I absolutely believe that the Garden of Eden was a real place, Adam and Eve were two real people, and even though there are some language issues to deal with, the story related is real and vital, and the time frame geologically recent, i.e., 6,000 (Ussher) to 10,000 (Whitcomb, if the genealogies skip some generations) years ago.
Where was the Garden located?
Most commentators seem to favor one of two general regions for the Garden: either northern or southern Mesopotamia, though proposals exist for locations surrounding the Arabian subcontinent and in eastern Africa. I’ve seen one suggestion that Eden lies at the bottom of the Red Sea, and another that puts it in the Indian Ocean.
Some proposed locations for Eden, per Babylon Rising.
Northern Mesopotamian versions tend to favor Eastern Turkey/Armenia, since (a) there is a perception that Shinar is in that area, based on Genesis 11:2 (ESV): “And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there”; and (b) the headwaters of both the Tigris and Euphrates rivers originate in that general vicinity.
Possible Mesopotamian locations, per Blue Letter Bible.
Personally, I have favored a southern Iraq location for years, since obtaining a copy of an unpublished book titled, simply, Eden, by a late pastor named David J. Gibson, who understood that rivers don’t divide flowing downstream as described in Genesis 2:10 (ESV), “A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers.” Gibson suggested, and I agree with him, that this verse should be interpreted from the perspective of an observer within the Garden gazing out at four rivers converging as they entered the Garden.
This is awkward language for us, but not necessarily for Moses in antiquity, writing in Hebrew. Consider that in Genesis 2:8 (ESV), “the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east”. This implies to me that the four rivers converged in the western part of Eden before flowing through the Garden, which was planted in the eastern part.
This makes sense, and from a hydrodynamics standpoint, it is the only interpretation that makes sense. Tributaries converge, they don’t diverge. If, for some reason, a river splits to flow around an obstruction or a sandbar, it will always come back together downstream nearby. If, for some reason, it splits to flow down two or more separate drainage basins, an unstable pattern results. One path will erode more quickly than the other(s), and eventually that path will “steal” all the flow from the other(s).
The only exception from that rule is the case of delta flow, but deltas aren’t formed by erosion, they’re formed by deposition of silt carried downstream in the water. As a river flows onto a plain and slows down, turbulence decreases, and silt falls out of suspension and stays more or less where it drops. Without sufficient turbulence to pick it up again, there is just enough energy available to keep the channels open.
Large deltas usually form at the mouth of a river where water leaving the delta’s channels flows into the sea or a lake. Sometimes deltas form inland, usually where a mountain stream empties onto a plain. The water from an inland delta will either evaporate, sink into the substrate, or collect into a single stream or a lake. Two examples are shown below.
The Inner Niger Delta, in Mali, is a wetland that floods during the rainy season in the Guinean Highlands, to the southwest. The delta formed where the topography flattens for 250 miles before spilling downwards again to the east.The Okavango Delta is formed by seasonal flooding form the Angola Highlands, where the Okavango River course flattens and slows in Botswana. Unlike the Inner Niger, this delta has no outlet.Pishon ? The deltaic terminal of Wadi Al-Batin. From Ali Al-Dousari on Researchgate
Genesis 2:10 would make total sense if the four “rivers” were delta channels, but the naming of those four rivers in verses 11–14 belies that possibility. Indeed, in my opinion the naming of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers conclusively fixes the location of the Garden in southern Iraq.
What about the other two rivers named?
The Pishon is fairly well defined because verse 11 says that it “flowed around the whole land of Havilah.” Havilah was a son of Cush who settled in what today is northwest Arabia. 1 Samuel 15:7 (ESV) defines that location: “And Saul defeated the Amalekites from Havilah as far as Shur, which is east of Egypt.” “Flowed around” could be literal (I found a map showing the Pishon as an ocean current flowing counterclockwise around the entire Arabian subcontinent), but more likely it simply means that it flowed through and provided water for Havilah. Gibson equated the Pishon with Arabia’s Wadi Al-Batin, an ancient and now-dry river and delta system flowing northeast through Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to the Tigris/Euphrates valley. I think he was right.
Gihon? Karun River, Wikipedia
As for the Gihon River that “flowed around the whole land of Cush” (verse 13), I would equate that with the Karun River, flowing out of Iran, through the ancient land of the Elamites.
I think that Christian commentators are thrown off by an assumption that “Cush” refers only to the region around Ethiopia and Somalia. My view is that Cush (a son of Ham) and his descendants settled large regions of Asia, as well as the upper Nile area. They apparently mixed with the Canaanites in the Lavant, and Nimrod, a son of Cush, was described in Genesis 10 as “9a mighty hunter before ADONAI. … 10His kingdom began with Bavel, Erekh, Akkad and Kalneh, in the land of Shin‘ar.” These abodes of Nimrod are all lands of southern Mesopotamia. Nimrod was, I’m convinced, none other than Sargon of Akkad, the world’s first great emperor. Elam and Asshur were Semites, but Cush may have extended into the Steppes alongside Shem (see Nimrod the Empire Builder: Architect of Shock and Awe, 2023, by Douglas Petrovich).
