Did It Ever Rain Before the Flood of Noah

Many scholars have stated, or speculated, that before the flood, it had never rained on the Earth. There is almost no evidence to support this supposition and I personally have a hard time believing that it had never rained before the flood. This is what we do know. God told Noah:

Genesis 6:17 “I am going to bring floodwaters on the Earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on Earth will perish.” (NIV)

No place does it say that it had never rained. Where this idea comes from is much earlier in Genesis where it says”

Genesis 2:4-7  ⁴This is the account of the heavens and the Earth when they were created. When the LORD God made the Earth and the heavens -  and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the Earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the Earth and there was no man to work the ground, ⁶but streams came up from the Earth and watered the whole surface of the ground- ⁷the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. (NIV)

The assumption here is that after this, God never sent rain even up to the time of the flood because the Earth was watered by waters that came up from the ground and the water table was just under the ground, so rain was not necessary. But even the four rivers spoken of in Genesis 2:10-15 is often misunderstood to mean that these four rivers watered the whole earth.

Genesis 2: 10-15  ¹⁰Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it divided and became four rivers. ¹¹The name of the first is Pishon; it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. ¹² The gold of that land is good; the bdellium and the onyx stone are there. ¹³ The name of the second river is Gihon; it flows around the whole land of Cush. ¹⁴The name of the third river is Tigris; it flows east of Assyria and the fourth river is the Euphrates. ¹⁵ Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. (NAS).

What the Genesis 2:4-7 scripture actually says is that God had not sent rain YET. This passage is a referring to a time during the creation, before there were plants and before man had been created. It says that there were waters that spring up out of the ground that watered the Earth. Genesis tells us in later verses that there were four great rivers all springing from one river with its headwaters in Eden. The Bible is not specific about whether or not God ever sent rain, but specifically what it says is:

“⁵and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the Earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the Earth and there was no man to work the ground.”

I believe that after God created man, and especially after He sent them out of the garden to work the land, that He would have caused it to rain so they could produce fruits and grains to live on. The theory that it had never rained prior to the flood is pure speculation. There is no scriptural evidence to back it up, simply a misunderstanding that comes from taking Genesis 2:5 out of context and trying to create an entire theology around it. I find that most of the really extreme theories that abound with the study of Genesis come from just that: taking one verse out of context and using it to try and make a specific case for someone’s personal belief.

Genesis is the story of the creation told in the simplest and most basic way possible. For anyone to make it their life’s work to prove scientifically every detail of Genesis is not only unnecessary, I believe it is unbiblical. I am fiction writer myself, and I know, and I make no pretence otherwise, that my fiction works are products of my overactive imagination and are shear speculation designed to spark the imagination, but never to be taken literally as theologically sound doctrine.

Dogmatism and speculation that asserts itself to be truth are the two greatest enemies for the Church today. It only serves to divide believers into camps so we can spend our time arguing with one another rather than pooling our resources to carry out the Lord’s work. How the Satan must laugh every time He bates us into a public debate over such silly matters as this.

To read more of my essays on Genesis or to learn more about my fiction books based on the stories in Genesis, visit http:thewitnesschronicles.com.

 

The Earth Before the Flood

I don’t think it’s possible to be a Christian or Jew and not have wondered what the world was like before the great Flood of Noah. The very prospect of a world so corrupt and evil that God found it necessary to wipe out mankind and everything that he touched is almost unimaginable. What was this world like before the flood? It most certainly was not a perfect world in any sense. We cannot allow ourselves to romanticize a world so objectionable that its very creator had to destroy it.

Try to think for a moment about something that you yourself might create from your own imagination and hands; the most beautiful thing you can imagine with your own mind. The imagine watching it slowly turn to rust and rubble and decay into something you hardly even recognize. But still, it is your crowning jewel, the greatest expression of  you that you have ever done. How bad would it have to become for you to decide to destroy it; to completely make it over into something new again; this thing that you created that was so much an expression of you. Yet you know if you do not stop the corrosion and decay, it will destroy itself and everything else you created right along with it. How gut wrenching and painful would that be? “But,” you say to yourself, “if only I can find just one small piece that is not yet corrupted, then I can use that small fragment to give it new life again. So you take that small uncorrupted piece and separate it from the rest, then melt and remold the rest of the piece into a new one and put the uncorrupted piece back in place once again.”

That is what God faced with His decision to destroy mankind. and remake the world with a catastrophe so unimaginable, that 5000 years later, we don’t even admit that it was possible. We look at the world and see how it works and can’t imagine that it has worked in any other way than it does today.

But God knew that simply flooding the world and starting over with one family would not crate a much different result, but only that it would extend His plan out a few thousand years until the fullness of His time was complete and his creation could be saved, as was His plan from the beginning.

What went wrong with the Old World. Well if the Book of Enoch has any credibility, it had as much to do with disobedient Watchers (angles) as it did with man’s fall. But man’s fall and subsequent sinful nature certainly made him easy prey to these disobedient “Sons of God.”

So, how will it be fixed, well If God created the world in a week, I believe His plan to repair it will take a week as well. God always seems to work in weeks and systematic number sequences. I tend to take the Bible’s view of a thousand year day.

II Peter 3:8 “But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” (NIV)

I personally believe that God’s plan to restore mankind is a seven day (seven thousand year) plan and that the seventh day, just as with creation, will be a day of rest, i.e. the millennium reign of Christ. But this of course is my opinion and not intended to be theological dogma. It don’t know this to be fact, it just seems to fit God’s pattern that we have to use as a model. Don’t confuse this however, with God’s creation of the earth itself which we discussed in Old Earth vs. Young Earth. God may well have take billions of  years by our estimates to created the universe and the earth in six distinct phases which we translate as days in our Christian traditions.

What do we know of the society before the flood?  Actually, very little by way of direct knowledge and even what we think we know comes to us from millennia of oral traditions before it was ever written down in clay or ink. These stories were pasted down through oral traditions for more than 2500 years before the very first accounts of Genesis (that we know of) were actually written down. There are many older versions of the flood written, such as the Gilgamesh Epic, and some Ancient Chinese folklore and other stories from just about every culture around the world, but those were written with a different intent than Genesis and are even shorter than the story in Genesis, so none of them tell the story as completely as Genesis does. In my next topic Rain, Rain, Never a Rain I will discuss some commonly held, or at least taught, beliefs about the world before the flood. and whether or not they hold any water (no pun intended) from a Biblical perspective.

To read more of my essays on Genesis or to learn more of my fiction books (The Witness Chronicles series), based on stories from Genesis and other non Biblical sources such as the Book of Jubilees, The Book of Enoch, etc., visit http://thewitnesschronicles.com.

 

 

The Serpent in the Tree

 Who was the serpent who tempted Adam and Eve? Was he an Earthly creature or a heavenly angel or somehow both? Was he one in the same as Satan? What other Biblical evidence do we have to support or refute this idea that Satan and the serpent are one in the same?

There are so many questions regarding the serpent and I’m not sure I can answer them all. But I will try to explain exactly what the Bible does say about Serpent to see if we can draw from the scripture a true understanding of who and what he is.

Let’s begin with Genesis where we are first introduced to the Serpent in the tree.

Genesis 3:1-15 ¹Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” ²The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, ³but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ “ ⁴“You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. ⁵“For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” ⁶When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. ⁷Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. ⁸Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. ⁹But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?” ¹⁰He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” ¹¹And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” ¹²The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” ¹³Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” ¹⁴So the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, “Cursed are you above all the live stock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. ¹⁵And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” (NIV)

There are many strange things about this encounter. To begin with, there is almost no lead up this event taking place. The scripture directly before this passage says:

Genesis 2:25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. (NKJ)

The very next thing we see in the story is the Serpent in the tree. We do not have any indication whatsoever of the time gap between 2:25 and 3:1. It could have been days, weeks, months or years. There is no way of knowing for certain.

The next thing we have is the statement:

Genesis 3:1 Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. (NKJ)

This tends to make us believe that the Serpent was in fact an animal of some kind that God had created. Otherwise, why compare it to the other beasts of the field. But was it an animal that was possessed by an angelic being of some sort, or an animal who was just more intelligent than all the others God had created. Strong’s Concordance tells us this about the word Serpent that we us in our English translations of the Bible.

The Hebrew word is 5175 Nâchâsh (na-khawsh’) which means a snake from the sound of a hiss. The prime root of this word is 5172 Nâchâsh (na-khash’) to whisper or to prognosticate.

This alone does not tell us much about the Serpent other than the term used to describe it is borne out of the idea that he whispered something to Eve. In other words, he put an idea into her head. But we know the Serpent was more than a mere spirit that entered into Eve’s thought process because God actually curses this creature in verse 14. God tells this creature that he will be lower than all the animals of the Earth and will live his life on his belly and that he will eat dust all his days on the Earth.

None of this alone tells us much about the Serpent that we did not already know, so now let’s look at some other passages in other parts of the Bible that may shed some light on who this creature was. We have a passage in Ezekiel 28 that may give us some rather revealing insight into the Serpent.

Ezekiel 28:13-15 ¹³ “You were the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you: ruby, topaz and emerald, chrysolite, onyx and jasper, sapphire, turquoise and beryl. Your settings and mountings were made of gold; on the day you were created they were prepared. ¹⁴You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones. ¹⁵You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you.’ (NIV)

Here we have a description of a Guardian Cherub, who was put in charge of Eden to protect it. It is unclear if this is the guardian that God placed in Eden to keep men out after Adam and his wife were expelled or if this is the Serpent who deceived Eve. But the last line in this passage may suggest that it was the latter:

¹⁵ “You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you.”

Remarkably, this is the same cherub who is being chastised here in Ezekiel 28 for corrupting the king of Tyre. Put these two passages together and they give us something very mysterious to ponder.

Now let’s look at one more passage to see where once again Satan is linked back to the Garden event and this creature.

