An Anthropologist Looks at Genesis 1

 

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

In the beginning…

The phrase "In the beginning" is common in African creation stories and songs, such as this song of the Mbuti Pygmies:

In the beginning was God

Today is God,

Tomorrow will be God.

Who can make an image of God?

He has no body.

He is as a word which comes out from your mouth,

That word! It is no more,

It is past and still it lives!

So is God.

The Akan of Ghana tell this story: “In the beginning the heavens were closer to the earth. First man and first woman had to be careful while cultivating and grinding grain so that their hoes and pestles would not strike God, who lived in the sky. Death had not yet entered the world and God provided enough for them. But first woman became greedy and tried to pound more grain than she was allotted. To do this, she had to use a longer pestle. When she raised it up, it hit the sky and God became angry and retreated far into the heavens. Since then, there has been disease and death and it is not easy to reach God.”

This narrative is told by the Fang of Central Africa: “At the beginning of Things, when there was nothing, neither man, nor animals, nor plants, nor heaven, nor earth, nothing, nothing, God was and He was called Nzame.”

A Bantu account is similar: “In the beginning there was only darkness, water, and the great god Bumba."

Of the beginning, the Gikuyu of Kenya say, "There was no sunlight... the whole land was in darkness."

The Egyptian creation story closely parallels Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning there was only the swirling watery chaos."

 

God spoke.

Another common theme among Africans is the power of the divine word to generate life. The Nilotic Luo have a saying: Wach en gi teko which means "a word has power."

The Bambara bards of Uganda recite this song in praise of the divine Word:

The Word is total:

it cuts, excoriates

forms, modulates

perturbs, maddens

cures or directly kills

amplifies or reduces

According to intention

It excites or calms souls.

 

God created all things.

Another African theme is expressed in the merism "the heavens and the earth...", meaning all things. All created entities owe their existence directly to the Creator. Among the Luo, Jachwech piny gi polo means the "Creator of earth and heaven."

Abraham’s Nilotic ancestors believed that the Creator created alone. In ancient Egyptian texts, God declares, "I cast a spell with my own heart to lay a foundation in Maat. I made everything. I was alone. I had not yet breathed the divine one Shu, and I had not yet spit up the divine one Tefnut. I worked alone."

The concept of “Maat” involves equilibrium and harmony between constituent parts, including the cycle of the seasons, celestial and planetary movements, honesty in social and business interactions, and justice.

Contrast the African picture of God’s direct act of creation to the Babylonian "Epic of Creation" in which Marduk creates. He is created to defend the divine ones from attack by the sea goddess Tiamat. Marduk offers to save them on the condition that he be appointed their permanent ruler. The gods agree to Marduk's terms. Marduk kills Tiamat and he fashions the earth and the skies from her severed corpse.

The Somali called the Creator Eebe, and Eebe's divine messenger was Huur, another name for Horus. In Luo, Horu' mo (horumo/orumo) means perfected, realized, finished, or completed. Other peoples of Somalia call the Creator Waaqa Tokkicha, meaning “the one God.”

A Luo reference to God is Nyasaye, which is comparable to the biblical “I am Who I am.” The Acholi Luos call the Creator Lacwec, and other Luos call the Creator Jachwech, a linguistic equivalent of Yahweh.

 

God separated the sea and the dry land.

The Oromo name for the High God is Waaqa. According to their creation story, Waaqa separated the body of water into two parts: the water above called “Bishaan Gubbaathe”, and the water below called “Bishaan Goodaa”.

Among the Nilotic Luo “Dog Nam” refers to the great water or the waters of creation. Luos consider God to be present at any great body of water, especially Lake Chad, the Nile, and Lake Victoria.

According to some mythologies, the Nile was where the work of creation began when the Creator caused a mound to emerge from the primal water. The emerging dry land called Tatjenun.

In the Egyptian Coffin Texts (2000 BC) we read, "I was the one who began everything, the dweller in the Primeval Waters. First Hahu emerged from me and then I began to move." Ha-hu (ruach in Hebrew) is the wind or breath of God that separated the waters above from the waters below and the dry land from the seas.

The waters were called Nun, a word found among the Horite Hebrew chiefs. Joshua bin Nun is an example. Nun represents the cosmic waters of the firmament above and firmament below (Gen.1:6). In Heliopolitan cosmology the watery realms were connected by the great pillars of the temple of Heliopolis (Biblical On).

Land is created through volcanism. The ancients observed this and attributed it to God’s actions. The rising mounds were called pillars and the Hebrew conceived on earth resting on pillars." I Samuel 2:8 says, "For the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s and he had set the world upon them." Many volcanic eruptions took place under the sea. Imagine volcanoes rising from the sea. These are the "pillars of the earth" described in Psalm 72, Job 9:6, and I Samuel 2:8.

Job 9 speaks of God "Who shakes the earth out of its place, and its pillars tremble.”  Among Abraham's Nilotic ancestors the mounds that emerged from the sea were called TaTJeNuN which appears to mean "twin pillars of God in the water."

Pillars marked sacred places and royal tombs. Ancient temples such as the one at Karnak have entrance halls filled with massive pillars. In the Ugaritic creation story the twin mountains are indicated by the sign T. The mountains Trgzz and Trmg emerged from a universal ocean and held up the firmament.

 

Related reading: The Themes of Genesis 1-3; The Chaotic Waters Subdued; The Nilotic Context of Genesis 1-2; The Nilotic Substrata of Genesis 1

Ignoring Anthropologically Significant Data

Alice C. Linsley

The website of the American Scientific Affiliation has papers from the ASA journal, or presentations given at ASA meetings, or works by individuals associated with the ASA that address Genesis 1-3. The authors generally agree that these chapters must be understood in the context of the Ancient Near Eastern (ANE), specifically Mesopotamia. None have explored the older Nilotic background of the material, which is indicated by the Genesis 10 designation of Abraham's ancestors as descendants of Kush. We find Abraham, the son of Terah (priest), in Mesopotamia because his ancestors were part of the Kushite dispersion that has been verified by DNA studies, anthropology, linguistics and archaeology. The marriage and ascendancy pattern of the Kushite rulers drove expansion out of the Nile Valley.

