2 Genesis, Chapter 1 - "bereshit"
The above phrase has nothing to do with the extracurricular activities of bears in the woods. "Bereshit" was the original Hebrew title of the book, meaning “in the beginning,” and later retitled, Genesis, in the Greek Septuagint translation, “due to its concern with the origin of the world.”
This information was taken directly from the Catholic Church, which institution - at least in this instance - is surprisingly and refreshingly honest and forthcoming. In explanatory text prefacing the bound version of The New American Bible (regrettably, said information is not available from the online version, a link to which is provided here), it freely admits that Moses was not the author of the first five books of the Bible, commonly known as the Pentateuch: “It is true we do not conceive of him (Moses, parentheses, mine) as the author of the books in the modern sense.”
It goes on to say - and here, I’m encapsulating while trying to stay within context - the books are, “...the result of a careful and complex joining of several historical traditions, or sources,” and further admits, “...it is not always possible to distinguish with certainty among the various sources. The fact is that each of these individual traditions incorporates much older material.”
Every culture, at some point in its development, prior to its having acquired written language, employed a tribal historian, whose primary function was to serve as a memory bank - a mental repository of the history of its people. He or she would then pass on this information, orally, to his or her successor.
There is a parlor game that goes by many names, in which a group leader sits in a circle with a number of other players. He/she writes a brief paragraph and whispers it to the person seated nearest him, who then whispers their version to the next person and so on around the circle. The last person writes down the final version and the two are compared. The result of this exercise is always amusing, as the end product rarely even closely resembles the original.
Imagine then such a parlor game, in which a story is passed down through a hundred generations, a thousand - such is the reliability of oral tradition, and consequently, the reliability of the first five books of the Bible.
The original Old Testament was thought to have been first compiled in an ancient form of Hebrew sometime during the sixth century BCE, because Hebrew writing was thought to stretch back no further. However, Yosef Garfinkel of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem recently discovered a pottery shard during excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa, near Israel's Elah valley, dating back to about one thousand BCE, upon which was an inscription in ancient Hebrew (Paleo-Hebrew, or proto-Cannanite), indicating that the Hebrews had developed a written language about four hundred years earlier than was previously thought. This doesn't change the reasoning that established the compilation date, but it does leave open the possibility that some of the early Biblical myths were written down at that point in time, rather than having been passed on orally beyond that date. Still, that removes only twenty or so players from the above-described game, and it's a fact, demonstrated by any who have played, that far fewer than that are required to significantly scramble a story. Then too, discovering that Hebrews had the ability to write the Pentateuch a few hundred years earlier than was previously supposed, does not necessarily mean that they did - I know of no biblical authority to have changed his opinion as to the timing of the written work, based on Garfinkel's discovery on a few shards of pottery.
To summarize, Moses - god’s Chosen One - was not the author of the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, as is ascribed to him in the titles: “The ... Book of Moses, Called,....” etc.
And remember, “...it is not always possible to distinguish with certainty among the various sources. The fact is that each of these individual traditions incorporates much older material.”
In essence then, no one knows for certain exactly who wrote any of these books, nor, consequently, can there be determined the validity of the material, the accuracy of the reporting, or the reliability of the reporter, or for that matter, the accuracy of the translation of the reporting. (You'll find a perfect example in the next post, as I have personally found just such a translation error in our inerrant book!)
It further describes parts of them as, “...made up (read, comprised, rather than concocted - parentheses, mine) of many disparate (disparate: “different, dissimilar” - The American Heritage Dictionary) stories that have been reoriented, and given a meaning within the context in which they now stand.” It gives as a specific example, the story of Abraham and Issac (Genesis 22): “Within...(these)...traditions one has to reckon with many individual units; these had their own history and life-setting before they were brought together into the present more or less connected narrative.”
“Reoriented”? “ “...given a meaning within the context in which they now stand”?
By whom?
Just how subjective was that meaning? That reorientation? If anyone is to believe the contents of those five books, far more information is required, than is given.
With that thought firmly in mind, we’re now in a more realistic position to appreciate the first chapter of Genesis.
Most of us are quite familiar with the first line, "
Most who believe the Bible, presume its god to reside in “heaven”. If so, and if, as stated in that book, he created heaven, one must wonder where he spent his time prior to its creation --
Also, assuming this god to be immortal, there is no mention of what he had been doing up to this point. Science has established that the Universe came into existence approximately thirteen to fourteen billion years ago and the Solar System, of which the Earth is a part, has been around for four and a half billion of those years. The remaining ten billion years is quite a long time to spend devising a plan, but if this god is omniscient, as advertised (and it will later be amply demonstrated that he is not), one would think he could see what he would do in the future, skip devising a plan, and get directly to work on the project, rather than wasting ten billion years - but what’s a few billion years, when you have all the time in the world?
