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Chapter 12 - Conclusion
The seventh day's rest-for whom? Unquestionably the most important and illuminating disclosure regarding the meaning of the days is that made by our Lord when He explained that the sabbath had, at the beginning, been introduced by God for man's sake. Men have always believed this theoretically, it therefore all the more surprising that every interpretation, of which the writer is aware, has assumed that the seventh day's rest was originated by God for His own rest. Assured by our Lord's pronouncement as to the reason for the introduction of the seventh day's rest and seeing that the Fourth Commandment implies that for the six days immediately preceding the institution of that seventh day God had done work of some kind with man, it became obvious that the six nightly periods - the evenings and mornings - of cessation or rest were also for man's sake. Consequently there was one thing our Lord was not doing on those six days, He was not creating the heavens and the earth and all life on it. Of this we can be quite sure, not only because man was on the earth during those six days and it was he who needed the nightly periods of rest as well as the seventh day's rest. But, in addition, we have the clear evidence of Scripture that woman was not created on the same day or time as man, seeing that many incidents of great importance are recorded as having occurred between these two events. Scripture therefore does not teach a six-day creation or re-creation. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that God created the heaven and earth in six days. It is a record of what 'God said'. The creation narrative is a statement of what God said to man about the things He had created. This is quite evident from the incident where the first man and woman are addressed, "And God said to them ". 'There is a conjoint repetition of what 'God created' and also of what 'God said'. On each of the six days God told man about some aspect of His creative work, much of which had been accomplished in the long ages past. We have to face a fundamental issue from which there is no escape; this first page of the Bible is either the guesswork of some man, or it is a revelation made by God to man. We cannot honestly shrink from this issue, and every examination of its character has impressed us that we can do no other than accept the evidence that here we have the account of a revelation made by God to man, and made very early in the history of man. If anyone doubts this I suggest that they read all the accounts of creation or the origin of things known to man which I have collected into Appendix III, and compare them with the first page of the Bible. God gave names to the things He had created and obviously these names were given for man's sake, for names could surely have no other purpose. This is important, for it is evidence that what we have in this record is both God's revelation of the narrative and His explanation of it to man. Marks of antiquity. In Chapter VIII we considered the marks of extreme antiquity which the narrative bears. Unlike any other account known to man, this first chapter of Genesis contains no reference whatever to any subsequent event. We observed that the account was universal in character and not limited in scope to any particular people or country, but refers to mankind as a whole. Next we noticed the child-like simplicity of its statements, even to the omission in the last three days of revelation of the giving of names for no names are assigned to the sun and the moon; in Genesis ii it tells how Adam gave names to animals. We saw that it has the marks of having been originally written down in some form at the earliest imaginable date. The colophon states that it was written. In Chapter V we examined the final words of the narrative and observed that it is a colophon or appendix, which in accordance with ancient usage gives literary information concerning the writing. We saw that the title given to the narrative was 'the heavens and the earth' and that which was finished was the writing of the narrative. Similar instances were seen of the use in ancient times of these words 'the heavens and the e a rth' and 'finished', the former as a 'title' and the latter to mark the completion of a series of tablets. Other ancient evidence. In the section on archaeoloy (Chapter VII) we reviewed the available evidence regarding the ancient beliefs and traditions of men and saw that at the time of our Lord the prevailing belief of the Jews was that the account of creation had been given in the earliest times by direct revelation from God, and that it had been written down. The Samaritan evidence, dated the third century before Christ, is of a written revelation to Adam which was handed down to Enoch and Noah. With this the oldest translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, agrees in that it clearly states that the account was written. We also saw that the Babylonians taught that on one occasion a Being instructed first man for the daylight hours of six successive days. But it is quite obvious that the Bible account was not derived from the Babylonian, but that the Babylonian tradition was due to the reality