Creation, Evolution, Intelligent Design, and the Replicating Universe: 
What Does the Hebrew Text of Genesis 1 Allow?

For the full paper on this, click here

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Goals:  My goals for this paper are twofold:  (1) to introduce readers to the real issue of how Genesis 1 can be interpreted:  the grammar and structure of the passage; (2) to demonstrate to readers how various views of modern cosmology can be matched to what the text of Genesis 1 allows.  This won’t be easy since most readers will not know Hebrew and, frankly, learned to hate grammar in junior high school.

Before we get to the paper, I want you to be aware of where I'm at in general terms with respect to this topic.  I've

Affirmation 1:  The meaning of the Hebrew word yom (“day”) has a variety of meanings. That is, it has a semantic range that can refer to (1) a period of 24 hours; (2) part of a 24 hour period; (3) an age – an undetermined period of time.

Affirmation 2:  The meaning of the Hebrew word yom (“day”) when it has the qualifying phrase “evening and morning” (as in Gen. 1) refers to a 24 hour period. 

Affirmation 3:  The Day Age view held by Hugh Ross and others is hard to defend consistently in Genesis 1-2, most notably because of Affirmation # 2.  Day Agers are guilty at times of being “selectively non-literal” to defend their position.

Affirmation 4:  Those who espouse a traditional “six 24 hr. days” creationism are guilty of being “selectively literal.”  That is, if one points out to them other wordings in Genesis that have the earth as being supported by pillars, or as being covered with a dome upon which the stars are fixed, and which has “windows,” such features are called “poetic” or “metaphorical.”  The same goes for other descriptions of Israelite cosmology:

• the earth described as flat and round 

• the flat round earth supported by pillars

• the flat round earth over a place called Sheol

All of these descriptions are completely consistent (and often linguistically identical) to descriptions of the world and the cosmos found in other ancient Near Eastern texts.  The correlations are not accidental, nor do they necessarily denote literary borrowing.  They indicate a common conception.  The problem for “literal creationists” is this:  Who decides what is literal and what isn’t?  By what means (other than the motivation to defend your view and deny something else) can you demonstrate when you should take something as poetic vs. literal?  And if some things are to be taken poetically, why not the vocabulary of Genesis 1 that you say is literal?

Affirmation 5:  All the discussion about what “yom” means is actually peripheral to the larger question of the grammar and structure of Genesis 1:1-3.  Only when those verses are properly understood will the rest of Genesis 1 be explicable.  This fact is usually overlooked because most of the researchers who generate the heat in this debate don’t know Hebrew and get their position (and so their theology) from English translations or “word study” dictionaries.[1]  Lest I be misunderstood here, our English Bibles are good translations – the point, though, is that a translation (any translation) cannot tell you: (a) all the ways these verses CAN be translated; (b) what the implications of the alternate translations are; and (c) explain which translations are more plausible than others based on Hebrew grammar and sentence structure.  That is, translations have to make a choice and go with it – there isn’t enough space to give you all the rest. That’s what a good exegetical commentary is for, but you really need to know Hebrew to follow a good exegetical discussion.

Affirmation 6:  None of the above means that the traditional 24 hr. day view is to be discarded.  It is certainly one way of looking at the text, and perhaps the most straightforward way.  I say “perhaps” because [to repeat] the real interpretive crux of Genesis 1 is NOT its vocabulary.  It’s the grammar and syntax (sentence structure).

Aside from these affirmations, it's also important that you know my presuppositions.

Presuppositions:  It’s important from the outset for readers to know what my presuppositions are in going to the text of Genesis 1.  Here’s the list:

1. Genesis was originally written in Hebrew.  Therefore, Hebrew grammar and syntax should dictate what Genesis says or can say.  An English translation that does not reflect grammatical or syntactical possibilities is to be discarded as contrived and self-serving (or inept)

2. I believe the Bible is revelation given from the mind of God to human beings who preserved that revelation in writing.  What it affirms is therefore true (that is, it corresponds to reality).  Note I said “what it affirms.”  The Bible often merely reports things the way they were, including people’s beliefs, cultural customs, and elements of their worldview without “taking sides.”  The Bible certainly affirms there is a Creator who is utterly separate from that which was created, since nothing in its contents says or implies otherwise.     
3. I believe in a Creator God.  Philosophically speaking, there can be only ONE of that species—one uncreated being, one necessary being, one being who was and is apart from all that is created.  This God can be manifest or present in more than one person, but that subject is peripheral to the present issue.
4. Since God is the creator, when creation is properly understood, the results of that inquiry (assuming proper method) give us truth about the creation.     
5. Truth about creation and truth affirmed in the Bible are on equal footing.  That is, truth is truth.  You can’t have one “kind” of truth and another “kind” of truth if truth corresponds to reality.  One also cannot have one truth be “more true” than another truth.  If it’s truth, it’s true.  If it corresponds to reality, it’s real.  Note:  I am aware of postmodern attempts to undermine the concept of truth.  These attempts have not been found to be coherent (and if one says “they don’t have to,” then my point is accepted—since you’re trying to demonstrate your view valid but don’t want it to conform to reality.  You can keep your unreal views.  Enjoy them in an unreal way.  But again, this is another subject.      
6. For this reason, whatever one says about Genesis 1 must be consistent with actual reality discovered by science, and whatever science says must not contradict the revelation given to us in the Bible.  One is not a cop out to the other.  The approach derives from the philosophically incoherent idea that there are different kinds of truth or that one truth is “more true” than another.      
7. Finally, when I write or say that the text of Genesis is able to account for a variety of modern cosmological approaches, it isn’t cheating.  It’s waiting for science to get it right so we can merge general revelation (nature) with special revelation (the Bible)—so as to find out not only WHAT God did (Genesis tells us that much point blank – he created), but HOW God did it (we need science for that).  The Bible gives us the WHAT and WHO and WHY of creation; science gives us the HOW and WHEN.  The former is the agent; the latter the instrument.

Click here for my basic conclusions