Origins and Scripture – musings of an Alamo-Girl
My perception of reality drives my understanding of creation. I perceive the physical realm to be a manifestation of the spiritual realm and therefore science and Genesis are consistent on origins. Those who perceive the physical realm as all that there is, and the spiritual realm to be an illusion, will be prejudiced against my view and thus will vigorously disagree.
Following are foundations to my understanding:
The Word of God is alive (John 1:1) and is Jesus Christ (John 1:14). The Bible is inerrant and authorized by Him. It reveals God truly but not fully. The Word reveals Truth which cannot be discovered scientifically, a person either hears His voice or not.
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: - John 10:27
Not everyone is able or willing to hear. To many who don’t, we who do seem foolish.
But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;
And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, [yea], and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are:
That no flesh should glory in his presence – I Corinthians 1:27-29
One phrase from the previous quote has a bearing to my understanding of science: "and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence". The laws of physics break down in singularities, e.g. at the inception of the "big bang." Velocity, density, mass, size and so forth have no finite meaning in a singularity because they either become ‘zero’ or infinite with nothing in between in a mathematical sense.
The Bible is inerrant even to the tense of each word.
But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying,
I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. – Matthew 22:31-32 (emphasis mine)
The phrase "have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God" makes it clear that the author of the Scriptures is God and that it is written to us, to be read carefully. The second verse makes it clear that we ought to apply logic in reading the Scriptures.
For all these reasons, I know that creation was accomplished by God in 6 days just like He said. I also recognize that the universe appears to be billions of years old. I see both statements are true and compatible due to the effect the expansion of the universe has on the perception of time depending on the observer’s point of view.
As an example, let’s say a galaxy is so far away that the light from it that we see today left the galaxy when the universe was a small fraction of its present age and has been traveling for 12 billion years. If the galaxy was only 1 billion light years away at the time the light was sent out to us, why would it take 12 billion light years to travel 1 billion light years distance?
The short answer is that space itself expands. The light from the far galaxy is traveling towards us essentially at a constant speed, but because space itself is expanding, it takes longer to get here.
The following webpages have excellent animations to explain the concepts of relativity:
In sum, neither space nor time pre-exist. Space-time is created as the universe expands. Our viewpoint is from some point in the expansion – which is clearly not from God’s viewpoint. God alone was the observer of creation. Genesis is written by Him, from His point of view. Therefore I view the creation week from the Creator’s point of view as observer and author of Genesis (and of course all the other Scriptures).
As a final principle, because God uses words which have common usage but are also defined as symbols elsewhere in Scripture, I look for these defined word-symbols and read verses with both the common usage and the symbolic usage to see which "rings true" spiritually.
Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.
And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables?
He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. – Matthew 13:9-11
Following is my "take" on creation:
Day 1
The first Day of creation, 24 equivalent solar hours from the inception space/time coordinates of the creation observer, would appear to be about 8 billion years elapsed from our space/time coordinates. In other words, if God sent me a message on a photon at the beginning of that day, if I existed, I would have received it 8 billion years later, from my point of view.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that [it was] good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
The first day was spent in creating light and separating it from darkness.
The word "darkness" is used repeatedly in the Scriptures to symbolize evil.
Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. – I Thess 5:5
For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to [give] the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. – 2 Corinthians 4:6
The word "light" is used repeatedly to symbolize His divinity, holiness, goodness.
This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. – I John 1:5
Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. – John 8:12
I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness. – John 12:46
Notice that both "Day" and "Night" are capitalized as proper names in Genesis 1.
As we can see in I Thes 5:5 "day" parallels "light" and "night" parallels "darkness" - spiritually. Believers are children of the light, a point to keep in mind as we explore Adam in the subsequent days.
The use of the phrase "without form, and void" indicates that there was originally no physical existence, no physical laws, e.g.
http://www.alcyone.com/max/physics/laws/p.html.The phrase "the deep" is symbolized in Romans 10:7 to mean death (lifelessness.) Or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.)
The word "waters" is symbolized in Revelation 17:15 to mean peoples, multitudes, nations and tongues. And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.
Since obviously there was no physical life, the word "waters" must mean "tongues." There has been much discussion about what the term "tongues" means. It is used throughout Scripture along with references to nations, peoples or beings – but, in context at this point of the creation, I understand "tongues" to mean intelligence in sound or thought. In the mathematics/physics sense it can be viewed as information (the Shannon definition of information is roughly a successful communication).
Now, brethren, if I come unto you speaking with tongues, what shall I profit you, except I shall speak to you either by revelation, or by knowledge, or by prophesying, or by doctrine?
And even things without life giving sound, whether pipe or harp, except they give a distinction in the sounds, how shall it be known what is piped or harped? - I Corinthians 14:6-7
Other Scriptures point to "water" as the word symbol for such Spiritual communication:
For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, [and] hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. – Jeremiah 2:13
Praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that [be] above the heavens. – Psalms 148:4
The words of a man's mouth [are as] deep waters, [and] the wellspring of wisdom [as] a flowing brook. – Proverbs 18:4
The voice of the LORD [is] upon the waters: the God of glory thundereth: the LORD [is] upon many waters. – Psalms 29:3
Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and [of] the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. – John 3:5-8
Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. John 4:13-14
I find the phrase "God said" to be very important in understanding what was going on in the physical realm while all this was happening in the spiritual realm.
I believe the resonance of God speaking caused the physical realm to come into existence because it was, in effect, a higher dimensional shockwave. It would be known as the "big bang." In the physical realm, the consequence of His speaking in Day 1, from our four dimensional viewpoint, would look like a cosmic soup.
Publications on the big bang and higher dimensional dynamicsIn previous debates on the web, I had predicted that an algorithm would be discovered which, at the inception of this universe – the Big Bang - would give rise to the fields via harmonics, then geometry/dimensions, the particles – and of course the physical laws.
BEST MAP YET OF THE COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND (CMB). The CMB is a redshifted picture of the universe at the moment photons and newly formed hydrogen atoms parted company roughly 300,000 years after the big bang. First detected in the 1960s, the CMB appeared to be utterly uniform until, eight years ago, the COBE satellite provided the first hint of slight temperature variations, on a coarse scale, with an angular resolution of about 7 degrees….
The 36-member, international "Boomerang" (Balloon Observations of Millimetric Extragalactic Radiation and Geomagnetics) collaboration, led by Andrew Lange of Caltech and Paolo de Bernardis of the University of Rome, confirms that a plot of CMB strength peaks at a multipole value of about 197 (corresponding to CMB patches about one degree in angular spread), very close to what theorists had predicted for a cosmology in which the universe’s overall curvature is zero and the existence of cold dark matter is invoked…
The shape of the observed pattern of temperature variations suggests that a disturbance very like a sound wave moving through air passed through the high- density primordial fluid and that the CMB map can be can be thought of as a sort of sonogram of the infant universe. (de Bernardis et al., Nature, 27 April 2000.)