Revelation 12:7-9 ⁷And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. ⁸But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. ⁹The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the Earth, and his angels with him. (NIV)

Here, finally, in the last book of the New Testament, we have one passage that seems to connect all the terms Serpent, Devil and Satan together. It is difficult to know how Satan and the Serpent relate to the creature in the tree or the king of Tyre, but we do have John’s revelation that finally brings all these references together into one entity. We still have a tendency however, in our modern day theologies, to misunderstand the term Satan. Obviously Satan is used here as a term referring to this entity, but in the Jewish tradition, Satan was term meaning Accuser, or Tempter, and not necessarily a proper noun referring to an actual name of one particular Angel. Satan, in the Jewish tradition was often used in the plural sense. Richard Laurence tells us that, Satan means Impious angels. Literally, “the Satans” Ha-Satan in Hebrew (“the adversary”) was originally the title of an office, not the name of an angel or to Prefer accusations against or, “to accuse”.

The best example we have of this in scripture is in the book of Job.

Job 1:6-7 ⁶Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them. ⁷And the LORD said to Satan, “From where do you come?” So Satan answered the LORD and said, “From going to and fro on the Earth, and from walking back and forth on it.” (NKJ)

This passage has always been a puzzle to me until I began to study this topic in detail. I could never understand how Satan, who I was taught to believe had already been cast out of heaven, would come before the Lord with the other “Sons of God”. The name Satan used here, would clearly seem to be consistent with the use of an office or as an accuser as Laurence suggests. It is also consistent with the story told in the Book of Enoch.

Now I understand that in mainstream protestant theology, we do not accept the Book of Enoch as divinely inspired text, and therefore it is not part of the protestant Bible, but many Eastern churches and some Roman Catholic Bibles, do include this book as part of their belief. For those of you unfamiliar with this book, it is a series of visions given to Enoch before he was taken to Heaven. His visions are much like that of John’s in Revelation as they reveal many hidden things that go on behind the scenes between Heaven and Earth. In the Book of Enoch, he speaks of the Watchers, who are a class of angles who’s job it is to watch man and report to God on Man’s deeds. Some of these Watchers fell prey to lust and left their heavenly domain and married the daughters of men, as mentioned in Genesis 6:2. Without going into great detail, let me just say that this passage in Revelation 12 seems to fit very nicely with the mythology of the Watchers spoken about in the Book of Enoch.

The relationships between God and Satan and Satan and Man are the most puzzling aspects of the Bible. Was the Serpent one and the same as the same Satan we in the Christian faith teach or was it just another creature in God’s creation? Was he a Cherub appointed as the Guardian over the Garden of Eden or perhaps over the whole earth, as the suggested in Ezekiel with the words “…every precious stone adorned you: ruby, topaz and emerald, chrysolite, onyx and jasper, sapphire, turquoise and beryl. Your settings and mountings were made of gold; on the day you were created they were prepared. ¹⁴You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones.” This seems to suggest that this entity was present during the very formation of the earth. I believe the phrase “You walked upon the fiery stones.” suggests the time when the earth was still nothing more than a mass of molten rock. Whatever the case, this is truly a mystery that may not be completely revealed to us until all is said and done. What is the relationship between God and the Deceiver and why is he allowed to continue influence the affairs of man even though he has clearly sinned and been cast out of his place in heaven, it is difficult to say. I do address these things in some detail in my fiction books, but even that is based on speculation, mythology, and my imagination.

In conclusion, I believe it is safe to say that the Serpent in the tree was in fact the Devil or a Satan. Is there some link between this creature and the snakes of today as we often like to believe, or was this just a metaphor of some kind? I don’t know the answer to that but, we can say, both from John’s Revelation and the books of Genesis, Job and Isaiah, and Ezekiel,  that there are many strange things going on between Heaven and Earth that we are not able to see from our vantage point. Scientists have recently theorized that our universe my be made up of at least ten dimensions, but six of which were “rolled up” just milliseconds after the Big Bang so that we do not have access to then. Could this be evidence that Heaven and Earth coexist together, but humans cannot see a significant part of God’s creation, because we have been shielded away from six tenths of it, but the angels have access to Heaven, Earth and us?  The Bible certainly seems to indicate as much.

To read more of my essays on Genesis or to learn more about my fiction books based on the stories in Genesis, visit my website at http://thewitnesschronicles.com.

 

 

 

Two Trees in the Garden of Eden

A point of question that often arises over the Genesis text involves the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Genesis 2:9 And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree grow that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The Tree of Life was also in the midst of the garden. And the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. (NKJ)

This passage raises some very difficult questions. What kind of trees were these and why would God put them in the garden? How can a tree possess the gift of life or fruit of knowledge of good and evil? Any attempt to answer these questions is shear speculation, but the Bible does give us some other clues as to what these trees may have been.

The Tree of Life

First, let’s talk about the Tree of Life. For years this has been a mystery, but I believe recent scientific theories concerning string theory can give us at least a plausible explanation as to how this tree worked. We know that all matter decays as proven by the second law of thermo dynamics called the Law of Entropy. We also know that all matter in the universe already exists, i.e., no new matter is being generated, it is simply transitioning for one form to another. As Entropy takes over, energy devolves from an active to less active state or so it would seem from casual observation. That is what we refer to as decay, be it radio active decay or the kind of decay that takes place in the human body over time. This has always been part of God’s creation. It is often said by Theologians that man was created to live forever, and that death only came into existence when man sinned. This is not a completely true statement however. Man’s body was created like all other physical aspects of the universe, i.e., from the dust of the ground. It is made from the same matter that all other aspects of the universe are made of. Decay was and always will be a natural part of God’s creation. Our spirits were created to live forever, but our physical bodies were not

However, for man, God also created a way to overcome, or put off, this natural decaying process, i.e., The Tree of Life. How do I know this? John tells us as much in his Revelation in the 22nd chapter.

Revelation 22:1-2 “And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each ‘tree’ yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” (NKJ)

In Greek, nation and people are one and the same. In this passage, John reaffirms that the tree of life will once again be accessible to man in the new Earth that God will bring into being after the old Earth and old heavens have passed away. The water that flows from the throne and the trees that are fed from the water are intended to sustain life. I believe the original tree had the same purpose. It was to extend man’s life and to stave off the natural forces of decay as it began to take effect. This tree had the ability to “retune” the frequency of our strings and reenergize them to their greatest level. I believe that the human body was designed to last naturally for about 1000 years, or one day, according the biblical reckoning of a day. Again, I turn to scripture to support this belief.

Genesis 2:16-17 “And the Lord commanded the man saying, ‘Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You shall not eat, for on that day you eat of it you shall surely die.’” (NKJ)

Adam lived 930 years, and all the descendants of Adam mentioned in the Genealogy of Noah also lived very long lives, but none lived longer than 1000 years. Once Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden, they no longer had access to the tree of life. In fact the text goes on to tell the reason they were expelled was to specifically deny them access to the tree.

Genesis 3:24 “After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. (NIV)

I believe it is safe to say, that the Tree of Life, and whatever kind of fruit it produced, had the ability to regenerate or reenergize the cells, atoms, particles and strings that make up the human body and extend life indefinitely, as long as one has access to it. But God knew that an indefinite life span and a sinful nature were not a good mix. Denying access to the tree limited man’s life to 1000 years or less, but even that proved to be too long. After that, God found it necessary to reduce it even further to 120 years

Genesis 6:3 And the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” (NKJ)

Even though there are examples of men who lived much longer than that such as Abraham 175 years, Isaac 180 years, Jacob 148 years, there seems to be a distinct reduction in the length of life beginning with Noah’s sons, e.g., Shem 600 years, Arphaxad 465 years, Salah 433 years, Eber 464 years and Peleg 239 years. From this point on, the years are limited and continue to become less with each generation until we get to Moses who lived 120 years. Today on average, we live about 75-80 years. A few make it past 100 and almost no one makes it to 120.

The tree of life was a very special tree indeed. It had the ability to completely stop and reverse the natural decay caused by the laws that God put into place at creation. Someday, after the resurrection and when we are all given new glorified bodies, we will once again have access to a Tree of Life to maintain those bodies in a perpetual state of youthfulness.

The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

This tree is much different than the tree of life. The fruit of this tree gave knowledge not life. The real power of this tree has been hotly debated for centuries. Some believe that eating the fruit literally gave man an insight into the universe that he did not have before. Others say it possessed no special power, save to give Adam and his wife the knowledge that sin and rebellion against God was possible. Before entering this debate, let’s look to see what the Bible actually says.

Genesis 3:6-7 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. (NIV)

This passage gives us a very clear description of what happened to Adam and Eve upon eating the fruit of that tree. It says without a doubt, “Then the eyes of both of them were opened” There was indeed some change that took place as a result of eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. But, let us not forget that directly preceding Eve’s eating of the fruit, the Serpent said to her,

Genesis 3:5 “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God knowing good and evil.” (NIV)

It is not possible, regardless of what some scholars want us to believe, to know exactly what the change was that took place in Adam and Eve at that point. There are a couple of interesting points here however. Some have suggested that Eve eat the fruit and then later gave it to her husband, but the text does not support that. Rather, the text supports that Adam was right there with her at the time she ate it. “She also gave some to her husband, who was with her and he ate it.” Also, if Eve had eaten the fruit some time before she gave it to Adam, her eyes would have been opened first, for the text seems to say that the effect was immediate and simultaneous. “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized that they were naked” Had there been some time laps, she would have noticed she was naked before Adam even understood the concept of naked.

Whether the change that took place was physiological, or just mental awareness of some sort, they immediately became different and saw each other in a different way. They knew they were naked. Why was that the first thing they noticed when sin entered into them? After all, they were naked just moments before this. This speaks directly to our obsession with sex and the sexual nature of our lives. In the animal kingdom, sex is as natural as eating, but animals do not think about sex as a pleasurable thing. It is a device used to ensure the procreation of the species. It is an instinctive thing. I believe it was like this for Adam and Eve before this moment. The scripture is silent on whether or not they had ever had sexual relations up to this point. We do know that before this, God had told them to be fruitful and multiply.