It’s admittedly a stretch, but I have wondered if perhaps the ancient Kushan Empire, spanning the central Asian “stans” might have gotten its name from Cush/Kush. If so, then the influence of Cush stretched all the way to the Xiongnu tribe, north of the Yellow River, because the peoples who started the Kushan Empire, centered around Afghanistan, where refugees from the Xiongnu.
Putting all this together, I think that the following map states the case for Eden in southern Iraq:
What about the placing of Shinar in Turkey? I agree with the predominant view that Shinar is the area once occupied by Sumer, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. It’s not hard to explain away migration “from the east.” I suspect that waters from the Great Flood took years to retreat from low-lying areas, so descendants of Noah returning to their homeland in Shinar would have initially moved southeast along the spine of the Zagros Mountains. Saying that Shinar is west of Ararat because they entered from the east is analogous to assuming I live west of my church because I (sometimes) approach it from the west. The full story on that is that I live to the southeast and occasionally take a circuitous route along the freeway.
Post-flood migrations from Ararat to Shinar. From Google Earth. Annotations by Ron Thompson.
Aside from inevitable passing references here and in future posts, I think I’m finally done with banging a drum over Genesis 1. I view verse 1 as the definitive, all-important statement by God that He is the uncreated, everlasting creator of all that exists.(see Gen 1:2 through 2:3), I think, are a polemic against the pervasive pagan claims of the surrounding cultures and of the Israelites, who at the time of writing were migrating from one pagan enclave (Egypt) to another (Canaan). In this post, I want to Move on to chapter 2, verses 4 and following.
I absolutely believe that the Garden of Eden was a real place, Adam and Eve were two real people, and even though there are some language issues to deal with, the story related is real and vital, and the time frame geologically recent, i.e., 6,000 (Ussher) to 10,000 (Whitcomb, if the genealogies skip some generations) years ago.
The first order of business is to tell you where I think the Garden was.
Most commentators seem to favor one of two general regions for the Garden: either northern or southern Mesopotamia, though proposals exist for locations surrounding the Arabian subcontinent and in eastern Africa. I’ve seen one suggestion that Eden lies at the bottom of the Red Sea, and another that puts it in the Indian Ocean.
Some proposed locations for Eden, per Babylon Rising.
Northern Mesopotamian versions tend to favor Eastern Turkey/Armenia, since (a) there is a perception that Shinar is in that area, based on Genesis 11:2 (ESV): “And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there”; and (b) the headwaters of both the Tigris and Euphrates rivers originate in that general vicinity.
Possible Mesopotamian locations, per Blue Letter Bible.
Personally, I have favored a southern Iraq location for years, since obtaining a copy of an unpublished book titled, simply, Eden, by a late pastor named David J. Gibson, who understood that rivers don’t divide flowing downstream as described in Genesis 2:10 (ESV), “A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers.” Gibson suggested, and I agree with him, that this verse should be interpreted from the perspective of an observer within the Garden gazing out at four rivers converging as they entered the Garden.
This is awkward language for us, but not necessarily for Moses in antiquity, writing in Hebrew. Consider that in Genesis 2:8 (ESV), “the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east”. This implies to me that the four rivers converged in the western part of Eden before flowing through the Garden, which was planted in the eastern part.
This makes sense, and from a hydrodynamics standpoint, it is the only interpretation that makes sense. Tributaries converge, they don’t diverge. If, for some reason, a river splits to flow around an obstruction or a sandbar, it will always come back together downstream nearby. If, for some reason, it splits to flow down two or more separate drainage basins, an unstable pattern results. One path will erode more quickly than the other(s), and eventually that path will “steal” all the flow from the other(s).
The only exception from that rule is the case of delta flow, but deltas aren’t formed by erosion, they’re formed by deposition of silt carried downstream in the water. As a river flows onto a plain and slows down, turbulence decreases, and silt falls out of suspension and stays more or less where it drops. Without sufficient turbulence to pick it up again, there is just enough energy available to keep the channels open.
Large deltas usually form at the mouth of a river where water leaving the delta’s channels flows into the sea or a lake. Sometimes deltas form inland, usually where a mountain stream empties onto a plain. The water from an inland delta will either evaporate, sink into the substrate, or collect into a single stream or a lake. Two examples are shown below.
