Genesis 1 - 2 (Re-run)

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:15] Speaker B: Welcome to the weekly Deep Dive podcast on the Add on Education Network. The podcast where we take a look at the weekly come follow me discussions and try to add a little insight and unique perspective. I am your host, Jason Lloyd, here in the studio with my friend and this show's creative genius, creative genius producer, creative genius, Nate Pifer. [00:00:36] Speaker A: What's up, creative genius. I like that. [00:00:39] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. It is so good to be doing these with you, Nate. [00:00:43] Speaker A: It's a party. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. [00:00:46] Speaker B: So we're rolling into 2022, ready to discuss the Old Testament. [00:00:53] Speaker A: What more could we be asking for right now than living into 202022 and discussing the Old Testament? [00:01:00] Speaker B: I am excited every week and this Christmas season, this holiday season, good friends of the show here, good friends of us, the Erickson family. Oh, Shout out made the greatest shirts and dropped them off as Christmas surprises. Let the begatting begin. [00:01:17] Speaker A: They know us too well. They know me too well. Let's just say that I know you like begatting too, but I am the biggest fan of begatting. Begats. [00:01:25] Speaker B: Let the begats roll. [00:01:27] Speaker A: Let the begats begin. Maybe we should get a. Because we have them. So maybe we should both. We should just get a picture and post it. But again, thank you, Erickson family. You guys are the best. [00:01:38] Speaker B: They are the best. [00:01:39] Speaker A: Thanks for the shirts. [00:01:40] Speaker B: I love you guys. Thank you. Yeah. [00:01:44] Speaker A: What are we talking about this week? [00:01:46] Speaker B: This week we're diving into Genesis 1 and 2, which is the creation account. There is so much here. I hope we get a honest take on this. I don't know if we'll be able to cover everything. We'd like to, but we'll try to cover a lot of interesting things. And I'm trying to roll into this as well, a proper introduction into what is the Hebrew Bible. [00:02:09] Speaker A: Okay. [00:02:10] Speaker B: And you notice I said Hebrew Bible rather than Old Testament, just in the sense that in Hebrew, there was no New Testament. They didn't believe Christ was the Messiah. So if you don't have a New Testament, you don't have an Old Testament either. Right. So they just call it the Bible. So when referencing the Jews and their scripture, the Hebrew Bible is what they use to refer to what Christianity typically calls the Old Testament. To talk about the Old Testament, I want to kind of frame the discussion in context of why it matters, why it is so important. Joseph Smith lived and breathed the Old Testament quite literally. He felt it was extremely important. And hopefully after the end of last year, you all know the respect and reverence I have for the prophet Joseph Smith. And I want to. I think oftentimes a lot of people's perspective on the Old Testament is maybe it's a little bit confusing. It's hard to read, it's hard to understand. There's a lot of weird crazy stories in there that don't seem to make sense. [00:03:18] Speaker A: The dopest stories. [00:03:20] Speaker B: And some people would rather just assume, kind of skip it over and get into something that feels a little bit more comfortable. My hope is that we understand the Old Testament from a different perspective. That as far as the value it has in helping us understand God and our relationship to him and the atonement and bringing us to better appreciate the atonement, that is what perspective I would like to bring to this Old Testament this year. So let's start with Joseph Smith's use of the Old Testament. So I've got here some work done by Professor Jackson. Sorry, drawing a blank there. I was lucky enough to do some work with him as he was translating some of the Joseph Smith papers and Joseph Smith's translation of the Bible. But he did a lot of work on Joseph Smith's use of the Old Testament. So I'm going to quote straight from him. So quote. Over 170 separate discourses of Joseph Smith are recorded in the Nauvoo period. So over 170, some before small groups and some before thousands. They were recorded both by the official scribes and by other interested listeners in the audience, often incompletely, but sometimes with considerable fullness and precision. Although the sermons covered a variety of topics, more than anything else, Joseph Smith used them to teach his theology. Characteristically, his primary method for doing that was to quote, paraphrase and reason out of the Bible. The vast majority of his addresses included material from the Bible and were built on biblical themes. Although he touched on hundreds of Bible verses, excuse me altogether, he touched on hundreds of Bible verses. Makes a difference if you read that word right. [00:05:12] Speaker A: It does. That makes a big difference. [00:05:14] Speaker B: Big difference. Joseph Smith cared deeply about the Book of Mormon and its role in his church, published three editions of it during his lifetime. His care for the Revelation was just as deep. He says, quote, take away the Book of Mormon and the Revelations. And when he says the Revelations, he's talking about Doctrine and Covenants. Take away the Book of Mormon and the Revelations and where is our religion? We have none, he said. But again, he virtually never incorporated passages from the Book of Mormon or the Revelations into his sermons and writings. They always remained strangely external to him, as though they were never really part of Him. He never once cited the Book of Mormon or the Revelations in any of his sermons or discourses. But such was not the case with the Bible, the language of which flowed out of him freely, naturally, and often unconsciously. He used biblical phrases, examples and images in correspondence, newspaper editorials, private conversations, and especially public sermons. And so you might say, well, he was trying to convince people that weren't members of the church to believe in his religion. So he wouldn't use the Book of Mormon or he wouldn't use the Revelations, Doctrine and Covenants. He would use something familiar. But that's not the case. Professor Jackson continues. Joseph Smith's use of the Bible was not a public communications effort to gain credibility with non Mormons. With rare exceptions, his sermons and writings were aimed only at Latter Day Saints, whereas others were sent out on preaching missions and interacted with non believers. His last half decade was spent primarily at home in his own communities. In the records of his discourses from the last five years of his life, there is only one time where it appears that he used written notes for a sermon. And in all the extant accounts of those discourses, there is little to suggest that he ever took a Bible with them to the standard. Yet he freely quoted it word for word. And the Bible was such an integral part of who he was. Just how he spoke. Every day, he would just cite it. Genesis is one of the books that he cited from most. So this was a big part of his life of who he was. And it shows through in the Revelations and how he organized the