Genesis 1:28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the Earth and subdue it…(NIV)

We do not know how long they had lived together before this, but we do know the reason God created Eve was so Adam would not be alone and would be able to multiply as the other creatures did. But whether or not they had had sex or not is irrelevant, from this moment on, sex would never be the same for them or their offspring again. When they looked at each other and knew they were naked, “LUST” became a part of the equation. So, in just a few short minutes, sin begins to creep in. But what we need to understand here is that the first sin came even before Eve took the first bite of the fruit, and that sin was the sin of “COVETING.”

You see, Eve and Adam both coveted the knowledge of good and evil that God had, or maybe it was not even that deep. Maybe it was as simple as wanting the fruit that looked good to eat, even though they also had every other fruit in the garden. The Serpent tempted them into wanting something they could not have, the forbidden fruit, but coveting it came from within them. We often believe that eating the fruit brought sin into the world, but a careful reading of this passage shows us that sin was always possible even before the fruit was touched. They desired something they could not have. The tenth commandment says, “Thou shall not Covet.” and this scripture shows us that coveting was the very first sin ever committed. What actually caused their eyes to be open to their nakedness after this we cannot know, but I believe once they committed the sin of coveting, all other sin became possible to them as well. In fact when you think about it, most all sin in our lives has its roots in this one. Sin always results from our coveting something we do not now have. All greed, lust, steeling, lies, false witnessing, murder, and jealousy is bourn out of some need to gain something that others have and we want.

I do not believe there was any magic to the fruit. It did not possess all the knowledge of the universe, as I believe God would have freely given that to Adam and his wife anyway, that is after all, what they were created for. It simply was the one thing Adam and his wife could not have. Adam and Eve had everything that anyone could ever want. They lived in total peace, all their needs were cared for, the weather was always perfect, to the degree that they didn’t even need clothes, they even had access to the Tree of Life and could live forever, yet it was not enough. They still succumbed to the temptation of wanting the one thing and only thing that God said “No” to. They got what they wanted, and we have all paid the price every since.

To read more of my essays on Genesis or to learn more about my fiction novels based on the stories in Genesis, visit http://thewitnesschronicles.com.

 

 

Eden and The Garden of God

Genesis 2: 8-17  ⁸The LORD God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed. ⁹Out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. ¹⁰Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it divided and became four rivers. ¹¹The name of the first is Pishon; it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. ¹² The gold of that land is good; the bdellium and the onyx stone are there. ¹³ The name of the second river is Gihon; it flows around the whole land of Cush. ¹⁴ The name of the third river is Tigris; it flows east of Assyria and the fourth river is the Euphrates. ¹⁵ Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. (NAS)

In these 230 words is contained all our knowledge we have of Eden, at least from a Christian perspective. The Jewish Book of Jubilees gives a much greater detailed description of Eden and Adam and Eve and the time even before they were brought to Eden, but we will stick with the Genesis account here. In these words, however, is also contained some of the most compelling evidence for the lack of total accuracy of the strict historical facts of Genesis, at least of the pre-flood period. But before we get into that, let’s talk about one of the more confusing statements in the book.

¹⁵ Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.

Verse 15 of this account, eludes to man (Adam) being created outside the Garden of Eden and that God created the garden after He created Adam. This opens up a whole set of questions such as how long did Adam live outside the Garden before he was placed in the garden? Did God create the Garden just for Adam? How long did Adam live in the garden? We have absolutely NO answers to these questions, even though, as stated above, some other Jewish texts give greater details, but regardless, we are most left with a great number of unanswered questions. The Book of Jubilees says that both Adam and Eve were created outside the garden and that the entire task of naming the animals was completed before God brought Adam to the garden. It says specifically that Adam lived seven years outside the garden. The Genesis passage does say that Adam was created outside the garden, but how long he lived there and what he did before he was brought to the garden is not knowable from Bible alone.

The other thing we don’t know, is how long Adam and Eve lived in the Garden before they were expelled. Jubilees says about 14 years, but once again the Book of Jubilees is based on allegory and has other proven inaccuracies, so it cannot be taken as a canonical text. So, once again, Genesis leaves us with a great number of unanswered questions. I say once again, anyone who says they have answers to these questions is really just a writer of fiction pretending to be something else.

We have no provable or definitive timeframes for the very earliest parts of this story. The first clue we get to any timeframe is in Genesis 5:3:

Genesis 5:3 “When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth. (NIV)

We know that Adam was 130 when Seth was born. Whether this was just one year after Cain killed Able or several years we can’t say for sure. We also cannot tell how old Cain was when he slew Able. But assuming that Cain was at least a young adult of say twenty at the time, and as he was not born until after his parents were expelled from the Garden, Adam lived in the garden somewhere between one and one hundred and ten years.

I want to address one often misunderstood point before we move on. People often mistake the Garden of Eden as an entire land, but the text makes it clear that the garden was planted towards the east “In Eden.” It did not encompass all of Eden or an entire land in and of itself. It is unlikely that Adam and his wife would have been assigned to care for a garden so large that they would not even be able to circumnavigate it on foot. We should note that Adam and Eve were probably expelled to Eden, but outside the garden which was planted in Eden. This is a plausible assumption because we know that Cain was later sent to become a wonderer in the Land of Nod which was east of Eden.

Now on to the most historically difficult part of the story to deal with: the part of the four rivers coming from Eden. A common misconception is that the fountain from which the four rivers flowed was in the Garden, and the rivers flowed from the garden, but what the scripture actually says is:

¹⁰ Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it divided and became four rivers.

This clearly states that the fountain was in the Land of Eden and it divided into four rivers in the garden. Remember, we have already established that Eden and the garden are not exactly one and the same; the garden was only a place in Eden. This passage clearly states, at least to me, that the fountain or spring fed lake if you will, was in Eden and the river that it fed flowed through the garden portion and there divided into four rivers. This is not uncommon with rivers which often have long tributaries that emanate from them and create great fertile plains or flatlands.

It is entirely possible that God planted the garden at a place where, in the Old World, great rivers sprang from one source. The Land of Eden had a large spring fed lake or inland sea whose waters fed the river that watered the garden with the four rivers. It is a common misconception that at this time all the land of the Earth was watered by the four rivers that sprang from these headwaters. That is not what the scripture actually says. What is says is:

¹⁰ Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it divided and became four rivers.

People often want to go back to the earlier scripture about all the Earth being watered from the streams of the Earth “but streams came up from the Earth and watered the whole surface of the ground” (Gen. 2:6 NIV) in an attempt to say that these for rivers watered the whole of the Earth.  But these are two different passages and when we connect them together, we run the risk of making a huge error in our reading of the scripture.

The four rivers that flowed from the river that sprang from Eden and through the garden are not the same as those mentioned earlier, nor did these four rivers water the whole of the Earth. How big these rivers were and how much land they watered is total conjecture. We do not know how extensive these rivers were, and anyone who says they do is fooling themselves and trying to fool you as well.

We also know that two of these rivers, the modern day Tigris and Euphrates, cannot have flowed through the garden, even though many try to make that claim, because they do not take their rise from the same place. The Tigris flows east of Assyria. Assyria did not exist before the flood. And since all the names and lands mentioned in this passage i.e., Havilah and Cush and Assyria, are people and lands that existed only after the great flood, it is not likely that they are accurate names for rivers that flowed from Eden. Now Euphrates and Tigris may well be names brought over from the Old World by Noah and his sons, but they could not possibly be the rivers we know today by these names. It is possible that as Shem, Japheth, and Ham came across the mountains of Ararat down into the fertile Mesopotamian plains of Shinar that was bordered by these two grate rivers, they said something to effect of, “Wow, this place must surely be the garden spoken of by our fathers and these must be the Tigris and the Euphrates that we have heard them speak of as well,” since the plains of Shinar were most certainly fertile and abundant with food and animals, and so the names stuck. This may have been the first time they had ever seen a place so abundant and could very well have thought they had stumbled onto the garden of God. But of course that is shear speculation on my part, we simply do not know how these names were given to the two rivers that border the east and west sides of Shinar.

There is also much debate around whether Pishon and Gihon exist at all in the modern world, even under new names such as Nile or Ganges, which have often been suggested. We know that today both the Tigris and Euphrates run north to south and do not come from the same source and are fairly small rivers today compared to the great rivers such as Nile, Amazon, Ganges, Indus, Yellow, and Mississippi of modern day. Since I’m not that great of an ancient geographer myself, I have included here other’s explanations for the Pishon and Gihon rivers with links to where I found them.