"The early universe is full of sound waves compressing and rarefying matter and light, much like sound waves compress and rarefy air inside a flute or trumpet," explained Paolo deBernardis of the University of Rome La Sapienza, one of the members of the Balloon Observations of Millimetric Extragalactic Radiation and Geophysics (BOOMERanG) team. "For the first time the new data show clearly the harmonics of these waves."
The MAXIMA, BOOMERANG, and DASI collaborations, which measure minute variations in the CMB, recently reported new results at the American Physical Society meeting in Washington, D.C. All three agree remarkably about what the "harmonic proportions" of the cosmos imply: not only is the universe flat, but its structure is definitely due to inflation, not to topological defects in the early universe.
The results were presented as plots of slight temperature variations in the CMB that graph sound waves in the dense early universe. These high-resolution "power spectra" show not only a strong primary resonance but are consistent with two additional harmonics, or peaks.
The peaks indicate harmonics in the sound waves that filled the early, dense universe. Until some 300,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe was so hot that matter and radiation were entangled in a kind of soup in which sound waves (pressure waves) could vibrate. The CMB is a relic of the moment when the universe had cooled enough so that photons could "decouple" from electrons, protons, and neutrons; then atoms formed and light went on its way.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/pdf/0205/0205382.pdf - Cosmological Patterns and Galaxy Biasing (pdf) http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/gr-qc/pdf/9901/9901042.pdf - Stability and Size of Galaxies from Planck’s Constant (PDF)
From the Scriptures:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. – John 1:1
There is evidently also harmony in DNA.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/18/tech/main537093.shtmlImagine the human genome as music. Unravel DNA's double helix, picture its components lined up like piano keys and assign a note to each. Run your finger along the keys.
Spanish scientists did that just for fun and recorded what they call an audio version of the blueprint for life.
The team at Madrid's Ramon y Cajal Hospital was intrigued by music's lure - how it can make toddlers dance and adults cry - and looked for hints in the genetic material that makes us what we are. They also had some microbial genes wax melodic.
The end product is "Genoma Music," a 10-tune CD due out in February. "It's a way to bring science and music closer together," said Dr. Aurora Sanchez Sousa, a piano-playing microbiologist who specializes in fungi.
DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is composed of long strings of molecules called nucleotides, which are distinguished by which of four nitrogen-containing bases they contain: adenine, guanine, thymine or cytosine, represented as A, G, T and C. These became the musical notes.
French-born composer Richard Krull turned DNA sequences - a snippet of a gene might look like AGCGTATACGAGT - into sheet music. He arbitrarily assigned tones of the eight-note, do-re-mi scale to each letter. Thymine became re, for instance. Guanine is so, adenine la and cytosine do.
Played solo on percussion, classical guitar or the other instruments used on the CD, the sequences would sound cute but rudimentary, the musical equivalent of PacMan in an era of Microsoft Xbox.
So the alphabet soup of bases served as just that, base lines to accompany melodies composed by Krull and his scientific colleague. They say the melodies were influenced, even dictated, by the mood and rhythm of the underlying genetic code.
US Patent Application
There is provided a method for determining the musical notes associated with an amino acid sequence, the musical periods of the sequence, the lengths of the notes, and the tone quality of the notes through the retroaction of the whole set of amino acids and using that information to regulate the biosynthesis of the protein. The amino acids that build a protein emit a signal of quantum nature at a certain frequency. Following the properties of this signal, the frequency is transposed into a musical note. This discovery has numerous applications since one can then deduce from the amino acid sequence of a protein a sequence of notes composing the melody that will act to stimulate or inhibit its synthesis inside an organism, wherefrom one can in addition delimit its biological functions.
Exactly when, during the first day, God spoke, it doesn’t say. He moved upon the face of the "waters" before He spoke. So my 8 billion years for the first day might be a tad high.
Day 2
The second Day of creation, 24 equivalent solar hours from the inception space/time coordinates of the creation observer, would appear to be about 4 billion years elapsed from our space/time coordinates.
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which [were] under the firmament from the waters which [were] above the firmament: and it was so.
And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
The word "heaven" can mean a number of different things based on how it is used. Sometimes it refers to the firmament, as in the above passage, and sometimes "heaven" refers to the spiritual realm or the sky above. Sometimes it is used in plural. In every usage, the word speaks to a higher order, an "aboveness" - and here it is capitalized as a proper name.
And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. – Matthew 16:19
And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven. – Acts 1:10-11
These [are] the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, - Genesis 2:4
I find the use of the plural of heaven interesting in light of the many worlds and multi-verse theories which have been proposed. Although the theories don’t do violence to my "take" on creation, it should be noted that the "multiple universes from multiple quantum fluctuations" is a rather convenient answer to why our universe happens to have just the right physical laws to support life, i.e. the other ones that don’t have the right physical laws may also exist if there are multiple universes. In other words, without more research, the multi-universe theory feels contrived to me.
I have the same reaction to theories of imaginary time, ekpyrotic cosmology and cyclic cosmology. All of these theories propose to move the beginning further back or obfuscate the beginning of time. Nevertheless, none of the theories defeat the fact that there was a beginning (Genesis 1:1)
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/generalscience/5mysteries_universes_020205-1.htmlThere's a reason some theorists want other universes to exist: They believe it's the only way to explain why our own universe, whose physical laws are just right to allow life, happens to exist. According to the so-called anthropic principle, there are perhaps an infinite number of universes, each with its own set of physical laws. And one of them happens to be ours. That's much easier to believe, say the anthropic advocates, than a single universe "fine-tuned" for our existence.
There are quite a few
The forces show a very wide spread of strengths, which our Universe depends on to greater or lesser degrees. Suppose gravity was stronger, by a factor of 10^10. This seems quite a lot, but it would still be the weakest force, just 10^-28 of the strength of electromagnetism. The result would be that not as many atoms would be needed in a star to crush its core to make a nuclear furnace. Stars in this high-gravity universe would have the mass of a small planet in our Universe, being about 2km in diameter. They would have far less nuclear fuel as a result, and would use it all up in about one year. Needless to say, it is unlikely that any life would evolve or survive long under such conditions.
Make gravity substantially weaker on the other hand, the gas clouds of hydrogen and helium left after the Big Bang would never manage to collapse in an expanding universe, once again leaving no opportunity for life to emerge
These and other odd features of water are a consequence of the hydrogen bond - the attraction of the electron-rich oxygen atoms of water molecules for the electron-starved hydrogen atoms of other water molecules. This in turn is a function of the precise properties of the oxygen and hydrogen atoms, which also determines the H-O-H bond angle of 104.5 degrees - only slightly less than the ideal tetrahedral angle of 109.5 degrees. It is (incidentally) the hydrogen bond which holds together the two strands of DNA.
