What happened before before God. What preceded the creation of our world? Time was created at the same time as the Universe
One of the reasons people reject the idea of a young universe is because they believe it somehow limits God. After all, what, in this case, was He doing all the time before creation? This question reflects a basic misunderstanding of God and the concept of time.
One day a man came up to me after learning about my idea about the young age of the Universe. He said: “If you believe that she is young, then what was God doing all the time before creation?”
I asked: "What time do you mean?"
He replied: “It makes no sense to say that always, but He created the world only six thousand years ago.” Apparently he was disturbed by the fact that God had a lot of time and nothing to do.
I began to explain that it was not logical to wonder what God was doing before creation if He had always existed. After all, it doesn’t matter how much time passed before creation; an infinite amount of time had passed before this moment anyway. So even if the universe were billions, trillions, or quadrillions of years old, one would still ask the same question.
Time was created at the same time as the Universe
A study of this verse indicates that God created time, space, and matter on the first day of creation week. None of these concepts existed separately from the others. God created the Universe with space-mass-time. Space and matter must exist in time, and for time to exist, space and matter are necessary. Time only matters if there are physical objects and events that occur in time.
“In the beginning...” and time began! There was no time until it was created!
God exists independently of time and the universe
When I explain this to children, I do it like this. There was no “before” creation. There wasn’t even “nothing”! There was only God, existing in eternity.
This is something that humans, finite created beings, can never fully understand. This is why the Bible clearly states that faith is always necessary to understand God. Biblical faith is not contrary to reason, but it surpasses our understanding.
“And without faith it is impossible to please God; For he who comes to God must believe that He exists and is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6).
In Psalm 89:3 we read: “Before the mountains were born, You formed the earth and the universe, and from everlasting to everlasting You are God.”.
So what was “before” creation? God existed from eternity to eternity - God existed in eternity.
Do you remember what God said to Moses when he asked Him who He would send to lead His people out of slavery in Egypt?
God answered Moses: “I am the Existent. And he said, Thus shall you say to the children of Israel: Jehovah [Jehovah] has sent me to you” (Exodus 3:14).
God is the great “Existence.” He exists in eternity, and He was not created.
In Revelation 1:8 we read: “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, says the Lord, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”.
Isaiah 43:10 records God's words: “And you are My witnesses, says the Lord, and My servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe Me and understand that it is I: before Me there was no God, and after Me there will be no”.
In other words, it would be a mistake to talk about what God was doing “before creation” because the very concept of time (before, during and after) arose only on the First Day of Creation Week. God exists - He exists - and He exists in eternity. He is beyond time.
God wanted us to understand His plan for history, from beginning to end.
Then, in the 5th and 11th chapters of the book of Genesis, the exact genealogy of the line of Christ is set forth. It says that Adam was 130 years old when he conceived Seth. When Seth was one hundred and five years old, he begat Enosh—and the list continues in the same way. If you add up all the dates and other references to time in all of Scripture, it becomes clear that the “beginning”… was approximately six thousand years ago.
Some Christian leaders claim that the Bible does not give a clear date for creation, so we cannot know for sure how many years ago it happened. Of course, the Bible does not give the exact date of creation. After all, if the Bible said that creation happened six thousand years ago, and the Bible itself was completed about 2000 years ago, then this would mean that creation is already 8000 years old! The Bible also does not use terms such as “BC” or “AD” because these terms are man-made terms based on the date of birth of Jesus Christ.
However, the Bible gives us something even better than an exact date. It gives us a clear account of history that allows us not only to determine the age of the universe, but also to know all the vital details associated with God's plan of redemption from the beginning of time, including the details of the genealogy of the promised Christ.
One final thought: No passage in the Bible suggests that creation can be millions or billions of years old. Belief in millions of years of history is part of a worldly, man-made religion; a religion that tries to explain the origin of life without God, instead of believing in the true story told in the book of Genesis, which begins with the words “In the beginning...”
Our ability to believe God's promise of salvation depends entirely on our ability to believe everything He says about history, from its very beginning to its very end. If we can't trust what He says about the past, how can we trust His promises about the future?
Fortunately, we serve a God whom we can trust in everything. And although He transcends space and time, He humbled Himself by becoming man to die on the cross for our sins. He has also given us an accurate account of history in His Word so that we will know what the truth is.
Ken Ham is the founder and president of Answers in Genesis. He is the author and editor of many books on the authority of God's Word and the influence of evolutionary thinking on our culture. Among these books is his recently published bestseller Already Lost.
The beginning of the weekly chapter "Breishit" describes the creation of the world. At the same time, in our sources there are hints of what was and what existed before the creation of the world.
Midrash on the book of Mishli (8, 22) tells us that: “7 things were created before the creation of the world: the Torah, the Throne of Glory of the Creator, the Temple, repentance (teshuva), gan eden (Garden of Eden), Gehen (hell) and the name of Moshiach.
The Torah, as stated in Mishlei (8:22): “The Lord created me at the beginning of His path, before His creatures, from time immemorial.”
The Throne of Glory of the Creator, as it is said in Tehillim (93:2): “Your throne was established from ancient times, from time immemorial You are.”
Teshuvah, as it is said in Tehillim (90, 2-3): “Before the mountains were born and You created the earth and the universe, and from everlasting to everlasting, You are G‑d! You bring a person to exhaustion and say: “Return, sons of men!”
Gan Eden, as stated in Breishit (2:8): “And the Lord planted God's garden in Eiden from the east, and placed there the man whom he had created” (in Hebrew there is a play on words MIKEDEM, this is both from the east and in advance, and based on this they teach that the Garden of Eden was planted before the creation of the world).
Gehenom, as it is said in Yeshayahu (30, 33): “For the burning place has been ready since yesterday, and it has been prepared for the king, deepened and enlarged; there is fire in the fire and plenty of wood; The breath of the Lord burns in him like a stream of brimstone.”
Also in the VT treatise “Psakhim 54” these same phenomena are mentioned, but in a slightly modified order.
Another midrash in the collection Breishit Rabbah (1:4) gives a different interpretation of the phenomena created before our world. “Six phenomena preceded the creation of the world, some were created, and some existed at the level of the Divine Idea.
The Torah and the Throne of Glory of the Creator were created. The Torah, as it is said in Mishlei (8, 22): “The Lord created me at the beginning of His way, before His creatures, from the beginning” and the Throne of glory of the Creator, as it is said in Tehillim (93, 2): “Your throne was established from ancient times, from time immemorial You."
The forefathers (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob), the Jewish people, the Temple and the name of Moshiach existed at the level of the Divine idea. Forefathers, as it is said by Hoshea (9, 10): “As grapes in the desert I found Israel, as the first fruit of the fig tree at the beginning of its ripening I saw your fathers; and they came to Baal-Peor and indulged in shame and became vile, as they desired.”
