Addendum to the Essay on Genesis, Ch. 1 - 3

This addendum is meant, first, to provide a more succinct statement of the Biblical concept of “in the beginning.”  Second, additional paragraphs are supplied on the moral fall of Adam and Eve and their physical banishment from the Garden of Eden.  Third, the distinction between Genesis-1 creation and Genesis-2 creation is more fully explored.  Finally, a separate section of Internet links is provided in order to facilitate navigation among eight recent blog postings on the history and philosophy of religion from a Christian perspective. 

      ‘(1) We previously indicated that the first Hebrew word in the book of Genesis is rendered in English as “in the beginning.”  This word occurs five times in the Old Testament, according to the “Bible-hub” Internet resource.  The latter four such occurrences of “in the beginning” clearly mean “early in the reign” of some king, indicating temporal priority and the idea that physical causes precede physical effects.  The first occurrence of “in the beginning,” however, refers to logical or absolute priority.  In logical priority, premises must be defined or understood “before” any necessary conclusions may be drawn.  In other words, temporal priority is empirical (based on the structure of the external world); whereas logical priority is conceptual (based on the structure of reason).

      ‘(2) The third chapter of Genesis deals with the Fall of Man, which in turn calls forth the Wrath of God in Romans 1:18-32.  In the NIV we read that “the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people” (2011) or “of men” (1978).  There is human culpability for this spiritual malfeasance, because God’s power and nature “have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.”  The fallout from such godlessness and wickedness is so obvious that it can in some cases be seen as merely empirical data, requiring no special theological treatment other than the summary doctrine of “total depravity.”

      We note in passing, based on the Bible-hub Internet tool, that the Greek word, anthropos (anthropon in the genitive case), is the common source for the two NIV translations of “people” (2011) and “men” (1978) in Romans 1:18.  Anthropos has as its possible meanings, applicable to both males and females, the following: (1) that which is “man-faced,” (2) a concrete human being, (3) a general or generic human being, and (4) an “indefinite” human being (or a “someone”).

      There is real ugliness or “aesthetic strangeness” involved when one is asked to make a switch in familiar Biblical linguistics from “wickedness of men” to “wickedness of people,” despite the facts that Biblical Greek is static and that anthropos has meanings applicable to both male and female.  Was the third chapter of Genesis incomprehensible until someone figured out that the “Fall of Man” was really “The Fall of People”?  Was the Shorter Westminster Catechism unfathomable for hundreds of years until someone deciphered the meaning of “What is the chief end of man?” as being “What is the chief end of people?”  There is today a real issue about the privilege of having a “dead language” in which to register Biblical texts and eternal truths.  Such an issue did not arise in the times of Wyclif and Luther, et al., who strove for the accessibility of Biblical texts in everyday languages - - which is a different issue.  One wishes for accessibility without cynical, rhetorical manipulation.

      ‘(3) Near the end of Genesis-1 creation, in Genesis 1:26, the NIV-2011 contains “Let us make mankind in our image.”  (“Us” and “our” refer to the Trinity.)  The NIV-1978 contains “Let us make man in our image.”  The Hebrew source for these “mankind or man” translations is “adam,” or “he who is taken from the earth.”  At the interface between Genesis-1 creation and Genesis-2 creation, in Genesis 2:1, both NIV translations contain “Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.”  Continuing on to Genesis 2:5, the NIV-2011 states that “There was no one to work the ground.”  The NIV-1978 states that “There was no man to work the ground.”  The labor shortage thus implied seems to have been one reason for instituting Genesis-2 creation.

      In Genesis 2:7, both the NIV-1978 and the NIV-2011 contain “The LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”  The “breath of life” in this context (i.e., in Genesis-2 creation but not in Genesis-1 creation) seems to refer to the spiritual content of human existence.  Spirituality is also suggested by the last part of the Schlachter 2000 German translation of Genesis 2:7: “So wurde der Mensch eine lebendige Seele,” where “eine lebendige Seele” means “a living soul.”  Thus, a fundamental quarrel emerges in the translation of the last two words of Genesis 2:7.

       It would appear to be necessary, in the analysis of Genesis 2:7, to declare one’s colors regarding the translation of the Hebrew word that is transliterated either as nefesh or nepes in the Bible-hub Internet tool.  Either the NIV (1978 or 2011) rendition is correct regarding “a living being,” or else the Schlachter 2000 rendition is correct regarding “a living soul.”  In Genesis 2:7, the word at issue, nefesh (or nepes), is the penultimate word of the Hebrew text and the basis for the final word of the English text. 

      The “being / soul” issue in Genesis 2:7 has been previously analyzed.  In the Wall Street Journal of April 5, 2019, Blaire French (a lecturer at the University of Virginia) wrote an article entitled “Putting ‘Soul’ Back in the Hebrew Bible.”  French wrote that “To exclude ‘soul’ as a definition for nefesh because it sounds too Christian does not do justice to the original text.”  Contra French, the NIV translators appear to be making Aristotle’s point that even plants have souls, which are simply “principles of life” and not a big deal for humanists.  Such translators do not scruple to remove “soul” from Genesis 2:7. In so doing they would appear to be taking a “low view” of the word nefesh as it was originally used in the context of Genesis 2:7.  The present writer endorses the “living soul” translation for the ending of Genesis 2:7.