It is also the hydrogen bond which is responsible for the crystalline structure of ice, which is in the form of an open lattice: this makes ice less dense than the liquid. As a result, ice floats. If ice was denser than its liquid form (as is the case with most other substances) then it would collect at the bottom of lakes and oceans, and eventually build up until the world was frozen solid. As it is, it forms a thin insulating sheet which prevents evaporation and keeps the waters below warm.
A carbon-12 nucleus is made from the near-simultaneous collision of three of these helium-4 nuclei [within stars]. Actually, what happens is that two helium-4 nuclei merge to make beryllium-8, but beryllium-8 is so unstable that it lasts only 10^-17 of a second, and so a third alpha particle (which is what a helium nucleus is) must collide and fuse with the beryllium nucleus within that time. Not only is this triple encounter a relatively unlikely event, but any such unstable beryllium nuclei ought to be smashed apart in the process. Therefore, it should be expected that carbon itself (and consequently all heavier elements) would be rare in the Universe.
However, the efficiencies of nuclear reactions vary as a function of energy, and at certain critical levels a reaction rate can increase sharply - this is called resonance. It just so happens that there is a resonance in the three-helium reaction at the precise thermal energy corresponding to the core of a star...
So if there was another resonance at work here all the carbon would be quickly processed into oxygen, making carbon very rare again. In fact, it turns out that there is an excited state of oxygen-16 that almost allows a resonant reaction, but it is too low by just 1%. It is shifted just far enough away from the critical energy to leave enough life-giving quantities of carbon untouched.
This ejection of rich material into space is carried by an enormous flux of neutrinos generated in the explosion. The neutrino is normally such a ghostly particle that it could pass right through many light-years of solid lead, unaffected. In blasting apart a supernova, its precise interactivity (or lack of it) is such that it should have enough time to reach the stellar envelope before dumping its energy and momentum, but not so much time that it should escape. This property is partly a function of the weak force in a complex relationship which must be just as we observe it, to one part in a thousand. If the star's matter was not so effectively redistributed, it would simply collect about the dead star or fall back. It would not be available for new stars to make planets capable of bearing life. A universe without our particular kind of neutrinos would be a dead universe.
If the strong force had actually been just 13% stronger, all of the free protons would have combined into helium-2 at an early stage of the Big Bang, and decay almost immediately into deuterons. Then pairs of deuterons would readily fuse to become helium-4, leaving no hydrogen in the Universe, and so no water, and no hydrocarbons…
An increase in the strong force of just 9% would have made the dineutron possible. On the other hand a decrease of about 31% would be sufficient to make the deuteron unstable, and so remove an essential step in the chain of nucleosynthesis: the Universe would contain nothing but hydrogen, and again life would be impossible.
The Universe has been expanding for 15 billion years at a rate fantastically close to a knife-edge line between recollapse and ultimate dispersion. Even at this point in time we can not tell for sure which side of the line we are on: whether Big Crunch or Heat Death is the ultimate fate of the Universe. It is lucky for us that the Universe is flat in this way since the tiniest deviation from its initial value (which must have been exact to one part in 10^35) would have led to a rapid Big Crunch or cosmic dissipation. And, as usual, no life.
The difference in mass between a proton and a neutron is only a little greater than the mass of the relatively tiny electron (which has about 1/1833 the mass of a proton). Calculations of relative particle abundances following the first second of the Big Bang, using Boltzmann's statistical theorem, show that neutrons should make up about 10% of the total particle content of the Universe. This is sensitive to the proton:neutron mass ratio which is (coincidentally) almost 1. A slight deviation from this mass ratio could have led to a neutron abundance of zero, or of 100%, the latter being most catastrophic for the prospects of any life appearing. Even if there were 50% neutrons, all of them would have combined with the remaining protons early in the Big Bang, leading to a Universe with no hydrogen, no stable long-lived stars, and no water. And no life
In the colossal energies of first millionth of a second of the Big Bang, particles and their anti-particles would have been created and destroyed in pairs, equally. Once the temperature fell sufficiently, photons could no longer be readily converted into particle-antiparticle pairs, and so they annihilated each other. The present ratio of photons to protons, 'S', is 10^9, which suggests that only one proton (and one electron) per billion escaped annihilation
One consequence of having a three-dimensional space is the inverse square law of forces. In particular, only in such a space are stable planetary orbits possible: more or fewer dimensions introduce instability. By a series of complex arguments it can also be shown that stable atoms and chemistry also require three dimensions of space, and the distortion-free propagation of any wave-based signal also requires exactly three dimensions of space.
Of course if our Universe was actually hostile to life, we couldn't be here to remark on the fact. This is the basis of the
Anthropic Principle. To put it another way: without the right kind of physics you don't get physicists.
Again, I take "waters" to mean tongues (intelligent sounds or thoughts, information.) Since physical realm beings don’t exist yet on day 2, I take this to mean that He was separating the spiritual realm from the natural realm. Or to put it another way, all lower waters (tongues, sounds, thought, information) were relegated beneath the firmament, which I believe is also a barrier between the spiritual realm and the natural realm.
I do not believe the barrier can be defined by geometric coordinates like a physical location. I see the physical and spiritual realm coexisting everywhere but separated by the firmament.
Some Kabbalist analysis arrived at this concept and suggested that the barrier is the speed of light and resonance itself (superstrings in the natural realm) along with thought are the only known common properties between the two realms.
Physics and KabbalaThis is appealing because we occupy our thoughts (Proverbs 23:7 - For as he thinketh in his heart, so [is] he:) and it is through thought that we receive Christ, pray and worship. And of course, Jesus emphasized in the Sermon on the Mount that thinking an evil deed has the same effect as doing it.
The Kabbalist view is also appealing because the speed of light is the delimiting factor to much of our current understanding. And the resonance observation would fit well with current research on higher dimensional dynamics.
It is possible that the firmament could be dimensional and nevertheless undetectable from our 4 dimensional worldview (3 spatial dimensions and 1 temporal dimension). We are inclined to view the physical realm on a timeline and thus expect each effect to have a cause. However if there were an additional time dimension, our timeline would be a plane and not a line and cause/effect could become effect/cause, past/present/future all malleable. It would make superluminal events (such as non-locality) and superposition logical. But I digress…
In search of extra dimensions (Fermi Lab)I see the barrier firmament like a one way mirror. The physical realm cannot clearly see into the spiritual realm, but the spiritual realm can see into the physical realm. The reason I suspect it works this way is because of I Cor 13:12 and what happened on day 6 (see below.)