The Jewish people, as it is said in Tehillim (74:2) “Remember Your community, (which) You acquired from ancient times, You saved the tribe of Your inheritance, this mountain Tziyon, on which You dwell.”
The Temple, as stated in the prophecy of Yirmiyahu (17, 12): “The place of our sanctuary, the throne of Majesty, is exalted from the beginning.”
The name of Moshiach, as it is said in Tehillim (72, 17): “His name will endure forever, as long as the sun (shines), his name will forever be, and all nations will be blessed in him, they will call him happy” (there is an incorrect translation into Russian, when literal translation - before the sun (before the sun) Yanon will be his name.”
Rabbi Aava, the son of Rabbi Zeir, said that the same is true for Teshuva, as it is said: Teshuva, as it is said in Tehillim (90, 2-3): “Before the mountains were born and You created the earth and the universe, and from everlasting to everlasting You G-d! You bring man to the point of exhaustion and say: “Return, sons of men!”, but I don’t know what happened first—whether the Torah preceded the throne of glory or the throne of glory preceded the Torah.”
Rabbi Aba Bar Kaana said: “The Torah preceded the throne of glory, as it says “Mishlei” (8:22)
“The Lord created me at the beginning of His way, before His creatures from time immemorial.” And this verse precedes the verse from Tehillim (93, 2) “Thy throne was established of old, from time immemorial Thou art.”
Rabbi Huna and Rabbi Jeremiah, on behalf of Rabbi Shmuel bar Rabbi Yitzchak, said: “The thought of the Jewish people preceded everything, because if the Creator had not expected that after 26 generations of those who lived from the creation of the world, a Jewish people would be created who would receive the Torah during the Sinai revelation , he would not have written in the Torah “Command the children of Israel, tell the son of Israel.”
According to Arel Segal, the above-mentioned phenomena from the Midrash in the book of Mishli hint to us at 7 stages of the final deliverance of the Jewish people - Geula.
Torah – revelation of the Creator’s qualities manifested through names in the Torah
The Throne of Glory-Temple will prepare the Jewish people for the revelation of the Creator in the world and will enable them to discern between true prophecy and false prophecy.
The Temple - the observance of halakhah by an individual, prepares him to receive divine abundance and holiness, and the observance of halakhah by the Jewish people, prepares him for the construction of the Temple.
Teshuvah is the desire for Teshuvah and for the return of observance of the commandment to Eretz Israel.
Gan Eden is a national return to Eretz Israel and the transformation of the desert into fertile land.
Gehenom - misfortunes and troubles occurring both in the physical and spiritual worlds, which characterize the period preceding the coming of Moshiach (Hevlei Mashiach.
The name of Moshiach is the beginning of the awakening to final deliverance in our era, a hint of the coming of the time of final liberation.
In the protracted and so far equal dispute between creationists and evolutionists, a serious advantage has emerged. Some, as you know, adhere to the theory of supernatural intervention in the processes of the universe. They believe that the Universe is the work of God. Others take a position of materialism. And they prove that there is no God, and the Universe appeared on its own as a result of the so-called Big Bang. Creationists say that in the beginning there was the Word. Evolutionists have some incredibly dense point called singularity. Like, the Universe arose from it and expanded to its current size.
Both ideas are absolutely equivalent in the strength of their argumentation. Neither side has yet found 100% convincing arguments. Except that the evolutionists are a little ahead of their opponents. Because if we believe observations and interpret them accordingly, then the Universe is still expanding. Which indirectly confirms materialistic ideas.
When they want to get the better of creationist-idealists, they build a simple logical chain. “Well,” they say, “God created everything around. And who created God?
Creationists are angry and confused. But the most advanced and educated ones find something to cover. And they ask their opponents a “symmetrical” question: “What happened before the Big Bang?”
The standard answer that had to be given a couple of weeks ago - that there was nothing: neither space, nor time - naturally did not suit the debaters.
And then it happened. The godless evolutionists seem to have beaten the creationists. Some still do not know who created God. And others have already understood what happened before the Big Bang.
A LONG TIME AGO, IN ANOTHER UNIVERSE...
There was another Universe before ours. Previous. This conclusion was reached by Roger Penrose from Oxford and Vahan Gurzadyan from the Yerevan Physical Institute. Both are not some kind of home-based dreamers, but world-famous scientists. They studied the so-called relict radiation - the microwave background left after the Big Bang and preserving information about the origin of the Universe and its development. And against this background, they discovered strange irregularities that looked like concentric circles.
Penrose and Gurzadyan believe: circles are not from our space-time. These are the gravitational signatures of the collision of colossal, supermassive black holes that formed in the previous Universe at the end of its existence. That is, before “our” Big Bang.
According to scientists, universes arise in sequence - one after another. And the end of the previous one becomes the beginning of the next one.
The main conclusion: the universe is cyclical.
In the future, our Universe will return to the state it was in at the time of the Big Bang, says Penrose. - It will become homogeneous. And from infinitely large it will again turn into infinitely small. And black holes will evaporate.
By the way, astrophysicists Paul Steinhardt from Princeton and Neil Turok from Cambridge share a similar opinion. And they prove that the Universe first expands and then contracts. And the problem just didn’t start. Because the Universe goes through the same cycle. It collapses and immediately recovers.
Who knows, maybe God is cyclical? One, for example, ends his existence, the other immediately begins along with the Universe he created. Then the traces discovered by Penrose and Gurzadyan are imprints of events that happened to the previous God?
"DARK STREAM" TO ANOTHER WORLD
But what if the universes don’t just go one after another, one replacing the other? Do they appear and disappear en masse, like bubbles in boiling water? And such suspicions arise. At a minimum, there is some other Universe next to ours.
Two years ago, a group of NASA specialists led by astrophysicist Alexander Kashlinsky, studying microwave and X-ray radiation, discovered strange behavior in about 800 distant galaxy clusters. It turned out that they were all flying in the same direction - towards a certain part of space - at a speed of 1000 kilometers per second. This universal movement was called the "dark flow."
Recently it turned out that the “dark stream” covers as many as 1,400 galaxy clusters. And carries them to an area located at the visible borders of our Universe.
According to one of the assumptions, somewhere out there - beyond the limits of observation - there is a huge mass that attracts matter. But this contradicts existing theory, according to which the matter after the Big Bang, which gave birth to our Universe, was distributed more or less evenly. This means that there cannot be concentrations of masses possessing such fantastic power. Then what's there?
An amazing hypothesis was proposed by Laura Mersini-Houghton from the University of North Carolina. According to her calculations, it turns out that our galaxies are being sucked into another Universe located nearby.
It’s interesting that Laura came up with her ideas back in 2006 - before the “dark stream” was discovered. In fact, she predicted it. But if there are several universes, then what about God in this case? Is there one in each? Or is there just one for everything?