James Henry Breasted (1865–1935), director of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, in his 1916 textbook, Ancient Times: A History of the Early World, included the Nile Valley as part of the "Fertile Crescent," a term he coined. The crescent was fertile because it included major water systems that were interconnected during the African Humid Period. However, a Nilotic context for Genesis 1-3 is not considered by any of these ASA writers:

James D. Bales
Richard H. Bube
John C. Collins
Dick Fischer
Terry M. Gray
Daniel C. Harlow
Armin Held
Charles E. Hummel
Conrad Hyers
Lee Irons
Thomas Key
Meredith Kline
Denis O. Lamoureux
Paul Seely
William F. Tanner
Edwin Walhout
John Walton
Davis A. Young
G. Douglas Young


All of these scholars would describe themselves as "Evangelicals" who take Scripture seriously, yet they ignore anthropologically significant data provided in Genesis.


Related reading: The Themes of Genesis 1-3; Rightly Reading Genesis 1-3; The Fertile Crescent and the Cradle of Civilization; Abraham's Ancestors Came Out of Africa; Abraham's Kushite Ancestors; The Genesis King Lists; Denis Lamoureaux's 2013 ASA Lectures; Genesis in Anthropological Perspective; Alice C. Linsley's posts at ASA Website; Water Systems Connected Nile and Central Africa; Dick Fischer's ASA 2015 Presentation: Adam According to Mesopotamian Tradition

Peter Leithart on John Walton's Lost World of Genesis 1

John Walton’s The Lost World of Genesis 1 promises a lot. It offers what Walton calls a “face-value” and “literal” reading of Genesis 1, but one that sidesteps the problems of attempting to reconcile science and the Bible. For Walton, creationist readings and concordist readings that attempt to correlate Genesis 1 with contemporary scientific theory both miss the point and read “modern” questions into an ancient text that was not designed to answer those questions.

Walton’s treatment of the “days” of Genesis 1 illustrates the cleverness of his solution: With young earth creationists, he claims that Genesis 1:1-2:4 describes a seven-day sequence, and that the days must be interpreted as normal 24-hour days (90-91). Yet he doesn’t think that Genesis 1 implies anything at all about the age of the material universe. Christians can rely on science to tell us how old the earth is.

The two main planks of Walton’s argument are, first, his claim that Genesis 1, being ancient cosmology, should be read like an ancient cosmology, and, second, the claim that ancient cosmologies present not a “material” ontology but a “functional” one. According to the “modern” materialist ontology, a thing is when it comes into material existence; on this view, to “create” means to bring something into material existence. According to ancient ontology, though, a thing is when it has been assigned and equipped to play a role in an ordered system; to “create” doesn’t mean to bring something into existence but to give something (that might already exist) its place in an order. For ancients, a thing is “by virtue of its having a function in an ordered system” (24).

Genesis 1, he argues, is concerned with function rather than with material origination. Walton believes that God brought material things into being (96); he doesn’t think, however, that this is what Genesis 1 is about. Overall, it’s about God’s organization of the world as a cosmic temple. More specifically, things are not made de novo in Genesis 1 but are assigned their proper position in that cosmic temple. The sun had been shining for a long time before the week of Genesis 1 begins; what happens during that week is not the formation of the ball of burning gas but the placement of the sun with the moon and stars in the firmament as signs, for appointed times, etc. Pre-existing heavenly bodies are given new functions in relation to humanity. Presumably too human beings of some stripe had existed for a long, long time, but they are assigned a new role as priests of God’s cosmic temple during the seven days of “creation.” That is what it means in Genesis 1 for God to “create” heaven and earth.

Read it all here.

Related reading: Review of John Walton's Lost World; The Danger of Concordism; YEC Dogma is NOT Biblical; The Nilotic Substrata of Genesis 1

God is.

What is the most important verse in the Bible? Here is an interesting response to that question.

And the second most important verse (IMHO) is Genesis 3:15, the origin of Messianic expectation among Abraham's Nilo-Saharan ancestors.

Rabbi Michael L. Samuel's Book on Gen. 1-3

Here is a review of Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel's book Birth and Rebirth Through Genesis: A Timeless Theological Conversation Vol. 1: Genesis 1-3.  Read other reviews here. 


The reviews do not mention anything about the historical-cultural context of Genesis 1, 2 and 3 so I suspect that Rabbi Samuel does not delve into the Kushite context of Abraham's ancestors.  Nor does he appear to address the origins of messianic expectation beginning in Genesis 3:15.


A theological conversation that is not grounded in historical-cultural realities is too speculative for my taste. This is my argument with Harvard Professor Shaye Cohen.  I prefer the thought of Rabbi Kadura and Rabbi Simon Altaf.

Answers to High Schoolers' Questions About the Serpent in Genesis

Alice C. Linsley


Part 3: The Serpent
(Part 1: Answers to Questions about God; Part 2: Answers to Questions about Adam and Eve)

The serpent is a neutral symbol in the Bible. It symbolizes both good and evil. The serpent is an enemy to be trampled under foot (Gen. 3:15). In other references the serpent is to be lifted up (Num. 21 :4-9). The serpent in Eden is said to be wiser than all the other creatures and it tempts the woman to transgress. Jesus urges his disciples to be wise as serpents, yet gentle as lambs.

How can a single entity have two apparently opposite qualities, both good and evil? It is a mystery. Yet it is as real as a mobius strip, and as mysterious as the Biblical merisms of good-evil, night-day and male-female.

mobius strip

The way the bronze serpent coiled around the staff of Moses have reflected the sun's brilliance. It was actually a solar symbol. The Sun was the emblem of God among Moses's people. The coiled solar serpent on the staff indicated that Moses was God's appointed leader of the people. Even today, this image appears on the croziers of some bishops in the Church.

Q: Why was the devil in the form of a serpent?

A: Genesis does not say that the devil took the form of a serpent. It asserts that a serpent spoke and the woman heard. There are allegorical as well as historical explanations for this. Many Christians believe that the story of the serpent in Genesis has both levels of meaning; that is, it speaks to us symbolically and it speaks about something that actually happened in the past.