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. – I Corinthians 13:12
Current theory is that the sun formed some 4.55 billion years ago from a supernova 5 billion years ago and that the earth is 4.5 billion years old, with the chemicals to support life existing on (physical) earth about 4 billion years ago. The NASA Genesis spacecraft will return with solar material in 2004 that will help test these theories. If all these theories hold true, then these building blocks to our solar system as we know it today were spawned during the 2nd Day.
Day 3
The third Day of creation, 24 equivalent solar hours from the point of view of God as the creation observer, would appear to be about 2 billion years elapsed from our viewpoint today.
And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry [land] appear: and it was so.
And God called the dry [land] Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that [it was] good.
And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, [and] the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed [is] in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
And the earth brought forth grass, [and] herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed [was] in itself, after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good.
And the evening and the morning were the third day.
On this day I believe God created in the spiritual realm a perfect growing garden for spiritual beings. In this context, I believe "waters" refers to the common usage of the term, but the phrase "under the heaven" instead of "under the firmament of heaven" indicates that it was happening in the spiritual realm, above the firmament. Here the word "earth" is capitalized as a proper name. I believe this is supported by this later verse where God refers to having made the plants before they were in the earth (physical realm.)
And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and [there was] not a man to till the ground. – Genesis 2:5
My understanding of what was happening on day 3 has a lot to do with the garden of Eden. In Genesis 2 and Revelations 2 we see that the tree of life is in the center of Eden (Genesis) and Paradise (Revelation.) That tells me that Eden is either in the center of, or is the same thing as, the spiritual realm of Paradise.
There may be a physical "type" of Eden in the natural realm (like with the ark or the temple) – but it would only be a model and not the real (perfect) thing. After the creation week, I believe Adam was banished into a physical body in the natural realm specifically to make him mortal. Before then, there was no death or decay in Adam’s "world." (Genesis 2)
I believe Adam was banished into the body of a hominid, a modern physical earth-man, probably on Day 7. I believe other hominids existed, but only the spiritual descendants of Adam could have his essence, the life that was breathed into him.
And the LORD God formed man [of] the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. – Genesis 2:6
I suspect these spiritual descendants are the ones who have ears to hear and are the ones for whom the Bible is written, the ones He already knew.
For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate [to be] conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. – Romans 8:29-30
But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you.
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:
And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any [man] pluck them out of my hand.
My Father, which gave [them] me, is greater than all; and no [man] is able to pluck [them] out of my Father’s hand.
I and [my] Father are one. - John 10:26-30
Speaking of "ears to hear," the Word comes alive especially quick to me when reading the gospel of John. It is a love letter.
Current research shows that there are microfossils at 3.5 billion years in the fossil record and that atmospheric oxygen increased about 2.1 billion years ago. That would indicate some modeling activity was occurring in the physical realm to correspond with creation of the garden Earth in Paradise on Day 3.
Day 4
The fourth Day of creation, 24 equivalent solar hours from the inception space/time coordinates of the creation observer, would appear to be about 1 billion years elapsed from our space/time coordinates.
And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: [he made] the stars also.
And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that [it was] good.
And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
Because of the phrase "firmament of the heaven" I believe this refers to the physical realm, the structure of the solar system as we know it today – specific orbits and such. Notice how the word "earth" is now lower cased, not a proper name. Likewise, heaven is in lower case and singular.
As mentioned previously, the Genesis project of NASA will help to clarify what was happening in the formation of the solar system. I am curious if any catastrophic events occurred in our solar system approximately 1 to 2 billion years ago.
We already know of strange phenomenon in the solar system: that the orbits of the planets and satellites lie roughly in the same plane (the plane of the ecliptic) – that they orbit and rotate in the prograde direction, with axis tilts of less than 30 degrees and nearly circular orbits.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-01o.htmlMoreover, the Sun's circular orbit about the galactic center is just right; through a combination of factors it manages to keep out of the way of the Galaxy's dangerous spiral arms. Our Solar System is also far enough away from the galactic center to not have to worry about disruptive gravitational forces or too much radiation.
Because of this, states Gonzalez, "I believe both simple life and complex life are very rare, but complex life, like us, is probably unique in the observable Universe."
The fossil record indicates the oldest cellular organisms date back to 1.2 billion years, which would be towards the end of Day 4.
Day 5
The fifth Day of creation, 24 equivalent solar hours from the inception space/time coordinates of the creation observer, would appear to be about ½ billion years elapsed from our space/time coordinates.
And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl [that] may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his 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 fowl multiply in the earth.
And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
Again the phrase "open firmament of heaven" causes me to view the 5th day in the physical realm.
On this day (a 500 million year period to us) God directed the physical realm waters to abundantly bring forth creatures. I see this as what is called "evolution" but clearly guided by intelligent design. The blessing I believe corresponds to the "Cambrian explosion." God’s interventions might be what is known as "punctuated equilibrium."
Of course, the debate rages on evolutionary biology and intelligent design. These verses indicate that we will find evidence of both - because on the one hand God tells the waters to bring forth abundantly (biologically) and other hand He says that He created whales and every living thing that moves, that the water brought forth abundantly (intelligent design.)
From that verse I would expect the fossil record to make a better case for evolutionary biology in the most simple of life forms and for intelligent design to make a better case for the more complex. For a graphic representation of the differences:
Charts of conflicts between Darwin theory and natural historyFor a long time now I’ve been suggesting that the evolutionists should be malleable on the randomness tenet. I said that because it seemed like a good way to forge peace between that side and intelligent design with regard to teaching children in public schools. However, after doing a great deal of research on information theory, algorithms and mathematics in genetics – in particular, the symbolization – I’m even more convinced that evolutionists insist on randomness to their own peril. The current focus is autonomous biological self-organizing complexity.
I realize the evolutionist position is that randomness does not mean the same thing as ‘roll of the dice’ – because random mutations are culled by natural selection. Nevertheless, the initiating event in their theory is a random mutation. However, regulatory control genes and functional complexity point away from randomness and towards autonomy and self-organizing complexity.
The presence of algorithmic information even within junk DNA (
Complexity International – Brief Comments on Junk DNA [pdf]) is counter-indicative to randomness per se. The Chaitin papers [ps] explain why:We now turn to Kolmogorov’s and Chaitin’s proposed definition of randomness or patternlessness. Let us consider once more the scientist confronted by experimental data, a long binary sequence. This time he in not interested in predicting future observations, but only in determining if there is a pattern in his observations, if there is a simple theory that explains them. If he found a way of compressing his observations into a short computer program which makes the computer calculate them, he would say that the sequence follows a law, that it has pattern. But if there is no short program, then the sequence has no pattern—it is random. That is to say, the complexity C(S) of a finite binary sequence S is the size of the smallest program which makes the computer calculate it. Those binary sequences S of a given length n for which C(S) is greatest are the most complex binary sequences of length n, the random or patternless ones. This is a general formulation of the definition…
In other words - to sustain the pillar, one would have to presume that random information content can be algorithmic (which is, by definition, not random.)
Even more to the point, the physics of symbols (
H.H. Pattee) and the current state of the art (Rocha and Language-like features in junk DNA) strongly suggest that new research will show that mutations were opportunistic or essentially pre-programmed.In any case, I predict that intelligent design at first cause (abiogenesis, life from non-life) will be underscored since there is no origin for the minimal necessary information content whether or not opportunistic (
Yockey seventh message). Yockey is the author of Information Theory and Molecular Biology. http://www.ideacenter.org/infotheory.htm -The importance of Yockey’s work from the Intelligent Design corner Entropy in Logic and the Theory of Algorithms
Day 6
The sixth Day of creation, 24 equivalent solar hours from the inception space/time coordinates of the observer, would appear to be about ¼ billion years elapsed from our space/time coordinates.
And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good.
And 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 fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
So God created man in his [own] image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which [is] upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which [is] the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein [there is] life, [I have given] every green herb for meat: and it was so.
And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, [it was] very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
The sixth day is a split screen to me, because it doesn’t delimit by the firmament in either direction. The first two sentences continues the "evolution" on the earth, especially with regard to animals, but limits the creatures to reproduce after their own kind.
So far, the fossil record has shown no new animal phyla after the Cambrian explosion about 500 million years ago. The animals simply proliferate and diversify in agreement with the first two sentences. If the process were entirely natural at this point, I would expect to see fossil evidence of new animal phyla to correspond with the extinctions of 250 and 65 million years ago. I would also expect to see a much larger and diversified fossil record.
The split screen starts in the third passage where He says "Let us make man in our image." I believe this happened in the spiritual realm, i.e. spiritual man (Adam) was given authority over everything in the physical realm, but actually existed in the perfect spiritual realm which was set aside in Day 2 and furnished in Day 3. I believe Adam was banished from the spiritual realm to occupy a mortal body in the physical realm so that he would experience death and decay as punishment for disobediently obtaining the knowledge of good and evil which was established in Day 1.
This discussion raises the question of the purpose of evil and predestination v free will, both of which I address in a separate collection of musings
http://www.alamo-girl.com/backdoor.htmDay 7
The seventh Day of creation, 24 equivalent solar hours from the inception space/time coordinates of the creation observer, would appear to be about 1/8 billion years elapsed from our space/time coordinates.
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
These [are] the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, - Genesis 2:1-4
This is the day God rested from His work.
The latest study pegs the age of the universe at 13.7 billion years with a very small margin for error http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2003/0206mapresults.html
This figure is about 14% lower than my ballpark estimates, but it is close enough for me because, as I noted in day 1, it is not disclosed exactly when on Day 1 God first spoke, causing the beginning of space/time.
The effect of the expansion rate of the universe on time is not relevant to subsequent verses in Genesis because the focus of the Scriptures changes from the Creator’s viewpoint to the Adamic viewpoint --- life on (lower case) earth.
The countdown began when Adam was banished. We are at year 5764 of the countdown according to the Jewish calendar.
The physical realm is still under the Adamic dominion and therefore suffers empathetically.
For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.
For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected [the same] in hope,
Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.
And not only [they], but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, [to wit], the redemption of our body. – Romans 8:19-23
Summary of the Creation week:
The creation week begins with language, thought, tongues, sounds, information. On personal experience, I know the Word is alive. And it is the written word that tells me that Jesus is the Word made flesh. From John 1:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not..
He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.
He came unto his own, and his own received him not.
But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, [even] to them that believe on his name:
Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. – John 1:1-14
The spiritual descendants of Adam were not made for the physical realm – we were made for the spiritual realm. The Bible is a spiritual work and should be read that way. It shows us the way back home, which is through Jesus Christ (Romans 8:29-30)
Of course, I cannot be sure if my "take" on how the Bible reconciles with science is correct until the rest of me gets to the other side, but the flow of what I have written here rings true to my spirit, and in the end, that’s what counts to me.
Continuing on to the Patriarchs
In my view, Adam – who had been made to reside in Eden (Paradise) in the spiritual realm – had been banished to live in the physical realm in the form of a hominid, a modern man.
Adam had been granted dominion over the physical realm before being banished and thus would have special knowledge not available to regular hominids. That special knowledge I believe is the reason the patriarchs lived so long and also the reason they got into so much trouble. The regular hominids probably thought Adamic men were super beings and might have even worshipped them or written legends (mythology) about them. If so, that would have soothed their damaged egos and might have caused them to become more self important and full of error.
I believe that Adam knew things that he passed on to his children, and them to theirs. Some things were probably lost as time went by, but I imagine Adamic men remembered the things most important to their personal welfare. Since he had been banished to experience death, and probably held no hope of eternal life after such disobedience, I believe he would have done everything he could to delay his own demise. If it were in his power, he probably suppressed the aging gene.
In the alternative, perhaps the hominid body into which Adam was banished specifically had the aging gene, the p21 gene, nullified. If true, this could either be an act of mercy or judgment (or both) from God.
Either way, in my view, it would take an extraordinary event – such as a murder or an accident or a catastrophe – to bring about the death of a physical descendant of Adam until the p21 gene was active in the Adamic lineage through inbreeding with regular hominids and/or until the original knowledge of Adam was lost.
By knocking out gene p21, research team temporarily thwarts human cells’ aging process Cell Stress and Aging Section Key old age gene foundHere are the patriarchs, the physical descendants of Adamic man – year born and year died – measured from the day Adam was banished to the physical realm (inception date of zero.) The patriarchs had other children who were also reproducing.
Adam 0 to 930
Seth 130 to 1042
Enosh 235 to 1140
Kenan 325 to 1235
Mahalalel 395 to 1290
Jared 460 to 1422
Enoch 622 to 987*
Methusela 687 to 1656
Lamech 874 to 1634
Noah 1065 to
Shem 1558 to 2158
Arpashad 1658 to 2096
Shelah 1693 to 2120
Eber 1723 to 2187
Peleg 1757 to 1996
Reu 1787 to 2026
Serug 1819 to 2049
Nahor 1849 to 1997
Terah 1878 to 2083
Abraham 1948 to 2123
*Enoch did not die in a physical sense, he was "taken."
And Enoch walked with God: and he [was] not; for God took him – Genesis 5:24
Elijah is the only other one who has (so far) bypassed physical death. There will however be a generation of Christians who will escape physical death:
For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
Then we which are alive [and] remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. – I Thessalonians 4:16-17
It may sound strange, but the manuscript of Enoch and the book of Revelation are significant in my understanding of the Noah flood.