      While summarizing - - in a somewhat speculative mode - - the apparent necessity for an additional Genesis-2 creation beyond the Genesis-1 creation, one might say that a genus (homo) with a certain number of species (perhaps more than one) had arisen in the Genesis-1 creation.  However, at least one of God’s intended species for that genus had not yet appeared by the time of the completion of Genesis-1 creation.  Ultimately, Genesis-2 creation occurred, featuring the venue of the Garden of Eden with its fateful ground rules, as well as at least one addition to the list of the species in the genus homo.  

      On the view, presented here, of Genesis (Chapter 1) creation complemented by Genesis (Chapter 2) creation, a new species originated in the Garden of Eden in Chapter 2.  The new species descended from first members named Adam and Eve.  Depending upon one’s taste, this new species could be attributed to a divine decision or to an unpredictable, stray cosmic ray that caused a decisive genetic mutation.  This theory of a bipartite creation has the advantage that Genesis-1 creation had evidently provided sufficient species with potential marriage partners for the descendants of Adam and Eve.  All species seem to have freely intermingled outside of the Garden of Eden.  This theory presupposes that the scientific fields of DNA and archaeology are valid modes of inquiry compatible with Biblical accounts of creation.  For example, one sometimes reads of studies of the percentages of Neanderthal DNA among various historical populations of homo sapiens.

Eight Recent Blog Postings on the History and Philosophy of Religion

Previous Blog in 2026

‘(1) Mar. 9, 2026: Essay on Genesis, Ch. 1-3

2025 Blogs

‘(2) Dec. 8, 2025: History of Religion and Timeline-Essay 2.2

‘(3) Nov. 10, 2025: History of Religion and Timeline-Essay 2.1

‘(4) Aug. 22, 2025: Philosophy of Religion and Background-Essay 1

‘(5) July 21, 2025: Commenting on Biblical Texts

2024 Blogs

‘(6) Dec. 3, 2024: Conceptualizing Free Will

2023 Blogs

‘(7) Feb. 6, 2023: Conceptualizing Secularity (2): Ancient to Modern

‘(8) Jan. 30, 2023: Conceptualizing Secularity (1): Definitions

Essay on Genesis, Ch. 1 - 3

The first Hebrew word, call it W1, in the First Book of Moses is translated into English (NIV) in the book of Genesis as “in the beginning.”  According to the Bible-hub Interlinear web resource, W1 occurs only four other times in the Old Testament, where it is translated as “early in the reign of …”  If one assumes that the creation of the universe deserves its own sense for W1, then we might postulate that W1 can bear either of two senses: first, as an absolute or logical “beginning” of time itself or, second, as a “relatively early time near the beginning of a phase, process or reign elsewhere defined.”  In the case of Genesis 1:1, W1 is taken to refer to absolute or logical priority: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

  Analysis requires that we seek to remove the quotation marks surrounding the word “beginning” in the phrase “the ‘beginning’ of time itself.”  Let A be the phrase “the ‘beginning’ of time itself.”  Let B be the phrase “time itself.”  By saying that “A is logically prior to B,” we mean that B must be understood in terms that include A (as a matter of knowledge); as well as that “if B exists, then A exists” (as a matter of ontology).  It would seem that the offending quotation marks can indeed be dropped.

In contrast, consider the events C and D.  By saying that C is temporally prior to D, we are saying something about four-dimensional space-time that is both consistent with special relativity and informative regarding the so-called “time-stamps” associated with C and D.  When relativistic effects are negligible, then “C being temporally prior to D” means that “the time value associated with C is less than the time value associated with D.

In English, the absolute (logical) versus temporal distinction seems reasonable: We may say things like “In (or at) the beginning of the war, each side had ten warships” (absolute beginning).  We might also say that “In the beginning of the war, each side failed repeatedly before finally launching ten warships” (relatively early in a temporal process, or during some imprecisely defined “days of yore”).

In German, the same absolute (logical) versus temporal distinction is indeed picked up in the Schlachter 2000 translation of Genesis 1:1, but to the opposite effect: In all German usage known to the current writer, “Am Anfang” could potentially bear either of the aforementioned two senses.  However, Schlachter renders Genesis 1:1 as “Im Anfang,” which seems to refer exclusively to the sense of “relatively early in a process.”  Generally, the present writer expects reliable translation, good German, and helpful and accurate notes in Schlacher.  But in this instance, online Luther resources verify that Martin Luther translated Genesis 1:1 as “Am Anfang schuf Gott Himmel und Erde.”

“In the beginning,” the logical necessity of Genesis-1 creation was about to be embraced (comprehended in thought).  The earth and the deep (the sea below and the heavens above) were desolate (formless), empty, and dark (Gen. 1:2); as well as seeming metaphorically to cry out for some ex-nihilo creation.  The Spirit of God was “hovering above the waters,” setting the stage for God to proclaim a six-fold “Let there be …”  On each of the Six Days of Creation (Gen. 1:3-31), God would “speak some aspect of the world into existence.”