In the allegorical approach, the serpent embodies the devilish work that opposes God’s purposes. In other words, the serpent represents a rebellion inside the order of creation. Later, people came to imagine this creature as the Devil or Satan (the Accuser). However, in the time of Abraham and Moses the serpent was a symbol of divine appointment by the overshadowing of the sun. The sun was often pictured as a coiled serpent. Moses lifted up a staff with a serpent in the wilderness and told the people to look upon it and be saved. Numbers 21:8 tells us that God instructed Moses to do this:  The Lord said to Moses, "Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live."

In ancient times the serpent or snake was associated with trees of poles.  In Genesis, the serpent is associated with the tree in the midst of the garden.  In Numbers, the serpent is wrapped around a pole.  Referring to His death, Jesus alluded to the story in Numbers, saying, "But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." (John 12:32)  Jesus is Divine Healing Wisdom on the Cross which is called both a "tree" and a "pole" in Scripture.

In the natural-historical approach, the serpent actually existed and spoke to the woman. One explanation for how this may have happened involves the eating of plants that grow in the part of the world where Eden was located. Before the Fall, humans ate only plants. It is conceivable that the woman ate a combination of plants that caused her to see and hear a talking serpent (hallucination).

Such plants which are high in tryptamine alkaloids exist in the tropics of South America and Africa. In Africa, the Iboga plant produces such effects and is said by the shamans to take one back to the "beginning of time." The isolated active component ibogaine has been used in the treatment of heroin and opium addiction.

Iboga plant

In South America, shamans use a plant called Ayahuasca or Soga de Vida. Ayahuasca is an hallucinogen containing tetrahydroharmine (DMT), which when ingested is neutralized by the oxidizing action of peripheral monoamine oxidase-A (MAO-A), an enzyme in the lining of the stomach. Shamans circumvent the MAO inhibitor by inhaling or smoking the plant or by mixing the DMT with an MAO inhibitor that prevents the breakdown of DMT in the digestive tract.

Ayahuasca vine resembles a coiled serpent

According to the South American shamans, the cosmic serpent taught their ancestors which plants to mix to overcome the body’s natural protection. Combining ingredients allows the DMT in the Ayahuasca to have an hallucinogenic effect when orally ingested. The vine also contains harmaline which can cause vomiting and diarrhea, but it does not affect the shamans who develop a tolerance to its emetic and purgative effects.

In his study of ayahuasca among the Amazon natives, Jeremy Narby found that shamans of the Amazon see and communicate with serpents under the influence of ayahuasca. Narby maintains that nature is speaking to humans through hallucinogenic plants. The illogic of his view never occurs to him. If this is nature speaking, then why must the shaman neutralize the natural enzyme MAO-A in order to gain knowledge? This is cheating nature. People of God do not steal knowledge by drug-induced trances and hallucinations. Instead, they grow in wisdom through constant prayer, communion with God in Christ, the fellowship of the Church, and the study of Scripture. They become, not the mouthpieces of serpents, but of Christ our God.

Q: The serpent in Genesis is never directly referred to as Satan. Why is this?

A: It is true that the serpent in the garden is not identified as the Devil or Satan in Genesis. However, in Revelation the serpent is identified as "that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray" (Rev. 12:9, 20:2).

Recalling that there are two trees in that story, we see that the serpent led Eve from the right choice - to eat of the Tree of Life - to the wrong choice - to eat of the Tree by which she hoped to become like God. This has been the Devil's primary approach throughout history. He attempts to lead us away from life by promising what he cannot give - divinity and immortality.

The serpent is one of the oldest religious motifs. Serpent veneration was rather widespread in the early Neolithic and before. The serpent was venerated among archaic peoples around the world. It was regarded as having powers to communicate, to deceive, to hide, to reveal and to heal and protect. The oldest serpent veneration is evidenced by the 70,000 year old python stone carved in a mountainside in Botswana.

The serpent motif is found in Africa, Arabia, Pakistan, India, Central Asia and the Americas. It is a significant symbol among traditional Africans and Native Americans, and in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. It is often found with symbols of the Sun and the Tree of Life. The great antiquity of these symbols is attested by their wide diffusion, yet their meaning has remained fairly stable in each religion. Only in Judaism and Christianity is the serpent associated with Satan and evil. In the Bible, the serpent is both good and evil; a kind of trickster whose words and advice always must be tested.

Surveying literature and ancient monuments, it becomes evident that the serpent is not believed to have the power to create something new. The serpent or serpent deity's "innovations" are imitations of what God has created, sometimes helpful imitations (See Doctrine of Signatures; herbalism), but often distorted imitations. Likely this is why the Apostle John warns us "do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God." (1 John 4:1)


Related reading:  The Dragon and Beast of Revelation; Serpent Most Subtle; Serpent Symbolism; The Cosmic Serpent Exposed; The Serpent on Moses's Staff

The Nilotic Context of Genesis 1:1-2

"Fee al-badi' khalaqa Allahu as-Samaawaat wa al-Ard . . . "

Genesis 1:1 - Arabic Bible

Alice C. Linsley


Genesis 1 should be considered in the context of Abraham's Nilo-Saharan ancestors from whom we received this amazing account. The elements of Genesis 1 align very closely with the creation accounts of peoples who live in the Nile region or who migrated from the Nile. The correlation of theme, language, and device is much closer to the African than to the Babylonian stories. Also the theology expressed is distinctly Nilotic, as will be demonstrated in this parsing of Genesis 1:1-2.

In the beginning God ....
God was at the beginning. The Creator pre-existed eternally and is not constrained by time and space, as are creatures.

From reading Sumerian commercial records, the Egyptian Coffin Texts, and the Hebrew Scriptures it is evident that many Afro-Asiatic peoples believed that the earth emerged from a watery chaos. In the Coffin Texts we read, "I was the one who began (everything), the dweller in the Primeval Waters. First Hahu emerged from me and then I began to move."

Ha-hu is the wind (ruach in Hebrew) that separated the waters above from the waters below and the dry land from the seas.

The phrase "In the beginning God" is common in African creation stories and songs, such as this song of the Mbuti Pygmies:

In the beginning was God

Today is God,

Tomorrow will be God.