church. And to give you an example, Joseph Smith published, I don't know if you guys are aware of this, a Frequently Asked Questions about the Church. And he called it Answers to Sundry Questions. And he kind of put it. A lot of it was kind of tongue in cheek. He says, I've copied the following to save myself having to repeat myself a thousand times. And so here in his answers to the. The most common questions about the church, he says, question number one, do you believe the Bible? If we do, we are the only people under heaven that does, for there are none of the religious sects at the day that do. [00:08:46] Speaker A: Whoa. [00:08:48] Speaker B: Shocked, Fired. Yeah. Yeah. It is pretty kind of a confrontational statement or way of saying that. But we'll look at question two and then we'll dive in and try to break this up a little bit or break it down a little bit. Question two, wherein do you differ from other sex? So first question, do you believe in the Bible? Second question, how are you different from the other sex? Because we believe the Bible. Bold statements and to kind of break down where he is coming from and the importance of the Bible to this religion. As we are going in and studying the Old Testament this year, I want us to gain an appreciation of how it influenced this religion that we are a part of today, that the idea of Melchizedek priesthood, Aaronic priesthood, comes straight from the Old Testament, the idea of temple worship. What other Christian denominations today do you know? To Joseph Smith's point as he is answering these questions, what other Christian religions have built a temple, something that was so critical to the early church? What other Christian religions believe in a prophet which was core throughout the entire book of the Bible? As you talk about these prophets and restorations and these movements of apostasy, restoration and prophetic calling, a lot of the church is based on and founded on the principles and teachings that we find core to our belief in the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible. So I want us to kind of take that perspective as we look at the Old Testament. We are going to our roots. This was what the church was based on. We believe the Bible to be the word of God. Let's understand it, because this is who we are. The Abrahamic covenant, the establishment of Israel, the restoration of Israel, and the teachings of atonement. Now, speaking of atonement, there is a cool conference talk given by Elder Nelson before he was prophet on the importance of the role of the Book of Mormon. Excellent talk. And in here he highlights the ability of the Book of Mormon to teach us about the atonement. He says, this unique mortal mission of the Lord, the Gospel as he defined it, we know as the atonement. The fullness of the Gospel therefore connotes a fuller comprehension of the atonement. This we do not obtain from the Bible alone. The word atonement in any of its forms is mentioned only once in the King James version of the New Testament. In the Book of Mormon, it appears 39 times. It's a powerful statement from Elder Nelson talking about the power of the Book of Mormon to teach us about the atonement to add to his message, the Old Testament, the word atonement, just in that form, atonement shows up 80 times. And if we want to talk about how many times the word shows up, going back to the Hebrew form Kaphar, which is translated often as covering in stories and allegories, in symbolism, in the story of Adam and Eve and their nakedness being covered. Atonement is taught predominantly throughout the Old Testament. It is a very critical role. The Sacrifices, the law. Everything they did pointed towards this. So if the Book of Mormon teaches it 39 times, the old Testament doubles that and brings in a more rich understanding. Because everyone in this time did not know that Christ had come. They didn't have that knowledge in the back. They are looking forward to this coming and teaching about it and hoping for it and believing it and giving us perspective that helps us better appreciate it and understand ourselves and our relationship to God today. [00:13:02] Speaker A: Amazing. Very stoked. [00:13:04] Speaker B: So let's, let's, let's understand a few things about the text itself that might help us better understand our study of the Old Testament by the end of this year. I'm really hoping to make some Old Testament scholars out of you guys. [00:13:21] Speaker A: Can't wait. I want that for myself. [00:13:23] Speaker B: Okay, a few notes about the Hebrew Bible. When we're talking about chapters and verses, chapters and verses did not. Verses did exist in the Hebrew text. They had little markings that would mark the end of a verse, but chapters did not. Chapters is a later invention to try to organize the text, break it down and add it. But it wasn't part of the original. And they do have other divisions, though, and they divide the text into these paragraphs. And in the Hebrew, they would have the pe as a Hebrew letter in the Alphabet that they would put as a kind of a marketing, an opening, a pei. This is where this paragraph begins. And so when you look in Genesis or anywhere in the Old Testament, but we're starting in Genesis, you'll notice these P.E.I. markings are preserved in the text. And you may not have even noticed them or understood what they were, but here they are, the paragraph markings. So if you go to verse six, you'll see your first paragraph marking right at the beginning. There it is, paragraph. And God said, let there be a firmament. And you'll notice, so the first day of creation in verse five. And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. That is the first complete thought. And now you have new paragraph. And then you go to the second day, and then verse nine, there's the paragraph marker again. New paragraph, new thought. So this was how the Bible was originally organized. And you can see that. And it helps you get some context. So when we go, well, I'll dive into this as we're getting into the text. I'll show you how that paragraph marker can help you look at things and make kind of your own judgment call and try to understand and interpret the Bible to help you understand the text. Better. Another thing that you will notice is that there are in the King James version of the Bible, italicized words. So one example I want to show you helps maybe with the interpretation. Verse 16 and God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. And then in italicized text, it says he made, and then normal text, the stars. Also, anytime you see words in italicized in the text, it means that that doesn't exist in Hebrew. What the translators have done is added those words to try to help it read more smooth in English, even though there is no Hebrew precedent for those words to be there. So you can take those words out and try to read it and understand it, and it can help you look at it differently. So, like verse 16 and God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser night to rule the night. The stars also. Is he saying that he made the stars also, like the translators are implying, or is he saying, and the lesser light to rule the night with the stars also? The stars and the moon rule the night. So you can kind of see that and then