INSTEAD OF A COMMENT
Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society of London:
“We will never understand how the Universe works”
The leader of British scientists, astrophysicist and part-time royal astronomer doubted the intellectual abilities of human civilization. Like, we don’t understand the laws of the universe. And you will never know how the Universe came into being and what awaits it. And hypotheses, for example, about the Big Bang, which supposedly gave birth to the world around us, or that many others can exist in parallel with our Universe, will remain unproven assumptions.
Undoubtedly, there are explanations for everything, says Lord Rees, but there are no geniuses who could understand them. The human mind is limited. And he reached his limit.
Indeed, physicists and cosmologists have been trying in vain for several decades to create a Theory of Everything. Or the so-called Unified Theory. Albert Einstein worked on it. But I didn’t finish it. He ordered subsequent generations to finish it. But they pass.
The generally accepted so-called Standard Model of the Universe implies that there are four fundamental forces in it: electromagnetic force, the strong force, which exists in the atomic nucleus, the weak force, which controls radioactive decay, and gravity. Today's scientists have managed to link the first three forces. And the fourth - gravity - cannot be attached to the theory. As well as understand its nature.
We are as far from understanding the microstructure of vacuum as are fish in an aquarium, which have absolutely no idea how the environment in which they live works, the astronomer royal figuratively conveys the bitter truth.
For example, I have reason to suspect that space has a cellular structure,” continues Lord Rees. - And each of its cells is trillions of trillions of times smaller than an atom. But we cannot prove or disprove this or understand how such a design works. The task is too complex, beyond the reach of the human mind. Like Einstein's theory of relativity is for a monkey.
As a result, the Lord concludes: I believe that the Unified Theory exists in principle. But to create it, no human mind is enough. Moreover, all applicants for such authorship are likely to be mistaken.
The science of creation: how old is the Earth according to biblical texts? What evidence is there for the correctness of the Christian belief in the creation of the world? All about this in our material!
Creation Science
It says here that initially a single world ocean that covered the entire earth broke up into separate basins separated by land. The appearance of continents and seas on the face of the Earth was of utmost importance in the history of the development of our planet, but it happened in such a distant past that no traces of this event remained in the geological record.
IN modern science the question of the origin of the hydrosphere, as well as the atmosphere, is the subject of mutually exclusive hypotheses, which are based not on direct geological data, but on certain cosmogonic constructions and general views on the origin of the Earth. For the geologically foreseeable time, there is no data that would allow for a noticeable increase in the volume of the hydrosphere, which was noted by V.I. Vernadsky. If this position is correct, then it should be assumed that land appeared only as a result of a long process of geological development of our planet, expressed in the differentiation of its solid shells into oceanic depressions that contained the bulk of surface water. Thus, modern scientific data do not contradict the picture painted by the book of Genesis, but one has to be surprised, if one denies its divine inspiration, that a writer of a people who hardly saw the sea attached such great importance to its watery shell in the development of the Earth.
Bible and geology
We do not consider questions about the causes of the origin of oceans and continents, mountains and plains in this essay, since none of them contradicts the Bible. Something else is important for us now - comparative analysis the sequence of creations according to the Bible and the sequence of the appearance of various types of the material world in the light of modern scientific and natural knowledge.
These verses say that inanimate nature, at the command of God, produced living nature in the form of plants, which thus came into existence before animals. So, already at the relatively early stages of the development of the Earth, the plant world reached significant diversity and developed not only in water, but also covered the land.
There are no traces left of the very first stages of life in the geological record, so we have to limit ourselves to only general considerations and guesses. It is generally accepted that life arose in the oceans, but G. S. Osborne and L. S. Berg (1946) believe that the first stages of life took place on land, in swampy and damp places. According to modern ideas, first expressed by V.I. Vernadsky and now included in textbooks, our modern topoatmosphere (without which no animal life, which requires the presence of free oxygen, is possible) is biogenic. Without plants, animals would not only suffocate, but they would have nothing to eat, for only plants have the ability to convert inorganic forms of matter into organic ones.
In the deposits of the Archean era (see Geochronological table on p. 36) there are no reliable organic remains. The oldest undoubtedly known plant remains were found in the Precambrian limestones of Montana; Bacteria and various algae were found and well studied in Proterozoic sediments; in Precambrian deposits of the Czech Republic - wood described under the name Archaexylan, with signs of the structure of gymnosperms (that is, conifers); in the Precambrian of the Urals, indefinable remains of terrestrial plants and spores of higher plants were found; spores of higher land plants - bryophytes and pteridophytes - are described from Cambrian deposits of the Baltic region; from the Upper Silurian of the Australian province of Victoria - a flora of primitive, now extinct psilophyte plants. In the Devonian, the known terrestrial flora is already characterized by a large diversity of species and groups.
Geochronological table
Vegetable world
Thus, based on modern scientific ideas and data, we have to believe, in full accordance with the Bible, that plants were the first organized forms of organic life on Earth, and the plant world already in ancient times reached a significant diversity of forms.
Gen 1:14 | And God said: Let there be lights in the expanse of heaven to illuminate the earth, and to separate the day from the night, and for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years; |
Gen 1:15 | and let them be lamps in the firmament of the heaven to give light on the earth. And so it became. |
Gen 1:16 | And God created two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night, and the stars; |
Gen 1:17 | and God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light on the earth, |
Gen 1:18 | and to rule the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. |
Gen 1:19 | And there was evening and there was morning: the fourth day. |
The following verses talk about the creation of the Sun, Moon and stars. We have already talked a lot about cosmogony in the previous essay, so now we will formulate only brief conclusions from two scientific hypotheses of the origin of stars: 1) both hypotheses assume the presence of prestellar matter in the Universe. This matter only under certain conditions forms stars; 2) when implementing the mechanism of the second concept (assuming the presence of a special superdense state of matter), the existence of invisible stars is fundamentally possible, which can flare up in subsequent times. Further, the formation of clots of matter is possible in such limited areas beyond which no radiation can penetrate. This formation of matter can be characterized in figurative biblical language as God separated the light from the darkness.
Age of the Universe
Let us consider the problem of the age of the Earth and the bodies of the Universe, as it appears to theology and modern natural science consciousness.
For theology, the only criterion for the age of the world is the biblical texts. In the given texts of the book of Genesis, the creation of the world is described in certain stages called “days”. It is impossible to understand by them our usual astronomical days associated with the rotation of the Earth around its axis, since before the fourth “day” the Sun did not exist and, therefore, there was no change of day and night. Since the six days of the Bible - a conventional division of time - have nothing to do with the astronomical day, with their day and night, the night is therefore not mentioned in the book of Genesis in connection with the day of creation: “and there was evening, and there was morning” - for every hour had its own work, and it was not interrupted at night. This is emphasized by the order of words “there was evening, and there was morning” instead of the seemingly natural: “there was morning and there was evening - the fourth day.”
