Yet Another Creation Candidate. In previous posts we painted in broad brush the beginnings of another interpretation of Genesis 1. The posts, alas, trace my own convoluted thinking, and are not arranged in the best didactic manner, so I beg your indulgence for this haphazard presentation. 
 
Part one hypothesized that Genesis 1 talks about galactic and solar system formation, along with precedence of cometary over terrestrial life. While a novel creationist interpretation in a few respects, it is also similar to creationists such as Hugh Ross, intelligent design and literalists such as Henry Morris in other aspects.
 
So in part two, we discuss the three main creationist views held by conservatives represented by ID, RTB, & ICR. I hold that they consist of the three ways to balance two sides of a triangle consisting of science, philosophy and special revelation. However the balance is lost when Genesis 3 is exegeted, for Eden loses its scientific relevance to all three: its immediacy in ID & RTB, and its explanatory power in ICR. Both RTB and ID posit so much elapsed time since Eden that its presence becomes an incidental footnote to the creation story, while ICR has Eden with the rest of creation being made to appear old, so that its proximity in time and space becomes a theological rather than a scientific artifact.
 
But if Eden really existed, in space and time explored by modern science, then it not only can differentiate the many creation models (if it is older than 10,000 years, it supports RTB and ID, younger would support ICR), but it can tell us about anthropology, how we differ from Neanderthals, whether war is genetic (Darwinian) or not, whether sin is original or not, etc. In short, Eden tells us where we came from, where we are, and where we are going.  Because Eden is so important to creation models, I explore Eden in several ways.
 
In part three, I discuss Eden geographically, proposing a location in the Mediterranean basin, below sea level. Metaphorically, this is superior to the "chinese" solution of Medieval Christianity, and the "Euphrates marshland" solution of the Protestant Reformers. Not only has man never reentered Eden, but its proximity to the historical events of the remainder of Genesis provide explanatory power for many of the events recorded after Genesis 3. 
 
So in part four, we come to the nexus of the argument, what Eden means linguistically. To understand this significance of Eden, let us review the methodology by applying it to creationist's periodic favorite, "yom".
 
Yom
 
If life began on comets, perhaps even before the Earth cooled down from its formation during the Hadean 4.8 billion years ago, then we are clearly not interpreting "yom" as 24 hour days. In fact, the only reason a day lasts 24 hours, is that this is the present rotation rate of the Earth. However, the Earth's rotation and hence the passage of a day has been slowing at the rate of about 0.02 seconds per millennia due to tidal forces of the Moon. Extrapolating to the time of the Moon's formation in the Hadean some 4.8 billion years ago, a day was perhaps two hours long. So if we define "yom" to refer to a singe rotation of the Earth in inertial space, we must allow it to last somewhere between 2 hours and a billion years (e.g., not rotating). So tying "yom" to a physical phenomena as the literalists would insist, doesn't really define "yom" very well, in fact, it gives it too much freedom.

"Oh, but 0.02 ms/cy is so miniscule!" you may object, "How can that be a problem?" It isn't the size, but the existence that is the problem. To quote George Bernard Shaw, "We've already established what you are, ma'am. Now we're just haggling over the price." That is, because the understanding of physical phenomena is itself a developing subject, as science discovers more about angular momentum and space-time, there is no guarantee that the problem will remain miniscule. For example, despite the knowledge that black holes possess only mass, angular momentum and charge, Einstein's general relativity could only discuss mass for half a century, unable to handle the math of a rotating black hole. In the last 20 years (or at least since I had the course from Charlie Misner), the attributes of a spinning black hole have been added to the theory, but the charge has yet to be incorporated. Yet even with this poor theory, it is well-accepted that time slows down in the vicinity of gravity, and especially in the vicinity of rotating gravity, making elapsed time a rather elastic concept. (Gravity Probe B was NASA's billion dollar satellite to pin this quantity down, but two years past the end of mission, we are still awaiting Stanford's answer.) This parable is to suggest that we haven't yet exhausted the ways in which "yom" can be translated just from physical considerations alone, not counting its additional metaphorical, mythical, theological, and heavenly considerations. 
 
Therefore the literal method of interpretation depends on science, on culture, on aspects of human experience that change with time. It no more uniquely determines the meaning of the word than does the mythical or the biblio-historical methods. Instead, we find there are many reasonable ways to define even a single word, not to mention whole sentences and paragraphs.
 