The Enoch manuscript did not have the protection of the Jewish and Christian scribes over the years, but it contains at least some truth as follows:
Book of EnochThe Book of Enoch (also known as 1 Enoch) was once cherished by Jews and Christians alike, this book later fell into disfavor with powerful theologians–precisely because of its controversial statements on the nature and deeds of the fallen angels…
The theme of the Book of Enoch dealing with the nature and deeds of the fallen angels so infuriated the later Church fathers that one, Filastrius, actually condemned it openly as heresy (Filastrius, Liber de Haeresibus, no. 108). Nor did the rabbis deign to give credence to the book’s teaching about angels. Rabbi Simeon ben Jochai in the second century A.D. pronounced a curse upon those who believed it (Delitzsch, p. 223).
So the book was denounced, banned, cursed, no doubt burned and shredded–and last but not least, lost (and conveniently forgotten) for a thousand years. But with an uncanny persistence, the Book of Enoch found its way back into circulation two centuries ago.
In 1773, rumors of a surviving copy of the book drew Scottish explorer James Bruce to distant Ethiopia. True to hearsay, the Book of Enoch had been preserved by the Ethiopic church, which put it right alongside the other books of the Bible…
Though it was once believed to be post-Christian (the similarities to Christian terminology and teaching are striking), recent discoveries of copies of the book among the Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran prove that the book was in existence before the time of Jesus Christ. But the date of the original writing upon which the second century B.C. Qumran copies were based is shrouded in obscurity. It is, in a word, old…
There is abundant proof that Christ approved of the Book of Enoch. Over a hundred phrases in the New Testament find precedents in the Book of Enoch.
Another remarkable bit of evidence for the early Christians’ acceptance of the Book of Enoch was for many years buried under the King James Bible’s mistranslation of Luke 9:35, describing the transfiguration of Christ: "And there came a voice out of the cloud, saying, ‘This is my beloved Son: hear him." Apparently the translator here wished to make this verse agree with a similar verse in Matthew and Mark. But Luke’s verse in the original Greek reads: "This is my Son, the Elect One (from the Greek ho eklelegmenos, lit., "the elect one"): hear him."
The "Elect One" is a most significant term (found fourteen times) in the Book of Enoch. If the book was indeed known to the apostles of Christ, with its abundant descriptions of the Elect One who should "sit upon the throne of glory" and the Elect One who should "dwell in the midst of them," then the great scriptural authenticity is accorded to the Book of Enoch when the "voice out of the cloud" tells the apostles, "This is my Son, the Elect One"–the one promised in the Book of Enoch.
The Book of Jude tells us in vs. 14 that "Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied…" Jude also, in vs. 15, makes a direct reference to the Book of Enoch (2:1), where he writes, "to execute judgment on all, to convict all who are ungodly…" …
Many of the early church fathers also supported the Enochian writings. Justin Martyr ascribed all evil to demons whom he alleged to be the offspring of the angels who fell through lust for women (from the Ibid.)–directly referencing the Enochian writings.
Athenagoras, writing in his work called Legatio in about 170 A.D., regards Enoch as a true prophet. He describes the angels which "violated both their own nature and their office." In his writings, he goes into detail about the nature of fallen angels and the cause of their fall, which comes directly from the Enochian writings.
Many other church fathers: Tatian (110-172); Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons (115-185); Clement of Alexandria (150-220); Tertullian (160-230); Origen (186-255); Lactantius (260-330); in addition to: Methodius of Philippi, Minucius Felix, Commodianus, and Ambrose of Milanalso–also approved of and supported the Enochian writings…
One by one the arguments against the Book of Enoch fade away. The day may soon arrive when the final complaints about the Book of Enoch’s lack of historicity and "late date" are also silenced by new evidence of the book’s real antiquity.
There are interesting similarities between Enoch and the book of Revelation. The book of Revelation contains a blessing for those who read it:
Blessed [is] he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time [is] at hand. – Revelation 1:3
And the book of Enoch (1 Enoch) contains a blessing for the people in the end times.
The blessing of Enoch; with which he blessed the elect and the righteous who would be present on the day of tribulation at (the time of) the removal of all the ungodly ones. And Enoch, the blessed and righteous man of the Lord, took up (his parable) while his eyes were open and he saw, and said "(This is) a holy vision from the heavens which the angels showed me; and I heard from them everything and I understood. I look not for this generation but for the distant one that is coming. I speak about the elect ones and concerning them. (The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Volume I, 1 Enoch)
The book of 1 Enoch is difficult to read, like Revelation, for pretty much the same reasons. They both contain many metaphors and diaries of what each saw and heard in the spiritual realm. It seems to me it would be very difficult to describe spiritual realm observations using ancient language terms which were structured to address the physical realm. Both speak of horrific judgments and include timeline benchmarks. The book of Enoch speaks of the end time judgments as well as the Noah flood.
As a sidebar curiosity, 1 Enoch contains various statements which are strangely accurate considering the known age of the manuscript and the language, such as:
Then Uriel showed me another order (concerning) when light is beamed into the moon, from which direction of the bright sun it is beamed. 1 Enoch 78:10
They [sun and moon] do not depart from their orbit, neither increase or decrease it; but they keep faith one with another; in accordance with an oath they set and they rise. – 1 Enoch 41:5
In chapter 18, 1 Enoch describes a place so void it has no measure and no content, a pit "where the heavens come together." He records that the angel explained [v. 14] "this is the ultimate end of heaven and earth; it is the prison house for the stars and the powers of heaven…"
Getting back to the patriarchs, 1 Enoch says that some of the misbehaving angels ("Watchers") were breeding with earth women and creating giants who terrorized the earth. I believe those are the giants referred to in the following Scripture. I believe those horrors compounded the evil wrought by inbreeding and interaction of knowledgeable Adamic man with regular hominids.
And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they [were] fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also [is] flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.
There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare [children] to them, the same [became] mighty men which [were] of old, men of renown.
And GOD saw that the wickedness of man [was] great in the earth, and [that] every imagination of the thoughts of his heart [was] only evil continually
And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.
But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD. – Genesis 6:1-8
According to 1 Enoch the giants were made to kill off one another (and by dying, releasing their spirits as demons) and the Watchers who fathered them were dealt with as spiritual beings, bound for later judgment --- but that would leave all the creatures (including hominids) that they had corrupted still needful of destruction.
The wording of the above passage from Genesis 6, especially the phrase "My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also [is] flesh" (emphasis mine) --- causes me to believe the flood was targeted to Adamic man and everything that he (or the Watchers) had corrupted.