The Inner Niger Delta, in Mali, is a wetland that floods during the rainy season in the Guinean Highlands, to the southwest. The delta formed where the topography flattens for 250 miles before spilling downwards again to the east.The Okavango Delta is formed by seasonal flooding form the Angola Highlands, where the Okavango River course flattens and slows in Botswana. Unlike the Inner Niger, this delta has no outlet.Pishon ? The deltaic terminal of Wadi Al-Batin. From Ali Al-Dousari on Researchgate
Genesis 2:10 would make total sense if the four “rivers” were delta channels, but the naming of those four rivers in verses 11–14 belies that possibility. Indeed, in my opinion the naming of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers conclusively fixes the location of the Garden in southern Iraq.
What about the other two rivers named?
The Pishon is fairly well defined because verse 11 says that it “flowed around the whole land of Havilah.” Havilah was a son of Cush who settled in what today is northwest Arabia. 1 Samuel 15:7 (ESV) defines that location: “And Saul defeated the Amalekites from Havilah as far as Shur, which is east of Egypt.” “Flowed around” could be literal (I found a map showing the Pishon as an ocean current flowing counterclockwise around the entire Arabian subcontinent), but more likely it simply means that it flowed through and provided water for Havilah. Gibson equated the Pishon with Arabia’s Wadi Al-Batin, an ancient and now-dry river and delta system flowing northeast through Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to the Tigris/Euphrates valley. I think he was right.
Gihon? Karun River, Wikipedia
As for the Gihon River that “flowed around the whole land of Cush” (verse 13), I would equate that with the Karun River, flowing out of Iran, through the ancient land of the Elamites.
I think that Christian commentators are thrown off by an assumption that “Cush” refers only to the region around Ethiopia and Somalia. My view is that Cush (a son of Ham) and his descendants settled large regions of Asia, as well as the upper Nile area. They apparently mixed with the Canaanites in the Lavant, and Nimrod, a son of Cush, was described in Genesis 10 as “9a mighty hunter before ADONAI. … 10His kingdom began with Bavel, Erekh, Akkad and Kalneh, in the land of Shin‘ar.” These abodes of Nimrod are all lands of southern Mesopotamia. Nimrod was, I’m convinced, none other than Sargon of Akkad, the world’s first great emperor. Elam and Asshur were Semites, but Cush may have extended into the Steppes alongside Shem (see Nimrod the Empire Builder: Architect of Shock and Awe, 2023, by Douglas Petrovich).
It’s admittedly a stretch, but I have wondered if perhaps the ancient Kushan Empire, spanning the central Asian “stans” might have gotten its name from Cush/Kush. If so, then the influence of Cush stretched all the way to the Xiongnu tribe, north of the Yellow River, because the peoples who started the Kushan Empire, centered around Afghanistan, where refugees from the Xiongnu.
Putting all this together, I think that the following map states the case for Eden in southern Iraq:
What about the placing of Shinar in Turkey? I agree with the predominant view that Shinar is the area once occupied by Sumer, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. It’s not hard to explain away migration “from the east.” I suspect that waters from the Great Flood took years to retreat from low-lying areas, so descendants of Noah returning to their homeland in Shinar would have initially moved southeast along the spine of the Zagros Mountains. Saying that Shinar is west of Ararat because they entered from the east is analogous to assuming I live west of my church because I (sometimes) approach it from the west. The full story on that is that I live to the southeast and occasionally take a circuitous route along the freeway.
Post-flood migrations from Ararat to Shinar. From Google Earth. Annotations by Ron Thompson.
The creation passage and the Garden passage are separated by verse 2:4 (see below).
There seem to be contradictions between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, as traditionally understood. Because I believe Scripture is inerrant, but tradition is not, I inevitably try to let the former inform the latter.
Here are the relevant passages that I wish to discuss now:
[11] And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. [12] The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. [13] And there was evening and there was morning, the third day. …
[26] Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
[27] So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
[28] And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” [29] And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.
—Genesis 1:11–13,26–29 (ESV)
and
[4b] …in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens. [5] When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, [6] and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— [7] then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. [8] And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. [9] And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. …
[15] The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. …
[18] Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” [19] Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. [20] The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. [21] So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. [22] And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. [23] Then the man said,
“This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”
—Genesis 2:4b–9,15,18–23 (ESV)
Almost all conservative Evangelicals believe that Genesis 1:27 describes the creation of Adam and Eve: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” But Scripture never actually states that these are Adam and Eve!
I have suggested in past posts that Christians should be willing to consider alternatives where erroneous understandings might exist in uninspired translations and interpretations, but not in inspired autographs(the original manuscripts as prepared by the human authors). When comparing these passages, we must account for apparent contradictions and ambiguities.
John H. Walton, a conservative Old Testament scholar with Moody Bible Institute and later with Wheaton College, has proposed alternative understandings of these passages, suggesting that chapter 1 describes one human creation event, and chapter 2 a separate creation of just Adam and Eve. He bases this idea on several observations, including:
There are obvious contradictions in the reported order of the creation events (see below).