Pishon River – The Pishon River (2:11-12) has been variously identified by scholars with the Nile, the Indus, the Ganges, or other rivers. The lack of any general agreement stems from the fact that no known river matches Moses’ description: “it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. The gold of that land is good; the bdellium and onyx stone are there.” “Havilah” itself is of uncertain location, but [is generally believed to be] associated with the western or southern regions of the Arabian peninsula. “Bdellium” is usually understood to be a fragrant resin, found in abundance in Arabia, as are various types of precious and semiprecious stones (the identification of the “onyx stone” is uncertain). The only known Arabian source for “good gold” is the so-called “Cradle of Gold,” (Mahd edh-Dhahab), located about 125 miles south of Medina, in the Hijaz Mountains, which currently produces more than five tons of gold a year. http://www.focusmagazine.org/Articles/pishonriver.htm

Gihon River – Gihon is the name of a river first mentioned in the second chapter of the Biblical book of Genesis. The Gihon is mentioned as one of four rivers issuing out of the Garden of Eden that branched from a single river within the garden. The name (Hebrew Giħôn) may be interpreted as “Bursting Forth, Gushing”. The Gihon is described as “encircling the entire land of Cush”, a name associated with Ethiopia elsewhere in the Bible. As a result, Ethiopians have long identified the Gihon with the Abay River, which encircles the former kingdom of Gojjam. However, from a geographic standpoint, this would seem impossible, since two of the other rivers said to issue out of Eden, the Tigris and the Euphrates, are in Mesopotamia. The city in the Mesopotamian area that best fits the description is called Kish located in a plain area (sumerian ‘edin’) and resembles an area that is repeatedly flooded by the rivers today called Euphrat and Tigris. Fundamentalists have sought other identifications of both the “land of Cush” and the river Gihon; by some it has been associated with the Araxes (modern Araks) river of Turkey. Another proposed idea is that the Gihon river no longer exists, since the topography of the area has supposedly been altered by the Noachian Flood. Secular scholars note that the Gihon river remains unidentified, since the geographical ideas of the author(s) of Genesis cannot be reconstructed and need not conform with actual geography as known today: In Genesis 2, the Euphrates, Tigris, Gihon and Pishon rivers are all said to issue out of Eden, but the Euphrates and the Tigris do not take their rise in the same place, and the Pishon river remains as unidentified as the Gihon. First-century Jewish historian Josephus associated the Gihon river with the Nile (Jewish Antiquities, 1.39). However, a quite different Hebrew word is used to designate the Nile elsewhere in the Bible, and even in ancient times it must have been obvious that the Nile could not have a common source with the Tigris and the Euphrates. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gihon

This confusion and inaccuracy in geographic features of the rivers coming out of Eden leave us to believe that the writers or story tellers of Genesis took known landmarks and gave them names consistent with those passed down in the oral histories. In other words, if Shem and Japheth and Ham were all familiar with these rivers in the Old World, as they came into the Plains of Shinar and eventually spread elsewhere, they or their descendants would have identified the first great rivers they came to with those names they were familiar with. But since Cush and Havilah are both descendants of Ham, it is most likely that this description comes from the peoples of Canaan, where Abram and subsequently Moses would have learned of the one true God, perhaps from Melchizedek who was the King of Salem and a Righteous King by later accounts in Genesis. They had no real way of knowing how dramatically the continents had moved and shifted during the flood. This just goes to prove, that oral traditions do a great job of telling the stories, but lose historical and geographical accuracy over time. Post-flood names and locations were woven into the descriptions of the Pre-flood world.

This is why Genesis must be read with the understanding that it was an oral tradition passed from father to son for at least 2500 years before it was actually set in writing. Once it was written, great care has been taken to ensure it did not change, but prior to that time, it was subject to some alteration from generation to generation. Moreover, the entire topography of the Earth changed dramatically during the flood (we will discuss that in the section on the flood) and so it is useless for us to even try to correlate pre-flood locations such as Eden and Nod and the four rivers, with modern geographical locations. 

If you would like to read more of my essays on Genesis of learn about my fiction books based of stories from Genesis, please visit http://thewitnesschronicles.com.

In the Image of God

The Bible makes it very clear, that when God created man, he was a wholly different creature than any other creature in God’s creation.

Genesis 1:26 “Then God said, ‘Let us make a man in our image, in our own likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the Earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” (NIV)

The creation of man came as the last step in God’s creation process and we were something very different than all the other creatures on the Earth up to that time.

It is difficult to discuss this subject without once again getting into the Old Earth vs. Young Earth debate and how the fossil and geological records seem to indicate eons of time and various epochs and ages of dinosaurs and development of Neanderthal and other “Pre-human” species. The fact is however, the Bible is very clear that man was new and different than everything that preceded him. It is entirely possible that God had previously created other species who walked the earth and hunted and communal instincts, but this does not mean that His newest creation was somehow nothing more than a newer or smarter version of this old beast. There are some very old Jewish teachings that give new perspective to this new type of being called man that may shed some light on the topic for us. The following is an excerpt from my next to be released book, Children of the Fallen, the third book in my Witness Chronicles Series. This is about as simple an explanation of what some Jewish teachers believed as I can come up with.

“Excerpt from Children of the Fallen – When God created the earth and the heavens, he separated the earthly realm from the heavenly realm. He put man and animals and all the plants of the earth and the fish of the sea in the earthly realm. But God also created many orders of angels to over see different parts of his creation, and they were put in the heavenly realm. Some orders of Angels had the ability to move between the heavenly and earthly realms, and some could only carry out their assigned duties from the heavenly realm and they were called the spirits of the earth. Of those that had the ability to carry out their duties in both the heavenly and the earthly realms, there are the Arch Angles, the Cherubs, and the Watchers of Men.

Now God created all the heavens and the stars of heaven and the earth; and the earth was covered with water. Then the spirit of God moved upon the face of the earth and God cause the dry lands to raise from the sea, so that the land and to great outer sea were separate. God set two great lights in the sky, one to rule the day, and the other to rule the night. On the day that He created the earth and the stars and the sun and the moon, God also created Cherubs to rule over these bodies and to have dominion over all the heavenly spirits who were in charge of ensuring the movements of the stars and the earth. Then He created all the the creatures of the sea and the plants on the land and the creatures of the earth and the beasts of the field. And finally, when all was exactly as God planned, he created Man.

Now man was a very different creature than any other created before; for when god created Man, he was given attributes of both the beasts of the earth and the angels of heaven. For like the beasts of the earth, man was made to eat and drink, secrete the waste from our bodies, beget others of our kind, and as our bodies were made from the elements of the earth, our bodies were subject to aging and decay, just as the all the creatures of the earth.

And like the angels of heaven, man was given the power of speech and a discriminating intellect so we could think and learn and engage in deep understanding of God and all He had created and we were given free will to decide our own course in life. And man was made the glance of the eye so that we could look upon God’s creation and upon each other in wonder and understanding. With these eight attributes, God created man to be different and superior to all living things in heaven and on earth and to reign over all other creatures in creation.

And then God gave to Man one more thing than not even the angels of heaven were given: the very spirit of God himself. When God formed man from the dust of the earth he breathed into Adam and Adam became alive with the spirit of God that cannot die, but will dwell forever and ever and be one with the Creator of heaven and earth. So even though our bodies may parish, our spirit will live forever. And this made us superior to even the angels in heaven, so man was created to rule all the earth and have dominion over the all angels of heaven and the earth as well. But from the beginning, man was created to live in a physical world, which is why God planted the tree of life in the garden, so when Adam and his wife eat of the tree of life, they could renew their bodies and their bodies would not die.”

Basically, many Jewish teachers believed that Man was created with all the unique attributes of both the animals of the earth and of the Angels who were put over the functions of the earth (see Ezekiel 28:11-15) and then given one additional attribute that no even the Angels had: the spirit of God himself.

What Anthropologists understand about pre-human species is that they were purely instinctive. Just like all other animals, they had very little reasoning and mental capacity. What they also know is that at some point, in the very near past, (anthropologically speaking) this newer form of intelligent man suddenly sprang onto the scene. There is very little evidence of a slow development of intellect. It shows up among the anthropological record as suddenly as man does in the Biblical record, and as man becomes evident, the older bi-peddle species just as suddenly disappear. Ardent evolutionist of course make claims of the gradual development of man and are constantly searching for the “missing link” that can connect man to these pre-human species. But what they fail to tell the uniformed public is that there is not a single missing link that can show this connection. If a connection were ever made, there would have to be hundreds if not thousands of missing links found to make the direct connection of these pre-human animals to man.

The number of differences between humans and pre-humans at every level from DNA to skeletal differences, to brain size, is very small, but the differences seem to lie in areas of our Genes that, even by the best estimates of the staunches Evolutionist, would represent millions of years of evolutionary development. Yet these changes show up almost instantaneously in the anthropological and DNA evidence. Evolutionist continue however to insist that over time, they will find all the remains necessary to make the connection and have taken the tack that if they just continue to insist that they will find the evidence they need to prove this while at the same time, they insist that anyone who is not able to see that they are correct is simply not smart enough to be taken seriously, that the world acquiesces to their will. See the film, Expelled – No Intelligence Allowed, for stark evidence of this.

This charade is not unlike the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes. Everyone could see the Emperor was unclothed but was afraid to say anything because they knew if they did, they’d be accused of not being sophisticated enough to see them. The Emperor and his court of course had been convinced by a charlatan tailor that the clothes were so brilliant and special, that only the very smartest and most sophisticated people could actually see them. We often forget when reading that bedtime story to our children, that the reason the tailor made up the story of the clothing to begin with, was because he had nothing to give the king.

I am not going to get into a debate at this point over the geological records. As I said in Old Erath/Young Earth, I believe God can do whatever God wants to do and whether that was a long creation process or short creation process is irrelevant. God is God and none of us alive today were there to see how He did what he did, whether is was over billions of years or thousands. I do however believe that man is a very recent arrival on the Earth. In the anthropological records, the very earliest evidence of civilization of any kind is no more than 12,000-15,000 years old, and even that is debated due to inconsistencies in dating methods. And if the Bible and stories from just about every civilization on earth is correct and all of the earliest history of man on the Earth was destroyed by the Flood of Noah, then we may never know exactly when it all began. But what is clear, is that when scientist dig up evidence of early civilizations from beneath layers and layers of soil and silt, they often find evidence of civilizations so advanced and sophisticated that they are astonished by what they see. Carbon dating such strata ruins has proven to be a difficult thing to do, especially when scientist begin with the assumption that it was laid down over eons of time rather than considering that it may have been laid down in one single catastrophic event. Recent carbon dating of ash deposited by Mt. Saint Helens, however, shows wildly different dates, some indicating that the ash was deposited as much as 30,000 years ago. Yet those of us over the age of thirty remember very clearly this event taking place in 1979.