make your own interpretations. Typically, you'll see is was the to be verb in Hebrew. There is no word for to be. So in English, he was, he is, I am. Those exist in Hebrew, it doesn't. It's just a construct form. You put the words together. And so to put is in there, they're always going to have to add a little bit to the text. So you'll typically see is was, am in italicized marks to help it read a little bit smoother. And it does help, but it also helps us understand. It's cool because the translators were giving us a little bit of a peek at what the original text is versus how their translation is influencing the original text. So it can provide you a little bit of guidance that way. Next, in Hebrew, you don't have grammatical marks, you don't have question marks, you don't have exclamation points. So in us, when we're writing something, we can emphasize by writing it all caps or by putting an exclamation point or by underlining it. There's lots of things that we can do grammatically to. To a statement, to try to add emphasis or to show that we are asking a question in Hebrew, because they are not using grammatical marks to show these things, they do it more, I think, artistically. So when you are reading about, for example, the seven deadly sins, it says these six things. The Lord hates Yea, seven of them. He doth abhor you look at how he's building this motion. He Six things now become seven. It swells, hates, now becomes a pores. It's much more violent. So they're doing it through word choice. They're doing it poetically. So in Hebrew, I will curse you with a curse or bless you with a blessing. You have this emphasis, these words that are repeated two times. Or you have a building, or you have a falling where you're running to, walking, to sitting, to standing, to laying, this idea of motion through the words. So in Hebrew, there's a lot of poetic use of the language to drive home points, a lot of repetitiveness or chiasmus. And we'll get into this poetry later on through the Bible. All right, I think that's a well enough kind of introduction into the text. Maybe. Let's get into the message itself, the heart of this episode as we talk about the Creation. To me, the creation account. It's amazing. There was a time. It is. Okay, if I just kind of break this up a little story? Story time, baby. When I was going to byu, studying Hebrew, studying the Bible, I wanted to develop a photographic memory. I wanted to just learn and retain as much as I could of anything. And I heard somewhere that if you memorized a scripture a day for two years, you would get a photographic memory. And so I tried, and I got, like, the first seven chapters of the book of Nephi, word for word, memorized all the way down, because rather than try to pick your favorite verses, I took the lazy way out. I just started at page one and tried to move through. And then I kind of got tired of reading through all the Nephi and doing it. So I tried to break it up, and it took me to Genesis 1. And then I started memorizing the Hebrew of it. So Genesis 1, one of my favorite chapters, I've really taken to heart and tried to internalize it. Kind of like Joseph Smith in the Bible. I memorized this chapter in the Hebrew. At the end of the day, I didn't stick with it. I didn't get two full years. No. [00:21:02] Speaker A: Sorry that you have to be like a mere mortal, like we are. Sorry about that, Jason. [00:21:07] Speaker B: You know, some things take a lot of perseverance climbing that high mountain. I didn't get to the top. I didn't get to the top, but I did learn Genesis 1 in Hebrew. Do you want to hear some of the Hebrew here? [00:21:21] Speaker A: It's what I've been waiting for. [00:21:23] Speaker B: All right, here we go, guys. Bereshit bara elohim etcha shamayim va' etcha eretz vaha eretz hayta tohu va bohu. And that's our introduction. That's the beginning. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Let's get into that creation. Okay. The earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. This first deep and the spirit of God moving upon the waters. This idea that at the beginning of creation there was primordial waters is what they call it primordial mordial kind of this before earth idea that there was this chaos and waters was the way of them imagining chaos. And you see this and creation epics outside of the Bible. This is where the Bible is going to be very similar to its time, a product of its time. This idea, they called it in the Babylonian creation myth, Tiamat, which is like the Hebrew T, home for this deep, this abysmal waters. And creation was the mastery of these waters. They say that this primordial mound arose from the waters. And from this spot God stood and affected creation and dominated over the waters. And in the Babylonian accounts, Marduk is the God who is mastering the waters. Tiamat is this chaos monster and she wants to destroy the gods. Marduk is the champion the gods send to go represent them and to fight Tiamat. And she is this dragon. So oftentimes the waters, the chaos is also figured as a beast in this dragon sense. And you even see it in the Hebrew later when he says, aren't you the one who cut Rahab, who wounded the dragon and Rahab again, this primordial chaotic monster, this water monster. So the way that Marduk does this in the Babylonian epic is he takes the four winds and shoves them down her throat and it tears her apart from the inside. And then he takes her body and he makes the earth and creates man from the clay from which it stands. And here's this Babylonian creation myth in Genesis. It's not that bloody, it's not that violent, but you have these elements of this water, destructive chaos. At the beginning, this brooding over the waters, the spirit of God moves on the waters, going to create this dry land and force the waters in their place. And they say that this very first mound from which the waters recede, that God stands to do creation, is what he's going to turn into Eden. This is where man is first created, the Garden of Eden. This is paradise from which they leave. This is how it has its beginning. And this is going to play a significant role throughout The Bible, you see it as God's signature when he takes Israel out of Egypt, he doesn't just take them the easy way, he takes them to the borders of the sea. And again, I am going to show my power over chaos, to organize. And he is dividing the Israelites from the Egyptians to create a nation. And his power is going to hit the waters and separate them to dry land to appear to where you have this new creation account. And now you are creating through separation this, this new nation, Israel, which is very much linked to this creation account. You're going to see it as Elijah gets carried up in the chariot and throws his garment down to Elisha, who steps to the rivers and smacks it with the robe and the rivers part and shows his mastery. And again you're going to see this signature move when Christ is in the boat on the Sea of Galilee and they say, master, carest thou not that we perish? And his spirit, his wind, his voice moves upon the waters as he states, peace be still. And the chaos becomes order. This is the powerful statement of creation. This is how it began, by the power of the Word. And that's what you're getting in Genesis 1 when it