The descriptions of each category of creation in chapter 1, including humankind, gives the impression that a significant population of every species were created. Creation of just 2 humans in Genesis 1 would be a breaking of the pattern.
Verse 4 is a “toledah” (Hebrew for “generations”), which is a fragment of Scripture used to separate two “chapters”, or thematic passages, of Genesis.
These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens. —Genesis 2:4 (ESV)
Walton presents the following table to show how other toledoth (plural) relate to material preceding and following them:
— Walton, John H. The Lost World of Adam and Eve. Accordance electronic edition, version 1.0. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2017.
In the table, all of the cases marked as “sequel” separate events in the past from events in the future.
The three labeled “recursive” indicate cases where one individual or family is followed, then the timeline is reset to follow another. In these cases, there may be chronological overlap, but no detail added to the first.
In the single case labeled “parallel/sequel” Cain is followed, then the timeline reset to Adam; then a toledah introduces parallel coverage of Seth.
There is no precedent in the ten cases enumerated for a toledah introducing an expanded account of the same thing previously covered. This is not definitive proof, but it is suggestive.
First, “creation” in verse 27 is the Hebrew word בָּרָא (bara‘, which means ex nihilo creation, or creation from nothing at all). In contrast, the Genesis 2 description is יָצַר (yatsar, which means to form something specifically by molding some constituent material into a shape, i.e., as a potter forming something in clay). The potter imagery is consistent with forming Adam “of dust from the ground”. “Dust”, here is Hebrew עָפָר, (‘afar), meaning things like “dry soil”, “loose earth”, “rubble”, or even “ashes”. None of these is clay, and none of them alone can be worked by a potter, but the intended image is of the detritus of death. More likely, it simply refers to the familiar elements on the periodic table, pasted by God into organic molecules.
Second, and more telling, we appear to have a serious contradiction regarding the creation of beasts of the field and birds of the heavens.
The sequence as written in Genesis 2 is (a) God formed Adam and gave him life; (b) God planted a garden on the east side of Eden; (c) God placed Adam in that garden; (d) God caused plants to grow from the ground; (e) God gave Adam his mission statement; (g) from the ground, God “formed” (yatsar) the land and air creatures; (h) Adam named the creatures; and finally (i) God formed Eve from Adam’s rib.
The serious contradiction here is that:
in chapter 1, air creatures are created on day 5 and land creatures on day 6, both of these prior to the creation of man on day 6.
In chapter 2, Adam (though not Eve) was created on or after day 6 while both the air and land creatures were created later.
The ESV translation above follows NIV in trying to resolve the problem by hedging on the language in 2:19. I can’t find any support for “Now the LORD God had formed“. This translation certainly does leave room for saying, “Oh, this isn’t where he forms them, that was already done.” But the correct translation seems to be “And out of the ground the LORD God formed.” Almost every translation words it this way, and even ESV includes that as a footnote. NIV is notorious for paraphrasing Scripture to make it say what they think it should say. I take this passage to mean that God formed new animals in the garden in addition to those that existed—possibly just new individuals, not new species.
I don’t see a clear, fair, and decisive path to resolving this contradiction.
On the other hand, if Genesis 2 is subsequent to Genesis 1 rather than a retelling, the garden theoretically becomes sacred space—a prototype tabernacle—and Adam’s race a priesthood.
While the concept that Adam and Eve’s creation at a time when earth was already populated by humans may be startling, it answers more questions than it raises. It gives Cain a wife without requiring biologically harmful incest. It reveals who it was who Cain thought might kill him. It answers the question, where did all the people come from to populate the city that Cain founded.
By the way, what was that city? Depending on how you define the term, it may have been Uruk, shown on the map above with the four rivers of Eden. Uruk was founded about 6,000 years ago, which fits very nicely with the picture I’m painting here.
You may say, “But the Bible teaches we’re all descended from Adam!” Yes, it does, and since Noah was descended from Adam, and we’re descended from Noah, then where’s the problem? The other humans all perished in the Flood.
Are we also descended from the pre-Garden people? I don’t know. Perhaps no pre-Garden genes were in the chromosomes of Noah or Mrs. Noah. But would it have mattered if there was some mixing? I don’t think it matters if Noah had non-Adamic genes mixed in, any more than it matters that Jesus had genes not contributed by Judah or King David. Mitochondrial DNA shows that all humans today have a common “mother” and Y-chromosomal analysis shows a common “father”, but both of those are way too late to have been Mr. or Mrs. Noah’s. Due to the nature of genetic inheritance, it will never be possible to trace back that far.
The Genesis 1 creation, whether it was Adam or not, was created in the image of God. They, too, were righteous or sinful, saved or unsaved. The difference is that they had not eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, so they were presumably innocent in the same way as Adam and Eve before the fall.