It is necessary to dwell on the chronology from the creation of the world, which was previously accepted by everyone Christian world and spans about 7,000 years.
There is no data in the biblical texts to determine the age of the world. Consequently, the question of calculating the age of the world does not fall within the purview of theology. Some interpreters of the Bible tried to approach chronology indirectly, using the information available in the Bible about individual clans and generations and the history of the Jewish people, and received completely different figures. The method they used, by its very nature, could not be part of the task of determining the age of the world from the first day of creation. Science has long been trying to estimate in different ways and methods the age of various parts of the world from their very formation. First of all, let us dwell on determining the age of the Earth.
Rough, simplified calculations represent science's first infant attempts to determine the age of the Earth. Only the discovery of radioactive decay by Becquerel and the Curies allowed geology to obtain a “standard of time” that does not depend on any geological processes. At any temperature, at any pressure, radioactive elements transform into non-radioactive lead and helium at the same speed. The ratio between radioactive elements, in particular uranium, and the lead or helium formed from it, adjusted for the rate of decay, is a measure of time. The same measure of time can be the ratio between radiogenic and non-radiogenic isotopes of the same element. Without being able to delve into the details of the time determination technique, we will report only the final results of the work done by a number of researchers.
1) The most ancient minerals found on earth are 2.0–2.5 billion years old. The most ancient rocks on the earth's surface were found in Antarctica and are 3.9–4.0 billion years old.
2) The age of meteorites reaches 4.0–4.5 billion years.
3) Based on the study of solar radiation, V. G. Fesenkov believes that the age of the Sun should closely correspond to the age of the Earth and, probably, other planets, and suggests that the planets, in particular the Earth, could exist in the absence of a fully formed Sun.
4) The theory of the expanding Universe predicts its age at 15–20 billion years.
Thus, in all of the above cases, determinations of the age of objects (an expanding metagalaxy, the earth’s crust, the Sun), made by different researchers, using different methods and methods, gave figures of the same order. Based on the requirements of scientific caution, it is impossible to talk about more. Are these coincidences random? It is difficult for us, brought up on the scientific thinking of the 20th century, to imagine that the entire majestic Universe with its billions of stars would have an age close to the age of the oldest rocks on the surface of our planet and the first origin of life on it.
One can, of course, doubt that the “red shift” indicates the expansion of galaxies, one can doubt Einstein’s theory, from which, regardless of the “red shift,” the expansion of the Universe theoretically follows, one can doubt the principles of determining the age of minerals and meteorites by radiological methods and any other, one can doubt the reliability of astrophysical data, but then one has to completely deny the suitability of our observations for interpreting the Universe. Atheists stand on this path. They say that it is impossible to transfer the laws of motion of a finite, limited region of the Universe to the entire infinite Universe. In other words, they recognize two worlds: one world, where there are laws leading to “clergy,” where they, unfortunately, have to live, and another world, a world that has not yet been discovered and is unknown to us, the “otherworldly” world (!), where there are no laws leading to “clergy”. The best thing that atheists should do, so as not to get into trouble themselves, is to admit that science, due to its limitations in each specific period of time, cannot provide a complete picture of the Universe that accurately reflects it, and, therefore, is unsuitable as a method of anti-religious propaganda.
Wanting to understand the meaning of the biblical description of the fifth day of creation, we must remember that the classification among ancient peoples, as well as among modern peoples of archaic culture, has an external morphological ecological character, and not a comparative anatomical one, like modern natural scientific taxonomy. For the ancients, a lizard seemed more related to some centipede rather than a frog, a sparrow to a bee rather than a mole, a bat to a swallow rather than an elephant; Finally, wouldn’t our poorly educated contemporary compare a dolphin with a fish rather than with a cow? From a scientific biological point of view, the family relationships of animals in the examples given are just the opposite.
Reptiles and birds
So, what meaning did the ancients put into the concepts of “reptiles and birds”? Reptiles (20th century, in Hebrew sheres) means the actual worms of aquatic and animals, in some cases multiparous, which is emphasized in this text by the word yish e r e su 'let it produce', derived from sharas, which means 'to swarm, give birth' or 'to give birth in abundance'. More successfully than in the Russian translation, the 20th verse was translated by Luther: Und Gott sprach: Es errege sich das Wasser mit webenden und lebendigen Tieren, lit. ‘God said: Let the waters be troubled by swarming and living animals.’
Saint Basil the Great also gives such an expanded understanding of the word sheres in his “Six Days”. In his commentary on verse 20, he writes: “A commandment has come out - and rivers produce and lakes give birth to their own and natural species; and the sea is sick with all kinds of swimming animals,” and below, in connection with this, he lists not only fish, but also slugs and polyps, cuttlefish, scallops, crabs, crayfish and “thousands of various oysters.”
In ancient times, birds, as Basil the Great testifies, meant all animals flying over the earth, both birds themselves and insects.
In the 21st verse the word tanninim is used, denoting a large sea animal itself, translated as 'fish' in the Russian translation, and for reptiles the word used is not sheres, as in verse 20, but romeset, denoting crawling, reptiles, so in this case the Russian translation is quite accurate.
So, in verses 20–23, which we are now examining, we talk about the appearance on Earth of various animals, the ancestral home of which, according to the Bible, is water; it is said that the sea was inhabited by a wide variety of creatures - small and large, and that land reptiles arose after aquatic ones and their ancestral home was also water.
Without dwelling on the relationships between individual types of the animal world and the genetic transition of one type to another, about which there is a large number of often mutually exclusive hypotheses, let us consider the factual material that geology and paleontology currently provide.
The earliest stages of the development of the animal world are hidden from us; The first remains of animals belong to the Upper Precambrian - these are the nuclei and imprints of protozoa, the remains of the skeleton of sponges, the tubes of worms, the horny shells of brachypods, mollusks and the tubes of pteropods (crustaceans).
In the Cambrian, judging by the available remains, the animal world already reaches a huge variety of forms. There are representatives of almost all living types. In Cambrian deposits, not only the remains of hard skeletons were found, which are usually the only ones preserved in the fossil state, but also (in North America) excellently preserved prints of organisms that have only a soft body: jellyfish, holothurians, various worm-like and arthropods. The words of St. Basil the Great that “the sea was sick with all kinds of swimming animals” are applicable to the Cambrian Sea.
With even greater justification, these words can be attributed to the Silurian period: up to 15,000 species of Silurian marine organisms are known. Apparently, the attempt of animals to get out of the water is associated with the Silurian, since in sediments of this age, although extremely rarely, there are remains of land arthropods, centipedes and scorpions, that is, in biblical terminology, reptiles. How this transition was carried out in general, what its stages were, we do not know; it is known that by the end of the Devonian it had already ended, because from the Devonian of North America (Pennsylvania) the imprint of a four-toed foot of a terrestrial vertebrate (Thinopus) has long been known, and from the Upper Devonian of Greenland - the first reliable bone remains of an amphibian skull.
