human is the human from the beginning.God prepared a blueprint, DNA, for each species.
The statement “for each kind” is also consistent with the vast amount of experimentation in breeding. Within a single species, genetic diversity is provided so that it can adapt to its environment, but there is no evolution beyond species.Using the diversity of the gene pool, we have created rice that is suited to cold climates, and today we can produce delicious rice even in Hokkaido, but no matter how much we breed, rice will never turn into wheat or buckwheat.Various brands of apples have been produced through breeding, but they cannot become pears.There is great potential for variation within a species, but there is no evolution beyond the species.You can cross a closely related donkey and a horse to produce a mule, but it will only last one generation and no offspring will be born.Let me quote another quote from Toshitaka Hidaka, the animal behaviorist I mentioned earlier.
In reality, a species, no matter how closely related, is disconnected from the species next to it.Even if this is true in terms of form and color, there is a clear distinction in terms of physiology, behavior, and other aspects of life.Even if there appears to be a continuous connection in this respect, when the two species interbreed and create a hybrid, the hybrid is infertile and no longer produces any more offspring.There is a break between the two species. [ Hidaka, ibid. p. 171].”
We would be wise to realize that this world was created by the Word of God through an honest faith in the Bible.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