But wait! you say. That means that they were immortal! No, it doesn’t. Were Adam and Eve immortal before the fall? I think “you will surely die” is talking about spiritual death, not physical. Maybe they were immortal, but if so, why was there a Tree of Life in the Garden?
Was death even possible, theologically, before the fall? That’s way too big a subject to take on here, in this post. I’ll eventually write about it. It’s a key question, since part of the reason some Christians shun fossil evidence is that they think it’s a violation of Scripture for animals to have died pre-fall. Obviously, I believe death was possible before the fall, but I owe you some analysis to justify my belief.
Then, there’s the biggest question of all. I’ve been telling you that the 7-day creation story is a polemic and not literally true as written. What about Adam and Eve, and the Garden? Well, that’s a whole ‘nother story. From Genesis 2 on out, there is way too much specificity for me to doubt. I mean, we have the begats, for crying out loud, and they are way too believable to dismiss.
I want to address just a few issues here that may seem confusing.
On the day that the LORD God made earth and heavens, no shrub of the field being yet on the earth and no plant of the field yet sprouted, for the LORD God had not caused rain to fall on the earth and there was no human to till the soil, and wetness would well from the earth to water all the surface of the soil… —Genesis 2:4b–6 (Alter)
The first phrase above, ending “made earth and heavens”, bookends the Genesis 1 story, which begins with “In the beginning … heavens and earth”. That makes it more likely that the phrase is part of the toledah, packaging the entire process—”the day that the LORD God made the earth and heavens.” Most of you take this “day” as seven literal 24-hour days—I take it to mean the entire 13.8-billion-year period from the Big Bang to the formation of Adam.
The term “LORD God” here is the Hebrew “YHVH Elohim“, the first occurrence in Scripture of God’s covenant name.
In 2:5 we are told that, before God created Adam or planted the Garden, there was as yet no “brush of the field”, i.e., no wild vegetation, in the land (the Garden). Paleontology suggests that Homo sapiens has been around for about 200,000 years, but for most of that time they were strictly hunter-gatherers. Agriculture doesn’t appear until around 10,000 years ago, and it didn’t predominate until around 6,000 years ago. Domestication of livestock began during that same period. Given some flexibility in dating by means of Biblical genealogies, it is entirely realistic to date Genesis 2 somewhere in that 6-to-10,000-year time frame, and thus to consider that Genesis 2:5 implies that both herding (hunting) and farming (gathering) were inaugurated in the Garden.
As most of my friends know, I am a fervent Creationist, though not a “Young Earth” creationist. I am totally convinced that the universe we live in was created ex nihilo (out of nothing, whatsoever) by the one, true, almighty and utterly magnificent Creator, the God of Israel.
I’ve stated it elsewhere, and I’ll state it again below: Genesis 1:1 tells me all I need to know about the origin of the universe. I can drive a car without understanding how an internal combustion engine or a lithium-ion battery is built. But I’m an academic at heart… so I seek.
The five books of Moses were written during Israel’s 40 years of wandering. He didn’t write for 21st century readers, he wrote for the Israelites, leaving behind one pagan culture and preparing to invade another with similar technologies and traditions.
The first several chapters of Genesis are where God sets the perspective for them: “Your beliefs about the form and function of the cosmos is unimportant—but it’s absolutely vital that you understand that I made everything that exists, it belongs to me, and it is me alone that keeps it running.”
My purpose in writing this particular post is fairly one-dimensional: To discuss the language used by Moses (and other OT writers) to describe God’s actions in the creation process.
One of my favorite Bible dictionaries.
Introduction
To paraphrase Merriam-Webster, to “create” is to “bring something new into existence” or to “design and/or produce something new through imagination and skill.” If, as a woodworker, I build a chair, I’m not doing something earthshattering, though I may earn kudos for my craftsmanship. If I “create” a new chair design, I could become famous. If I create an antigravity chair, I’m more than a designer and craftsman, I’m also an inventor, which is a much bigger deal. If I somehow manage to do any of those things without any raw materials—i.e., if I pop a chair into existence out of complete nothingness—then I have “created ex nihilo“, and I am God. To do so (assuming no trickery) requires a violation of the “conservation of energy”, which only God can do!He can do things like that because He is the creator of the laws of physics that govern the universe and because His existence transcends the universe.
Perhaps I should define the term “universe”. By longstanding convention, that means everything that exists. I would modify that to specify “everything created that exists”. Possibly not the “third heaven”, the divine realm, above the atmosphere (the “first heaven”) and outside the celestial realm (the “second heaven”). Some modern cosmologists are now talking about a “multiverse”, but that is just a theoretical device to explain away the existence of God. A topic for the future, maybe. There is one, and only one, universe!
In this post, I am going to focus on the language of creation, as I personally see it reflected in Hebrew references to the created universe.
