Serious Student's Guide to Genesis 1

by koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

conjoint lecturer Avondale College

Australia

8 May 2010

Moses wrote Genesis in 1460 BCE during his stay in Midian after he killed the Egyptian and Thutmosis III's palace police were looking for him.

This writing is about Genesis 1 and it is for the serious student who really wants to read God's Word the way it was meant to be read.

Why is it necessary to look at Genesis 1?

1. It is necessary to look at Genesis 1 since the book of Genesis deals with origins and chapter 1 with the origin of the our universe, heaven and earth.

2. There are many fake ideas floating around regarding Genesis 1, that needs attention.

a. that Genesis 1 is not a literal report of Creation but just a symbolic chain of events described for ulterior purposes than the origin of everything.

b. that Genesis is pre-history and is equal to myths and legends of the Nations that surrounded Israel.

c. that Genesis 1 supports the gap theory in which God created heaven and earth millions of years before and then in Creation week came back in Genesis 1:2 to start Creation.

d. that there are problematic contradictions in Genesis 1 that leads one to reject the veracity of the events described in it. Some pointed out how illogical it is to  create plants on day three but the sun on day four. Our answer is that it is no problem for plants to wait 12 hours to get sun.

What are some of the principles that we have to remember reading Genesis 1?

1. Moses designed Genesis 1 very well. This was also the position of A. van Selms, the Calvinist Semiticist of Pretoria University in the middle of the previous century.

2. Well designed as it is, as one unit, Moses also built in purposefully some omissions in the structure. They are:

i) There is no cause description (Tatbericht) in the first part of day three.

ii) There is no effect description (wayyehi ken = "and it was so") in day one and five.

iii)  There is no enumerations ("and God called . . . ") on three days:  second part of day three, day four and the first part of day 6.

iv) There is no evaluation (Tob statement "and God saw it and it was good") on day two.

3. The result so far is that the report is well designed with intentional omissions. 

4. The omissions are not to be regarded as: errorful, incomplete, confused, inconsistent.

5. Omission of data does not mean that the data did not happen or it never existed. Here it is important to distinguish between two aspects: explicit and implicit description modes. What we mean here is that if something is not described and seems to be omitted it is implicitly there since the brain has the wonderful ability to "fill in the gaps". For the Kindergarten we sometimes give a circle with dots and they have to go with a pencil from dot to dot until the circle is complete. Looking at the dotted circle with its open gaps or spaces between the dots, the circle still looks like a circle even in the absence of dots in between. Implicitly, those dot exist and the brain "fill in the empty spaces" and guess the rest of the form ending with the correct result of "circle". The same with a dotted line and a continuous line:

a.   . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

b.   ___________________________________________________

Both of these look like lines but (a) has dots omitted. Does the omission disqualify it from being a "line"? How are you able to connect all the dots and see a line? Simply because the regularity of the pattern establishes the form in the brain. In Genesis one there is a pattern and a very well designed one.

6. There is a well designed pattern in Genesis 1.

Every day has a Wortbericht "and God said" = a word description:

Monday (Genesis 1:6); Tuesday the first part (Genesis 1:9); Tuesday the second part (Genesis 1:11); Wednesday (Genesis 1:14); Thursday (Genesis 1:20); Friday (Genesis 1:26).

But what about day one?

Day one also has a Wortbericht ("Let us make . . . ) but it follows the Tatbericht ("and God made . . . "). It is in a reverse order than the other days.

The deed came before the word on day one but in all the other days the word came before the deed. 

Let us now approach Genesis 1 step by step.

1. Try to get any translation of Genesis 1 that is in your own language and that is considered to be a literal translation.

2. Use various different colors and it is suggested to have about six different colors available. Color pencils are good for this purpose.

3. There are about seven items to look for under every day.

4. Make sure you find every day from the first to the seventh. We know that the seventh is Saturday since in Exodus 20:8-12 we are told that the Sabbath is the seventh day and in the New Testament it is stated about the death of Jesus that it was on the day before the Sabbath. His resurrection was on the First Day of the week and today Christians are saying they worship on the First Day of the week because they felt it is important that He was resurrected. Biblically there is no support for this but confessionally the church has engineered this position.

Thus, write with a pen above first day [SUNDAY]; second day [MONDAY]; third day [TUESDAY]; fourth day [WEDNESDAY]; fifth day [THURSDAY]; sixth day [FRIDAY]; seventh day [SATURDAY OR SABBATH].

5. Find the following seven items and give it different colors:

yellow:  Wortbericht [WB] "and God said . . ."

green: Tatbericht [TB] "and God made . . . "

red: wayyehi ken [WK] "and it was so"

blue: Tob saying [TOB] "and God saw that it was good"

purple: enumeration "and God called the . . . "

pink: blessing "and God blessed . . . "

orange: mission "and God command them to . . ."

Now you are in a position to make conclusions.

a. You can see the omissions of items.

b. You can see the pattern of all items for every day.

c. You can compare one day with the other and see what is the same and what is different in the form it is cast.

By doing this one learns how careful Moses constructed Genesis 1. There will be two surprises for you, namely the first and the last part of the report. There is a switch in order of a Tatbericht [TB] and the Wortbericht [WB] in 1:1-3 and at the end of the report the superlative addition of humans that were "very" good (Genesis 1:31).

Conclusions:

1. Does no cause description in day 3A means that God did not cause its origin? Absolutely no. Exodus 20:8-12 states that heaven and earth was created by God. So also in Genesis 1:1.

2. Does a no effect description in day 1 and day 5 mean that they never came into being?

3. Does a no evaluation statement in day 2 mean that God did not think it is good but that it is evil or neutral?

4. Does a no enumeration description in days 3B, 4 and 6A means that it was nameless? It is hard to conceive.

5. This means that we have explicit and implicit statements. When it is not explicitly said, one can assume that it is implied. It is logically and reasonably so.

6. This is the rule with days two to six but only in day one is there an exception and that is Genesis 1:1-1:3. God first created before He decided to consult or speak more creation. The deed to create preceded the word to create.

7. In a vacuum in the existing abode of God and its circumference, God created our heavens and earth on Sunday morning. An hour later the Spirit of God was flying over the waters and said that there should be light. The deed preceded the word for more deeds of creation.

8. All this creation took place within six literal 24 hour days and the proof for that is Moses' rephrasing himself a number of times saying explicitly that, for example Exodus 20:8-12.

9. Scissors has no place in the creation report. There is no way one can cut Genesis 1:1 apart from the rest of the patterns and separate it from the rest starting in Genesis 1:2-31. They are all one closely knitted unit. To move Genesis 1:1 away from Genesis 1:2 and then to create a gap for millions of years between the existence of primordial matter which is later refashioned by God during a six day week, is out of the question.

10. There is no space for theistic evolution that wants to say God created the heavens and the earth but the first day is symbolically the first million year and so forth for things to originate through evolution. Again Exodus 20:8-12 make such a conclusion non-biblical.

11. There is one question we still need to answer: Why did Moses intentionally made the omissions at some days? Here is the answer. There are about 5 items per day from Sunday to Friday. On Friday, Moses described the last part of Friday with the creation of humans using 6 items. The rest of the report from Sunday, Monday, Tuesday the first part and Tuesday the second part, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday the first part are all described using only four out of the five or six items available for use. In every of these parts, Moses left out one item randomly. There is no pattern or reason for leaving them out other than just poetic freedom to be implicit rather than explicit or to be explicit rather that implicit.