says the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And the word for spirit is ruach, which means spirit, wind or breath. And it's cool that you've got these parallels. In Babylon when Marduk slays the monster, he's using the wind. Here it's the wind or the Spirit of God, his breath, his voice. Voice. By his command, he is showing mastery over the waters. So understand that imagery. The waters represents tumult, chaos. And God is going to put order over the chaos and show his mastery by making this recede with His Word. Uh huh. And God said, let there be light. So again with this word. And God said, and we're going to see that over and over. Vayomer Elohim. And God said, and he said. And again, this idea of his breath, his wind, his voice, his spirit is what's affecting creation. By the power of His Word, let there be light. And there was light. And God saw the light, that it was great. Good. When it says that he saw the light, that it was good, we're going to see him repeating this statement for each day of creation. He saw what it was, that it was good. He saw that it was good. He saw that it was good. And when he's done, he says, and he saw all of creation, that it was very good. And good has a sense of completion that it's done the accountability. He didn't just say, let there be light, but he also saw to it that it was good, that it was done, that it met the requirements of his creation. And the idea of good here is a sense of that it was righteous, that it was correct, that it was obedient. Then some of the creation, he's saying, let the firmament divide the waters from the waters. Let this do that. And he saw that it was obedient in a sense of good in that it was obedient. So he is handing out responsibilities or having things perform different, and then he is following through and holding it accountable. This is where you get that sense of creation in Abraham that Joseph Smith records. And the gods said, and the gods saw that they were obeyed. And when we see. One quick note. When you see the word God in Hebrew, it is most times from Elohim. And the im ending, as we've talked in other episodes, is the plural. You can translate God as gods in most cases just as easily as you can God. So if you say in the beginning, gods created the heaven and the earth, and. And the gods said, it is technically a correct translation in the sense that it is. The Elohim said, the Elohim did this, and Elohim means gods. It's interesting. And as we're getting into creation, it's a powerful story. I think we're very familiar with it. It's important because it shows up in Genesis. It shows up again for us in the Book of Moses, it shows up a third time in the book of Abraham, and then we've incorporated it as central to our temple worship. There is a lot to be learned and a lot to value from this creation story. And I feel like it gets a disservice from people defending the creation, from science and trying to say this is not supposed to be a scientific explanation for how the world was created. It's supposed to be more of a story that tells us about who we are and try to create this, what it is and what it is not, and trying to put limits on the word of God. And as you look at this, it doesn't seem like a very scientific explanation as God is trying to explain to man thousands of years ago concepts that are beyond his reach. But as we looked from the Book of Moses, Moses beheld every inch of the earth and every person that lived on the earth. He had an understanding of things past, things future. He had quite a bit given to him. And I tend to want to give him a lot more credit than we do. And I tend to think that this text, this creation account, is not just a good religious story to help us understand symbols and the meaning and who God is, but also scientifically gives us a better comprehension of how the Earth was created. So allow me to try to explain that just a little bit. When we look at this creation. And the very first thing is God said, let there be light, but then he does not create until day four, the sun and the stars and the moon to rule the day and to rule the night. How is that possible? How is God creating light before he's created the sun and the moon and the stars? Is this a disagreeance with science, or is this. There's something better to understand with how this works. So in trying to understand modern scientific perspective to the creation of the Earth, there have been a lot of studies recently done with samples of magma. Not magma, mantle rock from the Earth's mantle. So we have our crust, which is a layer several miles thick. Below that, we have the mantle. We have never been able to successfully drill through the crust down to the mantle of our Earth, but we have had samples of the mantle thrust through the crust, through volcanic activity, through tectonic shifting, to where we can take that rock and we can study it. And scientists have taken mantle samples and tried to understand its makeup, its chemical makeup and how it formed and what it has to understand the early atmosphere of the Earth. And they've taken intense lasers and they've shown them on it to heat it up into its molten state. To understand the nature of an early Earth and what its atmosphere would be like, I'm going to read from one of these studies just a little bit. Working with colleagues in France and the United States, we found Earth's first atmosphere was likely a thick, inhospitable soup of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, much like we see on Venus today. We have plenty of samples of the mantle, some brought to the surface by volcanic eruptions and others by tectonic processes. From these, we could work out how to put together a matching mix of chemicals. In the library. We determined this atmosphere was composed of carbon dioxide and water. Nitrogen would have been in its elemental form, N2, rather than the toxic gas ammonia, NH3. But what would have happened when the magma ocean cooled? It seems the early Earth cooled enough for water vapor to condense out of the atmosphere, forming oceans of liquid water like what we see today. This would have left an atmosphere with 97% carbon dioxide, 3% nitrogen, at a total pressure roughly 70 times today's atmospheric pressure. Talk about greenhouse effect. But the sun was less than 3/4 as bright then as it is now. So early Earth, in the beginning forms of its creation, the atmosphere, the pressure was roughly 70 times atmospheric pressure today. And a similar makeup to what we have on the planet Venus. As far as atmosphere goes, I don't know if you know this, but on the planet Venus, you cannot see the sun at noonday, the clouds, the atmosphere is so thick, you cannot distinguish the sun in the daytime. If you take the Earth, an early Earth, its atmosphere was so thick and crowded, and the sun was a third as powerful as it is now. You would not see the sun, let alone the Moon or the stars, after the creation of the Earth. So first there is light. First the sun is created before the planets. Then you have to start separating the water out of the atmosphere, and you have to pull it together. And as you get the water out, the atmosphere is such that it obstructs the Sun. You can't see the stars. And then you have to have these simple organisms that start doing the photosynthesis, that start taking the carbon dioxide, the atmosphere that is rich in carbon dioxide, and converting it into oxygen, until you can start getting more complex life forms that evolve onto the face of the Earth. And then as you do that, you can start now pulling that out and create an atmosphere to where you can now start to see the sun and the day and the stars at light to rule the night on day four. And now you can start having more complex life evolve. And as we look at day four of creation after. So let's go to day four, they're talking about the lights. 