I am not a linguist, though I have a working knowledge of Biblical Hebrew, but at this moment, I have at my disposal, either on shelves or on software, 22 commentaries, 7 study Bibles, 5 Hebrew grammars, and 5 other miscellaneous books that are relevant for this discussion. Most of this material is relatively recent; that is, less than 100 or so years. Some older, from as long ago as the Reformation or even the Patristic Age (the age of the “Church Fathers”). Typically, before I post opinions on my blog, I review them against everything I have or can find on the Internet. What is ultimately posted is my own opinion, based as much as possible on research.
Where the verb “create” appears in the Old Testament, it is almost always one of four Hebrew words:
bara’, to create or make. Only this verb includes ex nihilo.
‘asah, to make, build, accomplish, achieve, or simply to do.
yatsar, to form or fashion with the hands, as a potter.
kun, to establish, appoint, or prepare.
When used in a narrative sense, as in Genesis 1 and 2, I think it is important to view these verbs strictly in accordance with their primary meanings. However, when used in poetic writings where the language is designed to be more flowery and embellished, shades of meaning are not so clear-cut. For that reason, I don’t think it is wise to base any theology solely on poetic passages.
In Isaiah 41 and 43 we see examples of poetic mixing of terms.
In 41:17–20, God is promising through the Prophet that eventually, in the latter days, He will show compassion on His people, who have been scattered across desert regions and who are thirsty, poor and needy. He will gather them back into their land, and that land, even the parched Arabah in the south, will become a garden.
Verse 20, below, consists of a pair of classic Hebrew poetic doublets, where a first line makes a statement, and a second line restates it in alternative and usually exaggerated terms: the people will “see and know”, that is, they will “observe and understand” that God “has done this”, that is, He has “created it.”
Then the people will see and know, together observe and understand that the hand of ADONAI has done [‘asah] this, that the Holy One of Isra’el created [bara’] it. — Isaiah 41:20 (CJB)
The creative act in view here may have been ex nihilo, but the poetic usage of bara’ doesn’t require that interpretation. In fact, the process of Israel’s regathering is well underway as I write. It appears that God’s mechanism so far has been in blessing the labor of His people since their regathering began in 1948. In his 1869 travel book, Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain wrote, “Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes…. desolate and unlovely.” It’s certainly not that way today!
In 43:1b and 7, God is speaking of His creation, Israel. Did God create Israel, the people, ex nihilo? I don’t think so. When I say that “God is my Creator”, I mean that He created the first human beings, and at that time He endowed them with the ability to procreate. Each act of procreation by any creature, human or otherwise, is a biological process that certainly allows, but probably does not require, any further intervention by Him. That doesn’t negate the fact that our creation, ultimately, was at His hand.
But now this is what ADONAI says, he who created [bara’] you, Ya‘akov, he who formed [‘asah] you, Isra’el: … everyone who bears my name, whom I created [‘asah] for my glory — I formed [‘asah] him, yes, I made him.’” — Isaiah 43:1b,7 (CJB)
In the following poetic verse all four verbs are used in a single sentence. It happens that in this case the KJV translators realized that Isaiah’s intention was to emphasize how all-encompassing God’s creative act was, and they did an excellent job of parsing the intended meanings of each verb instance.
For thus saith the Lord that created [bara’] the heavens; God himself that formed [yatsar] the earth and made [‘asah] it; he hath established [kun] it, he created [bara’] it not in vain [i.e., not to be in chaos], he formed [yatsar] it to be inhabited: —Isaiah 45:18 (KJV)
The verb bara’
In the beginning God created [bara’] the heavens and the earth. —Genesis 1:1 CJB
According to Vine,
bara’ (בָּרָא, 1254), “to create, make.” This verb is of profound theological significance, since it has only God as its subject. Only God can “create” in the sense implied by bara’. The verb expresses creation out of nothing, an idea seen clearly in passages having to do with creation on a cosmic scale: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Gen. 1:1; cf. Gen. 2:3; Isa. 40:26; 42:5). All other verbs for “creating” allow a much broader range of meaning; they have both divine and human subjects … and are used in contexts where bringing something or someone into existence is not the issue. —Vine’s Expository Dictionary (emphasis added)
According to the above, only God can “create” (bara’). The New Testament clarifies that in this case the term, “God” (Elohim), refers to the triune God. For example,
[15] He [Jesus] is the visible image of the invisible God. He is supreme over all creation, [16] because in connection with him were created all things—in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, lordships, rulers or authorities—they have all been created through him and for him. [17] He existed before all things, and he holds everything together. —Colossians 1:15–17 (CJB) (emphasis added)
(Note what Paul is stressing: The “invisible” here (thrones, lordships, rulers and authorities) refers to the pagan gods, which were themselves created entities. See Gods and Demons.)
Other Hebrew grammars suggest that bara’ does not always mean ex nihilo creation; however, where it refers to original creation, logic dictates that it must. God preexisted all else that exists, including all the mass and energy building blocks from which everything in the universe was assembled. This is clear from the Colossians quotation above, and
[1] In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. [2] The same was in the beginning with God. [3] All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. —John 1:1–3 (KJV) (emphasis added)
The Bible, Old Testament and New, is God’s description of Himself and of how He chooses to interact with Adam’s race. The sacred writings of every other religion attempt at length to explain the origins of the gods, the universe, and humanity. The God of Israel is eternal and therefore has no need to explain His own existence.
The traditional English translation reads: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” This rendering construes the verse as an independent sentence complete in itself [that] makes a momentous assertion about the nature of God: that He is wholly outside of time, just as He is outside of space, both of which He proceeds to create. In other words, for the first time in the religious history of the Near East, God is conceived as being entirely free of temporal and spatial dimensions. … Unlike the pagan cosmologies, Genesis exhibits no interest in the question of God’s origins. His existence prior to the world is taken as axiomatic and does not even require assertion, let alone proof. … The use here of a merism [“heaven and earth”], the combination of opposites, expresses the totality of cosmic phenomena, for which there is no single word in biblical Hebrew. —The JPS Torah Commentary (emphasis added)
Bara‘ appears in Genesis 1, in verses:
1, where it describes the creation of “the heavens and the earth”;
21, regarding the creation of “sea creatures”, “creeping things” and “winged birds”; and
27, regarding the creation of “humankind”.
In my view, Genesis 1:1 is the defining statement of the origin of the universe and all that it contains. Any other mention of that origin in the Bible is merely a reference back to that single, powerful verse.
The verb ‘asah
6 God said, “Let there be [yə·hî, see below] a dome in the middle of the water; let it divide the water from the water.” 7 God made [‘asah] the dome and divided the water under the dome from the water above the dome; that is how it was, 8 and God called the dome Sky. So there was evening, and there was morning, a second day. — Genesis 1:6-8 (CJB)
The quote here is from The Complete Jewish Bible (CJB), a Messianic Jewish translation by David H. Stern. His use of the term “dome” may seem strange to you. The Hebrew is רָקִיעַ (raqia), which Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB) defines as “an extended, solid surface” or a flat “expanse”, both of which certainly suggest the concept of a dome. Furthermore, raqia is a derivative of the Hebrew verb, רָקַע (raqa), a root which means “to beat, stamp, beat out, spread out” (BDB) or “to expand (by hammering) … to overlay (with thin sheets of metal” (Strong’s).
KJV, of course, uses the term “firmament” here, which is derived from the Vulgate’s Latin, firmāmentum, which indicates a “prop, or support.” The Latin was a direct translation of the Septuagint’s Greek, στερέωμα (stereóma), meaning “a solid body, or support structure” (Strong’s), or “that which furnishes a foundation; on which a thing rests firmly” (Thayer’s Greek Lexicon).
A number of the commentaries in my library, written by thoughtful and devout Christian scholars, define “firmament” as simply a space between the waters below (ocean) and the waters above (vapor). In other words, the sky or atmosphere. There is absolutely no Biblical or linguistic support for this!
The job of a Bible scholar is exegesis. Exegesis is defined as critical analysis and explanation of Scriptural text. What these obviously well-intentioned scholars have done is to look at the passage and say, “Well, I don’t see anywhere else in Scripture or in extrabiblical sources that raqia can mean atmosphere between oceans and clouds, or a space between any two solid or liquid collections, but I know what God created, so that must just be Moses’ odd way of describing it.”
That is absolutely not allowed! That sort of “analysis” has a name: eisegesis. Eisegesis means reading your own ideas, traditions, or prejudices back into Scripture. In other words, instead of letting Scripture inform you, you are informing Scripture! Eisegesis accounts for a ton of bad theology, sectarian error, and downright heresy.
I point out all of the linguistic information on the “dome” in verse 7 to demonstrate that the language of Genesis 1 supports the diagram below, which is a schematic diagram of what in ancient times was universally believed to be the structure of the cosmos. The Babylonians saw it this way, as did the Persians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Hebrews, and yes, the 1st Century Christians. And that’s the way Moses described it!
Ancient cosmological beliefs
We know that picture is not right, but it does conform with Genesis 1. So, either God is using the description for His own purposes without explicitly endorsing the details, or Genesis 1 is talking about something completely different—for example, Schofield’s famous gap cataclysm. I used to think the latter; now I think the former.
Back on topic…
Though the Hebrew ‘asah in Genesis 1:7 does mean a type of creation, that term, by itself, doesn’t imply ex nihilo creation. Having described how the ancients understood the “dome”, or “firmament”, it makes sense that they would have thought of it not so much as a “creation” as a “construction“, like a dam or a roof. I don’t believe that this picture of the cosmos is even vaguely correct, but generations of belief made it an unbreakable tradition. In Genesis 1:1, God took full credit for creating the entire cosmos. In the rest of the chapter, He said, “this is the way you understand it to be made—that’s fine for now, but give the credit to me, not to Marduk, or Amun, or Baal, or Zeus, or any other regional creator-god.”