In the Carboniferous period following the Devonian, newt-like amphibians were widespread - they were, in the full sense, animals reptiles on the ground. At the same time, insects from the Orthoptera group appear and reach their greatest development. The number of their known species - given the incompleteness of the geological record - reaches 1000. About this period we can say that “birds flew across the firmament of heaven.”
In the Permian period, along with amphibians, reptiles (reptiles in the modern sense of the word) were also widespread. The Mesozoic era is a veritable kingdom of reptiles, which not only gave rise to such gigantic forms as the 28-meter brachiosaurus, but also filled the “waters of the seas,” along with a variety of fish, amphibians and a rich world of invertebrates.
In the Jurassic, flying reptiles were found, the structure of the wings of which in general resembled the structure of bats, and from Jurassic deposits two finds of real, although very primitive birds are known from the lithographic shales of Bavaria. In the Cretaceous, birds become quite numerous.
Thus, according to biblical terminology, the Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian periods and a significant part of the Mesozoic era can be called the day of reptiles and birds.
This is how the Bible talks about the first stage of creation on the sixth day. There is no doubt that by animals and livestock we should understand land mammals, and that their homeland is the mainland, but it is unclear what is meant by reptiles, since reptiles were already mentioned when describing the fifth day. Perhaps the natural scientific data themselves will help us understand the meaning of this term in the Bible.
Currently, the appearance of mammals is associated with the findings of extremely scarce remains in the Middle and Upper Jurassic deposits. Rare remains of marsupials and placental mammals are known from the Upper Cretaceous, and the following Tertiary period can be called, together with the modern Quaternary, the era of mammals; they not only dominate the land (animals and cattle), but also rose into the air (bats, etc.) and took possession of the seas (whales, dolphins, seals, walruses, etc.). The shape, richness of color and variation in size of mammals is amazing - from tiny voles to giant elephants and whales. They have mastered all the forests and steppes of the globe, they are not afraid of either the heat of the deserts or the cold of the polar countries - everywhere they are the most mobile, the most active, the most intelligent animals. Man himself belongs to them.
In all likelihood, reptiles in the book of Genesis refer to frogs, toads (that is, tailless amphibians) and snakes. Paleontological data also inclines us to this understanding of this word, since the appearance of amphibians and snakes coincides with the time of the appearance of mammals.
Is the world static?
On previous pages we saw that according to biblical and scientific data, the appearance of the Earth and the cosmos as a whole was changing. Pondering the meaning of the biblical text, theology puts forward a problem of enormous natural scientific significance: did God create the world unchanged and static, or can the world of God change and develop? Is it possible to improve in this world and grow from lower to higher in the field of spiritual activity and material, especially biological development, or is everything that exists subject to monotonous, ever-repeating closed cycles, like the movement of machine pistons? To the question: The Creator of which world should have greater wisdom and greater power? - only one answer is possible: of course, a mobile and developing world. Thus, from a Christian theological point of view, which recognizes God as Almighty, it is easier to accept natural scientific theories of a developing Universe than a static one. The great principle of universal development, which permeates to one degree or another the entire creation of God, is concentrated with special force in the internal, spiritual world man is the crown of Divine creativity. Consequently, if a person, a creation possessing will and reason, does not work on his spiritual development, does not strive for it, then he consciously or unconsciously is an opponent of the great creative idea of the Divine, that is, a fighter against God, conscious or unconscious, and therefore the spiritual begins in him desolation, regression.
Possibility of mental and spiritual development man has been indisputably proven throughout human history and especially by the countless host of Christian ascetics, canonized and uncanonized saints.
It seemed that theology was supposed to anticipate the ideas of the natural evolution of the world. They actually exist in embryo in some Church Fathers, although they start from different starting positions. For example, Rev. John Damascene wrote: “what began with change must change.” But why then did the Inquisition and the Jesuits fight against scientific discoveries, and why did some churchmen oppose the theories of the evolution of animals and plants with hostility? Why in the 19th century did they stubbornly defend the idea of the immutability of species, although such an assumption has no basis either in Tradition or in Revelation and is contrary to all analogies in nature? Based on limited scientific evidence ancient world and the Middle Ages, theologians created a speculative scheme of the universe, which, in their opinion, exhausted the power of God. And so, when the empirical study of nature - the creation of God, expanded known to people the limits of His power and wisdom beyond the boundaries of their old ideas, these theologians forgot that the power of the Creator extends beyond the limits human understanding, made a fuss about the imaginary atheism of scientific theories, “for His immeasurable creative power and wisdom” (Lomonosov’s words) were measured by their limited knowledge. However, not all clergy are guilty of this. Some of them were even the founders of evolutionary theories in biology. For example, the English priest W. Herbert (1837) believed that “species were created in a highly plastic state, and that through crossings and deviations they produced all currently existing species.”
Currently, biological evolution can be considered a scientifically established pattern. However, contrary to popular belief, neither zoology nor botany as the science of modern life forms (neobiology) can prove it. They can only prove the plasticity of the organism or its stability, or the nature of the relationship between these two polar properties of the organism. In short, neobiology deals with factors that can be considered factors in evolution, but not with evolution itself.
Only paleontology, together with geology, has factual documents of past eras of life. Consequently, only it can provide the factual basis for the history of the organic world, that is, the framework within which questions of the development of life can and should be developed - that empirical basis, beyond which the realm of fantasy begins.
Paleontology and evolution
However, paleontology did not immediately start talking about evolution. The famous Belgian paleontologist Louis Dollot divides the history of paleontology into three periods: the first is the period of the creation of fables, when instead of studying, they preferred to reason, and large extinct animals were mistaken for the skeletons of giants or mythological creatures; the second is the morphological period; with it essentially begins paleontology as the science of fossils, created by Cuvier in the same way as comparative anatomy; and the third period is the period of evolutionary paleontology, created by the works of V. O. Kovalevsky. “Kovalevsky’s work,” wrote Dollo, “is a true treatise on the method in paleontology.”
What geological and paleontological evidence can be given in favor of the evolution of the organic world?
1) It has been empirically established that in ancient deposits there are no modern forms and there are remains of now extinct animals, and different deposits differ from each other in different fauna, and when moving to younger deposits we encounter more and more highly organized forms. This can be explained either by Cuvier's theory of catastrophes (which assumes countless repeated creations and destructions of everything previously created, with each time more highly organized organisms appearing than in previous acts of creation), or the result of evolution.