In the Six Days of Creation portrayed by Genesis 1:3-31; six differing, overlapping, non-consecutive time intervals of universal creation and development occur.  This six-fold plan of creation featured the following: There was to be initial radiation, inorganic phase separation (solid - liquid - gas), organic plant life, astronomical development of stars, organic animal life in the water and in the air, and organic land-based animal life including mankind.  On the Sixth Day, creatures that could be referred to as man, mankind, Menschen, or “generic adam” (he who is taken from the earth) appear in Gen. 1:26-27.  In the words of Gen. 2:1, “So were the heavens and the earth completed in their vast array.”

Tto the nearest integer multiple of five billion, the universe’s inaugural radiative blast (Big Bang) has dominated about fifteen billion years of universal development; and the declaration “Let there be light” (Gen. 1:3) can therefore only refer to one metaphorical day, namely, the First Day of Creation.  Moreover, there is no expectation that - - for example - - organic plant life (Day 3) must develop before stellar development (Day 4) can occur.  The developments or tasks envisioned by the Six Days of Creation are only logical prerequisites for the overall creative process.  This reading is consistent with a Biblical understanding in which metaphor and literal interpretation peacefully coexist.

Among the events of the Sixth Day of Creation in Gen. 1:26-27, God is said either to have “made mankind in our (Trinitarian) image” or to have “created mankind in His (God’s) own image.”  However, He had not yet explicitly “added form” to the dust of the earth, which is the material cause of mankind (Gen. 2:7).  Indeed, in Gen. 2:5, no Mensch was even available to cultivate newly available agricultural land.

In view of the labor shortage appearing in Gen. 2:5, it would seem to be more appropriate to redefine the term “mankind” in Gen. 1:26-27 as “the set of all hominids.”  Then the subset of all hominids, referred to in Gen. 2:7, can be relabeled as man, mankind, Menschen, or “generic adam.”  This subset of hominids refers, at first, to Adam and Eve, when they lived in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 2:8).  Later, upon being driven out of the Garden after the Fall of Man (Gen. 3:7-24), Adam and Eve would also have descendants falling into this subset.  Man, mankind, Menschen, or “generic adam” have a prescribed, restrictive relationship with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:17).  In contrast, while the members of the set of all hominids may have logged an enormous number of travel miles during epic adventures accessible to archaeology, these migrations did not earn all hominids a special relationship to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The old-earth timeline portrayed by the Days of Genesis 1 differs from the young-earth timeline developed in Genesis 2.  (See the blog post of Nov. 10, 2025.)  Genesis 1 deals with the six metaphorical days of Biblical creation.  These are not six intervals of physical time, but rather are representations of six tasks logically required to have been accomplished before the whole panoply of heavens and earth could finally be assembled and proclaimed to have been “completed in all their vast array.”  Internal to each of these six metaphorical days, there may be temporal processes; but, overall, there seems to be no unifying time allowing sequential completion of all six tasks.  In contrast, Genesis 2 only begins its account of mankind and the Garden of Eden after the “heavens-and-earth completion” proclaimed by Gen. 2:1.  Evidently, the Big Bang, planetary formation, and hundreds of thousands of years’ worth of archeological data had all started in the remote past, long before the Genesis 2 story.

In Genesis 2:10-14, the four rivers flowing in the vicinity of the Garden of Eden are mentioned: the Pishon (near the land of Havilah), the Gihon (near the land of Cush in southeastern Mesopotamia, not in Africa), the Tigris (east of Ashur, or ancient Assyria), and the Euphrates (no data here, but it is the river flowing through ancient Babylon).  Owing to radical landscape changes due to the later, catastrophic flood, the locations and flow directions of these rivers do not sound entirely familiar.

“Adam” and “Eve” as proper names appear only gradually in the Book of Genesis.  For example, the NIV English translation of “adam” (he who is taken from the earth) changes from “a generic man” to “the particular man named Adam” in Gen. 3:20.  Next, Adam chooses to name his wife “Eve.”  Thus, Genesis 3:20 seems, momentarily, to be the first verse with both Adam and Eve mentioned as proper names.  Regrettably, however, the Schlachter 2000 German translation still uses Mensch (generic adam) as the person doing the wife-naming in Gen. 3:20.  Eve, or Eva, means life, living, or the mother of all the descendants of Adam.

In Gen. 3:1-6, the tempting snake was more deceptive than any other animal in the fields and was therefore capable of inducing Eve (who also induced Adam) into eating from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  In Gen. 3:22, God deplores the fact that man now knows good and evil, because man now needs only to reach out and to eat from the fruit of the tree of life in order to live forever.  In order to avoid this final, forbidden step (Gen. 3:23-24), God first banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden.  God then strategically placed cherubim (angelic creatures) and a flaming sword to guard against, and presumably to prevent, mankind’s return from exile back into the vicinity (Garden of Eden) of the tree of life.

Background for Genesis Essay – 2.2

Biblical Timeline for Genesis: Before reading the book of Genesis straight through, we will assign provisional dates to some of the events in its narrative.  In terms of the preceding blog in this series, we are now working with the Young-Earth Timeline, whose “time-zero” is the essentially simultaneous appearance of Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden.  Assigning dates (as “years B.C.” or “years ago”) to prominent events on this timeline seems to be heuristically useful, albeit fraught with inevitable assumptions and approximations.