of the event. It is hoped that we have succeeded in lifting the meaning of this first page of the Bible out of the rut of opposing and conventional interpretations into which it has unhappily fallen. There is a great difference between reading something into the Bible-this we have no right to do--and in discovering in the Bible things which are undoubtedly there but which have hither-to been overlooked. As Dr. Gwatkin has said, (The Knowledge of God, Vol. I, p. ii), "A theory is easily fitted to any one difficulty; the test of it is its explanation of other difficulties." Current interpretations only meet one difficulty. I submit that the following seven difficulties are eliminated by the interpretation I have given. (i) God giving names - we now see the reason for this. (2) 'God said'-the whole account was a revelation to man, just as the two final statements of what 'God said' are stated to have been. (3) The 'evenings and the mornings' are now seen to be, quite naturally, for man's nightly rest. (4) The seventh day on which God 'ceased' was for man's sake. While (5) all the days, including those in the Fourth Commandment and the seventh day's rest, are seen to be natural days, there is no need to give these days exceptional duration, and this (6) disposes of the idea that (a) the day of rest was instituted a few hours after Adam had been created, or (b) that it was at the end of a long geologic age, or that this seventh day is one of some thousands of years. And (7) the old conflicting ideas about the 'light' of day one before the 'sun and moon' of day four and all its related problems disappears. The first chapter of Genesis therefore does not say anything about the period taken by God in creating the universe, but it does tell us about the period taken in revealing to man the account of creation. Admittedly this has wide implications, for it rids the record not only of the perplexities produced by misinterpretations but what is even more important, it means that we have a God-given record of the origin of things imparted to man in simple language. It is a revelation of the things which man by his unaided efforts could not have known.(1) This first page of the Bible, disencumbered of its misinterpretations, stands in its sublime grandeur, its remarkable accuracy, its concise comprehensiveness, quite unique in the creation literature of the world. I am aware that more might have been written relating to this subject, for instance, on the origin of the idea of God, on the problem of the way in which language and writing originated, but the scope of this book precludes anything approaching an adequate discussion of these important subjects. I hope however what - I have written at least justifies the remark of Descartes that "the origin of the idea of God may well be God Himself ". This first page of the Bible claims that this is so, it is very important that we interpret it aright, for it is the great fundamental basis of our knowledge of God as Creator. False interpretations bring it into disrepute.; our investigation has, we believe, recovered the original interpretation current in ancient. times; what seems to be a new and modern interpretation turns out to be the one current millenniums. When our enquiry began we could not attach ourselves to any of the prevailing schools of interpretation, our attitude was not unlike that of Irenaeus (Ep. lxxxii. 3) when he wrote, " If in any one of these books I stumble upon something which appears to be opposed to truth, I have no hesitation in saying that either my copy is at fault, or that the translator has not fully grasped what was said, or that I myself have not understood." Is it too much to hope that these pages may become an eirenicon, reconciling the two types of explanation now prevailing, which contend the one against the other? That which explains the days as six long geologic periods with geological nights contradicts the other which insists that creation proper is not referred to in the six days, but only a subsequent yet entire re-creation of the earth and all life in six literal days. A house so divided against itself cannot stand, a reapproachment of both sides is necessary. It will be seen that the substance of what both opposing interpretations have been insisting upon is true; the days of Genesis are intended to be literal days, but not of creation, and the time occupied in the events described may well be as long as the 'geological' interpretation asserts. Our study has shown that in the words of Psalm cxix. 16o, "Thy word is true from the beginning ", and we know "" that the truth shall make you free". (1) "Many scientific men have speculated about the first beginning of life and their speculations are often of great interest, but there is absolutely no definite knowledge and no convincing guess yet of the way in which life began. But nearly all authorities are agreed that it probably began upon mud or sand in warm. sunlit shallow brackish water, and that it spread up the beaches to the inter-tidal lines and out to the Open waters " (H. G. Wells, A Short History of the World). According to this statement 'all authorities' are agreed about the probability of 'something about which they have 'no convincing guess'. Appendix I |