But let us ignore all these other approaches and zero in on the literal meaning as understood by science:  the definition of "yom" as taken by the ancients to be one passage of the sun on a sundial, or by the moderns to be one revolution of the Earth in space. The ancient measurement requires a clear sky, which was not always available, so even in Biblical times, one had water clocks, hour glasses, and other methods of measuring elapsed time indoors. The accuracy of these clocks depended on technology, with the one-second accuracy of the pendulum clock introduced by Galileo providing a 100-fold increase in precision. If one were to insist that the "literal" meaning be the accuracy to the scribe who first transcribed the word (forcing God to ignore all future scientists), then one should probably say "yom" means a day of 23 to 25 hours. 
 
So for a young earth "literalist" to say that science cannot discover the truthfulness of the six 24-hour day Genesis account because God can make it "look old", requires him to deny the very tools used to define 24 hours! It is like saying "language cannot be trusted to convey truth", or "Mommy, Billy had his eyes open during the prayer". For if the Genesis account is "true" in the sense that it explains the origin of everything, then it must also explain the origin of itself. The recursiveness of the language means that the solution to the duration of "yom" must also include itself. Any general solution that does not include itself is incomplete, unless it also claims universality, in which case it is not just incomplete, but false.
 
Recursion
 
Now just because a theory includes itself doesn't make it true. "All Cretans are liars", said a famous Cretan, who included himself in the theory, yet caused Bertrand Russell to fume that such a statement was nonsense. (Kurt Goedel proved that even if it were nonsense, there was no way to know beforehand which were valid and which were nonsense, leaving us right back where we began.) Despite this incomplete logic, St Paul gave the inspired commentary on Epimenides to Titus  "What he says is true"  leaving us all in theo-logically inspired knots. Language has the ability to transcend science, to transcend logic, to go where neither philosopher nor scientist has gone before. Thus language needs science, needs philosophy, yet is more than both.
 
If we are to know what "yom" means, we come eventually to revelation. We come to God, hat in hand, humbly asking the meaning of the word. But as in a dictionary, words are defined by other words, and those words with more words, until eventually the wordless world, the stars and the galaxies, the Big Bang and the tireless light of creation now cooled by ten orders of ten, the vibration of quartz crystals, and even the more minute vibrations of cesium atoms declare it. Slowly we begin to understand time, and space, and the universe that still sings the creation song in pitches too low to be seen. And the meaning of "yom" coalesces out of the formless and the void, a gift of the Creator whose thought we are beginning to think again.
 
Like an ancient sea voyage, naming and defining is a profoundly recursive task with each days observation of direct causation--clouds and birds and land--corrected by each nights stellar calculation of indirect revelation--the location on the map, the effects of currents and winds, perhaps even, like the Polynesians, sensing the ocean swells reflected from distant lands, deep calling to deep. And so the journey of faith is a voyage of discovery, of linguistics, of hearing God speak, of discerning His voice. There is no certainty apart from the reliance of faith; there is no knowledge but the recognition of His thoughts; there is no progress but the motion across His map. Recursion destroys all self-reliance, leaving only the wholly other, the experience of past voyages, of prior promises kept, of mariner's lore remembered. 
 
It has always been thus, it is only the modern with his calculating machines who think the task leads from A to B by some logic of binary trees. This was the endeavor of the positivists, the reductionists, the functionalists, the behaviorists--yet all their hopes were dashed by the indeterminacy of logic, of quantum mechanics, of chaotic classical dynamics. All the supports of science were found to be incomplete, limited, incapable of certainty but for the simplest problems. For the problems we grapple with daily are indeterminate, recursive, uncertain; they are problems that include us in the calculation, and therefore change as we change, mutating with every decision. If we focus only on what we know, only on our last decision, we are dead reckoning in a hurricane, we are navigating in a fog, we are at sea with neither compass nor sextant. But if we have a goal beyond ourselves, if we have an external referent, a magnetic pole, a pole star, then we can escape the prison of our self, obtaining the salvation of our souls.
 
What is the meaning of "yom"? God knows. And it will take every effort of science, of logic, of linguistics, of hermeneutics to tease it out from Him.  Nor can we be certain that we have attained closure, that we have achieved full understanding, that we "will be like God", for the fruit of the garden only promises us the moral knowledge of "good and evil", which is to say, the knowledge of the only moral agent, the knowledge of ourselves.
 