Assigning dates to some Middle Eastern events on a relatively short timeline does not rule out the possibility of assigning dates to events on anthropological or cosmological timelines, provided that there is no equivocation on the term “the first human.”  This term might refer (on a short timeline) to the first hominid with an implicit covenant with the God who created the heavens, the earth, and a right relationship with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Alternately, this term might refer (on a long timeline) to the first hominid that possessed a certain technically specified DNA type and that arose in Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago.  (One notes in passing that the fallacy of equivocation occurs if one word is used in two different senses in the same argument, whose validity depends on that word having a constant meaning throughout the argument.)

The time interval for a renowned Biblical narrative - - from Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden; to Noah, his Ark, and the ensuing, cataclysmic Flood - - consists of the ten strongly overlapping generations from Adam to Noah.  Among these antediluvian patriarchs, Adam is generation #1; while Noah is generation #10.  Seven of these ten patriarchs lived to be at least 900 years old at the time of their deaths.  Only the 10th generation (Noah) was born after the death of Adam, thereby becoming the only antediluvian patriarch whom Adam could not possibly have met.  Upon data-mining pre-Chapter-12 Genesis, one finds that, from the creation of Adam to the death of Noah, there elapsed about two thousand years.  But Noah died 350 years after the Flood (Genesis 9:28).  Hence, the Flood occurred approximately 2000 – 350 = 1650 years after the creation of Adam, et al.  (The roughly one-year duration of the Flood itself is negligible compared to the overlapping lifetimes of the first ten patriarchs.)

Archbishop James Ussher calculated Creation (of all types) as having occurred - - very rapidly! - - in 4004 B.C.; the Flood as having inundated the earth in 2348 B.C.; and, hence, the time interval from Adam to the Flood as having been 1656 years, which is very close to the 1650 years estimated above.

The epic Flood experienced by Noah is presumably the same Flood mentioned in some written works (on clay tablets) from ancient Mesopotamian cultures.  In the Sumerian and other languages, there are poems about Gilgamesh, as well as a later Epic of Gilgamesh.  Gilgamesh, the King of Uruk, undertook a long and arduous journey to discover the secret of eternal life.  He met with Utnapishtim, who along with his wife were the only humans to have survived the Flood.  Utnapishtim gave Gilgamesh a gloomy report: No human will find eternal life, for the gods created man and death linked together, reserving eternal life for themselves (the gods).  Some of the best copies of the Epic were found in the library ruins of the Assyrian King Ashurbanipal, whose name appears once in the Old Testament (in Ezra 4:10).

The first written compositions (poems) about Gilgamesh are thought to have been compiled sometime between 2100 B.C. and 1200 B.C., and we assume that these dates are the most extreme possibilities for the earliest “Flood-documentation date.”  We will further assume that the Flood set back civilization by either 1000 years (maximal literary catastrophe) or 100 years (minimal literary catastrophe) before the art of writing could have been revived, and an orally transmitted Flood-tradition memorialized.

On the above assumptions, the creation of Adam could have occurred as early as the year determined by the sum of three numbers: 2100 B.C. (Flood-documentation date) + 1000 previously elapsed years (maximal interval from the Flood to its documentation date) + 1650 previously elapsed years (from Adam to the Flood) = 2100 + 1000 + 1650 = 4750 B.C.  Similarly, the creation of Adam could have occurred as late as 1200 B.C. (Flood-documentation date) + 100 previously elapsed years (minimal interval from the Flood to its documentation date) + 1650 previously elapsed years (from Adam to the Flood) = 1200 + 100 + 1650 = 2950 B.C.

The estimation procedure - - as presented above - - places the creation of Adam in the interval between 4750 B.C. and 2950 B.C., bracketing Ussher’s value of 4004 B.C.  Rounding to the nearest 1000 years, we can say that the estimated range of years B.C. for the creation of Adam runs from 5000 B.C. to 3000 B.C.; while Ussher’s result is approximately 4000 B.C.  Alternately, we can say that the estimated range of “years ago” for the creation of Adam runs from about 7000 years ago to about 5000 years ago; while Ussher’s result is around 6000 years ago.  This time of creation for Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden is the time-zero for the Young-Earth Timeline.

The birth year for the patriarch Abram is thought by some scholars to have occurred sometime between 2200 B.C. and 1800 B.C.  Here we will use, in “our” dating system, the intermediate value of 2000 B.C., making Abram very slightly younger than the first known Gilgamesh literature (2100 B.C.).  In this approach, God called Abram around 1925 B.C., consistent with Abram’s being 75 years of age when he left Haran [the city, not the brother] in Gen. 12:4.  The subsequently re-named Abraham was 175 years old at the time of his death in Gen. 25:7.  Thus, on this view, Abraham died around 1825 B.C.

Isaac was born when Abraham was 100 years old, which in “our” dating system is 1900 B.C.  Isaac died when he was 180 years old; hence, in the year 1720 B.C.  (See Gen. 21:5 and 35:28.)   Jacob was born when Isaac was 60 years old; hence, in the year 1840 B.C.  Jacob died when he was 147 years old; hence, in the year 1693 B.C.  (See Gen. 25:26 and 47:28.)  Less is known about the lifetime dates of the sons (and two grandsons) of Jacob, most of whom ended up leading one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.

One of Jacob’s sons, Joseph, then 30 years of age, took up service to the Egyptian Pharaoh.  Joseph presided over emergency grain storage in Egypt during a forecast seven years of plenty to be followed by seven years of famine.  (See Gen. 41:41-57.)  Lengthy negotiations between Joseph (incognito) and his brothers ensued regarding permission for the Israelites to enter Egypt and to avoid the famine in Israel.  (See Gen. 42:1 - 47:12.)  Thus, when Jacob entered Egypt at age 130 (Gen. 47:9), Joseph was likely 39 years of age, implying that Joseph was born when Jacob was 91 years old.  Thus, in “our” dating system, Joseph was born in 1840 B.C. - 91 = 1749 B.C.  Further relying on Gen. 50:26, we infer that Joseph died at age 110 years in 1749 B.C. - 110 = 1639 B.C.

We continue Joseph’s biography using Gen. 15:13, Ex. 1:8-11, and Ex. 12:40 as follows: Only after Joseph had been dead and buried in Egypt for about 30 years (1609 B.C.) did a new Pharaoh feel threatened by Israel’s burgeoning population and enslave the Israelis under Egyptian masters for what turned out to be 400 years.  Thus, 430 years elapsed after Joseph’s death but before an Israeli leader would arise to start the process of freeing the Israeli slaves from Egyptian bondage (1209 B.C.).  On “our” view, the 400 years of slavery occurred from 1609 B.C. to 1209 B.C.  Subsequently, the approximately 40 years of Israel’s wandering in the desert took place from 1209 B.C. to 1169 B.C.

Moses led the Israelites in escaping Egyptian slavery during the Exodus, which we assume to include both the exit from Egypt and the 40 years in the desert.  Moses was 80 years of age at the beginning of the Exodus (Ex. 7:7) and continued until his death at age 120 (Deuteronomy 34:7).  He lived, on the view presented here, between 1289 B.C. and 1169 B.C.  Other scholarly and Rabbinic viewpoints exist: Moses is sometimes said to have died as early as 1451 B.C., which is some 282 years earlier than in “our” estimation.  On these divergent views, the 40 years in the desert could have started in 1169 + 40 = 1209 B.C. or in 1451 + 40 = 1491 B.C.  During the Exodus, the Ten Commandments were given by God to Moses.

What is relatively very well-known from Babylonian and Persian history is that many or most Jews were deported to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar in 597 and 586 B.C.; that the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in 586 B.C.; that Cyrus the Great of Persia officially freed the Jews in 539 B.C.; that the Jews began their return in 538 B.C.; that the Temple in Jerusalem was rebuilt by 516 B.C.; and that Jeremiah’s prophecy of the “Seventy Years of Babylonian Captivity” was fulfilled from 586 to 516 B.C.  (See Jeremiah 25:8-14 and 29:10.)  Minor changes to the starting and ending dates of the Babylonian Captivity have been proposed.

We again emphasize that our estimates for the lifetime dates for Abram, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and - - much later - - Moses could easily be off by plus or minus 200 years, or even more.  But these estimates are broadly consistent with the second millennium B.C. as being the time of the Israelites’ 400 years of slavery in Egypt and 40 years of wandering in the desert.  However hazardous, uncertain, and error-prone this time-estimation process may be; it may nevertheless help one in dealing with remote Biblical dates.

In the next blog posting, we will be in a position to start reading the text of Genesis itself with some important philosophical distinctions in mind, as well as an appreciation of the imprecision and inaccuracy inherent in the historical dating of the distant past.

Background for Genesis Essay – 2.1

In the immediately preceding blog posting in this series of background essays, the author stated that “the Septuagint does not seem to be ‘just one more translation’” of the Hebrew Bible, but instead “seems to be a divine authorization, or warrant, to take Greek philosophical presuppositions seriously.”  At that point, beyond the issue of the acceptance of some Greek philosophical presuppositions, the author should have added the sentence: “Whether or not the Septuagint, as a whole, rises to the status of a divinely inspired writing is a complex issue not adjudicated here.”

However, we will now go on to note that the whole idea of calling the first Hebrew-to-Greek Bible translation “The Seventy” (Septuagint) was to emphasize that its 70 (or 72) participating scholars had isolated themselves in separate rooms and produced identical translations.  Hence, their work must have been divinely inspired, based on the apparently presupposed principle that hyper-consistency implies divine inspiration.  If the Septuagint had not been originally received as a divinely inspired text, then none of the original recipients would have given any credence to it.  Later, Calvin thought that the Septuagint must be respected, albeit without an authority equal to that of the Hebrew Bible: The Septuagint had, after all, been quoted in the New Testament, which presumably was divinely inspired.

Belief as an attitude toward a proposition: The philosophical approach to belief, as delineated in these background essays, distinguishes between the objective, propositional content of a belief and a thinking subject’s attitude towards that propositional content.  If the subject’s set of attitudes includes an acceptance of that objective content, based on “considered judgment,” then the subject is classified as a believer of that content.  If the accepted, objective content deals with religion, then the subject typically also holds other attitudes or inclinations, such as a propensity to worship, to reverence, to pray, to stand in awe, to seek forgiveness, or even to seek mental clarity on what should be taught (a.k.a., orthodox doctrine).