All of these arguments, both for and against a world wide flood, do not change the fact that mankind, as we understand our species today, came onto the scene with a suddenness that cannot be explained through natural evolutionary processes. For anyone truly interested in the DNA evidence for our uniqueness among all animals on the earth and how the very name of God is written on our Genes, I highly recommend Gregg Braden’s book, The God Code.  It will forever change your understanding of who we are as a species.

In any case, the sudden explosion of civilized societies in all parts of the world often astonish anthropologist. Every corner of the globe where research is being conducted, uncovers evidence of sophisticated groups of humans who were farming, building cities, worshiping gods, and engaging in musical and other types of artistic endeavors thousands of years earlier than ever before imagined. This supports the Biblical accounts that mankind was created and almost immediately upon being expelled from the Garden in Eden, began to reproduce, spread around the land and develop farming, ranching, metal working, and the building of cities. See Civilization Before the Flood.

Mankind was indeed a different type of creature. We were created with intellect, knowledge, and skill. We had the ability to communicate through language, reason, and understanding, the moment God breathed into Adam’s nostrils. We were created to have fellowship and communion with God, and we were created with free will: the ability to accept God or reject God. With this came God’s blessings or His willingness to allow us to find our own way. But the most remarkable thing of all about God, is that even in our rejection, He still desires our companionship and will eventually restore us to our rightful place in His kingdom.

To read more of my essays on Genesis or to learn more about my fiction books based on the stories in Genesis, visit http://thewitnesschronicles.com.

Old Earth vs. Young Earth

For decades, Christians have engaged in the Old Earth vs. Young Earth debate with the scientific community and even among ourselves. The typical Christian school of thought insist that since the Bible states that the Earth was created in six days, that it must mean six literal 24-hour days because the Bible is inerrant and cannot possibly be wrong on this point. The Scientific and some Christian apologists take the view that the physical evidence of science i.e., geology, cosmology, astrology, zoology, and biology, show undeniable evidence that the Earth and the Universe is approximately 4.5 Billion years old. The old earth Christians state that God created the earth in six distinct periods of time, but each period was incredibly long and each had its unique purpose as supported by the story told in Genesis. I will not discuss the Evolutionist view here, but needless to say it favors an old Earth. paradigm. Among Christians, this debate is commonly referred to as Christian Apologetics. (I hate the term apologetics. It makes it seems as if we Christians need to apologize for our beliefs). The two camps, however, even differ on the details of how long ago God created man. The scientific view holds that it may have been as long as 49,000 years ago, and of course the staunch fundamentalist view is that it could not possibly have been more than 6,000 – 7,000 years ago.

Dr, Gerald L. Schroeder, Ph.D. states in his book Genesis and the Beginning “Although science and theology offer divergent opinions on many aspects of our world, the difference in their statements of the age of the universe is particularly bothersome because it is a proven difference. The age of the universe has been measured using a variety of independent technological systems, including radio-active dating, Doppler shifts in starlight, and the isotropic ‘3° above zero’ radiation background. The methods of these studies are totally unrelated. Therefore, an error that might have occurred in one would not appear in the others. Yet data taken from these diverse studies present a strong scientifically consistent argument for a very old Earth and an even older universe.”

There are other sound scientific explanations however, for the difference between the two camps that actually prove them to both be correct. Many scientists now believe, that when the big bang happened, i.e., God’s creation of the universe, that for a very brief moment in time, the universe was made up of as many as 10 dimensions. Six of these dimensions are thought to have “folded up” during the initial expansion of the universe. Yet even though science sees evidence for the existence of these dimensions, it cannot in any way explain how or why they folded up. Moreover, some scientist have also calculated that as the universe expanded and these dimensions folded up, it would have severely warped time, and in fact slowed time as the universe expanded. This would have created a universe that has aged 13.5 billion years in literally six 24 hour days. This is obviously a stretch and an attempt to reconcile the the two camps, but is purely speculative at this time.

To add even more fuel and debate to this theory, a more recent discovery by NASA’s Wilkerson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) has discovered that the universe did indeed expand from the size of a marble to billions of light years across within the first trillionth of a second after its cataclysmic birth. An article written by Dan Vergano for USA Today in May of 2006 titled Big Bang Unfolded in the Blink of an Eye, announced the discovery that the universe expanded billions of light years away from the initial point of origin in a mere trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity suggests that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, yet evidence now suggest that all matter in the universe not only exceeded the speed of light, but did so by a billion times or more. Relativity also suggests that as matter approaches the speed of light, time warps and slows down. In other words, if you were on a spaceship that left earth and traveled the universe exceeding the speed of light, those people on the spaceship, who thought they had been gone for say ten or twenty years, would return to an earth that had aged hundreds or thousands of years during that same mission.

Vergano’s article goes on the say that the universe is far larger than scientist have ever imagined before. Researchers base this assumption on the temperature readings that measure millionth-of-degree differences in cosmic background radiation as detected by the WMAP launched in 2001. They assume that since the initial expansion of all matter in the universe was propelled billions of light years from its point of origin in a trillionth of a second and the temperature of the background radiation left over from the Big Bang is whatever it is, setting the age of the universe at 13.5 billion years old, therefore the universe must be millions of times larger than we can observe.

It is entirely possible that this new discovery has confirmed the Biblical account of Genesis and that, at least the first day mentioned in Genesis, was neither billions of years long or 24-hours, but a mere twinkling of an eye. In fact, the only thing we can say for sure is that God’s ways extend beyond any human understanding. And what about the other dimensions that “folded up?” What happened to them? The Bible speaks in many places of how the angles in heaven can come and go from the Earth and how the angles work behind the scenes to rule nations and leaders and pour out the sun and the rain and oversee the operations of the stars and such. I believe that heaven exists in the realm of the unseen dimensions that these scientist now say they can detect evidence of. That at the moment of creation, God separated the unseen realm from the four dimensions we inhabit, but in reality, we live side by side with the heavens. John’s Revelation tells us:

Revelation 19:11 Now I saw Heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. (NKJV)

This seems to me to be a perfect description of the unseen dimensions suddenly being revealed to the 4 dimensional world we live in.

I believe it is possible that the Earth is old by our time standards, and that Genesis is absolutely correct in its reading as well. I also believe that the creation of man was very recent, 6,000 – 7,000 years ago. I have listened to and read all the arguments in great detail and recommend anyone desiring a serious understanding of the issues do the same. There are many organizations holding both views that are dedicated to the study and education of the topic. I think the two organizations which state their cases most clearly are the Reasons to Believe at www.reasonstobelieve.org : the scientific “Old Earth” view, and the Institute for Creation Research at www.icr.org : the literal six 24-hour day “Young Earth” view.

None of this however, has altered the debate of an old Earth vs. a young Earth within the creation researcher communities, and this saddens me a great deal. They both hold to their beliefs with fierce dogmatism. These debates, unfortunately, are often played out in public forums that do little to advance the cause of Christ and usually drive more non-believers away from His church than it brings to His church. They see this debate as divisiveness and simply want no part of any religion that can’t even agree among itself what it believes.

To me, the debate itself is nothing more than Christians’ attempt to convince ourselves of something we have no empirical proof of either way. Faith does not require empirical proof; otherwise, it would not be faith. Both of these organizations sponsor and participate in large conferences many times a year where thousands of Christians show up to be wowed by all their evidence. I have attended events put on by both sides of the debate and have found very few non-Christians attend. This then begs the question, “Who is it we are really trying to convince?” I honestly don’t understand why we even need the debate at all. Christ never once tells us to go out and prove the existence of God or the validity of His word to the world. He says,

Mathew 28:16 “Go and preach the good news [of Christ] unto all the Nations.” (NIV)

I’ve read the Old and New Testaments many times, and I don’t recall any of the prophets or apostles ever entering the debate or needing to justify their faith by proving to others that the ancient Hebrew texts and stories in Genesis should be taken as scientific fact. In fact, the only real word we have on the topic comes from God himself written in the book of Job.

Job 38:3-7 “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth? Tell me if you understand, who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were the footings set, or who laid its cornerstone – while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?” (NIV)

This passage does little to answer our questions but does tell us that we simply cannot possibly know the ways of God. It seems that what God is saying here is “Forget about it. You weren’t there. It’s not for you know. Quit trying to figure it all out.”

I don’t have the scientific background to prove or disprove either supposition. Rather, when I write on such topics, I tend to take the position that makes the most sense to a “common sense” kind of thinker. For instance the debate over the literal interpretation of “Six Days.” The Bible says,

Genesis 1:14-19 ¹⁴And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, ¹⁵and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the Earth.” And it was so. ¹⁶God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. ¹⁷God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the Earth, ¹⁸to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. ¹⁹And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day. (NIV)

Now it seems to me that since a 24-hour day is measured by the Earth’s rotation around the sun and if God created the sun and the moon on the fourth day, the three preceding days must have been based on some time period other than a literal 24-hour day. Those who take the literal 24-hour day position have a difficult time explaining this anomaly, at least to my satisfaction.

This brings us to only one conclusion. We cannot know, at least on this side of Heaven, which of these theories are true or closer to the truth, so why do we continue to invest millions of dollars donated by well meaning Christians to build museums and hold huge conventions in our attempt to answer questions for which there is no answer that we can know for sure. I don’t mean to speak ill of those who engage in this research, as they are all honest well meaning Christians. I’m as interested in the origins and timing of the creation of the universe as anyone, but I trust that it will all be explained in God’s timing. After all, if God really is in control, do we need to spend our limited time and His resources trying to convince others that their science is wrong when almost every day, something scientists thought they knew about life or the universe turns out be proven wrong by science itself? Given enough time, scientists seem to do a pretty good job of disproving their own theories without us wasting God’s resources to help them along.