Who can make an image of God?

He has no body.

Contrast this to the Babylonian "Epic of Creation" in which Marduk is created to defend the divine ones from attack by the sea goddess Tiamat. Marduk offers to save them on the condition that he be appointed their permanent ruler. The gods agree to Marduk's terms. Marduk kills Tiamat and from her corpse, which he cuts into two parts, he fashions the earth and the skies.

God created the heavens and the earth ...
Both the heavens and the earth are created entities which owe their existence to God, the Creator. No other gods shared in the act of creation.

"I cast a spell with my own heart to lay a foundation in Maat. I made everything . I was alone. I had not yet breathed the divine one Shu, and I had not yet spit up the divine one Tefnut. I worked alone." (Egyptian)

Maat is the principle or platform whereby God orders the universe.  In the Psalms the principle is often called "wisdom" by which God orders all things. The principle of Maat includes equilibrium and harmony between constituent parts, the cycle of the seasons, celestial and planetary movements, honesty in social and business interactions and justice. There appears to be a relationship between Maat and Tehut, just as there is a relationship between the watery chaos and Tehom.

The victory of Tehut (order) over Tehom (watery chaos) relates to the annual inundation of the Nile and helps us to understand the Egyptian concept of creation as a mound emerging from a primal ocean (mer). The first life form was a lily, growing on the peak of the emerging dry land called Tatjenen. This is symbolized by the rising pyramid along the Nile.

The celestial waters were called Nun, a name that appears among the Horite chiefs in the Hebrew Bible. Joshua bin Nun is an example. Nun is found at the Horite shrine of Heliopolis in Egypt and represents the cosmic waters of the firmament above and firmament below (Gen.1:6). In Heliopolitan cosmology the watery realms were connected by the great pillars of the temple of Heliopolis (Biblical On).

In Genesis the primal chaotic waters are called tehom. Tehom was subdued by tehut which went forth from the mouth of God. The Hebrew phrase "formless and void" (Gen. 1: 2) is tohu wa-bohu and is of Nilotic origin. The word tohu in Isaiah 34:11 means "confused" so Genesis 1 evidently refers to matter in a confused state before God set things in order.

The Egyptians envisioned the first place as a mound emerging from a universal ocean. Here the first life form was a lily growing on the peak of the primeval mound. The mound was called Tatjenen, meaning "the emerging land." Anything that springs forth, mounds, emerges represented life and was termed bnbn (benben), from the root bn, meaning to "swell forth." This conception of land and life emerging from a universal ocean was represented by stone pillars, mounds of earth, and pyramids.


The earth was formless (tohu) and void/empty (bohu) ...
The formlessness of the earth could have more than one meaning. It may simply mean that God had not yet created the material world. However, the ancient Nilotic peoples may have been thinking metaphysically, that is to say, that God had not yet created the Forms or archetypes of which created forms are the shadow or reflection. Whatever is meant by formless, there was nothing on earth. This is conveyed in this account:

At the beginning of Things, when there was nothing, neither man, nor animals, nor plants, nor heaven, nor earth, nothing, nothing, God was and He was called Nzame. (Fan / Congo)
Boshongo

Darkness was over the surface of the deep ...

Darkness and chaotic waters are commonly associated with the beginning of creation.  This is expressed in the following African creation stories.

"In the beginning there was only darkness, water, and the great god Bumba." (Bantu / Central Africa)

"There was no sunlight... the whole land was in darkness." (Gikuyu / Kenya)

"In the beginning there was only the swirling watery chaos."  (Egyptian)


The Spirit of God was moving over the waters (mə·ra·ḥe·peṯ, Egyptian origin) ...

The Spirit (ruach) of God moved over the dark waters. The ruach of God is the breath of life. This  concept is found in Genesis 2:7: "the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostril the breath of life and the man became a living being." However, in the Babylonian creation myth Ea makes mankind from the blood of Kingu.

In the image above a dead Egyptian receives the breath of life flowing over a sail. The sail was associated with Ra's solar boat which rises after dying at the end of the day. By the wind/breath/spirit of the Creator, the deceased may enjoy life beyond the grave and avoid the second death. The Egyptians believed in the resurrection of the body and prayed for, offered sacrifice for and prepared the bodies of their dead in this hope. The African bishop Saint Augustine wrote "that the Egyptians alone believe in the resurrection, as they carefully preserved their dead bodies." ("Death, burial, and rebirth in the religions of antiquity," Jon Davies, Routledge, 1999, p. 27)


Related reading:  Adam and Eve: The Blood and the Birther; The Nubian Context of YHWH; Who is Jesus?; Genesis One Sets the Scene; The Christ in Nilotic Mythology; The Themes of Genesis 1-3

Christians Debate Genesis and Evolution

Alice C. Linsley

The debate among Christians over Genesis and evolution involves several distinct but related issues. They are:

1. The Biblical assertion of a fixed order in creation
2. The Biblical view of a hierarchy in creation

3. The Genesis king lists as historical in contrast to the meta-historical Adam and Eve

4. Science's reliance on the Biblical assertion of uniformity in nature

First, there is the question of whether or not Genesis (and the Bible as a whole) allows for the possibility of evolutionary transformation from one species to another species. It does not. Genesis (and Jeremiah, Isaiah, Job) speak of a fixed binary order and hierarchy in creation, with humans at the pinnacle. The tiers of the hierarchy are spoken of as "kinds" and the clear implication is that there is a genetic boundary between kinds. That is why humans reproduce humans and bacteria - even when genetically modified - produces bacteria.

Consider the work of Richard Lenski at Michigan State University. He has grown E. coli in the test-tube for more than 40,000 generations. The first generations showed little mutation. Then a “mutator” strain arose, after which new genetic varieties were present in all cells, resulting in more than 250 varieties. The total number of single changes is more than a thousand, yet Lenski has produced nothing fundamentally new.

There is also the evidence that humans were fully human (and according to Genesis in the image and likeness of the Creator) from the beginning. Skeletal remains have been collected in Ethiopia, Kenya and Cameroon to recontruct a picture of the earliest known human populations. For example, Ward, Kimbel, Johanson, report here that the complete A afrarensis fourth metatarsal discovered at Hadar shows the deep, flat base and tarsal facets that "imply that its midfoot had no ape-like midtarsal break. These features show that the A. afarensis foot was functionally like that of modern humans."