Seat of the Soul
 
What is knowledge of ourselves but self-awareness? And what is self-awareness without awareness of the other? And what are "self" and "other", but abstract nouns for which language supplies the tools? Everything in the Genesis account about Adam & Eve needs language, needs abstraction, needs recursion. 

In Genesis 1, we have the linguistic actions of God on creating man in the image of God:

• God blesses them (using language, for the sake of language)
• God said to them "Be fruitful, ...rule over...every living thing...",  (abstract collective nouns again)

Then in Genesis 2 we have man's linguistic actions in response to God's:

• God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (breath is also used for speech)
• God said "It is not good for man to be alone..." (otherness, communication, company not available in pets)
• God commanded the man (using language) "From any tree...eat freely, but" (generalizations,  universals, logic, cause & effect)
  
• God ...brought them to the man to see what he would call them. (language, naming, definitions)
• God fashioned into a woman the rib...and brought her to man (alike, yet other)
• And man said "She shall be called..." (language, naming, interpretation of the name)

Not only does language play a critical role in the creation account--"God said" rather than "God did" or "God made"--but language as "breath" appears in the special creation of man--"God breathed...the breath of life". Notice that throughout the sacrificial laws of the Pentateuch, Moses illustrates that "the life is in the blood", yet God's action in bestowing life upon Adam is not about blood, but breath. In this Genesis account, language is more significant than biology for Adam's life. What could be more important than Adam's blood? Adam's soul. I believe that language is nothing less than the seat of the soul.

(In earlier posts, I had called this the "imago Dei", but in this post I am concluding that the image of God is the form of man, whereas the breath of God is the soul of man. However, since I also had thought that chapter 2 and chapter 1 were the same event, the difference didn't matter before.)

Notice also how God's blessing and cursing were executed, not just communicated, with language, because a blessing requires words to be spoken. Likewise Adam's first task was naming, or equivalently, defining the animals, (a recursive language task whose complexity we underappreciated until Minsky's AI group at MIT tried to teach a computer to recognize a horse.) Finally, Adam's "aloneness" was something that all these pets could not solve, despite their possession of all man's attributes but communication (or soul).  Instead, Eve was chosen to be a communicating partner, and Adam's second task was naming her, this partner who is a part of him. Every one of these statements is a recursive task, a job that includes itself. That means it must be an incomplete task, so that the blessing / cursing is still ongoing, the naming / defining, the aloneness / completeness, and the naming of spouse / self are all ongoing, And a task that is ongoing requires propagation across generations.

Now we come to the hard part to parse, where Genesis records an explanation for this recursive task of naming the partner that is part of one's self:

• For this cause a man shall leave his father & mother, and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
  

The earlier Genesis 1 blessing "be fruitful" implies that procreation was pre-Fall, so the "one flesh" is not just about sex,  and "for this cause" must be referring to something beyond, something Adam said or did when he named her, not when he later shared the forbidden fruit. But the only actions of Adam that could lead to consequences, are the creation of a helper (communication, company) and the naming of the woman. Contrast this with the more traditional interpretation, which argues "for this cause" applies to sex, to children, to raising a family, which is to say, the consequences are used to infer the unmentioned antecedent of "this". However, if the antecedent is the naming, the part becoming the partner, then the cause is communication, language itself.

In the New Testament, when Jesus was questioned about the legality of divorce, he quotes this verse to indicate the permanence of marriage. Since marriage is a non-material thing, an abstract noun, a product of language and law and culture, Jesus supports the interpretation of "this cause" to be the bond created by communication, by naming. After all, why do traditional marriage ceremonies end with the naming of the couple (renaming the wife)?  For that matter, why do laws always begin with definitions and naming of the participants? Why does culture retain the authority to grant or deny names: "civil unions" versus "marriage"? Far more important than the physical union of Adam and Eve, is the linguistic union, the naming of the woman.

Therefore something new, something different is being discussed in Genesis 2 that was not discussed in Genesis 1.

Double Take

The usual approach to chapter 1 and 2, is to see a recap of the original creation of man with more details added. But if chapter 1 is taken to be a purely material creation, then it may not be the same event as chapter 2. If chapter 1 is about the material creation, chapter 2 is about the immaterial. If the blessing of Genesis 1 was the material blessing, the fruitfulness and multiplication of man, the dominion and rule of man, then the blessing and cursing of chapter 2 is about the immaterial, good and evil, spiritual life & death.