Timelines from the Vastly Old to the Merely Ancient: Some civilizations and religions from the valleys of the Nile, Tigris, Euphrates, Indus, and Yellow Rivers date from circa 3500 B.C.  (The historian, Toynbee, defined and analyzed more than twenty world civilizations.)  During the last few centuries, natural scientists have been inclined to look for ever more remote physical traces of ancient civilizations, evolving life forms, planetary origins, and those ultra-remote cosmic events defining (or proceeding from) either the Big Bang or the most recent Big Bang (in case there really are intervening Cosmic Crunches).  For a given world-historical event, we assume the existence of an associated time-zero and a timeline proceeding from that time-zero up to the present and beyond.  A timeline is a half-infinite line (ray) whose unique terminal point is a time-zero for the real variable, time, appearing in the laws of physics.

The concept of the Big Bang allows one to speak meaningfully about physical laws that existed in an “inflationary epoch” (infinitesimally after a time-zero); or, on the other hand, about purposes and final causation that timelessly exist “logically prior to,” or “metaphorically before,” the Big Bang (provisionally assuming only one Big Bang).  Physical laws describe, typically via differential equations, the efficient causes operative in the universe.  Final causation considers questions such as “Why is there something rather than nothing?”  Empirically, the time-zero for the Big Bang is about 15 billion years ago.

The timeline that goes into effect after (or on the occasion of) the Big Bang might be designated as the Cosmic Timeline, which has been in operation for some fifteen billion years, has extended to the present, and will extend into the indefinite, if not infinite, future.  In other words, the time-zero in this case is 15 billion years ago.  The Cosmic Timeline seems to be consistent with the idea of ex nihilo creation attended by a “significant radiation event.”

A timeline tracing less far back, to planetary origins in our solar system, might be designated as the Old-Earth Timeline.  These planets might have become visually recognizable, albeit not yet habitable, after a certain period of swirling-dust accretion that had been mostly completed by some five billion years ago (the time-zero for this timeline).  This timeline is not consistent with ex nihilo creation, because billions of years had elapsed between the Big Bang and the heyday of planetary formation in our solar system.

A timeline tracing very much less far back - - to the celebrated homo sapiens and their predecessors who are now thought to have wandered about in Africa for multiple hundreds of thousands of years - - might be designated as the Anthropological Timeline.  In this case, the time-zero seems to have been 300 thousand years ago.  This timeline is not consistent with ex nihilo creation, because billions of years would have elapsed from the Big Bang to the origin of the DNA-encoded information that guided the development of amino acids, proteins, and molecular machines; and that led inexorably to that biological efflorescence known as homo sapiens.

At this point, the Cosmic, Old-Earth, and Anthropological Timelines provide a naturalistic temporal framework upon which to locate at least some of the events portrayed in Genesis 1.  For example, the original radiative blast establishing the time-zero of the Cosmic Timeline fits in very nicely the “Let there be light (radiation)” of Genesis 1:3.  Genesis-1 history was summarized in Genesis 2:1 as “Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.”  The stage had been set for a much shorter, more finely grained timeline starting with Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden in Genesis 2.

As a rhetorical matter, we acknowledge that there will never be an absolute resolution of the issue whether the “Days of creation” in Genesis 1 are literal or metaphorical.  However, in these essays we will assume that the Biblical Days of creation in Genesis 1 are metaphorical; and that some such metaphor offers the only way of taking the Biblical text seriously.  For example, the universe’s inaugural radiative blast dominated billions of subsequent years; and the declaration “Let there be light” can therefore only refer to a metaphorical day.  To the extent possible, we want to develop a Biblical understanding in which metaphor and literal interpretation can peacefully coexist in a reasonable, or at least plausible, manner.

The “apparent timeline” portrayed by the Days of Genesis 1 differs from the timeline to be developed in Genesis 2.  Genesis 1 deals with the six metaphorical days of Biblical creation.  These are not six units of physical time, but rather are representations of six tasks logically required to have been accomplished before the whole panoply of heavens and earth could finally be assembled and proclaimed to have been “completed in all their vast array.”  Internal to each of these six metaphorical days, there may be temporal processes; but, overall, there seems to be no unifying time allowing sequential completion of all six tasks.  In contrast, Genesis 2 only begins its account of Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden after the “heavens-and-earth completion” in Genesis 1, seeming to imply that the Big Bang, planetary formation, and those arduous African wanderings had all been things of the past at the time of the Genesis 2 story.

“In the beginning,” as Genesis-1 creation is ramping up, if not exactly proceeding along a unified physical timeline for all of its Days; the heavens and the earth were formless, empty, and dark (Gen. 1:2); seeming to cry out - - if metaphor and personification are permitted - - for some ex-nihilo creation.  The Spirit of God was “hovering above the water,” meaning that the stage was being set for God to proclaim a various, six-fold “Let there be … Day N (N = 1 - 6),” i.e., “to speak the world into existence” in Genesis 1.  This six-fold plan featured the following: There was to be initial radiation, inorganic phase separation (solid - liquid - gas), organic plant life, astronomical development of stars, organic animal life in the water and in the air, and organic land-based animal life including mankind.  Radiation having been mentioned for Day 1, the internal timeline for Day 1 seems to correlate with the beginning of the Cosmic Timeline.  The Days’ tasks being only logical prerequisites for creation, however, there is no expectation that - - for example - - organic plant life (Day 3) must develop before stellar development (Day 4) can occur.

