Episode 3: A Forgotten History, part 2
The history Moses gives at the start of Genesis doesn’t play well with others, but what makes anyone think Moses’ version is right?
This episode has more from Genesis 1-2 with background details from the book of Exodus. Any the quotes from the Bible were were taken from the English Standard Version (see ESV copyright here) or the New King James Version. For the other sources, including commentaries, websites, or articles, you can find links and references in the show notes below in the order they appeared. If you can’t find a topic, try searching through the show notes from “Episode 2: A Forgotten History, part 1” as the comment in this half of the show may have been covered by a show note listed there. If you have any questions, there’s a place to contact me at the bottom of the page.
Show notes:
For some background on Jewish theories about where the lights came from on Day 1 and Day 4, see here.
For God being light, see 1 John 1:5 and for God giving light in the New Jerusalem, see Revelation 21:23.
For Babylonian connections to moon worship, see references in Bauer, Susan Wise. The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome . W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition. Locations 1995 and 2385 - 2404.
Whether Babylon provides the earliest examples of astrology is unclear. It does provide very early examples. See more, here.
For the Babylonian use of stars for astrology, God did say the stars were to be used for “signs,” but this wasn’t a reference to human destinies as both Jeremiah and Isaiah make clear. For more see Nichol, F. D. (Ed.). (1978). The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (Vol. 1, pp. 212–213). Review and Herald Publishing Association.
For more on the background of astrology, see here.
For God naming things during creation, see Barker, K. L. (2002) NIV Study Bible. Genesis 1:5, note. Zondervan.
For Calvin and Luther’s idea that the fish and birds were created at the same time because they are related, see Nichol, F. D. (Ed.). (1978). The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (Vol. 1, p. 214). Review and Herald Publishing Association.
For the different words regarding “life” that Moses used to describe plants and animals, see Nichol, F. D. (Ed.). (1978). The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (Vol. 1, p. 213). Review and Herald Publishing Association.
The word for “whale” also means “serpent” in Exodus 7:9, 10, 12 and “dragon” in Isaiah 51:9 and Ezekiel 29:3. In this reference in Genesis it could be referring to a “sea creature” as in Pslams 148:7. From Nichol, F. D. (Ed.). (1978). The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (Vol. 1, p. 214). Review and Herald Publishing Association.
For the association between the Hebrew word for “creatures of the sea” and the local legends, see Barker, K. L. (2002) NIV Study Bible. Genesis 1:21, note. Zondervan.
For more on the Canaanite part-man-part-fish god, see Horn, S. H. (1979). In The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Dictionary (p. 257). Review and Herald Publishing Association.
For more on the Canaanite religion, see sources referenced in the show notes for part 1 of this series that discusses the Baal cycle.
The first time God blessed something is after He made the fish and birds. This further emphasizes the distinction between the animal and plant worlds. For more, see Nichol, F. D. (Ed.). (1978). The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (Vol. 1, p. 214). Review and Herald Publishing Association.
For more on the categories of animals God specified at creation, see Nichol, F. D. (Ed.). (1978). The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (Vol. 1, p. 215). Review and Herald Publishing Association.
For more on Mesha and the Moabite stone, see this article.
For a timeline of ancient Persian history, see here.
For details on the Behistun inscription showing Darius, see here.
For the parallel between God creating Adam and kings creating images of themselves as monuments, see Barker, K. L. (2002) NIV Study Bible. Genesis 1:26, note. Zondervan.
For other examples in the Bible of people setting up monuments to themselves, see 1 Samuel 15:12 where King Saul did it and 2 Samuel 18:18 where Absalom did it too.
According to Genesis 2:7 and Genesis 2:19, God formed both the animals and man from the “dust of the Earth.” In Hebrew, the word use for “forming” also refers to what a potter or a goldsmith does. For more, see Nichol, F. D. (Ed.). (1978). The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (Vol. 1, p. 222). Review and Herald Publishing Association.
God declared that Adam would be made in “Our image, in Our likeness.” These “our” references are used as proof for the doctrine of the Trinity, the idea that there are three parts to God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) that are both individual and combined with one another. Here, when Moses uses the word for “God” he almost always uses the plural form while, at the same time, using the singular form of the verb. The Trinity is a pretty involved topic, and one that people tend to debate. It’s probably worth discussing at some point, but well beyond the scope of this episode. For more information see Nichol, F. D. (Ed.). (1978). The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (Vol. 1, p. 171 and p. 215). Review and Herald Publishing Association.
For a discussion of whether God gave Adam a “soul” or simply made him a “living being” see the discussion in Nichol, F. D. (Ed.). (1978). The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (Vol. 1, p. 223). Review and Herald Publishing Association.
God stopped naming after Day 3. On Day 4, as mentioned earlier, Moses only describes the sun, moon, and the stars, and on Days 5 and 6, presumably the reason God didn’t name anything is because He was reserving that right for Adam who hadn’t been created yet.
For the importance of names in ancient times, see Nichol, F. D. (Ed.). (1978). The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (Vol. 1, p. 210). Review and Herald Publishing Association.
For the practice of naming things as a sign of ownership in ancient times, see Barker, K. L. (2002) NIV Study Bible. Genesis 1:5, note. Zondervan.
For more on Columbus discovering and naming things, see here it and here.
For the English changing New Amsterdam to New York, see here. For the city’s brief tenure as New Orange, see here.
If you’re curious why we call the first man “Adam” it’s because, like me, you don’t read ancient Hebrew. In the original language, the world for dust, as in the dust God sculpted, is ‘adamah. For “man” the generic word, the word is ‘adam with a small “a” and for that first man, in English we just capitalize it. For anyone who reads Hebrew, it’s obvious that this is a story of God making the dust come alive. For more, see Andrews Study Bible (2010) Genesis 2:7, note. Andrews University Press.
After creating Adam, God declares that “they” should have “dominion.” The “they” shows that God intended from the start to make a companion for Adam and the “dominion” shows they were meant to be rulers of the world. See Nichol, F. D. (Ed.). (1978). The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (Vol. 1, p. 216). Review and Herald Publishing Association.
In Genesis 2, it talks about the land before any green plant had sprouted. Instead of a reference to a complete lack of plants, This could be talking about an absence of cultivation, the fact that no one had tilled the ground yet and there was no harvest. See Nichol, F. D. (Ed.). (1978). The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (Vol. 1, p. 222). Review and Herald Publishing Association.
For this as the only complete story of the creation of woman in the ancient near east, see Barker, K. L. (2002) NIV Study Bible. Genesis 2:18-25, note. Zondervan.
Since parts of the creation story appear in both Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, and Genesis 2 seems to have some differences, people often think they are two different creation stories. Instead, Genesis 2 is just giving more detail. The first chapter is the overview, the second chapter recaps and gives more detail on the part that deals with humans and God. For more explanation on why there seem to be two creation stories, see Nichol, F. D. (Ed.). (1978). The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (Vol. 1, pp. 221–222). Review and Herald Publishing Association.
For the idea about the rib symbolizing equality between men and women at creation, see Matthew Henry’s commentary here with notes on Genesis 2:21-25.
From the naming-equals-dominion comment given earlier, you could argue that Adam owned Eve because he named her (See Genesis 2:23 and Genesis 3: 20), but that skips over an important detail. If Adam owned Eve, Eve owned Adam too. By using a bone from Adam to symbolically graft the two of them together, they were, in effect, one person, so the ownership discussion is moot. For the naming of Eve, see Barker, K. L. (2002) NIV Study Bible. Genesis 3:20, note. Zondervan.
Ribs regrow after surgery, as noted on p. 83, here. Other common sources for bone grafting materials are from the hip and leg bones as mentioned here. In these cases, one could argue for the use of the rib given the desire to symbolize equality.
For note on why God rested on Day 7, see Barker, K. L. (2002) NIV Study Bible. Genesis 2:2, note. Zondervan.
God was done with all of creation at the end of the seventh day and it was not an ongoing process according to Hebrews 4:3 where God’s work of creation was “finished from the foundation of the world.” See also Nichol, F. D. (Ed.). (1978). The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (Vol. 1, p. 218). Review and Herald Publishing Association.