Of the Adamic men, only Noah was found just and allowed to survive along with seven other souls (emphasis on the word "souls" i.e. Adamic.)
Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water. - I Peter 3:20
These Scriptures suggest a targeted deluge by using the phrase the "breath of life":
And the LORD God formed man [of] the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. - Genesis 2:7
And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein [is] the breath of life, from under heaven; [and] every thing that [is] in the earth shall die. - Genesis 6:17
All in whose nostrils [was] the breath of life, of all that [was] in the dry [land], died. - Genesis 7:22
Also suggesting a targeted flood, the vision in 1 Enoch 89 describes water filling an enclosed area wherein the ark rises. Although we see the evidence of a simultaneous catastrophe worldwide, it seems to me the greatest devastation would be in the areas with the highest concentration of Adamic men, the "civilized" areas. The flood waters in such an area would have risen over the highest boundary so none could escape.
And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters.
And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that [were] under the whole heaven, were covered.
Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. Genesis 7:18-20
Again I saw, and behold, fountains were opened upon the ground of the great enclosed area, and the water began to swell and rise upon the ground; and I saw that enclosed area until the whole ground was (completely) covered with water. – 1 Enoch 89:4
Adamic man was given 120 years to clean up his act, but of course, he didn’t. In my view, he knew way too much and by breeding with other hominids and teaching their descendants, he was spreading his knowledge to people who couldn’t handle it. More specifically, I believe they were all using the knowledge in evil, wrongful, self-serving ways.
Because Adam’s descendants still had his special knowledge and dominion over the creatures, I believe they were doing horrible things to the creatures as well (1 Enoch implies as much) and thus they also had to be destroyed. In a nutshell, everything that Adamic man or the Watchers corrupted – whether animal life or environment – had to be utterly destroyed.
The converse would be true. Hominids, creatures and environment that had no contact with either Adamic men or the Watchers would not necessarily have to die in the edict. I suspect the flood was worldwide, but targeted, and I believe the physical evidence is consistent.
National GeographicAlmost every culture on Earth includes an ancient flood story. Details vary, but the basic plot is the same: Deluge kills all but a lucky few.
Various articles agree that water levels rising from the last ice age would have caused global flooding naturally around 7500 BC, but that would predate the Noah flood by most calculations. And although the Sphinx erosion discoveries are interesting, they would also predate the Noah flood - except for the oldest dating for the inception of Adam.
The SphinxMainstream Egyptologists reacted with total disbelief when it was proposed that the famous Sphinx was much older than the 4th Dynasty [2500 BC] …
This tentative estimate [7000 to 5000 BC] is probably a minimum date; given that weathering rates may proceed non-linearly (the deeper the weathering is, the slower it may progress due to the fact that it is "protected’ by the overlying material), the possibility remains open that the initial carving of the Great Sphinx may be even earlier than 9,000 years ago…
Some marine archeologists believe they have discovered evidence of a huge flood in the Black Sea. Many believe this is the flood described in the Bible. By carbon dating, they figure the Black Sea turned from a huge lake into a small sea between 5460 BC and 4820 BC.
The scientists theorize that the Mediterranean Sea swelled about 7000 years ago, causing seawater to push through Turkey, through the narrow Bosporus and hitting the Black Sea with 200 times the force of Niagara Falls.
‘Home of Noah’ is found 300 ft. below Black Sea Is Noah’s ark under the Black Sea? The Hunt For Noah’s ArkFor me, the Black Sea flood is still too old. By my calculation, the Biblical flood was at 1656 years from Adam’s banishment at 3761 BC based on the Jewish calendar which says we are at year 5764. That would put the flood at about 2105 BC. But here comes the caveat and the reason the book of Revelation is important to my understanding …
I know that my estimate must be wrong because we are not permitted to know the date of Christ’s return
But of that day and hour knoweth no [man], no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. - Matthew 24:36
My estimate has an unknowable error if the 7000 year timeline of 2 Enoch is divinely inspired. The book of 2 Enoch (a different manuscript) says that eternity sets in after 7000 years:
2 EnochAn entirely different Enoch manuscript has survived in the Slavonic language. This text, dubbed "2 Enoch" and commonly called "the Slavonic Enoch," was discovered in 1886 by a professor Sokolov in the archives of the Belgrade Public Library. It appears that just as the Ethiopic Enoch ("1 Enoch") had escaped the sixth-century Church suppression of Enoch texts in the Mediterranean area, so a Slavonic Enoch had survived far away, long after the originals from which it was copied were destroyed or hidden away.
Specialists in the Enochian texts surmise that the missing original form which the Slavonic was copied was probably a Greek manuscript. This may have been, in turn, based on a Hebrew or Aramaic manuscript….
One of the most fascinating passages of the Slavonic Enoch is the account of the dramatization of eternity found in Chapter 33. As the world was made in six days, so its history would be accomplished in 6,000 years, and this would be followed by 1,000 years of rest, when the balance of conflicting moral forces has been struck and human life has reached the ideal state. (A reference of this conflict is also found in The War Scroll, a future battle between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness. These writings were recently discovered in Qumran Cave 1, which are part of the collection of The Dead Sea Scrolls). At the close of this 7,000 year cycle would begin the 8th Eternal Day, when time should be no more…
I believe the 1000 year reign of Christ on physical earth (Revelation 20:2-3) is the seventh thousand referred to in 2 Enoch, because it precedes the eternal, new heaven and earth (Revelation 21.)
Therefore, if my calculation were correct, the Christ millenium would be 236 years away from today. But since we cannot know the date of Christ’s return, I must therefore be wrong, and it would be less. It could also be more, but I doubt it because of other "signs of the times."
Moreover, a widely accepted method of dating – the Masoretic, Ussher method - disagrees with the Jewish calendar, and sets the Adamic inception date at 4004 BC instead of 3761 BC. If that date were correct, the flood would have occurred at 2348 BC and we would have already used up those 6000 years and Christ’s return would be slightly overdue by 8 years. So that number is not quite correct either.
Therefore, I suspect the true date of the Noah flood is somewhere between 2438 BC and 2105 BC and anticipate evidence dating to that time range.