From a theological point of view, the catastrophe theory is absurd and has no basis in Revelation. It reflects not Christian theological views, as they are trying to portray now, but the state of the factual material in Cuvier’s era, when, with a comparatively small number of paleontological finds, intermediate forms between known species and genera were not found. This circumstance, by the way, forced Darwin to devote a large section in his “Origin of Species” to the incompleteness of the geological record in order to save his theory from the blows of paleontologists.
2) In the fossil state, before the appearance of remains of new classes and other classification groups, there are remains of organisms that occupy an intermediate position between the new “future” class and the previously existing one, and their assignment to one class or another is very difficult. In this case, it is impossible to restore all stages due to the incompleteness of the geological record, since we do not know whether we are really dealing with transitional phenomena or with traces of the presence of certain classes unknown to us. This leaves a loophole for skeptics.
3) But there are genera in which it is possible to trace all the gradual transitions from one form to another from successive horizons. Moreover, the extreme forms are so different from each other that they, of course, should be classified as different species; It is impossible to draw the boundary between these species in a cross-section, since the intermediate forms give very gradual transitions. We are faced, as it were, with the situation that it is necessary somewhere conditionally to classify a mother as one species, and the daughter she gave birth to as another - a new one, and to classify two half-brothers born at the same time to different systematic units, so that somehow, at least conditionally , draw the line between species. A fact that is impossible in neobiology, but often happens in paleontology.
In this work, we do not dwell on the currently established laws of evolution (adaptive radiation, acceleration of the development of tachygenesis, irreversibility of evolution, non-specialization, etc.), since this is not directly related to our topic. Let us only note that Darwinism and evolutionary views should not be equated; they are not identical, as our high school students think.
Creation of the world and the origin of man
Gen 1:26 | And God said: Let us make man in Our image and after Our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the wild animals, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that moves on the earth. |
Gen 1:27 | And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female he created them. |
Gen 1:28 | And God blessed them, and God said to them: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the wild animals, and over the birds of the air, and over every livestock, and over all the earth, and over every living creature. , reptiles on the ground. |
The problem of human origin is one of the most exciting in biology and anthropology. For several centuries it has been a battlefield between people holding different philosophical, scientific, religious and even political views.
Starting with Giordano Bruno, who in his essay “The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast” (1584) spoke in favor of the independent origin of man in different places on the globe, the ideas of polyphilia were used in the fight against the Christian religion. Similar goals were pursued by the development of the hypothesis of polygenesis of human races, which contained the statement that different races are either different species of the same genus, or even different genera. The works of monophilist scientists, in particular in modern times(analysis of anatomical features that do not have adaptive significance - Henri Balois), proved that the only possible concept regarding the human race is monophyly.
If the question of the unity (monophyly) of the human race can now be considered scientifically more or less resolved, then questions about the specific ways of formation of the species Homo sapiens and about antiquity modern man are the subject of heated debate.
Between the previous stage and the Neanderthals and modern people, the oldest race of which is known as the Cro-Magnons, there is a certain break in gradualism, which is recognized by all scientists.
Archaeological finds show the impossibility of paleontologically defending the antiquity of Homo sapiens.
The question arises, why are they so stubbornly striving to prove the enormous antiquity of modern man, to prove his antiquity even at the cost of unconscious or conscious distortion of scientific facts?
The fact is that orthodox Darwinism explains the formation of man with his amazing mental abilities, which sharply distinguish Homo sapiens from the entire animal world, by the action of natural selection, which determines the entire diversity of animals and plants. According to Darwin's theory in its orthodox form, any species can evolve as a result of the fact that its individual representatives receive a slight superiority over their relatives, and only these more advanced representatives always survive the struggle for existence and only they pass on their progressive characteristics to their descendants. To explain the origin of man as the result of this extremely slow-acting mechanism of evolution, it is necessary to assume an enormous duration of his existence. The human brain is clearly superior to man's need to survive in his struggle for existence with other animals. Therefore, Darwin was forced to attribute its improvement to the long and fierce struggle of man with man and one human tribe with another. He also had to resort to the factor of sexual selection. In other words, according to Darwin, man's mental abilities satisfied his needs to survive in the fight against his own kind. Consequently, among peoples standing at lower stages of historical development, they should be immeasurably lower than among peoples who have gone forward in their historical development. However modern research They rejected the idea that the so-called savages were mentally retarded.
In the above biblical verses, the first thing that attracts attention is the grammatical agreement between the singular and plural. In verse 26: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” This hints at the mystery of the Holy Trinity, which in Three Persons is the One Indivisible Deity. God is One, but Three Persons of the Divine Nature. The dogma of the trinity of the Divine is completely unknown to the ancient Jews, but is entirely connected with Christianity, therefore for an atheist this discrepancy turns into a simple slip of the compiler or copyist. For a Christian, this is a pre-revelation of what later became a revelation.
So, man was conceived by the special will of the Divine as the ruler of the earth and everything that is on it. “And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul,” the second chapter of the book of Genesis complements the narrative of the first chapter (Genesis 2:7).
In the Bible we do not find a story about how, or by what means, man was made from the dust of the ground. It only indicates, as St. Gregory the Theologian notes, that man was created from already existing “material.” Both our soul and our body, as the great Christian ascetic taught Venerable Seraphim Sarovsky, created from “the dust of the earth.” Man, created from the dust of the earth, was “an active animal being, like others living on the earth<…>although he was superior to all beasts, cattle and birds.” They, as part of the earth, that is, as coming from the earth, could even serve as material for its creation. Therefore, there is nothing anti-Christian in including humans in the same systematic series with other animals, as Linnaeus did and as is now customary in biology - this is a statement of one of the aspects of human nature. There is nothing anti-religious in hypotheses of the origin of man from an ape-like creature; for a Christian, confirmation of these hypotheses only reveals how man was created in biological process of its formation. The main thing for the Bible is not this, but that God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul,” that is, man, who had previously been “the dust of the earth,” an animal, although the most perfect and intelligent of all animals , acquired the Holy Spirit and through this the ability of real communication with the Divine and the possibility of immortality. By coming into contact with the earthly world with his material nature, man became the king of this world and the viceroy of God on earth. And as God’s vicegerent on earth, he must continue the work begun by God - decorating and cultivating the earth for the glory of God.
In creativity, whatever it manifests itself in - whether in art, in the creation of new breeds of animals and plants or new celestial bodies - lies one of the aspects of our similarity to God. “You are gods,” said the Lord (John 10:34). We must approach creativity with prayer, with sacred mystical awe, with deep gratitude to God for the joy of our likeness to Him, with fear of what we use this likeness given to us for. Human creativity has two sides: the external one, which was just mentioned, and the internal one, which many people have currently forgotten about. Captivated by their external creativity, directed not to the glory of God, but to the glory of man, people forgot about internal creativity and, amusing themselves with their discoveries, inventions and so-called “miracles” of technology, they are losing the Kingdom of God and their immortality in a game of chance.