For the holiness of the seventh day, the law given at Sinai was perhaps less a statement of new ideas and more as thing to help people not forget things they were already supposed to know. Most of the commandments seem fairly obvious and direct the audience to worship one God and be a moral person in society. The 4th commandment stands out as unusual, but nonetheless important. It was recalled by Isaiah (Isaiah 66:22-23) in the Old Testament and by Luke (Luke 23:54), Matthew (Matthew 24:20) and John in the New Testament, with John noting that the commandments continue beyond the end of the current Earth (Revelation 14:7, 12). See Barker, K. L. (2002) NIV Study Bible. Genesis 2:3, note. Zondervan, and for some details and for the Sabbath as a memorial of creation, see Nichol, F. D. (Ed.). (1978). The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (Vol. 1, p. 175, p. 221). Review and Herald Publishing Association.
For the story of the manna appearing for the Israelites in the desert, see Exodus 16.
For references to manna in later Israelite history, see Psalms 78:23-25.
It’s true, the plagues in Egypt and the crossing of the Red Sea at the Exodus also would be “proof” of Moses’ God, but it would only be proof of that God’s power, not proof of the history Moses explained. The 40 years of food coming 6 days out of 7 on a continuous cycle, a miracle that lasted 4 decades and kept 2 million people alive, was the proof of the history of the 7 days of creation.
On Day 4 of creation, in Genesis 1:14 God mentions that the astronomical bodies were meant to be used as a calendar for marking off time. It’s unclear if there were “seasons” at creation the way we think of them today. At least one version of the verse suggests “appointed times” is an acceptable alternative translation. In that case, the Jews used months to figure out the “appointed times,” for their national celebrations. See Nichol, F. D. (Ed.). (1978). The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (Vol. 1, p. 213). Review and Herald Publishing Association.
One suggestion for why Moses refers to each day with the phrase “evening and morning” is that Moses was referring to the times between when God created. God finished creating, and it was an evening and a morning, and then He started creating again. That could be, but it might also just be a way of referring to a complete “day.” Daniel (Daniel 8:14) and Paul (2 Corinthians 11:25) both use similar phrases that are just translated “day.” We count days from midnight to midnight because the Romans counted things that way. In Moses’ time, and for traditional Jews still practicing today, a day began and ended at sunset. Jews count time going from evening to morning, dark to light, night to day. For more on how the Hebrews counted their days, see Nichol, F. D. (Ed.). (1978). The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (Vol. 1, p. 175, pp. 210-211). Review and Herald Publishing Association.
Weeks and months don’t quite get along. 4 weeks is 28 days but a lunar month is 29.5 days.
For the lack of cosmic cycles that could work as the origin of 7-day rhythms, see here.
Stars can be used to help with a calendar, and often were in ancient times, but they are also great for navigation, being used that way as late as the age of airplanes to navigate across open water. Details of their use in recent times can be found here.
Some might suggest the 7-day “week” came to the Jews from Babylon, but the evidence might suggest the opposite. For the uniqueness of the Jewish week in history, see this article, note 3.
The 7-day week came to the Roman empire in possibly the 2nd century BC according to this article, but the calendar we use today, including the day of rest instead of a market day, is clearly something that came from Christianity into Rome.
There’s some debate over who used a week and how long it was. This article suggests a 5-day week for the Babylonians while the Romans used clusters of 8-days or 10-days. References cited below suggest different groupings.
For the Romans using 8 day weeks, see here.
For the Egyptian 10 day week, see p. 4, here.
For the ancient Chinese Calendar, see here.
For the Assyrian 5-day week, see here.
For comments about which days were special to the Babylonians, and them being considered “evil” see p. 177 here.
For the Babylonians using a lunar calendar, see here.
For more odd calendars in history, the Roman calendar apparently used to have only 10 normal months of about 30 days, with the rest made up as needed. The Mayan and Aztec system used 13 day weeks together with 18 different 20-day months. The Chinese calendar used 30 day months and normal years, but included six 60-day “cycles,” essentially pairs of months, in the system. For more see here and here.
For Cicadas hatching on a schedule, see here.
For an example of a non-obvious rhythm in nature, it’s interesting to realize that people used to sleep for 2 sets of 4 hours rather than 8 hours straight before artificial lights shortened the nighttime. For more, see this article.
The 7-day, or circaseptan, rhythms in biology also show up as harmonics, or multiples, of that base frequency. A seizure article noted 2-week cycles in some patients while another article noted half-week cycles.
