S2 E8 TRANSCRIPT
THE BEGINNINGS ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE
INTRODUCTION
Hello everyone and welcome to Spirit-Led Hope. My name is Glenn Erichsen, and in this episode, we are talking about:
THE BEGINNINGS ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE
This is Episode 8 of Season 2, and in the four prior episodes, 4, 5, 6, and 7, we summarized the naturalistic, or materialistic, scientific view of the origins of the universe and life. I want to remind everyone that this was a very high-level summary. Many billions of dollars have been spent trying to understand our origins, and thousands upon thousands of pages have been written to describe the theories and the empirical evidence of our beginnings. In less than 80 minutes of podcasting, we have barely scratched the surface of the scientific material available for us to discuss.
In this episode we transition to the Biblical account of Creation found in the book of Genesis. And here, instead of thousands and thousands of pages, we find the core description of our beginnings in about a thousand words. Not pages…words. The contrast in the volume of material is staggering.
THE ORIGIN OF THE GENESIS ACCOUNT
Before we look at the Biblical account of Creation, let’s talk about the book of Genesis itself. Traditionally, Moses wrote Genesis probably around 1450-1410- B.C. That is about 3500 years ago! When we talk about the book of Genesis, we are talking about an ancient text.
Not only is the book itself ancient, but it records events that took place centuries before it was written. For example, Abraham was born around 2000 B.C. and Genesis records the life of Abraham as well as the ancient patriarchs who came before the Flood. Ultimately, the first two chapters of Genesis record the creation of the universe and life, long before Moses was ever born.
So how did Moses know what to write? Interestingly, the Bible does not specifically say.
One thing we do know for sure, is that the Creation account ultimately had to come from God himself. There were no humans present to record how the universe or life started. It is very possible that what Moses used for the first chapter of Genesis came from God by means of oral tradition. God may have told Adam who passed on the account to his children, and so on.
It is also possible that oral traditions were put into writing, and Moses had access to those writings. The first writing started around 3400 B.C., long before the time of Moses. Or God himself could have dictated the Genesis account directly to Moses. We just do not know. But because Moses was a prophet of God, we trust that what he wrote was accurate, independently of the way he got the information.
At the time of Moses, it is believed that most people were illiterate. Because Moses was raised as royalty in one of the greatest civilizations of his time, Moses had the perfect skills for writing the first books of our Bible. We read the results of his work, to this very day.
When we think of ancient people like Moses, we can sometimes believe that these people were not as intelligent as us. But that is a mistake. These are people who lived off the land and had to figure out the things we take for granted. They were the people who developed writing, and metallurgy, and farming, all the things in existence long before we were born.
These early people knew the land and observed how nature worked. They were the first ones who knew the night sky because they could see it. Most people today see only a small fraction of the stars seen by the ancients because of light pollution.
What these early people did not have is the technology and scientific knowledge we have today. In our era, people use their phones to talk to someone on the other side of the planet or to navigate using GPS. These early people had none of that. They lived by their five senses and what they could intellectually discern.
We take it for granted that we can look at our phones or watches and know what time it is. These early people could only tell time by the sun, the moon, and their own personal sense of time. They did not have quick access to the internet, and so they had to remember facts or rely on each other.
This is the era into which the book of Genesis was written, and we need to remember this. Think about that…the first people who heard the Creation account written in Genesis, had limited scientific knowledge as we know it. They had no quick way to tell time, no maps of the world, no telescopes, limited mathematics for describing large numbers, they did not know how fast light or sound traveled, they did not have an encyclopedia of the animal kingdom, but they were as intelligent as we are. Some scholars make the argument that we are less intelligent than they were!
Because they were intelligent, they keenly observed the world around them. They saw the sun, the moon, and the stars. They knew the plants and animals in their locality. And because they were intelligent, they asked themselves the same big three questions we ask ourselves. We talked about these in Episode 3. They asked themselves:
1. How did the universe begin?
2. How did life begin?
3. What is my purpose and value in life?
Keep this in mind as we prepare to read the Biblical account of how the universe and life began.
THE BIBLICAL ACCOUNT OF CREATION
When we talked about the scientific account of beginnings, it was necessary to give a very high-level summary. This is not required for the Biblical account. Because the Biblical account is so short, we are going to read the first chapter of Genesis in its entirety, and part of the second chapter. I am going to avoid adding commentary as we read. We will save that for later episodes.
As I get ready to start reading, I want you to think about the naturalistic explanation we just covered in the last four episodes. Imagine that your task is to summarize everything we discussed in less than 1000 words. Your goal is to give people with limited technology an understanding of how the universe and life started in a way that they can understand and remember.
Do not forget that these are people who do not have telescopes, ways to keep time accurately, or even the mathematical concepts for extremely large numbers. And you want to convey the naturalistic view of Big Bang cosmology to these people. You want to convey the progression of moving from nothing to a beginning, to the formation of the stars and earth, to a place that gives life, and the sequential development of life starting simply and ending with humans. Take a moment now, to think about what you would say to accomplish that in less than 1000 words. Now feel free to pause the podcast for a moment…but I am going to go silent for several seconds so you can think about it.
Okay, with that in mind, we now transition to what God has conveyed in the Bible. Because remember, the Genesis account must have originated from God. In his summary, God is going to add a few details because he knows these people (and us centuries later) are intelligent and have questions. In the same account, God will not only explain the beginnings of everything, but he will answer the three big questions by showing that he created the universe, he started life, and he gave us purpose and value.
I am going to start in Genesis Chapter 1 verse 1 and read through Chapter 2 verse 3. While I am reading, think about your summary and mentally compare it to what God has said. I am reading from the English Standard Version of the Bible which essentially tries to translate the original Hebrew literally.
Here we go starting at verse 1:
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning the first day.
And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.
And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.
And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” And there was evening and there was morning the fifth day.
And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
Genesis 1:1-2:3
And that, is the core Creation account from the Bible. Maybe that is the first time you have ever heard it from beginning to end. Now, there are other verses throughout the Bible that give us more details. For example, if we would have kept reading in Chapter 2, there we would see additional details about the creation of humans. We may look more at that in a later episode. And we may refer to some of the other verses, depending on how deep we go this Season. I have not decided yet.
But I am curious how your summary of the naturalistic worldview compared to the Biblical account. Obviously, the naturalistic view does not include God or give the same answers to our three big questions. But apart from the addition of God, did you find that there were some big similarities, or not? Were there some huge differences?
CLOSING
In our next episode, we will continue this exercise as we begin comparing the Biblical account we just read, to the materialistic account.
As always, if you have any comments, suggestions, or questions, please email me at glenn@spiritledhope.com, or simply use the Contact Form at spiritledhope.com. That is spiritledhope.com.
In this episode we again talked briefly about the big questions. If you find yourself wondering about your own purpose and value, this verse is for you:
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope, by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Until next episode, take care.