We are never called to prove to anyone that God exists or that the Bible is a reliable source of scientific proof of creation. The existence of God is written on the hearts of all men, many just chose to deny it or ignore it. We are called to care for the poor, teach the gospel of Jesus Christ and live Christian lives ourselves. Wouldn’t we do a better job of convincing non-believers that God exists by simply carrying for the poor and the widows and those who can’t care for themselves and taking the good news unto all the nations (all of which we ARE charged with in the New Testament), regardless of what others thought of why we do it? The only one we have to prove anything to is God, and we do that by following His commandments.

I have no answers to the question of an Old vs. Young Universe or Earth and anyone who says they do is merely a fiction writer in disguise. I believe that the truth lies in an answer that none of us can even fathom in our current fallen state with the use of only 10% of our total mental capacity. But I also think it is useless and a waste of the time God has given us to argue with anyone who believes the universe is 13.5 billion years old, or those who believe it is merely 6,000-7,000 years old. Either way, I simply smile and say, “You might be right.”

To read more of my essays on Genesis or to learn ore about my fiction novels based on the strories in Genesis, visit http://thewitnesschronicles.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And God said, “Let There Be Light”

One of the most difficult concepts in Genesis for us to understand is also the first words spoken directly by God:

Genesis 1:3 And God said “Let there be light,” and there was light.” (NIV)

The very idea of speaking something into existence from nothing is perplexing and beyond comprehension for most of us. Many reject the word of God outright, based on their lack of understanding of how He could have spoken light into existence. They cannot conceive of a god who is outside of the universe and therefore insist on either making God a part of the universe or reject the idea of God all together. But to do so is tantamount to searching for the watchmaker within the watch. The best we can hope for in such an endeavor is to understand the watchmaker by studying his design and the intricacies of his unique perspective on time telling devices, but the watchmaker himself is not in the watch. To find him, you must look outside the watch.

Accepting a God who exists outside and beyond our understanding has truly been a matter of faith… until recently that is. Some recent scientific theories about the most basic elementary particles that make up all matter in the universe may shed some light (no pun intended) on this subject. The first thing that we need to understand is that God did not create the universe from nothing as we Christians often say. Rather, He created the universe from His very words, which it turns out are a great deal more than nothing. To understand this, we need to go back to the basics of physics, i.e., the most basic things that make up all matter in the universe.

The Theory of Everything

When Albert Einstein published his Theory of General Relativity (GR), in the early part twentieth century, it astonished the scientific community. This simple mathematical equation explained so many mysteries of the universe that it literally revolutionized the way scientist thought about the physical universe. Isaac Newton was the first to explain the effects of gravity, and Einstein  later put Newton’s theory of gravity into perspective and explained why gravity works. Unfortunately it did not explain how gravity works, and so the quest to explain the universe continued.

Over time came a greater understanding of physics and while many scientist worked with the part of physical science that could apply GR to the observable universe, called Astrophysics (AP), others began to look more deeply into in the inner workings of matter itself. This discipline was called Quantum Mechanics (QM). QM seeks to explain how matter works. It takes all of the basic elements and breaks them down into Atoms, and Particles, and Sub-Atomic Particles called Quarks, and then it runs into a road block. Quantum Physicists know that everything must be made of something, but it can’t quite figure out what a Quark is made of: they are too small to be observed. All they can really do is try to explain their effects through QM.

What QM Physicists do know is that all matter is made up of certain elements. These are all listed on the basic Periodic Table of Elements. Currently there are 118 or so known elements. Each element is made up of atoms which in turn are made up of particles, i.e., Protons, Neutrons and Electrons. The number of Ps, Ns, and Es in each atom is what makes it unique from all the others. The atoms combine to create Elements and Elements combine to make Matter. We all are familiar with the elemental structure of water (H²O) which simply means that two Hydrogen atoms and one Oxygen atom combine to make what we know as water. This is often referred to as an element’s Atomic Structure. By smashing the particles into tiny bits with particle accelerators, Physicists have also discovered what they are made of, and they have named these things Quarks.

Studying the elements at the Quark level, Physicists have come up with three basic theories that explain how matter is formed and works. These are called the Strong Forces, the Weak Forces, and Electro Magnetism.

However, there is a problem with all this that both Astrophysicists and Quantum Mechanic Physicists recognize: the fact that when they try to combine Relativity with these 3 Forces, the mathematics break down. They simply do not work together, and in fact, seem to be diametrically opposed to each other. This has perplexed Physicists for decades and caused the science to be split into two camps: Astrophysics and Quantum Mechanics.

Einstein knew this to be the case and dedicated the last years of his life to try and come up with a theory that would allow all of these two theories to work together, which he called the Unified Theory. Sadly, he died in 1955 before he could create a formula that made sense. For many years, science concentrated most of its efforts and funding on understanding GR. The numbers of Physicists working on the QM side of science were less than a hand full. In recent years however, this has changed, and the result has been an explosion of information and a new theory called String Theory, most recently labeled the Theory of Everything or M Theory (M standing for the Mother of all theories). This holds the promise of realizing Einstein’s dream of a unified theory.

The Theory of Everything says that the most basic elements of the universe: the most infinitesimal particles that are believed to make up Quarks, and thereby all matter in the universe, are nothing more than strings of energy. These strings can be either flat or closed loops, but regardless of the type of string, it is still pure energy. What the bottom line of all this says is that all matter is merely energy. According to the theory, these tiny strings of energy vibrate like musical notes emanating from the strings of a piano, creating harmonic resonance that manifests itself as matter. Different strings vibrating at different frequencies combine to create a specific kind of Quark and they in turn combine to create Particles, i.e. Ps, Ns, Es, and they then combine to create Atoms which become Elements which make up all Matter.  The frequencies at which the various strings vibrate determine what kind of Quark, then Particle, and then what kind of Atom they become.

This gives an entirely new understanding of how the Bible is in fact accurate when it says that God spoke the universe into existence.  This theory is still just that, a theory, and years away from actually being observed by man made instruments. But if this theory is someday proven to be true, then all matter and all life in the universe could be proven to truly be the result of God’s voice, i.e. vibrating strings of energy. The only thing we know of that can come even close to comparing to this kind of vibrating energy to is a sound wave. It’s impossible to describe a “String” without comparing it to a sound wave or musical note. It is entirely possible to extrapolate from this that God literally spoke us into existence and we are the result of the harmonic resonance of His words. The only thing that separates man from the rest of creation is the spirit God breathed into us at creation.

Genesis 2:7 “… the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” (NIV)

When God breathed into the nostrils of man, He gave man a spirit that the other creatures did not have. Our physical bodies are just like every other part of creation, but our spirit transcends into the realm of God’s domain. In other words, our bodies are subject to the second law of thermo dynamics known as Entropy and will break down and decay, but our spirit will not pass away.

It has long since been known that sound never disappears; it just continues to travel past our hearing range and out into the universe. Some scientist have even suggested that if we could devise a way of capturing and sorting through these sound waves from space, we could in fact hear the voice of any person from any point in history. Although most physicists would never admit it, with this growing understanding of string theory, they have confirmed Genesis 1:3. Likewise we know that matter never disappears, it simply transforms from one type to another as the particles eventually break down. Thus we all change from living beings to dust as our physical energy changes. But the matter does not cease to exist, it simply changes from one form to another, perhaps as the frequency of the “Strings” change over time.

Einstein believed there was symmetry in the universe and that all the laws that govern the universe would one day be explained with one unified theory and equation. String Theory does just that. Unlocking “Strings” may hold answers that could in fact explain everything to us. And what could this possibly mean for the future? The things of Star Trek such as transporters and food replicators, could become a reality if we could discover how to manipulate the frequency at which these “Strings” vibrate. All one would need to do is scoop up a handful of matter, any variety will do, and retune it to what you wanted it to be. It also explains how John can say

Revelation 21:1 “And then I saw a new heaven and a new Earth, for the first heaven and first Earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.” (NIV)

God can simply speak an entirely new universe and Earth into existence in the blink of an eye.

Although we currently do not have the instruments that can detect and prove that these “Stings” exist, most Physicists believe that one day we will be able to prove it. After all, even gravity was not provable for millennia, but that did not keep it from being true. Unfortunately, without the ability to measure or detect Strings, we must assign this theory to the ranks of a possibility and not proof from a scientific sense. Science must deal with facts and the detectable and measurable universe, although that has not kept many so called scientist from calling evolution science, even though it is primarily based on assumption rather than provable series of steps in the development of life. I believe in what Genesis tells us: God spoke the universe into existence, and sooner or later, we will have no choice but to stand face to face with the evidence and accept it for what it is.

Personally, I think we are better off NOT understanding “Strings” any better than we do however, simply because our history suggest that if we did, we would use it for evil much more than for good. Einstein once said “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing… so is a lot.” This is why I believe that the closer we get to unlocking these mysteries, the closer we get to Christ’s return. I don’t believe we can be trusted with such knowledge without some very serious guidance and control, and only God himself can exhibit that level of leadership and restraint. To me however, the greatest revelation of this new understanding is that Moses was able to tell us over 3500 years ago, about this process, that up until recently, we have always labeled as an “Unknowable Mystery of the Bible.” It Is Now Knowable!

To read more of Ken’s essays on Genesis or to learn more about his fiction series, visit http://thewitnesschronicles.com.

Without Form and Void

 Genesis 1:1-2 ¹In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. ²The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. (NKJV)

This is certainly one of the most cryptic passages in the Bible. The very first passage in Genesis speaks of the heavens and the earth being created, yet having no form and being void. What does this mean exactly?

The Hebrew words used here are Tohu and Bohu. Gerald L. Schroeder, in his book titled Genesis and the Big Bang, draws this correlation between Tohu and Bohu and our modern day understanding of particle physics:

“Leading particle physicists now refer to T and B (Tohu and Bohu) as the two basic building blocks of all matter. The force of the big bang literally pressed this T and B into hydrogen and helium – almost no other elements were formed at that time. Instead, it took the alchemy of the cosmos to convert these primordial hydrogen and helium into the rest of the elements.”