Note also that there is no mention of his creating all of the other planets in the Universe (and astronomers have so far discovered more than a hundred and doubtless millions, if not billions more exist, as yet undetected), his concentration appears to focus on this one, small, insignificant-to-all-but-us, globe.
There is also no mention of the scientific fact that Sol, our sun, around which this mostly harmless planet rotates, is in fact a third-generation star - one giant star exploded, billions of years ago, and that Supernova shot matter and energy into space, some of which coalesced to form yet another giant star, which in turn exploded, also showering adjacent space with its matter and energy, some of which coalesced to form our sun.
How do I know this? Because I wear a gold ring on my finger. Heavier elements, such as gold and lead, are only produced in third or later generations of stars.
Original, first-generation stars are composed almost entirely of hydrogen, the lightest element known, its light and heat generated by the nuclear fusion of those hydrogen atoms. Fusing hydrogen atoms produces helium, an element heavier than hydrogen, as a by-product. The fusing of helium atoms produces still heavier elements as by-products, such as carbon, and so on down the Periodic Table. It takes a minimum of two Supernovae to create spacedust that contains the above-mentioned heavier elements that will eventually coalesce to form a third generation star that could have planets upon which gold or lead might be found.
So although this god’s creation of Sol, our Sun, was heavily touted, no mention was made of the creation of the two giant stars that must, by the laws of physics and the existence of heavier elements on the Earth, have preceded it - because the teller of the tale was simply unaware that such facts existed.
But this planet was (1:2), “...without form and void” - checking American Heritage again, we find void to mean, “empty, containing no matter.” Sounds a little like the Norse Ginnungagap, doesn’t it?
“...and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of god moved upon the face of the waters.” Now if the “face of the deep” and the “face of the waters” are the same face, then “the deep” seems to refer to space, and the belief appears to be held by the writer of the chapter, that space consists of water, surrounding the empty, matterless Earth. It’s easy to see how an ancient Earthbound observer might imagine space as being an enormous dark ocean; today, we still refer to excursions into space as “voyages,” and to spacecraft as “ships”.
Next he created light, which makes one wonder how, prior to that time, he could see what he was doing. The rods and cones of our eyes see because they receive visible light as it’s reflected off of objects; all living creatures - at least those on this planet - that are capable of sight, see in this manner. Some are capable of seeing farther into the light spectrum - i.e., into the infrared or ultraviolet range - than Humans, but all that can see, depend on the reflection of light, in some form, for sight.
Then he divided the light from the darkness. That makes for a flowery phrase if you don't think about it too hard, but it begs the question, were they previously fused together or somehow mixed or blended, that required them to be separated? Darkness is simply the absence of light, and they’re really not all that difficult to divide - I can do it with a flashlight.
He then called the light, Day and the darkness, Night. Day, on Earth, for those who haven’t yet quite reached this conclusion, is caused by rays of light emanating from Sol, our sun, bathing a portion of the planet. The result of this action is that the Earth casts a shadow of itself onto the opposite side of the planet, which we have come to call, Night. There are rare times when the moon, in its orbit around the Earth, moves directly between the Earth and the Sun, blotting out the sunlight almost entirely, causing nearly complete darkness (except for the faint light emanating from the sun’s corona), despite which, on the sunward side of the Earth, technically, it is still Day. There are doubtless planets that revolve around a double-star solar system, or that orbit a single star that has a companion star sufficiently nearby to cause its light to bathe the planet as well - on such planets, depending on the positioning of the stars, there may well never be Night.
Again, a primitive, Earthbound Human would have no way of knowing all that science has revealed to us over the years, regarding our own Solar System and those billions of others that dot the dark void of space.
The Bible tells us that the evening and the morning were the first day. In a moment, we will find ourselves wondering how that could possibly be.
So although this god’s creation of Sol, our Sun, was heavily touted, no mention was made of the creation of the two giant stars that must, by the laws of physics and the existence of heavier elements on the Earth, have preceded it - because the teller of the tale was simply unaware that such facts existed.
But this planet was (1:2), “...without form and void” - checking American Heritage again, we find void to mean, “empty, containing no matter.” Sounds a little like the Norse Ginnungagap, doesn’t it?
