Therefore, Volume 1 of this Trilogy on creation will examine first of all what the Bible reveals about origins. It will become compellingly clear that — not only in Genesis but all through the Holy Scriptures — this world and everything in it had its origin not by evolutionary processes but by supernatural special creation, coming into existence at the word of the eternal, transcendent, omnipotent, personal Creator God — the sovereign God of the Bible.
This evidence should be sufficient, but it will then also be supplemented by strong scientific evidence (see Volume 2) and persuasive societal evidence (Volume 3). The conclusion will be that we are certainly the products of God’s special, purposeful creation, and, therefore, must someday answer to Him.
In this volume, therefore, we shall examine only the biblical evidence, accepting it at face value, interpreting each relevant passage of the Bible literally in its intended context, and deliberately avoiding any attempt to correlate it with science. This approach will yield what we can call the biblical doctrine of creation and earth history.
Then, in Volume 2, we shall examine only the data from science and history, completely avoiding biblical references, endeavoring to develop a strictly fact-based scientific doctrine of origins and history. The evolutionary model will be included in this analysis, of course, but the facts must be allowed to speak for themselves, not merely interpreted to fit evolutionism. As indicated above, when this is done, the scientific data will also be seen to correlate better with creation than with evolution.
Thus, the remarkable fact will emerge that the scientific model of origins — developed without reference to the Bible — will ultimately be found to agree fully with the biblical record of origins when the latter is developed without reference to science. This has to be so, of course, because the God who made the world also wrote the Word!
It will come as no surprise, then, as shown in Volume 3, that the evolutionary world view has had and is having a pervasively harmful effect on society and human life in general, whereas true biblical creationism is altogether beneficial and uplifting in every area of life.
First of all, though, let us proceed to explore the Word of God and its marvelous divine record of creation and history.
1 Isaac Asimov, Interview by Paul Kurtz, “An Interview with Isaac Asimov on Science and the Bible,” Free Inquiry, vol. 2, (Spring 1982), p. 9.
Chapter 1
The Biblical Record of Creation
In Volume 2 of this Trilogy, Science and Creation, it is shown that the basic facts of science fit the creation model of origins and earth history much better than they do the evolution model. There are, to be sure, certain unresolved problems in correlating all the scientific data with the concept of recent special creation, but these problems are not nearly so intractable as those which evolutionism encounters.
However, the details of the creation period — such aspects as its duration, the order of events, the methods used, and especially its meaning and purpose — cannot be determined from science. The scientific method is limited to the study of processes as they occur at present, not as they might have occurred in the past. Science in its strict sense can deal with the “how” and “what” and “where” questions, but only rarely with “when,” and never with “why.”
If creation is really a fact, this means there is a Creator, and the universe is His creation. He had a purpose in creation, and man1 is apparently at the center of that purpose, since only man is able to understand even the concept of creation. It is reasonable, therefore, that God, the Creator, would somehow reveal to His creature, man, the necessary information concerning the creation which could never be discovered by himself.
This is exactly what He has done in His book of “beginnings,” the Book of Genesis. Rather than outmoded folklore, as most critics allege, the creation chapters of Genesis are marvelous and accurate accounts of the actual events of the primeval history of the universe. They give data and information far beyond those that science can determine, and at the same time provide an intellectually satisfying framework within which to interpret the facts that science can determine.
The old arguments against the historicity of Genesis no longer carry weight. It once was maintained that neither Moses nor any of his predecessors could have written Genesis, since they could not have known even how to write. No one dare suggest such a notion any more. Writing was practiced even by the common people long before Moses, and even before the time of Abraham. Early man was a highly skilled technologist in many fields at a time far earlier than imagined by evolutionists. There is no reason at all, other than evolutionary preconceptions, that it should not be believed that man has been able to read and write since he was first created.
The general setting of Genesis, from chapter 12 onward (culture, customs, etymology, geography, political units, etc.), is very realistic — so much so that its narratives must have come originally from contemporaries of the people described. There seems no good reason, except for evolutionary preconceptions, to reject the probable historicity of the preceding 11 chapters of Genesis, which merge easily and naturally into Genesis 12.
Finally, all the writers of the New Testament, and Jesus Christ himself, accepted the historical accuracy and divine inspiration of all the early chapters of Genesis, as will be shown in this chapter. To believe these records as being altogether true and reliable is the only position consistent with accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as true and His teachings as authoritative.
Divisions of Genesis
There are several helpful ways of subdividing the Genesis record for effective understanding. The most obvious division is that of the six days of creation. Another important distinction has to do with God’s works of creation and His works of formation. Still another involves the structural divisions of the entire Book of Genesis itself. These divisions are indicated wherever the phrase “These are the generations of . . .” occurs. Each such occurrence marks the termination of one narrative and the beginning of another. This fact strongly implies that each of these divisions had a different original author.
1. The Original Writers of Genesis
As we have seen, the liberal myth that Moses could not have written Genesis because men did not know how to write then was dispelled a long time ago. Nevertheless, certain differences in style and vocabulary still seem to many to justify some kind of “documentary” theory of Genesis, pointing to more than one author of the original documents.
It is significant that, although the Book of Genesis is frequently quoted in the New Testament, nowhere are any of these quotations attributed to Moses. Quotations from the other four books of the Pentateuch, however, frequently are ascribed to him. There is no doubt, on the other hand, that the Jews regarded all five books as the books of Moses. This paradox is easily resolved when it is realized that Moses may have been the compiler and editor, rather than the author, of Genesis. The original writers of the various divisions were the patriarchs themselves, the ones whose names appear in the formula “These are the generations of. . . .”
In accord with the common practice of ancient times, records and narratives were written down on tables of stone and then handed down from family to family, perhaps, finally to be placed in a library or public storehouse of some sort. It seems most reasonable to believe that the original records of Genesis were written down by eyewitnesses and handed down through the line of patriarchs, from Adam through Noah and Abraham and finally to Moses.
All of these ancient records were then compiled and edited by Moses, with the necessary transitional and explanatory