"Australopithecus afarensis" means "Ape of the South found at the Afar Triangle."  The term was coined by South African anatomist Donald C. Johanson though Mary Leakey would have named her older find in Kenya "homo."  Today Johanson admits (as in the report above) that the evidence doesn't support his intial label of  "ape."

The earliest human skeletons show a range of anatomical features found among humans today.  Paleontologist Tim White reports here that the nearly complete skulls of people who lived 160,000 years ago are "like modern-day humans in almost every feature."

When Jeremy DeSilva, a British anthropologist, compared the ankle joint, the tibia and the talus of fossil hominins between 4.12 million to 1.53 million years old, he discovered that all of the hominin ankle joints resembled those of modern humans. Chimpanzees flex their ankles 45 degrees from normal resting position. This makes it possible for apes to climb trees with great ease. While walking, humans flex their ankles a maximum of 20 degrees. The human ankle is quite distinct from that of apes. Read more on this here.

Some of the A afarensis fossils dating between 700,000 and 2.4 million years are recognized as "early human fossils." These skeletal remains reveal human dentition, bipedalism, and oppositional thumbs. Stone tools for butchery of animals have also been found along with bones showing evidence of butchery. Dr. Curtis Marean of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University said, "Most of the marks have features that indicate without doubt that they were inflicted by stone tools."

It seems that there is no evidence of macro-evolution from one kind to another kind. Even the evolutionary biologist Kenneth Roux admits this here. He has said, "Evolutionary convergence at the molecular level is presumed to be widespread, but is poorly documented." It is impossible to honestly document what has not been observed.

The claim of universality of the DNA code as a prediction of common descent doesn't align with known variations that violate this prediction. At the same time there appear to be specific fixed boundaries within the DNA code. What is often termed evolutionary "change" is really flux, a distinction many fail to make. Flux is expected within species. This is not the same as evolving from one species into another, and flux within a fixed order challenges the evolutionary convergence theory.

Certainly, there is evidence for fluctuation within kinds. Consider horses, dogs and the range of human populations. Yet each is easily identifiable.  Range of physical characteristics is not the same as change in essence. Take the case of water. The essence of water is always and only H2O, but the form of H2O can fluctuate between vapor, solid and liquid. We wouldn’t call this transformation “evolution.” People in the ancient world were familiar with the concept of “flux.” Plato and Aristotle address this in their writings. Plato’s Forms and Flux are very close to Afro-Asiatic thought of Genesis, as he studied in ancient Egypt.

Meta-historical Adam and Eve

There is also the question of Adam and Eve, who in biblical parlance represent the first created humans. As such we must relate them to the oldest known human populations in Africa, dating to over 3 million years. Yet their offspring Cain (Gen. 4) and his brother Seth (Gen. 5) have been identified as Chadic rulers who lived around 2800 BC. Cain and Seth, and the women that they married, represent a thriving river civilization with a lengthy list of rulers who established laws and maintained order. Obviously, there is a gap of time between the creation of the first humans and the emergence of a people to whom God made the Edenic promise that a woman of their people would bring forth the Divine Seed (Gen. 3:15). The whole of the Bible concerns God’s fulfillment of this first promise made concerning the "Woman" (not Eve, as she isn't named until five verses later). Therefore, this promise is also a prophecy concerning a future event which Christians call the "Incarnation of Jesus Christ." That is why I believe that Genesis is not ultimately about human origins. It is about the origins of Messianic expectation among Abraham's African ancestors.

Science's Reliance on the Fixed Order of Creation

Finally, there is the fact that science works because the world is exactly as Genesis asserts. The constellations, the stars and planets move according to a fixed pattern. That's why scientists can predict where to look and when to look there. That's how they can identify singularities, such as the Star of Bethlehem.

Progress in the sciences depends on the fixed order of creation. It assumes the consistency of the laws of nature. Geneticists recognize certain genetic patterns which form the basis for their research. Physicists' exploration of the material world is based on physical laws that do not change. Anthropologists find that humans are essentially the same regardless of their environments. The oldest known human skeletons show the same range of flux, the same essential nature as human skeletal structures today. Even technological "change" has been possible because of the fixed nature of mathematical and physical laws.

Related reading: Biblical Anthropologists Discuss Darwin; Today's Savage Mind; Genesis and Genetics; Meat Consumption 3 Million Years Ago; Getting the Facts About Human Origins; Christianity Emerges from Belief System of Abraham's Ancestors (Originally titled "Christianity Lacks Originality")

Dumb News Report on Genesis

Here is a dumb news report on Genesis and Andrew Parker's use of Genesis. It is from the sensationalist Daily Mail:

The revalation [sic] came to Professor Andrew Parker during a visit to Rome. He was in the Sistine Chapel, gazing up at Michelangelo's awesome ceiling paintings, when a realisation struck him with dizzying force.

'A Biblical enigma exists that is on the one hand so cryptic it has remained camouflaged for millennia, and on the other so obvious one cannot miss it.'

The enigma is that the order of Creation as described in the Book of Genesis, and so powerfully depicted in the Sistine Chapel by the greatest artist of the Renaissance, has been precisely, eerily confirmed by modern evolutionary science.

Read it all here.

Andrew Parker is a biology professor from Oxford whose area of study is the evolution of the eye.  He claims to be an atheist and stirred the ire of fellow atheists when he asserted that evolution and Genesis can be reconciled.  In his The Genesis Enigma: Why the Bible is scientifically accurate he asserts that the people who gave us the book of Genesis understood evolution 3000 years ago.  Parker fails to identify who those people were. Would he think them so clever were he to recognize that they were ruler-priests who saw a fixed hierarchy in creation?  Or that they were Nilotic peoples who knew a great deal more about water creatures that Parker and over thousands of years never saw one species evolve from another species?  Had they done so they would have remarked on this fascinating observation in Genesis.

Parker has no friends among Young Earth Creationists either. He has said that, "Creationism is totally unfounded. It is as dangerous as fundamentalism in other religions."  He lost the literalists when he posited that the creation of lights in the sky to mark the seasons is a poetic description of the formation of vision. In Parker’s Day Five abundant sea life evolves in direct response to the evolution of vision. He writes, "Almost overnight, life suddenly grew vastly more complex. Predators were able to hunt far more efficiently, and so prey had to evolve fast too–or get eaten.”

Nor has he many friends among Christians who believe in theistic evolution because Parker fails to place Genesis in the theological context of divine creation. For him, life on earth developed according to the mechanism of evolution, not because the Creator created through the Generative Word.

The most important criticism of Parker's correlation of the days of creation with evolution is simply that Genesis holds to a fixed order in creation. To impose an evolutionary scheme on Genesis One is to make it say exactly the opposite of what it states: that life is organized within fixed genetic boundaries called "kinds."

Further, Genesis is not about the origins of life, but about the origins of Messianic expectation.

For a man of Parker's academic caliber, the book is disappointing.  He should have stayed with the subject of vision and its development. Perhaps he hoped to cash in on the Bible busting trend that has put plenty of cash in the pockets of fellow atheists like Hitchens and Dawkins. 

Related reading:  Genesis and Genetics; Hierarchy in Creation: The biblical view; The African Context of Genesis

Victory of God's Order Over Chaos

Dr. Zahi Hawass with statues, one of which is an image of Horus as a child wearing a sidelock.

Alice C. Linsley


I recently received an email from a Japanese friend in which she details some of the horrors and hardships endured by many Japanese in the aftermath of natural disasters.  She wrote: "In my country, fear of earthquakes always haunts us. We don't know when it gonna hit us and kill us. As a small child, I remember nights I could not sleep because of the fear of death by earthquake. I grew up with fear. However, because I encountered with Christ, I am no longer haunted by fear of death anymore. It is the unchanging truth, but it is quite scary when it happens. I lost words when I saw cars and houses carried away by water and drown in it as weapons to steal so many lives. I thought hell would be a place like this."

Hell is probably very like this, a chaotic state without hope of the victorious order that comes with God's Presence. According to Genesis 1, such chaos was overcome by God's Word in the beginning. The Genesis 1 and 2 accounts speak of water in a chaotic state and water that sustains life.

In the Genesis 1 creation account, the earth was chaotic. Darkness was on "deep" until the Spirit moved over waters (1:1-2).

Similarly, in Genesis 2, we read "In the day when the Lord-God made the earth and the heavens . . ." (2:4) there was nothing on earth (2:5) until a mist or water rose from the ground and watered all the surface of the ground.

In Genesis 1 we have an account similar to the ancient Nilotic belief of Tehom (Hebrew: תְּהוֹם‎), a watery and disordered deep which God put in order by His Word (Egyptian word "hu" or hut). The Tehom is subdued by the divine Tehut.

In the early Nilotic account of creation (before Egypt emerged as a political entity) the creation began when a mound or pillar of dry land emerged from the primordial sea. Here the first life form was seen as a lily, growing on the peak of the mound. The mound was called Tatjenen, meaning "the emerging land".

The victory of Tehut over Tehom relates to the annual inundation of the Nile and helps us to understand the Egyptian concept of creation. As rains fell in the Ethiopian headlands the Nile River rose above its banks, flooding the Nile Valley between June and October. The flooding lasted for 40 days. As the waters receded, only the highest mounds of earth would been seen at first. Even after the waters crested and began to recede, families did not return to their homes for another 40 nights. This is the origin of the biblical phrase "forty days and forty nights", and the context is Nilotic.

One of the oldest creation myths of the ancient Egyptians envisioned the first place in the world as a mound emerging from the waters of a universal ocean. In Hindu and Buddhist mythology the mound that emerged is called Mount Meru. It emerges from the center of the Cosmic Ocean, and the Sun and 7 visible planets circle the mountain. Mount Meru in Hinduism is a mythological mountain. 

The name meru is meri in Egyptian and is related to the ancient Egyptian word for love - mer.  The name Mary or Miriam is related to that same root - MR. The Virgin Mary, whose womb swelled with the Son of God, is portrayed in some icons as the mountain of God. The Prophet Daniel saw a mountain, from which a stone was cut by the hand of God (Dan. 2:34, 45). Doubtless this is what Malachi alluded to when he wrote, “But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise [swell/be magnified] with healing in its wings.” 

This conception of Earth emerging from a universal ocean likely originated in the Nile Valley where stone pillars called benben were erected. The term is from the root, bn, meaning to "swell forth". The Egyptian word for the rising sun is wbn, which comes from the same root as benben. The benben were a solar symbol. In his book, Mountains of the Pharaohs, Dr. Zahi Hawass states that the benben was the "solar symbol par excellence, thought to have existed in reality as an object, perhaps a stone with a rounded top..." (p. 34)

Hawass believes that this artifact was kept in the main temple at Heliopolis (biblical On) where the sun was the symbol of the High God Ra. Ra's son was called HR, meaning Most High One. The Greeks called Ra's son Horus. The Horite Hebrew priests who served at the main temple in Heliopolis were devotees of Ra, Horus, and Hathor. Heliopolis is mentioned multiple times in the Old Testament. Isaiah 19:18 says that Heliopolis was one of the five cities in Egypt that swore allegiance to the Lord of Hosts.

Recently discovered tombs of officials from the 4th Dynasty were surmounted by conical mounds that represent the benben. These tombs, along with the royal tombs at Giza, indicate that the ancient rulers hoped to rise from the place of death just as the sun rises daily in the east and sets in the west. The solar arc and the hope of resurrection were linked in ancient Nilotic thought.


Related reading: The Prestige of Biblical On; Early Resurrection Texts; The Nilotic Substrata of Genesis 1; Funerary Rites and the Hope of Resurrection; Righteous Rulers and the Resurrection; Solar Symbolism of the Proto-Gospel

Genesis 1 Sets the Scene

Genesis looks at what the culture around it believes about the nature of the material world, and disagrees with it profoundly. -- Jane Williams


Genesis 1 and 2 must be among the most hotly debated texts in the Bible. But our obsession with whether and how they can be reconciled with scientific descriptions of the beginning of the universe is distorting our understanding of where these "creation narratives" fit into the wider concerns of the Book of Genesis. In its printed form, Genesis has 50 chapters, only one and a bit of which directly concern the origins of the universe. They are there to set the scene for what follows.

Genesis is, from beginning to end, a theological book. It opens with God, "the beginning", and everything that follows is based on this assumption of the relationship between God and the world. So when we get on to the main action of Genesis, with God's conversations with Abraham and his descendents, we know that what is happening is not just of local significance. The God who calls Abraham is the one we have just seen, making the world, so we know that Abraham's story is one about the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

Read it all here.

This is an interesting article, though it contains nothing controversial or new.  Williams asserts that Genesis presents a view of the material world unlike the cultures around it. The first question one might ask is "Cultures around whom?" It is meaningless to speak of cultures around a text.  It would be more meaningful to ask "What culture produced this text?"

The second question to ask is this: "If the Genesis creation stories are akin to the Gilgamesh Epic, then in what way do they represent a worldview different from the culture that produced the Gilgamesh Epic?"

In fact, the Genesis creation stories have much closer affinity to the creation stories of the part of Africa from which Abraham's ancestors came. This is evident in motif and in theological detail. We might more accurately speak of these as Afro-Arabian narratives since Abraham's ancestors were Nilotic and spread across the Arabian Peninsula. This is why the Genesis creation stories have close affinity to the creation stories of the Nilotic peoples.


Related reading:  The Genesis Creation Stories; The Christ in Nilotic Mythology; Afro-Arabian Number Symbolism

The Creation Museum

The Creation Museum, near Cincinnati, is a large facility with petting zoo, gardens, and an exhibit hall and planetarium.  It is a favorite destination of home schooling groups and students from Christian schools. To see everything you should plan to spend the day. Visit the official website for current news on events. The staff are friendly and helpful and I especially enjoyed the petting zoo.

Sheep shearing at the petting zoo

The Museum is committed to young-earth creationism. As a Biblical anthropologist I found the scheme forced. The exhibits are well constructed but often portray a picture contrary to what the Bible actually says about Abraham's ancestors going back to Eden. The scheme seems unaware of what the Bible tells us about the Afro-asiatic Dominion, the flood of Noah's time and Abraham's kingdom-building ancestors, and claims to represent the only biblical view of creation and the flood. People who believe that the earth is only 6000 years old, based on Ussher's (flawed) dating, will enjoy it more than those who accept that the earth is about 4 billion years old.

Dinosaurs and humans are shown co-existing. The dating assumes that God created things to appear old. I found no explanation for why God would do this and find none in the Bible either. The scheme assumes the accuracy of Bishop Usher's dating for the earth based on the age spans assigned to the patriarchs from Adam to Abraham. It assumes that the people listed in Genesis 4 and 5 are the first humans on the surface of the earth, a claim that Scripture does not support.

The Museum is an example of what happens in attempts to force concordance between Genesis and earth science. This is called concordism. John H. Walton, Old Testament professor at Wheaton College, points out the danger of such an approach.  He has written: "If we accept Genesis 1 as ancient cosmology, then we need to interpret it as ancient cosmology rather than translate it into modern cosmology. If we try to turn it into modern cosmology, we are making the text say something that it never said. It is not just a case of adding meaning (as more information has become available) it is a case of changing meaning. Since we view the text as authoritative, it is a dangerous thing to change the meaning of the text into something it never intended to say." (From here).

The Creation Museum is located 7 miles west of the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (about a 30-minute drive from downtown Cincinnati).  For tickets call 1-888-582-4253, ext. 376.  Ticket Information (not including tax):

• Adult (13-59 yrs) $21.95
• Senior (60 yrs up) $16.95
• Children (5-12 yrs) $11.95
• Children (under 5 yrs) Free
• Planetarium (with admission) $7.00

2-Day Passes are available


Related Reading:  YEC Dogma is NOT Biblical; False Assumption #1 of Young Earth Creationists; False Assumption #2 of Young Earth Creationists; Between Biblical Literalism and Biblical Illiteracy; Kentucky to Get Noah's Ark Theme Park

David Plotz on Genesis One

David Plotz, writing for Slate Magazine, blogs on the Bible.  His comments on Genesis are often hilarious. Here's a sample:

You'd think God would know exactly what He's doing, but He doesn't. He's a tinkerer. He tries something out—what if I move all the water around so dry land can appear? He checks it out. He sees "that it was good." Then He moves on to the next experiment—how about plants? Let's try plants. 

This haphazardness may be why Creation seems so out of order. If God made light on the first day, what was giving the light, since the sun doesn't appear until the fourth day? And God tackles the major geological and astronomical features during the first two days—light, sky, water, earth. But Day 3 is a curious interruption—plant creation—that is followed by a return to massive universe-shaping projects on Day 4 with the sun, moon, and stars. The plant venture is a tangent—like putting a refrigerator into a house before you've put the roof on.

Does the Lord love insects best? They're so nice He made them twice: On Day 5 He makes "the living creatures of every kind that creep." Three verses, and 24 hours later, He makes "all kinds of creeping things of the earth." 

"Creeping" is all over these last few verses of Creation. God tells His newly minted man and woman that they rule over world and its creatures, including, as the King James puts it—"every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." What a superb phrase! It's perfect for insects, terrorists, and children.

Now that's funny!

Genesis One a Mistranslation?

It’s a few days now since we ran the story of Old Testament scholar Professor Ellen van Wolde claiming that the start of the book of Genesis was based on a mistranslation and God didn’t “create” the world, but (simply!) “spatially separated” Heaven and Earth.

The comment thread to that story has, depressingly and predictably, broadly divided between Creationists saying something like “God still made it all” and secularists going “Told you so – it’s all a fairy story”.

It has to be said that the good Professor didn’t really aid her case by adding some really breathtaking silliness by way of commentary. Try this:

“There was already water. There were sea monsters. God did create some things, but not the Heaven and Earth. The usual idea of creating-out-of-nothing, creatio ex nihilo, is a big misunderstanding….The traditional view of God the Creator is untenable now.”