God offered life and death to man, good and evil (see Deut. 30:15), so that man could choose and make himself one way or another.
A person can descend to an animal state and rise with the help of God to an angelic state, for the seeds of a diverse life are embedded in him; The constantly, naturally changing world gives a person the opportunity to develop and grow according to his own will.
The world could not be built according to Beautiful Arbitrariness and not have laws, if only because a person could only cognize a world in which laws exist; Only a world developing according to laws could a person possess, only in it could a person demonstrate his creative abilities.
Having examined the biblical account of the creation of the world in the light of modern ideas, we did not see anything in it that contradicts science. It can be said with certainty that science in its development is more and more consistent with the narrative of Moses. His story in many details becomes clear only now: the beginning of the world, light before the Sun and stars, emphasizing the anthropological factor in the development of nature, and much more. A comparison of the latest discoveries of science with the Bible clearly shows how much the providence of the Jewish prophet rose above not only the limited ideas of ancient peoples, but also above the views of natural scientists of modern times. For an atheist, this is an inexplicable miracle; for an anti-religionist, this is a fact that must be kept silent; for a Christian and a Jew this is not surprising, for for them the Bible and Nature are two books written by God, and therefore they cannot contradict one another. The imaginary contradictions between them are explained by the fact that a person reads one of these books incorrectly or both together.
Looking back at the path traveled by science over many centuries to understand the Great Book of Nature, we can say in the words of Einstein: “The more we read, the more fully and highly we appreciate the perfect design of the book, although its complete solution seems to be moving away as we moving forward.”
At the very beginning of the essays it was said that Christianity considers God the Creator to be the beginning of everything. In presenting the history of creation, we consciously sought to remain on the basis of precisely established facts and generally accepted opinions in our atheistic age, contrasting them with the biblical story and not rising to theological contemplation and thought. Now, finishing this essay, it is perhaps worth touching them lightly, at least with hints.
From the biblical account of the creation of the world it is clear that in the creation of the world after its creation they acted and developed natural forces and natural processes: “and the earth brought forth greenery,” “let the water bring forth reptiles,” etc. But these elements did not act spontaneously, but upon receiving special abilities granted to them by God: “And God said: let the earth bring forth greenery,” - and she produced, “let the water bring forth reptiles,” - and she produced, that is, matter did not simply develop as a result of the properties it initially had, but the will of the Divine, moving from one stage to another, bestowed new abilities on the elements, expressing Itself in in the form of natural laws, that is, laws that have retained their meaning to this day. In other words, God, having created matter, did not leave it to remain in chaos, but as a wise Ruler directed the development of the Universe separate from Him, being in this sense the Creator of everything visible and invisible.
The manifestation of God's will is visible throughout the history of mankind, but in most cases it is expressed in the form of natural laws - unnoticeable to the outside world, which does not even listen to miracles, but significant for a Christian. A Christian scientist must be able to see with his mind and feel with his heart the manifestation of the Divine Will in Nature and in human history and tell about It.
“It is fitting to keep a sovereign’s secret, but it is commendable to announce the works of God” (Tob 12:11).
Cm. Archpriest Gleb Kaleda. The Bible and the science of creation // Alpha and Omega. 1996. No. 2/3 (9/10). - Ss. 26–27. - Ed.
In sacred books, the word “day” is used quite often without connection with the astronomical day. Jesus Christ calls the entire time of His ministry “day.” “Abraham your father,” He says, addressing the Jews, “rejoiced to see My day” (John 8:56). The Apostle Paul says: “The night is past, and the day is at hand: let us therefore put away the works of darkness” (Rom. 13:12); “Behold, now is the acceptable time, behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor 6:2). In the latter case, day is the time after the Nativity of Christ. “In your sight,” David figuratively exclaimed in a psalm, turning to God, “a thousand years are like yesterday” (Ps. 89:5), and the Apostle Peter wrote: “With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Pet 3:8).
We find the same understanding of the biblical day in St. Basil the Great. In the second conversation on the Sixth Day, this “universal teacher,” as the Church calls him, says: “Whether you call it a day or an age, you express the same concept; whether you say that it is a day, or that it is a state, it is always one, and not many; Whether you call it a century, it will be one and not multiple.”
A critical analysis of this chronology was given in 1757–1759. the founder of Russian natural scientific apologetics of Christianity M.V. Lomonosov, who in his work “On the Layers of the Earth” wrote about the presence of “...implicit and dubious numbers in Hebrew Old Testament, which, like many other places in it, the most skillful teachers of this language could not quite understand to this day; and this is not the last reason that all Christian peoples begin calculating the years from the Nativity of Christ, leaving the ancient, as not quite definite and doubtful; Moreover, there is no agreement on this between our Christian chronologists; for example, Theophilus Bishop of Antioch believes from Adam to Christ 5515 years, Augustine, 5351, Jerome 3941.”
Polyphyly- a theory according to which life (or its individual forms) could independently arise in different places. Monophyly- theory of the single origin of life. Accordingly, the terms polygenesis And monogenesis(along with monophyly) reflect views on the origin of humanity. - Ed.
The so-called theory of primitive (prelogical) thinking, put forward in the last century by L. Lévy-Bruhl and supported by a number of ethnographers and psychologists, is based, firstly, on bias and secondly, on insufficient knowledge of the material. The same can be said about the absolutely untenable statement according to which there are no words in the languages of the peoples of archaic culture abstract meaning. - Ed.
These chapters are perceived by some as factual descriptions, by others as allegory. Some view the 6 days of creation as describing the stages of the origin of the universe, although the phrase world creation has a religious connotation, and the phrase origin of the universe used in natural sciences. Very often the biblical story of creation is criticized for not being consistent with what has been proven by science. But are there any contradictions here? Let's speculate!
World creation. Michelangelo
Before dwelling in more detail on the history of the Creation of the world, I would like to note one interesting feature. Most religions and ancient cosmogonic texts first tell about the creation of the gods, and only then about the creation of the world. The Bible describes a fundamentally different position. The Biblical God has always been, He was not created, but is the creator of all things.
Six days of the creation of the world.
As you know, the world was created out of nothing in 6 days.
The first day of the Creation of the world.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the abyss, and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters. And God said: Let there be light. And there was light. And God saw the light that it was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. And God called the light day and the darkness night. And there was evening and there was morning: one day. (Genesis)
This is how the biblical story of the Creation of the world begins. These first lines of the Bible allow us to better understand biblical cosmology. It should be noted that here we are not yet talking about the creation of the heaven and earth familiar to us; they will be created a little later - on the second and third days of creation. The first lines of Genesis describe the creation of the first substance, or, if you like, what scientists call the creation of the universe.