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 for 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, the lesser light to rule the night. And he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of 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. Now, on day five, and God said, let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life and the fowl that they may fly above the Earth in the open firmament of heaven. Where is life created on Earth? According to science, life started in the oceans. When I go to the creation account in Genesis, I see no disagreeance when it says, let the oceans bring forth abundantly. Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life and foul. And this idea that the fowl in the air, the birds, are coming from the ocean that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heavens. And God created great wells and every living creature that moveth which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind. And you've got these periods, these long slow periods of time, and it's fascinating if we even step back in creation and we talk about the plants that show up when we talk about that order in verse nine. And God said, let the waters under 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 sees. 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. So as I look at the progress in the creation of plant life, grass to herb to tree, and you look at the early plant life, the history of that, and they'll tell you about how plants in the very beginning were very small and close to the earth because they didn't have the systems for taking the water and bringing it out to the tall plants. You couldn't have seed bearing trees, you couldn't have seed bearing plants. You had these non vascular plants that were very short and close to the earth, the grasses, those come before then. You can start getting these herbs and start developing these other plants. And then as you start to develop into these seed bearing plants, then you can eventually get to where you're having shrubs and trees. But even the order of creation, creation of plant life as described in Genesis matches your scientific explanation of the development of plant life here on Earth. And they say that plant life developed well before animal life to the point where the entire earth was covered in plants because there was no predators, there was nothing to eat the plants, the entire thing was just covered in plants, which allowed for enough exchange of the carbon dioxide, the air and oxygen to where you could get an oxygen rich atmosphere to now where animals can start showing up. And they're going to show up out of the ocean and then you're going to start building a more complex animal structure. That eats the plants and starts to create this other new balance in creation. So this creation account, as much as it jives and matches with early Mesopotamian history and these creation accounts of. Of a God fighting these forces of chaos, it also matches and holds up against current scientific understanding thousands of years later. This idea that you have to have these early photosynthesizers, you have to have these early plants that are exchanging with the atmosphere, that are creating a place to where you can now start to have more light filter into the planet. Now you can have oxygen to support the animals that all of these happen. And one of the fascinating things about creation, I think most of you are aware, Nate, I'm sure you know this. When you talk about a day in Hebrew, the day starts with the sunset, right? When you talk about the Sabbath, it is Friday night, when the sun sets, Sabbath begins, and Sabbath ends with sunset the next day. So it encompasses a period of darkness and a period of lightness. 24 hours from sunset to sunset. However, look at how God describes these days in creation. It is very different from the Hebrew day. He says, going for the very first day, and God called, verse 5, and God called the light day, and the darkness, he called night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. Not from sunset to sunset. He says the evening. So when the sun went down to the morning was the first day. And I look at that and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, evening to morning. Seems like it should have been the first night, not the first day. But I think he is going through starting at sunrise, telling us what he did during a period of light. And then when he gets done, he reflects back upon the day from the evening, from the time he stopped going back to the time where he began was the first day, that first period of light, almost kind of this chiastic structure where he starts at the morning, works to the night, and then he finishes with the night and goes back to the morning and says, this was my first day. And I think it is significant that he is not including periods of darkness or with that creation. The reason why I think it is significant when you look at the scientific history of Earth is that you have massive periods of extinction between these different events. You have this period where plants cover the Earth and you have this weird nightfall of destruction instead of creation. And here we have a God, as we talked in the last episode, the Creator and the Destroyer. And this creation account is not just. Maybe I shouldn't give credit to God as the destroyer on this one. This idea that he is battling chaos and that there are times where night prevails and then he comes back in and puts order in the day. And it's this battle, this back and forth. Here is the day and then night fell, here's the next day and then night fell, and then here's the next day and night fell. And you look at it and say, how is it that you have these massive extinction events on Earth, yet life evolved to be more sophisticated, more complicated. After each one of these extinction events, 90% of life on Earth is wiped out. Wouldn't we be starting at square one? Yet the very next day, life on Earth is more developed, more complex. And I love this story. In an episode a long time ago, the Silmarillion, when he's doing his creation account in J.R. tolkien, he's talking about the song that they're singing and your version of Satan, if you will, trying to interweave discord into the song. And yet these destructions, this coldness brought the water to bring this beautiful snow or this beautiful creation that even though as much as Satan tried to destroy the creation, it worked to diversify and to beautify it, but yet there's this role of this back and forth. The creation was not just this one smooth deal. It was periods of light and periods of darkness. That's what I like about it. [00:45:23] Speaker A: There's kind of a cool. Just throw this in there real quick. There's kind of a cool parallel even to the various dispensations of, of recorded history through the Bible. Right, Absolutely. And, and that's, and, and like to highlight exactly what you're saying. That's very much a pattern which is light and then darkness naturally happening. Right. Not God causing that, and then him coming back and re establishing light even in a more full way, and then again trailing off into darkness because of nature, naturally. And every time he comes back and re establishes his light, it's a brighter light and even more sophisticated. [00:46:01] Speaker B: And that's what I love about God, is his patterns being able to step it out and apply it on such a large scale. And yet you can also zoom in and it works so well on a small scale, this idea of the history of the world being a creation at times when God calls a prophet and dispels light on the Earth in this period of day when there is light and then there is apostasy and rejection and darkness. But he reclaims his creation and takes it one step closer. The whole history of the Earth is described in six days, with the millennium being a seventh day of rest. All of Earth history follows this pattern. But then on the individual level, how much of us we try so hard to create order, to separate out. And there's moments we walk in the light and we know we walk in the light, and yet we get tired, we're not perfect. And periods of darkness roll in where we wonder, we struggle, we have this darkness. And sometimes the darkness really comes to help us appreciate that light when it comes back even stronger. And we keep hoping that the days of lightness are enough to overpower and create us to a point. When we hit that seventh day, it's enough. [00:47:29] Speaker A: I even again, too, not to get like too on the nose about this, but I also just love even the symbolism in, in the life cycle, like you just said, right? The idea that at birth the waters separate and we are, you know, thrust into this, you know, from, from the primordial soup, right? We, we are thrust into this world and then throughout this world, we, we eventually slow down and grow old, you know, but not before a chance again to re. Establish life again, separate the waters quite literally and, and come back into this earth new and fresh again. So I mean, there's a lot of really beautiful kind of symbolisms even in that. Even in just the cycle of life on the very personal, individual level. [00:48:17] Speaker B: And we'll see it with, as we mentioned, Moses, this idea of him separating the waters of the Red Sea and going through in this new creation account. Right. We saw it again with Noah when the earth was flooded. And he's in this ark almost this new birth, this new creation, the Red. [00:48:36] Speaker A: Sea, the blood and the water. [00:48:38] Speaker B: Yes, and the animals on the ark, this new Eden as it comes out. And we see it in our own life, in the waters of baptism. And it's funny how people look at these ancient Israelites, and as much as they credit them for their Bible, the religion, a lot of religions come from these guys, but they look at their understanding of cosmology, the heavens and the earth, and they think they are so backwards or stuck in a time where they don't understand anything. They're not scientifically based in anything. The Hebrew word for heaven, shamayim, literally means there is water, and they look at it. The heavens of earth, the windows, excuse me, the windows of heaven. When they open, it's holding back all the water that's caught up there and it falls on us and it rains. And that's this simple understanding because the sky is blue, it must be water. And so they look at them and. [00:49:33] Speaker A: Say that's they were stupid or they didn't get it? Or they misunderstood. [00:49:39] Speaker B: And yet today, and I was just reading this week, they've discovered a new phenomenon called atmospheric lakes. We have these atmospheric rivers and these atmospheric lakes of these large deposits of water in the atmosphere that move over and this whole water cycle and the waters that are above that bring rain down from below as a blessing, and the waters below, maybe they are not as backwards as people want to give them credit for. Maybe their idea is not as wrong as what it seems. And when you talk about God having to travel to the earth, in the Babylonian temples, in the Egyptian temples, they would put their gods in a boat and on the Akitu festival, an ark. The Akitu festival is the new year, as we're celebrating New Year's, the Babylonian New Year festival, they would take their boat and put him in an ark and then parade him around. And the idea is that if there is water up in the heavens and he has to get here, he has to travel through the waters to get here. And, and they put tie up posts on the roof of their temples for the gods to tie their boast, their posts to their boats to. [00:50:56] Speaker A: That's very convenient. That's very kind. That's considerate of them. [00:50:59] Speaker B: Considerate of them. Seems, seems all weird. But when you understand this, the role that waters plays in chaos and our importance of trying to create by organizing and controlling the waters, instilling order on it, and we have to pass through the waters of baptism to enter into the kingdom of heaven, it works on a religious sense, it works on a symbolic sense, it works as a narrative, it works as a story. But scientifically there is also a lot of validity to what's happening as well. That's what, that's what's so powerful about this creation account to me is how it works in tying in a lot of these weird ideas of the ancient world. And yet it fits in a more coherent message to us in a modern world. And yet it also has scientific truth that resonates with it. What other document from 5000, 3000, 2000 years ago makes this much sense and has that much meaning and that much message on so many different levels. [00:52:12] Speaker A: It's awesome. I love it. Should we keep going? [00:52:14] Speaker B: Yeah. If there is anything that testifies to the truthfulness of the Bible as the word of God, to me, right in the beginning with this creation account, I love it. [00:52:26] Speaker A: Let's keep going. [00:52:27] Speaker B: Okay, going back into the creation account, let's look at chapter two. And this is where you'll see how those paragraph markers can help us okay, verse 1. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the hosts of them. So if you look at that, it almost fits a little bit better with verse 31. Then God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Thus. So if we were to read this with no interruption, thus the heaven and the earth were finished and the host them. And on the seventh day, God ended his work which he had made. And he rested on the seventh day from all of his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in that he had rested from all the work which God created and made. And then verse four, paragraph marker. That, to me is where chapter two should have begun and chapter one should have ended. You see, that previous paragraph fits so well with the end of chapter 31. And we're going to see throughout the Bible how these chapters and interjections are kind of weird and some of these breaks and see if we can look at it and make a little bit more sense. In chapter two, we have that new paragraph, verse four, new thought. These are the generations of the heaven and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, 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. This is kind of weird. We just went through creation. We talked about the plants, we talked about man. And now all of a sudden we have a break, a new thought, and God says he's giving us a whole different perspective. This is another creation account. And in my mind, Genesis 1 is telling us, here's the creation of the earth and how I did it all. And now Genesis 2. If we start this in verse 4. Now, this is the story of this generation of life on the Earth. Perhaps there was all sorts of life and all sorts of things and all sorts of. Who knows what happened before God repurposed the earth for us to be here at this time. Let me now tell you the story of Adam and Eve and your generation of life here on the earth. Life has been wiped out. I'm going to start all over. And here we have a new cycle. This is before the plants and the man was here. And now God tells us about Adam. [00:55:26] Speaker A: And Eve, about mankind. [00:55:27] Speaker B: Mankind. And so he causes a mist to go up, verse 6. For there went a mist from the earth and Watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul. That is significant to me. Again, you have the breath or wind of God, or spirit or spirit of God in creation. The same spirit word that moved upon the waters, he is putting it is the spirit of man is now being put into man. He breathes into his nostrils. And the idea that that wind, as we breathe in, as long as we're breathing in and breathing out, we're staying alive. If we stop, that wind stops, that goes away. We lose our spirit. It's no longer part of us. So the spirit and this wind are kind of interconnected. [00:56:20] Speaker A: That's awesome. [00:56:22] Speaker B: And when we're talking about the wind or spirit as part of this, there's something significant about this when we're talking about creation. And that to me is the sealing ordinance of a man and a woman being sealed together. Ordinances have a physical aspect to them and a kind of a non physical. The oath that you're making the covenant, right? So baptism, physically you're getting put into the water and you're being pulled out. That is the physical aspect, symbolic of a covenant or an oath, a promise that you're making go into the wedding, the ceiling. The physical aspect of this ordinance is that man and women share breath when they are asked to kiss over the altar. In my mind, I look at this as another example of creation. That this spirit, this wind is exchanged and that now they are both going to give of their life to create new life and to create. [00:57:36] Speaker A: That's awesome. [00:57:37] Speaker B: And God is going to give them a command. One that seemed kind of weird to me when he says to multiply and replenish the earth. What seemed weird to me is the word replenish. If you are replenishing, is that assuming that the earth was full before. [00:58:03] Speaker A: And. [00:58:03] Speaker B: In English it has that sense. This is something that I have wondered before. Was this a hint that the earth was full of life before we had an extinction event or something happen and God has started anew, are we supposed to refill the earth? And if that's the case, then haven't we refilled it today with billions of people, the earth is full. So do we still have to refill? And so I think the problem is it is a poor translation in Hebrew. It doesn't have the sense of replenish. In Hebrew it means fill, not refill. And we are not trying to get it to a certain level that it was we are supposed to populate, to continue to populate and fill the earth. Let's go on. Some of the description of Eden I think is worth noting. [00:59:00] Speaker A: Okay. [00:59:00] Speaker B: They talk about the river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from thence it was parted and became into four heads. The name of the first is Paisan, that which compasseth the whole land of Havilah. And there is gold. And he talks about each of these different four rivers. And the idea is, if water is flowing from Eden, it is splitting into four streams. The significance of four is the four corners of the Earth. Eden is the source of water to water the entire Earth. To go out into the four different corners is the symbolism and imagery here. If Eden is watering the earth, then Eden has to be at a part higher than the Earth because water flows with gravity down. So again, this idea that the very first mountain of the Lord is Eden, from here God put man on the earth. The water is flowing out. But then also this source of creation is to nourish the rest of the earth. From this story comes nourishment and water to go fill the rest of the earth. Donald Perry, a professor of Hebrew, helped translate some of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Amazing man. He's written an article about the Garden of Eden as a temple of God and some of the imagery and symbolism there. We'll get to when we talk about the fall of man. And last, as we start talking about a help meet for the Lord, for Lord, for Adam, verse 15. And the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the man said. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat. But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. Let's talk about that here in a second. Keep going. And the Lord God said, it is not good that man should be alone, for I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground, the Lord formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air and brought them unto Adam. So again, we have kind of a different story of creation that's a little different from what we were getting before. Adam is created, and then God is creating all of these animals after the fact and bringing them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all the cattle and the fowl of the air and every beast of the field. And for Adam, there was not found a help meet for him. Names are important. Names are a part of creation. The idea that if you give something a name, it exists. If it doesn't have a name, it's hard for it to exist. Naming it, there is significance there, and the significance to earning a name and getting a new name. But here Adam is naming the beast of the field, all of the animals, and there is not a help meet for him. And when we say meet, it means equal. A help that is worthy, equal or at his level. Of all the animals, there is nothing like Adam. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam. And he slept and he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh thereof. In Hebrew, we're not taking a rib, but actually a side he took from Adam's side and he closed there up. And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man made he a woman. And the verb for make here when he's creating the woman is the same verb when you're building like you're building a temple. So he took from the Adam aside of Adam and built woman and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. You missed the word play here. She shall be called Isha because she was taken out of Ish. She will be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh. There's some commentary on this from the old rabbis. That Adam, when Eve was created, God did not take from Adam's head that Eve might rule over him. He did not pull from Adam's foot that Adam would rule over her, but he took from his side, from his rib that they would be side by side next to each other. And in some old sources, they talk about how the first man, Adam, this gets a little bit weird. They draw pictures of Adam as a Siamese twin. And this idea that Adam and Eve were both existent at the very beginning of creation. [01:04:05] Speaker A: And. [01:04:06] Speaker B: And really what God was doing was separating the two that were already fully created from each other. That they might come back to each other and reunify through their marriage, through their wedding, through becoming one with each other. But they were part of each other and they separated. And that's the yearning that they come back to each other. This idea that they were one in the beginning and kind of split off. Cleaving and cleave is such a great verb for describing this because it says for this reason shall man cleave unto her. What does cleave mean? [01:04:42] Speaker A: It's to separate. [01:04:44] Speaker B: Yeah. A meat cleaver. And this idea that for this reason shall man cleave. Cleave from what? Separate from what? Cleave from his mother, from his father, from anyone else. In order for this marriage to work, there has to be a cleaving. To cleave to your wife means separate yourself from wanting other wives, from wanting other parents, from. You are becoming one with your wife. [01:05:16] Speaker A: And almost relying on that person or using that person to help bolster you Up. Up. Or each other up. Right. [01:05:25] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:05:26] Speaker A: That you leave the other relationships that you might. Because that's the thing is like, we don't. We don't disconnect from all of our other relationships in this life. Right. When we get married. And I think that that's kind of the thing is. Is like, what are we separating? And that's maybe separating who we. Who we confide in, who we rely on in hard times, who we support, who we. You know what I mean? It's like it's. I think it's just maybe important to kind of draw that distinction there that it's. It's. You don't. You don't end all of your other relationships with your parents and your friends and all of these other things, but what you do is you separate any sort of emotional reliance maybe, right. Or. Or certain really deep attachments in that way and use the help meet that we choose. Right. Or that. That we, you know, cleave unto. Right. We leave to basically join with this other person. And that. That's. This other person is that person that we basically establish and really, you know, sink. Sink our. Our emotional and. And, you know, physical reliance upon Or. Or trust in and various things. Does that make sense? [01:06:45] Speaker B: Yeah, it does. And this story kind of going back to creation, it works so well symbolically is what it's teaching us. From a religious. From overly simplified kind of. This story resonates with us. We like it. But when you try to break it down scientifically, sometimes some of these things a little bit maybe off or Helter Skelter. But I want to take a look at this maybe from a scientific perspective, kind of how we did with the creation account. And look at. In my mind, if I were to try to understand this scientifically, wouldn't I create Eve first? Because man can't create a Woman, If I had Eve as the first creation, then she could give birth to Adam. And wouldn't that fit as a better creation story for how man was here? But here in this creation, you've got Adam. And what's happening is a side of Adam, a half of Adam, is being separated out to create Eve. This idea that they are both equal, that one didn't come before the other, in a sense, that a woman would give birth to a man. And from a scientific perspective, when we talk about how creation takes place, we have two sets of our DNA. We have 23 chromosome pairs that if we were to separate those in half and then combine it with another half of 23 pairs, we get the 46 again, where it creates a new person. In a man, you have an X chromosome and a Y chromosome, and in a female, you have two X chromosomes. And if you were to start with a female and take half the chromosomes to where you now are dealing with one X, and you were to duplicate it, you would end up with a second X. So no matter how you divided a woman, whether you take one half here or one half there, and this is how babies are produced, when you're talking about gametes, when you're talking about the egg cell, the sperm cell, it's half of your genes, it's half of who you are, which is mixing with half of who your spouse is and creating one full set. And no matter how you split that half in a female, you're only ever going to get an X chromosome, where if you take half of a male, which is the X half, and duplicate it, you will end up inevitably with two X chromosomes or a female. You can, scientifically speaking, start with a man, take half of their DNA, replicate it, and create a first female, which you never could do the other way around. [01:09:31] Speaker A: Interesting. [01:09:33] Speaker B: So where you try to look at it and say, if it was a basic understanding and they were trying to reason how this all happened, it would make more sense to put Eve as the first, the mother of all living. That's what her name means, Eve, the mother of all living. But yet, the wisdom of God. I look at this story and I see it even holds up to the most modern understanding, the most scientific, rigorous way you could approach this. It still makes sense, which is kind of cool. [01:10:01] Speaker A: It's awesome. We're running out of time. What do you got for us? [01:10:05] Speaker B: This is it. Next week, we're going to be talking about Adam and Eve. They're naked in the garden. And that's how kind of finishes in chapter two. But in chapter three, as it starts talking about the serpent and being subtle and this idea of the fruit and the tree of knowledge, that's all going to be more in the next week as we talk about the fall of Adam and Eve. And then we're getting into our begetting. [01:10:29] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. You just. You know. You know what is just gonna stoke me, don't you? I have something special for some baguettes ready. [01:10:38] Speaker B: I can't wait. [01:10:40] Speaker A: I'm trying to figure out how. I'm trying to figure out how to do it. If I just actually just pre record it myself and then just. And then play it and record just you enjoying it with everybody at the same time or. I don't know yet. But I'm. I'm just gonna tell you I have something special for you for that. [01:10:59] Speaker B: I mean, do you want me to just post a video with the face palm and just. [01:11:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's. That might be the artwork for that week. All right, well, great work, Jason. I'm incredibly excited to dive into this stuff with you, and I'm excited for you to help make Old Testament scholars out of each of us. But we are done for this week, so until next week. [01:11:21] Speaker B: See ya. [01:11:24] Speaker A: Sam.