Phew, thanks Prof. I think that’s cleared up the mystery of creation once and for all.

Actually, I think her etymological point about the translation is fascinating. She just shouldn’t have gone off on one, as though she had a seat at top table in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

Read it all here.

The Danger of Concordism

"If we accept Genesis 1 as ancient cosmology, then we need to interpret it as ancient cosmology rather than translate it into modern cosmology. If we try to turn it into modern cosmology, we are making the text say something that it never said. It is not just a case of adding meaning (as more information has become available) it is a case of changing meaning. Since we view the text as authoritative, it is a dangerous thing to change the meaning of the text into something it never intended to say." -- John H. Walton, Ph.D (From here.)

Dr. Walton received his Ph.D from Hebrew Union College and is professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College.


Related reading:  Review of Walton's The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate; Genesis One as Ancient Cosmology

Rightly Reading Genesis 1 - 3

Alice C. Linsley

Question number six of the Nine Meaty Questions is: "I don't read Genesis 1 and 2 as two separate creation stories, but rather chapter 2 as an expansion on the outline laid out in chapter 1.... what do you think?"

Answer: A right reading of Genesis does not require reading the first two chapters as one continuous narrative. These chapters are not a chronological account of historical events. In fact, the narrative flow of chapters 1-3 requires that Genesis 2 be read with Genesis 3, but not Genesis 1 with Genesis 2.

Further, text criticism and number symbolism suggests that Genesis 2 is older than Genesis 1. Looking at the larger picture, it becomes evident that the Genesis 1 and Genesis 2-3 creation and origin accounts represent different traditions among Abraham's Afro-Asiatic people.

One reader of Just Genesis has suggested that "The second description tells it from a different point of view: God's, while the first tells it from man's view." This is certainly the case, but as no humans were present when God created the Heavens and the Earth, Genesis 1 clearly is not to be read as an historical account.

Another reader, Mairnéalach, takes this view: "The two narratives may be reconciled, but any attempt to do so in a consistent manner will also fatally damage the remaining modernistic/journalistic interpretation of Genesis. This is proper and to be desired. If one attempts to maintain the modernistic/journalistic hermeneutic, their rules of interpretation are much like Calvin ball. (This is the game that Calvin and Hobbes played together, where Calvin gets to change the rules on the fly as he wishes, so that he can win the game no matter what happens.)

I appreciate Mairnéalach's criticism of what he calls the "modernistic/journalistic" approach to reading Genesis, something quite foreign to the text itself. Genesis 1 represents an ancient religious worldview that sees the order of creation as having seven parts. Emphasis on the number seven as the achievement of Shalom/Sabbath reflects a well-developed theological understanding of Messiah's inevitable ascent (as we will see later).

The number seven is a reference to union or completion in the first creation story which says that God's creative work lasted six days and God rested on the seventh day. The number seven in association with God at rest (sabbath) portrays the concept of completion or perfection of a relationship between Master and Servant, or between Creator and Creation, or between Husband and Bride.

The seven-part order of Genesis 1 suggests the more recent (eastern Afro-Asiatic) or Babylonian influence, which attaches seven to weddings as attested by Esther 1:5-11: "And when these days were expired, the king made a feast unto all the people that were present in Shushan the palace, both unto great and small, seven days, in the court of the garden of the king's palace. On the seventh day, when the heart of the king was merry with wine, he commanded Mehuman, Biztha, Harbona, Bigtha, and Abagtha, Zethar, and Carcas, the seven chamberlains that served in the presence of Ahasuerus the king, to bring Vashti the queen before the king with the crown royal, to shew the people and the princes her beauty..."

But the seven-part structure is not characteristic of the older (western Afro-Asiatic) view of the order of creation. The older system, reflected in Genesis 2 and 3, is binary. It upholds the binary distinctions of God-Man, Heaven-Earth, Male-Female, and Life-Death. These distinctions are found in Genesis 1 also, but the structure of Genesis 1 is seven-fold, not binary.

The number symbolism of Abraham's people (which has been re-interpreted in Kabbalah) points to the Triune God (1) whose Son, Jesus Christ, is the Logos (2) who by the Spirit (3) became incarnate of the Virgin Mary (5), lived on earth as a man who died (6) but, as God, rose from the dead, showing great mercy to all the world (4) and ascended as the Royal Son of God (7) who becomes the Royal Bridegroom (8) who enters the bridal chamber to consummate the marriage to his pure and spotless Bride, the Church (9) and from that union will be born a new reality, a new world (10).

Genesis 2-3 addresses the relationship of God (1) and Logos (2), a common theme among the western Afro-Asiatics. The bards of the Bambara of Uganda recite this praise of the generative power of the Logos:

The Word is total:
it cuts, excoriates
forms, modulates
perturbs, maddens
cures or directly kills
amplifies or reduces
According to intention
It excites or calms souls.

The idea of the Logos in Genesis seems strange to many because they don't think of Genesis as being about the Son of God. However, as the kinship pattern of Abraham's people reveals, they were motivated to preserve the bloodline through the mothers by an expectation that a Ruler-Priest-Savior would be born from them whose radiance would be a light to the nations. And they were right!

As linguistics, climatology, anthropology and archaeology collaboratively suggest, this expectation was spread by Afro-Asiatic ruler-priests who controlled the large water systems from west central Africa to the Indus River Valley aound 12,000 years ago. They believed that God, who desires Sabbath communion with us, accomplishes this through the Blood of His Son and eternal Priest. The expectation of this Salvation is first found in Genesis 3:15: Thus the Lord God said to the serpent... 'I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head, and you shall strike at his heel.'

For Jews the Exodus is the central event of their corporate consciousness whereby God delivered them and established a special relationship with them as His own holy possession. For Christians the central event is the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, whereby atonement is made through the shedding of His Blood. We might argue that these events are at odds, the first locating atonement through obedience to the Law and the second locating atonement through Jesus' obedience to the Father. But in both events God is working with a specific line of Afro-Asiatic ruler-priests. It is from this line that Jesus enters the world to bring salvation to sinners according to the ancient expectation.