Thus, on the first day of creation, the first substance, light and darkness, was created. It should be said about light and darkness, because lamps in the firmament of heaven will appear only on the fourth day. Many theologians have discussed the topic of this light, describing it both as energy and as joy and grace. Today there is also a popular version that the light described in the Bible is nothing more than the Big Bang, after which the expansion of the Universe began.
Second day of the creation of the world.
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate water from water. [And it became so.] And God created the firmament, and separated the water that was under the firmament from the water that was above the firmament. And so it became. And God called the firmament heaven. [And God saw that it was good.] And there was evening, and there was morning: the second day.
The second day is the day when the primary matter began to be ordered, stars and planets began to form. The second day of creation tells us about the ancient ideas of the Jews, who considered the sky to be solid, capable of holding huge masses of water.
The third day of the creation of the world.
And God said: Let the water that is under the sky be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear. And so it became. [And the waters under heaven were gathered into their places, and dry land appeared.] And God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of waters he called seas. And God saw that it was good. And God said, “Let the earth bring forth green grass, grass yielding seed [after its kind and in its likeness, and] a fruitful tree, bearing fruit according to its kind, in which is its seed on the earth.” And so it became. And the earth brought forth grass, grass yielding seed according to its kind [and likeness], and a tree [fruitful] bearing fruit, in which is its seed according to its kind [on the earth]. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning: the third day.
On the third day, God created the Earth almost as we know it now: seas and land appeared, trees and grass appeared. From this moment we understand that God creates the living world. Science describes the formation of life on a young planet in a similar way; of course, this did not happen in one day, but still there are no global contradictions here either. Scientists believe that long rains began on the gradually cooling Earth, which led to the appearance of seas and oceans, rivers and lakes.
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Thus, we see that the Bible does not contradict modern science and the biblical story of the Creation of the world fits perfectly into scientific theories. The only question here is chronology. What one day is for God is billions of years for the universe. Today it is known that the first living cells appeared two billion years after the birth of the Earth, another billion years passed - and the first plants and microorganisms appeared in water.
The fourth day of the creation of the world.
And God said: Let there be lights in the expanse of the heaven [to illuminate the earth and] to separate the day from the night, and for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years; and let them be lamps in the firmament of the heaven to give light on the earth. And so it became. And God created 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 heaven to give light on the earth, and to rule the day and 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.
It is the fourth day of creation that leaves the most questions for those trying to reconcile faith and science. It is known that the Sun and other stars appeared before the Earth, and in the Bible - later. On the one hand, this is easy to explain if we take into account that the Book of Genesis was written at a time when astronomical observations and cosmological ideas of people were geocentric - that is, the Earth was considered the center of the Universe. However, is everything so simple? It is likely that this discrepancy between the cosmology of the Bible and science can be explained by the fact that the Earth is more significant or “spiritually central”, because man lives on it, created in the image of God.
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The heavenly saints in the Bible and in pagan beliefs are fundamentally different. For pagans, the sun, moon and other celestial bodies were associated with the activities of gods and goddesses. The author of the Bible may be deliberately expressing a completely different attitude towards the stars and planets. They are equal to any other created object in the universe. Mentioned in passing, they are demythologized and desacralized - and, in general, reduced to natural reality.
Fifth day of the Creation of the world.
And God said: Let the water bring forth living things; and let the birds fly over the earth, across the firmament of heaven. [And it was so.] And God created the great fish and every living creature that moves, which the waters brought forth, 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 of the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth. And there was evening and there was morning: the fifth day.
World creation. Jacopo Tintoretto
And here the biblical story of the creation of the world fully confirms scientific facts. Life originated in water - science is sure of this, the Bible confirms this. Living organisms began to multiply and reproduce. The universe developed according to the will of God's creative plan. Let us note that, according to the Bible, animals arose only after algae appeared and filled the air with the product of their vital activity - oxygen. And this is also a scientific fact!
Sixth day of the Creation of the world.
And God said, Let the earth produce living creatures according to their kinds, cattle and creeping things and wild beasts of the earth after their kinds. And so it became. And God created the beasts of the earth according to their kinds, and the cattle according to their kinds, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And God said: Let us make man in Our image and after Our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing. on the ground. And 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 animals], and over the birds of the air, [and over every livestock, and over all the earth,] and over every living thing that moves on the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed that is on all the earth, and every tree that has fruit yielding seed; - This will be food for you; And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to every [creeping thing] that creeps on the earth, in which there is a living soul, I have given every green herb for food. And so it became. And God saw everything that He had created, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning: the sixth day.
The sixth day of creation is marked by the appearance of man - this is a new stage of the universe, from this day the history of the human race begins. Man is something completely new on the young Earth; he has two principles - natural and divine.
It is interesting that in the Bible man is created immediately after animals, this demonstrates his natural beginning, he is continuously connected with the animal world. But God breathes the breath of His Spirit into a person’s face - and the person becomes involved in the Lord.
The creation of the world by God out of nothing.
The central idea of Christianity is the idea of creating the world out of nothing, or creation ex Nihilo. According to this idea, God created all things from non-existence, transforming non-existence into existence. God is both the creator and the cause of the creation of the world.
According to the Bible, before the Creation of the world there was neither primordial chaos nor primordial matter - there was nothing! Most Christians believe that all three persons of the Holy Trinity participated in the creation of the world: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
The world was created by God to be meaningful, harmonious and obedient to man. God gave this world to man along with freedom, which man used for evil, as evidenced by. The creation of the world according to the Bible is an act of creativity and love.
History of the Creation of the World - sources (documentary hypothesis)
The Creation story existed in the oral tradition of the ancient Israelites long before it was recorded by biblical writers. Many biblical scholars say that, in fact, it is a composite work, a collection of works by many authors from different periods (documentary theory). It is believed that these sources were combined together around 538 BC. e. It is likely that the Persians, after conquering Babylon, agreed to grant Jerusalem significant autonomy within the empire, but required local authorities to adopt a single code that would be accepted by the entire community. This led to the fact that the priests had to abandon all ambitions and bring together sometimes contradictory religious traditions. The story of the creation of the world came to us from two sources - the priestly code and the Yahwist. This is why we find in Genesis 2 the creation stories described in chapters one and two. The first chapter is given according to the priestly code, and the second - according to the Yahwist. The first tells more about the creation of the world, the second - about the creation of man.
Both narratives have much in common and complement each other. However, we see obvious differences in style: Text submitted according to the Priestly Code, clearly structured. The narrative is divided into 7 days; in the text, the days are separated by phrases "And there was evening, and there was morning: day...". In the first three days of creation, the act of separation is clearly visible - on the first day God separates darkness from light, on the second - the water under the firmament from the water above the firmament, on the third - the water from the dry land. Over the next three days, God fills everything he has created.
The second chapter (Yahwist source) has smooth narrative style.
Comparative mythology claims that both sources biblical history The creations of the world contain borrowings from Mesopotamian mythology, adapted to the belief in one God.