The Skeptics Annotated Bible (4 page)

1
In the beginning
God created the heaven and the earth.

2
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.

(1.1)
“In the beginning”
The first of two contradictory creation accounts. Compare with 2.4-25 in which the order of events is entirely different.
1 The two creations
2 Who created heaven and earth?

The Genesis 1 account conflicts with the order of events that are known to science. In 1.1, the earth and “heaven” are created together “in the beginning,” whereas according to current estimates, the earth and universe are 4.6 and 13.7 billion years old, respectively. In Genesis, the earth is created (1.1) before sun and stars (1.16); birds and whales (1.21) before reptiles and insects (1.24); and flowering plants (1.11) before animals (1.20). The order of events known from science is in each case just the opposite.

3 And God said,
Let there be light
: and there was light.

(1.3)
“Let there be light.”
God creates light and separates light from darkness, and day from night, on the first day (1.3-5). Yet he didn’t make the light producing objects (the sun and the stars) until the fourth day (1.14-19). And how could there be “evening and the morning” on the first day if there was no sun to mark them?

4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

7 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.

8 And
God called the firmament Heaven
. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

(1.8)
“God called the firmament Heaven.”
God spends one-sixth of his entire creative effort (the second day) working on a solid firmament. This strange structure, which God calls heaven, is intended to separate the higher waters from the lower waters.

9 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.

10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

11 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.

(1.11)
“Let the earth bring forth grass.”
Plants are made on the third day before there was a sun to drive their photosynthetic processes (1.14-19). Notice, though, that God lets “the earth bring forth” the plants, rather than creating them directly. Maybe Genesis is not so anti-evolution after all.
3 Were plants created before or after humans?

12 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.

13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.

14 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: