Our understanding of the early chapters of Genesis is falsely conditioned by
the Documentary Analysis theory of Graf and Wellhausen, which applied
evolutionism to the critical study of the Bible. Chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis
are falsely claimed to be duplicate rival accounts (JE and P) of the same
divine acts of creation culminating in the appearance on earth of Homo Sapiens.
It is crucially important to realise that Genesis 1 and 2 are successive
chapters describing two different chains of events.
The first four books of the Bible, Genesis through Numbers, known as Books of
Moses, date from about 1440 BC when God revealed many things to Moses when he
was alone with Him on Mount Sinai (Exodus 24:15-18). Deuteronomy, the fifth
book of Moses, dates from the end of Moses' life. His secretary, Phinehas,
Aaron's grandson, was responsible for writing out the words on scrolls and
storing them in the Ark of the Covenant (Numbers 25:11; Deuteronomy 31:24-26).
Moses knew nothing of archaeology and primitive anthropology or of science and
cosmology. There were no eye witnesses of the Creation, so he could only have
known about it by divine revelation (Genesis), or by sheer romantic imagination
(Ennuma Elish, the Babylonian creation myth). The Bible as we have it was and
is a divine revelation first to Israel and then to the Church. It does not tell
us about God's dealings with palaeolithic man. For whatever reasons,
palaeolithic man died out, probably in the last Ice Age. God made a new start
with Adam, who as we shall see was the *first farmer* of the Neolithic or New
Stone Age.
HE FIRST MEN
(1) Palaeolithic Man (Genesis 1:26-30)
He was made by God (27), like God (26), and for God (28). His generic name 'Adham (not a personal name) indicates his earthy origin "from the ground" Min ha'Adhamah. He had a world-wide spread (28); and lived by hunting and gathering (28-29). He was NOT a farmer. Therefore, he was evidently a Palaeolithic or Old Stone Age Man, whose remains have been discovered in Tanganyika, Peking, Java, Neanderthal, Cromagnon, Lascaux and elsewhere. The Lascaux cave paintings of 15,000 BC and ancient burial mounds (tumuli) show that he was very religious. Yet he died out, probably in the last Ice Age which ended around 10,000 BC.
(2) Neolithic Man (Genesis 2:7-25)
This time Adam is a personal name of an individual. He was a living soul (7, AV); he had a specific geographical location - the Anatolian plateau around Lake Van in Turkey (8-14); he had a specific occupation - farming (15). Wheat and barley, sheep and dogs originated there, and spread with their owners in all directions along the rivers Halys, Araxes, Tigris, Euphrates, and the Mediterranean coast. Adam and his sons lived by agriculture and stockbreeding (Genesis 4). Therefore, he was evidently no hunter-gatherer, but the first farmer of the Neolithic or New Stone Age, who, anthropologists tell us, appeared after the end of the last Ice Age, sometime between 10,000 and 8,000 BC in Anatolia, Turkey. He was a farmer
DINOSAURS
Where do Dinosaurs fit in? In Day 5, early on. They died out in the first Ice
Age, which their "cold blooded" metabolism could not cope with. Mammals (and
Marsupials for that matter) have a built-in "central heating system" to
maintain their body temperature within very precise limits (the Mitochondria
burning brown adipose tissue to heat the body up, and the sweat glands
producing perspiration to evaporate off the skin surface and cool the body
down). The "days" of Creation are very long; see my earlier post on the main
theories. I favour the "Six Day Blueprint for a Billion Year Programme" theory
of Profs Wiseman and Van Der Spuy.
Anyone else out there have an angle on Dinosaurs? Or did God create the rocks
complete with the fossils already in place? (I don't think so).
Ben Crick- ben.crick@argonet.co.uk