 What Schroeder is saying is that in the beginning God created the two basic building blocks of all matter. But it was unformed and had no substance until He began to work them into the stuff of stars and earth and water. The passage speaks of the spirit of God hovering over the water. I find it rather telling that hydrogen, the very first element, is one of the two components that make up water. This tells us that He also had to create oxygen at a very early stage in the process. Scientists are convinced that water exists in many places in our universe and in fact many theorize that most, if not all of the water that exists on the earth, came from comets impacting the earth very early in its history. Although few scientists will ever admit it, these theories actually support the Genesis account of creation rather than disprove it. 

In addition, a recent development in the field of Quantum physics relating to string theory, now renamed as M-Theory sheds new light on this entire topic. This is what the Wikipedia has to ay about M-Theory.

“In the standard model of particle physics, particles are considered to be points moving through space, tracing out a line called the World Line. To take into account the different interactions observed in Nature one has to provide particles with more degrees of freedom than only their position and velocity, such as mass, electric charge, color (which is the “charge” associated with the strong interaction) or spin…

String Theory

“In String Theory, the myriad of particle types is replaced by a single fundamental building block, a `string’. These strings can be closed, like loops, or open, like a hair. As the string moves through time it traces out a tube or a sheet, according to whether it is closed or open. Furthermore, the string is free to vibrate, and different vibrational modes of the string represent the different particle types, since different modes are seen as different masses or spins.

“One mode of vibration, or `note’, makes the string appear as an electron, another as a photon. There is even a mode describing the graviton, the particle carrying the force of gravity, which is an important reason why String Theory has received so much attention. The point is that we can make sense of the interaction of two gravitons in String theory in a way we could not in QFT. There are no infinities! And gravity is not something we put in by hand. It has to be there in a theory of strings. So, the first great achievement of String Theory was to give a consistent theory of quantum gravity, which resembles GR at macroscopic distances. Moreover String Theory also possesses the necessary degrees of freedom to describe the other interactions! At this point a great hope was created that String Theory would be able to unify all the known forces and particles together into a single `Theory of Everything’.

From Strings to Superstrings

The particles known in nature are classified according to their spin into bosons (integer spin) or fermions (odd half integer spin). The former are the ones that carry forces, for example, the photon, which carries electromagnetic force, the gluon, which carries the strong nuclear force, and the graviton, which carries gravitational force. The latter make up the matter we are made of, like the electron or the quark. The original String Theory only described particles that were bosons, hence Bosonic String Theory. It did not describe Fermions. So quarks and electrons, for instance, were not included in Bosonic String Theory.

By introducing Supersymmetry to Bosonic String Theory, we can obtain a new theory that describes both the forces and the matter which make up the Universe. This is the theory of superstrings. There are three different superstring theories which make sense, i.e. display no mathematical inconsistencies. In two of them the fundamental object is a closed string, while in the third, open strings are the building blocks. Furthermore, mixing the best features of the bosonic string and the superstring, we can create two other consistent theories of strings, Heterotic String Theories.

However, this abundance of theories of strings was a puzzle: If we are searching for the theory of everything, to have five of them is an embarrassment of riches! Fortunately, M-theory came to save us.

Extra dimensions…

One of the most remarkable predictions of String Theory is that space-time has ten dimensions! At first sight, this may be seen as a reason to dismiss the theory altogether, as we obviously have only three dimensions of space and one of time. However, if we assume that six of these dimensions are curled up very tightly, then we may never be aware of their existence. Furthermore, having these so-called compact dimensions is very beneficial if String Theory is to describe a Theory of Everything. The idea is that degrees of freedom like the electric charge of an electron will then arise simply as motion in the extra compact directions! The principle that compact dimensions may lead to unifying theories is not new, but dates from the 1920’s, since the theory of Kaluza and Klein. In a sense, String Theory is the ultimate Kaluza-Klein theory.

For simplicity, it is usually assumed that the extra dimensions are wrapped up on six circles. For realistic results they are treated as being wrapped up on mathematical elaborations known as Calabi-Yau Manifolds and Orbifolds.

M-theory

Apart from the fact that instead of one there are five different, healthy theories of strings (three superstrings and two heterotic strings) there was another difficulty in studying these theories: we did not have tools to explore the theory over all possible values of the parameters in the theory. Each theory was like a large planet of which we only knew a small island somewhere on the planet. But over the last four years, techniques were developed to explore the theories more thoroughly, in other words, to travel around the seas in each of those planets and find new islands. And only then it was realized that those five string theories are actually islands on the same planet, not different ones! Thus there is an underlying theory of which all string theories are only different aspects. This was called M-theory. The M might stand for Mother of all theories or Mystery, because the planet we call M-theory is still largely unexplored. (M-theory, the theory formerly known as Strings; Wikipedia -http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gr/public/qg_ss.html.

This theory fits perfectly with the words of the Bible. We know that God separated the heavens from the earth. We typically think of the heavens only as the seen parts of the universe such as the stars and planets and nebula and such, but the heavens really refers to the unseen dimensions of the universe, i.e. the six dimensions that are rolled up. In addition, M-theory suggests that all matter existed in another parallel universe, (5 parallel universes are assumed) and somehow collided with our space, which was empty, therefore resulting in the big bang. It is much more plausible however, that what all this is describing, is God, in whatever form you would like to believe, spoke (stings can only be compared to sound waves) into the void and the universe, (Heavens and Earth) came into being.

To read more of Ken’s essays on Genesis or to learn about his fisction books on stroies from Genesis, visit http://thewitnesschronicles.com.

The Genesis Story

The entire story of creation and the world before flood is told in just seven short chapters of the Bible. A few names, some general loose detail of the process and order of creation, the Man’s fall into sin, the first murder, the first city, the development of metal working and musical instruments and ranching, a few cryptic passages about “The sons of God and the Daughters of Men.” and some creatures called Nephilim, and the destruction al all life except for one man and his wife, three sons and their wives and an ark full of animals. All we know is contained in about 4300 words that would not even be an acceptable term paper by most college English 101 standards of today.

Nonetheless, as Christians, everything we believe about creation and the fall of man comes from this primary source. We get a few other glimpses into the nature of God, the angels and heavenly things from other parts of the Bible or books not part of the protestant Bible such as The Book of Jubilees, The Book of Enoch, etc., but these are not considered Canonical text as they have too many inaccuracies and conflicting passages to be taken as \”Inspired by God.\” From a Christian perspective, the books included in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible are the only text which were found by the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. to pass the rigorous test of inspired text. So all we really have to go on are the first 7 Chapters of Genesis, and a few other related passages in other books such as Job, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jude and Revelation, yet it is so little.

There have been many stories and much speculation on the “Old World” i.e. the world before recorded history. My Witness Chronicles series are my attempt to make sense of it all and try to put it into a story that we can all relate to. But they are simply works of fiction written from one man’s imagination several thousand years after the fact. I will attempt in this work, to tell what we as Christians know as fact from the Bible, and also dispel many of the very bad theological assumptions, myths, and legends that have been passed down through some Christian traditions that have been around for as long as any of us can recall.

Not all theology on the first seven chapters of Genesis is bad. However, my concern problem with most pre-flood theology is that, none of us were there and we have no direct record of those times outside of Genesis, so we really have no idea how and why thing developed as they and what it was like to live in those times. Yet many theologians in the modern church often speak as if God has given them some special insight into this lost world. I have a great imagination, but at least I’m willing to admit that my stories are works of fiction. Most theologians and so called, “Experts” on the topic, actually teach as if they know exactly what happened or what the world was like before the flood. I will not make any such claims here.  I will simply try to explain what we can prove, give some plausible explanation for what we can’t prove empirically, but believe nonetheless, and attempt to dispel some of the very bad theology that I have come across in my years of research.

The best place to begin this discussion is at the beginning. I will start with Gen. 1:1 and work my way through Genesis in chronological order to the best of my ability. This does not mean that I will go verse by verse, or have something to say about every verse or topic, but I will discuss sections or verses that often have resulted in much of the legends, mythology, misunderstanding, or controversy that we modern Christians must contend with.

But before we begin, let me say a few words about where the Genesis story that we know today originated. It is commonly accepted by both Jews and Christians alike, that Moses was the first to write the Book of Genesis. Many believe that the story was told to Moses by an Angel of God directly while on Mount Sinai, which is what the Book of Jubilees claims, but it is more likely that he would have learned it through the normal oral traditions of the day. I have no doubt that Moses did indeed receive the “Laws of Moses” directly from God on Mount Sinai, but the story of Genesis is more likely to have been passed along through tradition than a direct revelation from God. So we need to understand what Moses believed and what are the traditions and stories and understanding that he would have grown up with or been exposed to as he learned what it was to be a descendant of Abraham.

The first thing we need to understand is that Moses did not grow up learning the Hebrew and Semitic traditions. Moses was raised in the court of an Egyptian Pharaoh. This Pharaoh however (unlike past Pharaoh’s who welcomed the family of Jacob as they entered Egypt as a favor of his son Joseph, an official in Pharaoh\’s court) felt much contempt for this foreign people living in his land. Most Egyptian scholars today think the Jews were probably know in Egypt as the Hykos, a foreign people who dwelled among the Egyptians until about 1550 B.C. By this time during their sojourn, the Hykos (Hebrews) were slaves and bond servants to the Egyptians. It is not likely that Moses would have learned much about the Hebrew tradition or belief system during this period in his life, which we are told lasted for about 40 years.

The next phase of his life however, was much more conducive to Moses forming his understanding and belief of the one true God. After fleeing Egypt, Moses spent the next forty years as a shepherd in Midian living with his Father-in-law Jethro, also known as Reuel in the text.