For the 7-day cycle in mood, see here.
For the effect of a 7-day cycle on heart rate and blood pressure, see this article.
For swelling on a 7-day pattern after some surgeries, see this article, p. 7.
For more on 7-day cycles in 7% to 21% of seizure patients, see this article.
The probability a transplanted organ will be rejected tends to peak in intervals of 6-8 days after transplant. See this article, pg. 7.
For the effect of a 7-day cycle on heart rate and blood pressure, see this article.
For a cancer treatment study looking at how half-week and full-week cycles affect drug efficacy, see here. For timing treatments based on a 7-day cycle, among other biological rhythms, see this article and the mention of chronopharmacology.
For the idea that this 7-day cycle isn’t just because of culture, see references to “endogenous” in this article as well as examples of insects, fish, birds, and mammals that also use this rhythm.
For nature knowing the 7-day week, see reference here.
For the pontifex maximus changing the calendar in Rome, see here.
The French gave up on changing the lengths of seconds, minutes, and hours after 17 months according to this article while the 10-day week lasted longer with the French Republican calendar itself continuing from 1793 to 1806 as mentioned here.
For the Soviet Union’s experiments with the length of the week, see here.
For more on the Westinghouse time capsule, see pages of the book of record, here.
For the coining of “time capsule” and other famous time capsules, see this article.
The Rosetta stone gave the key to cracking ancient Egyptian writing, but though it was discovered in 1799, it took another 20 years before people figured out just how hieroglyphics worked.
According to this source, the library of Ashurbanipal was discovered in the 1840s. The tablets discussing the Babylonian stories of creation were found between 1848 and 1876 as mentioned on pg. 1 here.
For the discovery of the story of Baal, see here.
For more on the Babylonian and other stories of creation, see here.
For God speaking rather than competing in creation, see Barker, K. L. (2002) NIV Study Bible. Genesis 1:1, note. Zondervan.
For the gods having to fight for control in other stories besides the one given in the Bible, see Barker, K. L. (2002) NIV Study Bible. Genesis 1:1, note. Zondervan.
For God making the world out of nothing, see Psalms 102:25, Isaiah 40:21-22 and Hebrews 11:3, as well as the Andrews Study Bible (2010) Genesis 1:1, note. Andrews University Press and Nichol, F. D. (Ed.). (1978). The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (Vol. 1, p. 208, p. 218). Review and Herald Publishing Association.
For the root word behind the term “deep” that Moses used at the start of the story, see Nichol, F. D. (Ed.). (1978). The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (Vol. 1, p. 209). Review and Herald Publishing Association.
For more on the idea of an eagle “hovering” over it’s nest, see Barker, K. L. (2002) NIV Study Bible. Genesis 1:2, note. Zondervan. For where Moses uses the word again in Deuteronomy 32:11 see Nichol, F. D. (Ed.). (1978). The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (Vol. 1, p. 209). Review and Herald Publishing Association.
For man as rulers of the world, see Genesis 1:26. For the purpose of the seventh day and the communion of God with man, see Nichol, F. D. (Ed.). (1978). The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (Vol. 1, pp. 220 - 221, 604 - 605). Review and Herald Publishing Association.
In His day, Moses’ history undermined the religions of Babylon and Egypt. Today, that same story undermines atheism, the belief in no God, polytheism, the belief in many gods, pantheism, the belief that God is a part of nature, gnosticism, the belief that the material world is evil, and materialism, the belief that there is nothing more than the physical world. For a list of the modern systems the Genesis story opposes, see Andrews Study Bible (2010) Genesis 1:1, note. Andrews University Press, and Nichol, F. D. (Ed.). (1978). The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (Vol. 1, p. 208). Review and Herald Publishing Association. For a definition of gnosticism, see here. For creation in Genesis undermining Gnostic belief, see Andrews Study Bible (2010) Genesis 1:31, note. Andrews University Press. The definition of materialism I used comes from here.
For the perfection of creation, see “very good” in Genesis 1:31 and Nichol, F. D. (Ed.). (1978). The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (Vol. 1, pp. 217–218). Review and Herald Publishing Association.
Update: Altered some notes and improved the sources used for some information on 12/16/2019.