A timeline tracing again very much less far back than the Anthropological Timeline - - to the human and horticultural origins portrayed in Genesis 2 - - might be designated as the Young-Earth Timeline.  An estimate of its time-zero value will be given in the next blog posting in this series.  That time-zero value marks the creation of Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden.  The Young-Earth Timeline is not consistent with ex nihilo creation, because billions of years would have elapsed from the Big Bang to whatever modification of DNA coding was required to guide the first appearance of Adam: “The Lord God formed a man, Adam, from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (Gen. 2:7).  On this view, Adam was not the world’s first homo sapiens, but rather an obscure branch of homo sapiens, perhaps with some slightly reinitialized DNA coding.  There is, however, no reason to doubt that Adam, Eve, and their Garden were the first of their kind in their allotted corner of Mesopotamia.

Regarding the Garden of Eden and, presumably, the Middle East generally: Where there had been no surface water, no plants, and no one to work the ground; there God created streams, plants, a horticulturalist (Adam) “from dust,” and Adam’s wife (Eve) “from one of Adam’s ribs.”  Nearby Africa may have had water, plants, and animal life from an early date; but Genesis-2 creation concentrates specifically on its own Young-Earth Timeline, during which the creation of Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden occurs.  These particular creation events occur, evidently, in Mesopotamia.

Summarizing: The Cosmic, Old-Earth, Anthropological, and Young-Earth timelines are not incompatible: In the indefinite past, there were notable events that established timelines with different estimated values for their “time zeros.”  For example, empirical evidence puts the Cosmic, Old-Earth, Anthropological, and Young-Earth time-zeros at, respectively, 15 billion years ago, 5 billion years ago, 300,000 years ago, and a value to be discussed in the next blog in this series.

Background for Genesis Essay - 1

In the preceding blog posting in this series, the author concluded with the statement that “the first (of the following) essays will start with the first part of the book of Genesis.”  Now, however, it seems best to defer that assignment until after two preliminary essays on the philosophy and history of the Judeo-Christian religion have been presented.  Developing philosophical and historical clarity now is expected to lead to quicker comprehension of the Genesis text once it is started.  Today’s essay will start with some philosophical background on the topics of belief, faith, trust, states of affairs, facts, unrealized possibilities, truth, and knowledge.  Then, we will state some Biblical background information.

Philosophical Background: Prior to any philosophical or theological reflection, it might seem that a comprehensive presentation of God’s truth could be accomplished with a Bible that “started at the beginning” and said everything that was worth knowing (in the sense of “capturing in writing”) about the relationship between God and man.  Among presuppositions of this exposition would be the ideas that belief is another word for faith; that the Hebrew Bible presents faith as trust in God; and that the Christian Bible identifies faith as trust in Christ, who is the second person of the Holy Trinity.  Here, “trust” includes experiential or emotional factors, if any, that cannot be captured in writing.

However, the terms “belief” and “faith” have not only a branch of meaning relating to the term “trust,” but also a branch of meaning relating to the terms “truth” and “knowledge.”  These latter two terms are in turn related to a real (or actual) world, which is assumed to exist and to be intelligible.  This real world is thought to consist of states of affairs (SOA’s) that “obtain” and that are usually known as “facts,” whereas SOA’s that “do not obtain” are merely unrealized possibilities.  SOA’s are also known as “situations” that may or may not occur.

An SOA is a way that the real world must be in order for some corresponding (or underlying) proposition about the real world to be true in a logical world.  In other words, an SOA is a truth-maker; whereas a proposition is a truth-bearer.  SOA’s either obtain or fail to obtain; whereas propositions are either true or false.  For example, if historical research and judgment lead one to believe that the SOA “Caligula is cruel” obtains; then, as a matter of logic, the proposition “Caligula is cruel” is true.  Likewise, if the relevant judgments lead one to believe that the SOA “Caligula is cruel” does not obtain; then, logically, the proposition “Caligula is cruel” is false.  The distinction between truth-maker and truth-bearer is based on the difference between empirical research and judgment, on the one hand; and the logical world of premises and deductions, on the other.

We speak of a belief as one particular type of introspective judgment or attitude toward a proposition, which in turn is something that can be true or false in logic.  If the attitude is one of acceptance, then we are said to have judged (fallibly) that the SOA under consideration obtains in the real world; thereby forcing the corresponding proposition to be true in the logical world.  If the attitude is one of rejection, then we are said to have judged (fallibly) that the SOA under consideration does not obtain in the real world; thereby forcing the corresponding proposition to be false in the logical world.

One notes in passing that there is a panoply of possible attitudes that one might take towards a proposition, including, but not limited to, expecting, hoping, or fearing; intending, desiring, or wishing; believing, knowing, or judging; and accepting, rejecting, or doubting.  In this essay we are focusing on believing and knowing.  Attitudinal analysis presupposes that we are capable of (fallible) introspection and judgment; that we can recognize real and logical worlds; that these worlds are intelligible; and that we can estimate subjectively (or in some cases, statistically) how much confidence or probability to attach to any particular belief - - from certitude to barely above 50%.