“...and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of god moved upon the face of the waters.” Now if the “face of the deep” and the “face of the waters” are the same face, then “the deep” seems to refer to space, and the belief appears to be held by the writer of the chapter, that space consists of water, surrounding the empty, matterless Earth. It’s easy to see how an ancient Earthbound observer might imagine space as being an enormous dark ocean; today, we still refer to excursions into space as “voyages,” and to spacecraft as “ships”.
Next he created light, which makes one wonder how, prior to that time, he could see what he was doing. The rods and cones of our eyes see because they receive visible light as it’s reflected off of objects; all living creatures - at least those on this planet - that are capable of sight, see in this manner. Some are capable of seeing farther into the light spectrum - i.e., into the infrared or ultraviolet range - than Humans, but all that can see, depend on the reflection of light, in some form, for sight.
Then he divided the light from the darkness. That makes for a flowery phrase if you don't think about it too hard, but it begs the question, were they previously fused together or somehow mixed or blended, that required them to be separated? Darkness is simply the absence of light, and they’re really not all that difficult to divide - I can do it with a flashlight.
He then called the light, Day and the darkness, Night. Day, on Earth, for those who haven’t yet quite reached this conclusion, is caused by rays of light emanating from Sol, our sun, bathing a portion of the planet. The result of this action is that the Earth casts a shadow of itself onto the opposite side of the planet, which we have come to call, Night. There are rare times when the moon, in its orbit around the Earth, moves directly between the Earth and the Sun, blotting out the sunlight almost entirely, causing nearly complete darkness (except for the faint light emanating from the sun’s corona), despite which, on the sunward side of the Earth, technically, it is still Day. There are doubtless planets that revolve around a double-star solar system, or that orbit a single star that has a companion star sufficiently nearby to cause its light to bathe the planet as well - on such planets, depending on the positioning of the stars, there may well never be Night.
Again, a primitive, Earthbound Human would have no way of knowing all that science has revealed to us over the years, regarding our own Solar System and those billions of others that dot the dark void of space.
The Bible tells us that the evening and the morning were the first day. In a moment, we will find ourselves wondering how that could possibly be.
*****
Want to know just when that first day was? I can tell you exactly. The Man usually credited with determining that date was Bishop James Ussher (1581-1656), the Anglican Archbishop Armag and First Primate of all Ireland from 1625 to 1656, who, through a complex formula involving counting backward through the biblical generations, then juxtaposing the Gregorian calendar over the Julian, determined that the Earth was created on Sunday, October 23, 4004 BCE This information was published posthumously in a book with the rather ambitious title of The Annals of the World, in 1658.
But he was scooped by one of his contemporaries - Sir John Lightfoot (1602-1675), Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, published his calculations in 1644, before Ussher’s were completed. Lightfoot even went a step further - he swore on a stack of Bibles that Man was created at exactly nine o’clock in the morning - at least by god’s Timex!
Bear in mind however, that Native Americans were firmly ensconced in the Western Hemisphere, dutifully helping the Woolly Mammoth achieve extinction, for more than 11,000 of those 4,004 years.
Verily I say unto you, both of these men had far too much time on their hands --
pax vobiscum,
archaeopteryx
But he was scooped by one of his contemporaries - Sir John Lightfoot (1602-1675), Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, published his calculations in 1644, before Ussher’s were completed. Lightfoot even went a step further - he swore on a stack of Bibles that Man was created at exactly nine o’clock in the morning - at least by god’s Timex!
Bear in mind however, that Native Americans were firmly ensconced in the Western Hemisphere, dutifully helping the Woolly Mammoth achieve extinction, for more than 11,000 of those 4,004 years.
Verily I say unto you, both of these men had far too much time on their hands --
pax vobiscum,
archaeopteryx
Posted by archaeopteryx at 10/21/2010 7:29 AM 
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: religion Christianity Judaism Islam bereshit the Bible Genesis Pentateuch Moses Old Testament Khirbet Qeiyafa Paleo-Hebrew proto-Cannanite Biblical myths Exodus Leviticus Numbers Deuteronomy creation Abraham Issac biblical inerrancy the deep Bishop James Ussher The Annals of the World Sir John Lightfoot atheist atheism
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: religion Christianity Judaism Islam bereshit the Bible Genesis Pentateuch Moses Old Testament Khirbet Qeiyafa Paleo-Hebrew proto-Cannanite Biblical myths Exodus Leviticus Numbers Deuteronomy creation Abraham Issac biblical inerrancy the deep Bishop James Ussher The Annals of the World Sir John Lightfoot atheist atheism
Other branches of Christianity, and also Jews, came up with different days. According to the Eastern Orthodox, the date was 5508 BC
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Still just a tad of difference between that figure and 4.5 billion years --
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What's a half a dozen zeros between friends?
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