Exodus 2:15-25 ¹⁵When Pharaoh heard of this matter, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh and dwelt in the land of Midian; and he sat down by a well. ¹⁶Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters. And they came and drew water, and they filled the troughs to water their father\’s flock. ¹⁷Then the shepherds came and drove them away; but Moses stood up and helped them, and watered their flock. ¹⁸When they came to Reuel their father, he said, “How is it that you have come so soon today?” ¹⁹And they said, “An Egyptian delivered us from the hand of the shepherds, and he also drew enough water for us and watered the flock.” ²⁰So he said to his daughters, “And where is he? Why is it that you have left the man? Call him, that he may eat bread.” ²¹Then Moses was content to live with the man, and he gave Zipporah his daughter to Moses. ²²And she bore him a son. He called his name Gershom, for he said, “I have been a stranger in a foreign land.” ²³Now it happened in the process of time that the king of Egypt died. Then the children of Israel groaned because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry came up to God because of the bondage. ²⁴So God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. ²⁵And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God acknowledged them. Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. (NKJV)

Jethro was the Priest of Midian, and it was from him that Moses is most likely to have learned of God. The Midianites were descendants of Abraham.

Genesis 25:1-4 ¹Abraham again took a wife, and her name was Keturah. ²And she bore him Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah. ³Jokshan begot Sheba and Dedan. And the sons of Dedan were Asshurim, Letushim, and Leummim. ⁴And the sons of Midian were Ephah, Epher, Hanoch, Abidah, and Eldaah. All these were the children of Keturah. (NKJV)

As a Priest of Midian, Jethro would have known the teachings and traditions of his forefather Abraham. It is known by archeologists that the land of Canaan gave root to the very first Monotheistic belief system. It is likely the reason God called Abraham to Canaan, was to learn and study under the guidance the one priest in all the Bible, before Christ, who is called a Righteous King and Priest: Melchizedek, King of Salem.

Genesis 14:18-20 ¹⁸Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was the priest of God Most High. ¹⁹And he blessed him and said: “Blessed be Abram of God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth; ²⁰and blessed be God Most High, Who has delivered your enemies into your hand.” And he [Abraham] gave him a tithe of all. (NKJV)

Somehow, in the midst of the Canaanite nations, this one King managed to retain an understanding and truth of the one true God, probably passed down from Noah through 10 or more generations, and now finally making its way through Abraham\’s descendant Jethro to Moses, the one who would write the story of creation that we still read today.

I know that was a long winded way to say what I’m trying to say, but we need to understand where Moses learned his history of the Hebrews. We have no idea who Melchizedek was or how he knew what he did or why he was considered a Righteous King and Priest of the one true God. This is what Easton has to say about him.

“MELCHIZEDEK – king of righteousness, the king of Salem. All we know of him is recorded in Genesis 14:18-20. He is subsequently mentioned only once in the Old Testament, in Psalms 110:4. The typical significance of his history is set forth in detail in the Epistle to the Hebrews, ch. 7. The apostle there points out the superiority of his priesthood to that of Aaron in these several respects, (1) Even Abraham paid him tithes; (2) he blessed Abraham; (3) he is the type of a Priest who lives forever; (4) Levi, yet unborn, paid him tithes in the person of Abraham; (5) the permanence of his priesthood in Christ implied the abrogation of the Levitical system; (6) he was made priest not without an oath; and (7) his priesthood can neither be transmitted nor interrupted by death: ‘this man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood.’ The question as to who this mysterious personage was has given rise to a great deal of modern speculation. It is an old tradition among the Jews that he was Shem, the son of Noah, who may have survived to this time. Melchizedek was a Canaanitish prince, a worshipper of the true God, and in his peculiar history and character an instructive type of our Lord, the great High Priest (Hebrews 5:6,7; 6:20)”. (Easton\’s Bible Dictionary, PC Study Bible formatted electronic database Copyright © 2003 Biblesoft, Inc.)

It is obvious that whoever he was, he was a special kind of King and Priest as even Paul says in Hebrews:

Hebrews 5:5-11 ⁵So also Christ did not glorify Himself to become High Priest, but it was He who said to Him: “You are My Son, Today I have begotten You.” ⁶As He also says in another place: “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek;\”   ⁷who, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear, ⁸though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. ⁹And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him, ¹⁰called by God as High Priest “according to the order of Melchizedek,”  ¹¹of whom we have much to say, and hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. (NKJV)

Hebrews 6:20 …where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus, having become High Priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. (NKJV)

Hebrews 7:1-22 ¹For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him, ²to whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all, first being translated \”king of righteousness,\” and then also king of Salem, meaning “king of peace,” ³without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, remains a priest continually. ⁴Now consider how great this man was, to whom even the patriarch Abraham gave a tenth of the spoils. ⁵And indeed those who are of the sons of Levi, who receive the priesthood, have a commandment to receive tithes from the people according to the law, that is, from their brethren, though they have come from the loins of Abraham; ⁶but he whose genealogy is not derived from them received tithes from Abraham and blessed him who had the promises. ⁷Now beyond all contradiction the lesser is blessed by the better. ⁸Here mortal men receive tithes, but there he receives them, of whom it is witnessed that he lives. ⁹Even Levi, who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham, so to speak, ¹⁰for he was still in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him. ¹¹Therefore, if perfection were through the Levitical priesthood (for under it the people received the law), what further need was there that another priest should rise according to the order of Melchizedek, and not be called according to the order of Aaron? ¹²For the priesthood being changed, of necessity there is also a change of the law. ¹³For He of whom these things are spoken belongs to another tribe, from which no man has officiated at the altar. ¹⁴For it is evident that our Lord arose from Judah, of which tribe Moses spoke nothing concerning priesthood.   ¹⁵And it is yet far more evident if, in the likeness of Melchizedek, there arises another priest ¹⁶who has come, not according to the law of a fleshly commandment, but according to the power of an endless life. ¹⁷For He testifies:  “You are a priest forever According to the order of Melchizedek.” ¹⁸For on the one hand there is an annulling of the former commandment because of its weakness and unprofitableness, ¹⁹for the law made nothing perfect; on the other hand, there is the bringing in of a better hope, through which we draw near to God. ²⁰Greatness of the New Priest and inasmuch as He was not made priest without an oath ²¹(for they have become priests without an oath, but He with an oath by Him who said to Him: “The LORD has sworn And will not relent, ‘You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek’”), ²²by so much more Jesus has become a surety of a better covenant. (NKJV)

The Jews have very little to say about Melchizedek formally, but it is evident from Paul’s letter that they had a long standing tradition and understanding of Melchizedek as a Righteous King and Priest from outside the Levitical line and even outside the line of Abraham. There are some legends that say that he may have been Shem and that Melchizedek was possibly his Canaanite name or a name given to him later by God, as God was prone to do from time to time. But Paul writes here that he had no genealogy; that is to say, his father and mother and lineage were completely unknown and undocumented. Some modern Christian theologies say that he was an Angel or “Son of God” because of Paul’s statement here, but I believe that is a misunderstanding of the text and that Melchizedek’s history was simply not known.

It is obvious however, that what we do know from archeology about the birthplace of monotheism as well as what the Bible tells us about Melchizedek, that he was a central character in the development and passing along of the truth of the One True God which ultimately made it to us through Moses, who learned it from Jethro the Priest of Midian, who learned it from the line of Abraham who learned it from Melchizedek.

There is however; some Jewish tradition that comes to us from the Book of Jubilees that states that Moses learned it directly for an Angel of the God on Mount Sinai.

Jubilees 2:1-2 \”And the angel of the presence spake to Moses according to the word of the Lord, saying: Write the complete history of the creation, how in six days the Lord God finished all His works and all that He created, and kept Sabbath on the seventh day and hallowed it for all ages, and appointed it as a sign for all His works.\” (From The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament by R.H. Charles, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913. Scanned and Edited by Joshua Williams, Northwest Nazarene College.)

Although this is not canonical text, it does show that the Hebrews, or at least some priestly clans, had some beliefs beyond the strict documentation of the book of Genesis as written in the Torah. Again from Charles:

\”The Book of Jubilees is in certain limited aspects the most important book in this volume for the student of religion. Without it we could of course have inferred from Ezra and Nehemiah, the Priests\’ Code, and the later chapters of Zechariah the supreme position that the law had achieved in Judaism, but without Jubilees we could hardly have imagined such an absolute supremacy as finds expression in this book. This absolute supremacy of the law carried with it, as we have seen in the General Introduction, the suppression of prophecy -at all events of the open exercise of the prophetic gifts. And yet these gifts persisted during all the so-called centuries of silence-from Malachi down to N. T. times, but owing to the fatal incubus of the law these gifts could not find expression save in pseudepigraphic literature. Thus Jubilees represents the triumph of the movement, which had been at work for the past three centuries or more. And yet this most triumphant manifesto of legalism contained within its pages the element that was destined to dispute its supremacy and finally to reduce the law to the wholly secondary position that alone it could rightly claim. This element of course is apocalyptic, which was the source of the higher theology in Judaism, and subsequently was the parent of Christianity, wherein apocalyptic ceased to be pseudonymous and became one with prophecy. The Book of Jubilees was written in Hebrew by a Pharisee between the year of the accession of Hyrcanus to the high priesthood in 135 and his breach with the Pharisees some years before his death in 105 B.C.\” (From The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament by R. H. Charles, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913. Scanned and Edited by Joshua Williams, Northwest Nazarene College.)

The point of all this is that the book of Genesis that we read today is a story that began as oral tradition and was passed down as oral tradition or nearly 1800 years until it came to Moses at around 1550 B. C. But even after Moses was said to have written it down, we have no direct written copies of all or even part of the story earlier than about 500 B. C. so we can only assume the story we read today has been kept as an accurate account but have no direct evidence as to what Moses actually wrote at the time he penned the book of Genesis or if he was writing down the story as told to him by an Angel or by the Priest of Midian.  

To read more of Ken\’s Genesis:Factts and Fictions essays, visit http://thewitnesschronicles.com.