Finally, knowledge is sometimes said to be justified true belief, i.e., belief that is true and that is backed up (i.e., justified) by a “story” of why the belief must be true.  Ever since the Platonic dialog, Theaetetus, however, this approach has been shown to be plagued by circularity.  One recent philosopher, Robert Nozick, created a “work-around” for this problem.  In this new approach, knowledge is said to be “belief tracking truth”:  Your belief, X, qualifies as knowledge if X is true, you believe X, and you would not believe X if X were false.  Presumably, you are aware of some “factor” or “story” that explains why X couldn’t be false.  In effect, Nozick substitutes “couldn’t be false” for the traditional “must be true.”  It took more than 2300 years to get from Plato to Nozick, and one doubts that we have heard the definitive last word on this subject.

The nebulous role of certainty in accepting propositions: One might contrast certainty in the mathematical and logical worlds; a high degree of confidence for at least some empirical laws in the physical world; and sufficient reason for actions or beliefs in the moral or religious worlds.  Mathematical propositions that follow from self-evident principles and deductive proof are considered to be certain, because the “mind’s eye” sees, and assents to, each step in the proof.  Perceptions, being empirical, can sometimes be accumulated so as to allow the formulation of physical hypotheses, which in turn are tested via falsifiability criteria and possibly accepted with a high degree of confidence.  Some moral and religious propositions are thought to be so “existentially charged” that they rise to the level of “moral certainty” or “incontrovertible belief.”  One recalls that Aristotle’s practical syllogisms envision propositions as premises and actions as conclusions.  In the Christian New Testament (Hebrews 11:1), one reads that “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (NIV-1983).  Thus, the idea of certainty surpasses its original domain of mathematics and logic, migrating into the domain of religious faith.

Biblical Background: The Hebrew Bible contains 24 books divided among the five books of the Law (Torah) given to Moses; the eight books of the Prophets; and the eleven books of the Writings (e.g., Psalms, Chronicles, etc.).  The Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek as the Septuagint, which presents the books distributed among four sections (Law, History, Poetry, and Prophets) for use by Greek-speaking Jews in the third century B.C.  The Torah is referred to in Greek as the “five scrolls,” or “Pentateuch.”  The Christian Old Testament is essentially based on translation from the Hebrew Bible, with the Septuagint being available for context.  The first book of the Law is referred to (in English) either as The First Book of Moses or as Genesis, which is a Greek word that means “origin, source, or beginning,” albeit not a word that actually occurs in the Septuagint itself.  After the lifetime of Jesus of Nazareth, his followers produced a completely different set of writings that followed a different canon and that became known as the “New Testament.”

The first Hebrew word of the First Book of Moses is translated into English (NIV) as “in the beginning.”  According to the Bible-hub Interlinear web resource, this Hebrew word occurs four other times in the Hebrew Bible (always in the book of Jeremiah), in Jeremiah 26:1, 27:1, 28:1, and 49:34.  All four occurrences in Jeremiah are translated into English (NIV) as “early in the reign of …”  Thus, the same Hebrew word can bear two different senses, either as indicating an absolute or unqualified beginning or as indicating “relatively early” or “near the beginning” of a particular king’s reign.  The English translation of Genesis 1:1 as “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” is on solid ground.

However, the first two Greek words of the Septuagint (in Genesis 1:1) are transliterated as “en arche,” which means “as a first rule, highest ruler, or philosophical first principle.”  (One recalls that “monarch” means “the one ruler of a government or of a nation.”  See also Philip Wheelwright, “The Presocratics,” Odyssey Press, 1966, p. 15.)  On this Greek view, the English translation of Genesis 1:1 becomes “As a first rule or highest ruler or first principle of the universe, God created the heavens and the earth.”  The question arises: How could this utterly novel, Septuagint-based “context” of Genesis 1:1 have arisen?

The apparent answer is that Greek translators make Greek philosophical presuppositions, which God evidently intended to introduce into his Biblical revelation.  Some pre-Socratic Greek philosophers had proposed that one or another of the classical elements (earth, air, fire, and water) is the fundamental source, or arche, of all matter; which is to say, a basic, irreducible substance from which all other matter is composed.  In the case of Genesis 1:1 in the Septuagint, if the Creation truly occurred “in the beginning,” then the Creation is not a part of any temporal sequence.  Instead, temporal sequences arose within the Creation.  In the ancient Greek view, the Creator must be a true first principle, or arche, existing outside of time, not an interloper in the temporal order.  A “creator within time” could only be what the Greeks called a demiurge, a cosmic worker who fashioned the universe out of pre-existing materials (as in line 28a6 in the Platonic dialog, Timaeus).

The Septuagint version of Genesis, Chapter 1, envisions a logical sequence of purposes to be fulfilled, or tasks to be completed, while God “speaks the universe into existence.”  This type of creation is consistent with the Aristotelian worldview that there exists an Unmoved Mover who is a first principle or final cause of the universe.  Moreover, Greek presuppositions are useful in dealing with philosophical questions such as the apparent problem of a “young earth” at variance with the modern estimate (nearly 5 billion years) for the age of the earth.

The Septuagint does not seem to be “just one more translation” that is a forerunner of the relatively recent KJV or NIV translations.  Instead, the Septuagint seems to be a divine authorization, or warrant, to take Greek philosophical presuppositions seriously.

In the following blog posting, a second preliminary essay will deal with some guidelines for the historical dating of certain prominent Biblical events - - events that are remote in time and that typically allow only very imprecise suggestions for their historical dates.