I further expect the primary evidence to be geological in nature as it would record multiple catastrophes, such as earthquakes, sudden changes in elevation or climate - all indicative that a particular area was specially "targeted." I believe that God would have used such catastrophes to focus the devastation to utterly annihilate everything touched by the Watchers or Adamic man. There is such evidence:
COMETS AND DISASTER IN THE BRONZE AGE - British Archeology, Journal of the Council for British Archeology December 1997At some time around 2300 BC, give or take a century or two, a large number of the major civilisations of the world collapsed, simultaneously it seems. The Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, the Old Kingdom in Egypt, the Early Bronze Age civilisation in Israel, Anatolia and Greece, as well as the Indus Valley civilisation in India, the Hilmand civilisation in Afghanistan and the Hongshan Culture in China - the first urban civilisations in the world - all fell into ruin at more or less the same time. Why? …
Some decades ago, the hunt for clues passed largely into the hands of natural scientists. Concentrating on the earlier set of Bronze Age collapses, researchers began to find a range of evidence that suggested that natural causes rather than human actions, may have been initially responsible. There began to be talk of climate change, volcanic activity, and earthquakes - and some of this material has now found its way into standard historical accounts of the period.
Agreement, however, there has never been. Some researchers favoured one type of natural cause, others favoured another, and the problem remained that no single explanation appeared to account for all the evidence….
The hunt for natural causes for these human disasters began when the Frenchman Claude Schaeffer, one of the leading archaeologists of his time, published his book ‘Stratigraphie Comparee et Chronologie L’Asie Occidentale’ in 1948. Schaeffer analysed and compared the destruction layers of more than 40 archaeological sites in the Near and Middle East, from Troy to Tepe Hissar on the Caspian Sea and from the Levant to Mesopotamia. He was the first scholar to detect that all had been totally destroyed several times in the Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age, apparently simultaneously.
Since the damage was far too excessive and did not show signs of military or human involvement, he argued that repeated earthquakes might have been responsible for these events. At the time he published, Schaeffer was not taken seriously by the world of archaeology. Since then, however, natural scientists have found widespread and unambiguous evidence for abrupt climate change, sudden sea level changes, catastrophic inundations, widespread seismic activity and evidence for massive volcanic activity at several periods since the last Ice Age, but particularly at around 2200BC, give or take 200 years.
Areas such as the Sahara, or around the Dead Sea, were once farmed but became deserts. Tree rings show disastrous growth conditions at c 2350BC, while sediment cores from lakes and rivers in Europe and Africa show a catastrophic drop in water levels at this time. In Mesopotamia, vast areas of land appear to have been devastated, inundated, or totally burned...
Yet what was the cause of these earthquakes, eruptions, tidal waves, fire-blasts and climate changes? By the late 1970s, British astronomers Victor Clube and Bill Napier of Oxford University had begun to investigate cometary impact as the ultimate cause. Then in 1980, the Nobel prizewinning physicist Luis Alvarez and his colleagues published their famous paper in ‘Science’ that argued that a cosmic impact had led to the extinction of the dinosaurs.. He showed that large amounts of the element iridium present in geological layers dating from about 65 million BC had a cosmic origin.
Alvarez’s paper had immense influence and stimulated further research by such British astronomers as Clube and Napier, Prof Mark Bailey of the Armagh Observatory, Duncan Steel of Spaceguard Australia, and Britain’s best known astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle. All now support the theory of cometary impact and loosely form what is now known as the British School of Coherent Catastrophism.
These scholars envisage trains of cometary debris which repeatedly encounter the Earth. We know that tiny particles of cosmic material penetrate the atmosphere every day, but their impact is insignificant.
Occasionally, however, cosmic debris measuring between one and several hundred metres in diametre strike the Earth and these can have catastrophic effects on our ecological system, through multimegaton explosions of fireballs which destroy natural and cultural features on the surface of the Earth by means of tidal-wave floods (if the debris lands in the sea), fire blasts and seismic damage…
The extent to which past cometary impacts were responsible for civilisation collapse, cultural change, even the development of religion, must remain a hypothesis. But in view of the astronomical, geological and archaeological evidence, this ‘giant comet’ hypothesis should no longer be dismissed by archaeologists out of hand.
The dates given in the Old Testament are relative to the inception of Adam on earth and are in dispute in different manuscripts. I’m sure the anomaly is to keep us from being able to calculate the date of Christ’s return - but as a result, there are various different methods for estimating the Noah flood date. The possible Adamic inception dates range all the way back to 12,028 BC. The oldest would allow for some Sphinx erosion along with the Noah flood; some of the others would allow for the Black Sea being illustrative of the Noah flood. Of course, if any of the older ones were true it would be fatal to the authenticity of 2 Enoch but not necessarily 1 Enoch.
Biblical Chronology and Dating of the Early Bible The Genesis Chronologies, can the conflicts be resolved?I believe the Adamic survivors of the flood, Noah and his descendants - still remembered some of the original "tongues" (sounds, information) as described in my "take" on origins. I believe they were attempting to find their own way back home to the spiritual realm by building the Tower of Babel. Notice how they are referred to as "children of men" in the following scripture.
And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.
And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.
And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top [may reach] unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
And the LORD said, Behold, the people [is] one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.
So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city
Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth. - Genesis 11
Once he lost the language, Adamic man lost most of his knowledge and power and continuing to inbreed, he would have lost his ability to retard aging and therefore, after the flood, Adamic men began dying at a younger age, more like the regular hominids.
But Adamic man still knew he was different, he had the desire to ascend and thus was constantly looking for a way to avoid death, to find a higher existence, a spiritual realm, a oneness. But being out of fellowship with God and no doubt confused, his answer was to make idols, household gods, gaze at the stars, fantasize, etc. This probably fed a whole series of strange religions.
I wondered what made Abraham break rank and, to my delight, I discovered in one of the Pseudepigrapha texts a story that "rings true." To sum it up, Abraham dropped one of his father’s household gods in the fire and of course it burned to ash. Abraham mocked the false idol, but his father praised it and said he’d make another.
But you made him with an axe and by your skill he was made a god. And behold he has already dried up and his fatness has perished…
And you say, Let me make another and tomorrow he will make my food for me…
And it came to pass as I was thinking things like these with regard to my father Terah in the court of my house, the voice of the Mighty One came down from the heavens in a stream of fire, saying and calling, "Abraham, Abraham!"
And I said "Here I am." And he said, "You are searching for the God of gods, the Creator, in the understanding of your heart. I am he…" – Apocalypse of Abraham
The Bible begins the story of Abraham at the point where God tells him to get away from his father:
Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee:
And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:
And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. – Genesis 12:1-3
And there established grace though faith as the method of returning home to the spiritual realm:
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: [it is] the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast - Ephesians 2:8-9
By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went
By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as [in] a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise:
For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker [is] God. – Hebrews 11:8-10
Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.
Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham.
And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, [saying], In thee shall all nations be blessed.
So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. Galatians 3:6-9
Jesus answered, If I honour myself, my honour is nothing: it is my Father that honoureth me; of whom ye say, that he is your God:
Yet ye have not known him; but I know him: and if I should say, I know him not, I shall be a liar like unto you: but I know him, and keep his saying
Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw [it], and was glad.
Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?
Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. – John 8:54-58