Also in Genesis 1, God made (‘asah) the sun and moon in verse 16 and the land-dwelling animals in verse 25. In verse 26 He proposed “make[ing] [‘asah] man in our image”—the image of God, Himself, and the angelic Divine Council, who I believe He was conversing with—which He then did (“So God created [bara’] man in His own image”) in verse 27. In verse 31, He looked on “all that He had made (‘asah)“.
The same term, ‘asah, is used for another form of creation in verses 11 and 12:
11 And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing [‘asah] fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind… — Genesis 1:11-12 (ESV)
This makes reproduction a type of “making“. Of the Hebrew terms the Bible uses for creating, only ‘bara is restricted to God alone.
The verb yatsar
The term yatsar is used in chapter 2:
Then ADONAI, God, formed [yatsar] a person [Hebrew: adam] from the dust of the ground [Hebrew: adamah] and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, so that he became a living being. —Genesis 2:7 CJB
Adam was evidently not created ex nihilo like the “humankind” of Genesis 1:27, but rather was formed from dust, like a potter’s earthenware, and then endowed with life by God’s breathing into his nostrils. I’ll speak more about this in a future post.
Though it is poetry, and thus a genre that often obscures the precise meanings of some Hebrew terms, Amos 4:13 seems to me to do a good job of illustrating the differences between bara’, ‘asah, and yatsar:
For behold, he who forms [yatsar] the mountains and creates [bara’] the wind, and declares to man what is his thought, who makes [‘asah] the morning darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth— the LORD, the God of hosts, is his name! — Amos 4:13 (ESV)
The verb kun
Kun is not used in the creation account of Genesis, but it occurs elsewhere in Genesis:
Why was the dream doubled for Pharaoh? Because the matter has been fixed [kun, established or assured] by God, and God will shortly cause it to happen. — Genesis 41:32 (CJB)
God has taken something unsure and made it inevitable.
When Yosef saw Binyamin with them, he said to his household manager, “Take the men inside the house, kill the animals and prepare [kun] the meat. These men will dine with me at noon.” — Genesis 43:16 (CJB)
Joseph commanded the steward to make ready the meat. I know, that’s a fairly weak form of making something.
“Let there be light!”
The terms “Let there be (yə·hî)”: light, in verse 3, expanse, dome, or firmament in verse 6, and lights in the expanse in verse 14; and “Let it (wî·hî)”: the firmament in verse 6, are forms of “creative command.”
The concept here is a grammatical feature of Hebrew. It’s a device called a Hiphil Stem, and becommingjewish.org expresses it this way: “The Hiphil Stem can be used to express a causative type of action with an active voice.” That’s kind of technical, but what it amounts to is that a prefix “stem” is added to a Hebrew word to change it from a simple active verb form like “he loved” to a causative active form like “he caused to love“.
To make that even simpler by example, in Genesis 1:3, the Hiphil changes “the light is on” to “turn on the light”. It becomes a command, and when God commands, the universe obeys!
Food for thought
Genesis 1 and 2 were written for Moses’ Israelite followers, but there is wisdom in there for us in the 21st century.
The following passage is Wisdom anthropomorphized. All the rules for interpretation of poetry must be observed. It isn’t a real person speaking, but it could surely have been spoken by Solomon himself. For that matter, I can easily read myself into the poem!
I am there. I am speaking. God made me among the “first of his ancient works.” God planned all of it, including me, before He programmed the physical laws of the universe so that they would make it happen, and before He created from nothing the primordial singularity. Before He allowed it to expand and coalesce first into undifferentiated energy, then into forces, then particles, then ions, atoms, stars and galaxies. The atheist Carl Sagan was fond of saying that we are made of “star-stuff.” He thought he was second-guessing God!
22 “ADONAI made me as the beginning of his way, the first of his ancient works. 23 I was appointed before the world, before the start, before the earth’s beginnings. 24 When I was brought forth, there were no ocean depths, no springs brimming with water. 25 I was brought forth before the hills, before the mountains had settled in place; 26 he had not yet made [‘asah] the earth, the fields, or even the earth’s first grains of dust. 27 When he established [kun] the heavens, I was there. When he drew the horizon’s circle on the deep, 28 when he set the skies above in place, when the fountains of the deep poured forth, 29 when he prescribed boundaries for the sea, so that its water would not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, 30 I was with him as someone he could trust. For me, every day was pure delight, as I played in his presence all the time, 31 playing everywhere on his earth, and delighting to be with humankind. —Proverbs 8:22–31 CJB
The Back of My Mind 