In fact, many particulars are absent in chapter one, Eden isn't mentioned, nor even Adam. (The ESV translators argue that "man" in chapter one is a generic term, not a title as found in chapter two.)  Therefore chapter 1 is generic, chapter 2 is specific. This peculiarity is not how we tell a story, it is psychologically abnormal if the two chapters relate the same events, (as Bauckham argues for the authenticity of the Gospels). It might make sense if Genesis were written by several authors, but that creaky theory, which was popular in the 19th century, has not stood up well to criticism and is only compatible with the mythical interpretation we rejected in YACC part 1.

Here are the relevant overlap sections of each passage:

Genesis 1:26-28 Then God said,"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them,"Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

Genesis 2:7-8; 15-22  then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.  And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed...
The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone;  I will make him a helper fit for him." Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

What are the similarities?

Gen 1 has God "creating man", Gen 2 has God "forming man of dust".  Gen 1 has "male and female he created them", and Gen 2 has man formed, and then making his rib into woman.

What are the differences?

    Ex Nihilo:  Augustine in his Confessions, explores the huge difference between a God who creates from nothing, ex nihilo,  by merely speaking, with the pagan creation myths and philosophers such as Plato that have a Demi-Urge creator shaping pre-existing eternal matter. Augustine demonstrates that the Christian God is not only master of the Universe, he is also Creator of Space and Time and Matter, nothing is eternal or external to Him. For 1500 years Christianity nodded its collective head without understanding what "creation of time" meant, despite Augustine inserting a singular joke to prod us along: "I do not respond flippantly to the question 'what came before the creation?' as others have replied 'Creating Hell for those who pry too deep.'" That is, not until Einstein gave us the math to understand why the Big Bang is both the beginning of space and time.  So if ex nihilo is all that important in chapter 1, why then does chapter two refute it? Why does God form man from dust in chapter two, if He created man from nothing in chapter one?
   Create vs Form: By the same logic, why is the verb in chapter one "create" but the verb in chapter two "form"?
   Male/female vs Man/Woman: Why are the noun pairs "male/female" in chapter 1 which are general enough to apply to animals, but the human specific "man/woman" in chapter two?
  Image vs Breath: Why does chapter one identify the connection between man and God as "the image of God", whereas in chapter two it is "the breath of God"?
  Simultaneous vs Separate: Why does chapter two create "man" and "male and female" in the same sentence, presumably simultaneous, but separate and clearly non-simultaneous in chapter 2? In fact, the absence of woman is presented as a problem in chapter 2, while all previous creatures where created "male and female" in chapter 1. Why was God causing problems for Himself?
  Blessing vs Cursing: Why is the blessing in chapter one purely material with no downside, but the curse in chapter two is spiritual with no upside?
   Material vs Spiritual: Why is chapter one all about material aspects of humanity--imaging God, multiplying, dominating, filling--whereas chapter two are mostly immaterial--naming, prohibiting, being lonely?

Were the similarities more numerous and the differences less, we might argue for a chiasmic storyline, but the more we study these two passages, the more differences we find.  Given the strict chronology of chapter 1, it is also consistent that chapter 2 not be a flashback. Such are the differences, that we should discard the interpretation of Genesis 2 as a recap of Genesis 1, for they are not just different subject matter, but different subjects created at different times, and in different places.

Two Creations

If the two chapters are neither in the same place nor the same time, perhaps we can turn to science to understand a bit more about them. It is my contention that the gift of speech in chapter two is synonymous with the soul. Thus the chapter one creation was that of "soulless man", or hominids. This would correspond to science's  Neanderthals, Cro-Magnons and Clovis peoples. They may look like man (the image of God), but would not be human, would not have souls (the breath of God). This doesn't contradict Genesis, for none of the blessings of chapter one appear to require language or self-awareness. Being beasts, hominids would naturally multiply and fill the earth; and being the most intelligent beasts, they would also dominate over the others. But they would be incapable of spiritual acts, such as those found in chapter two; they would not speak, pray, sing, form governments, use money, build cities, or plan for the future, any more than trained chimpanzees accomplish any of these things.

Now there are many scientists who want to banish any qualitative barrier between animal and human intelligence, yet decades of research into animal intelligence have failed to duplicate what a human infant can accomplish before they are born, not to mention at 6 months. The difference between humans and apes is not quantitative, but qualitative. Just as biochemists have discovered that a single cell is not Darwin's bag of jello but a spectacularly intricate molecular machine, so structural linguists and psychologists have discovered that a human infant is not a blank slate, but a sophisticated pre-programmed synthesizer of information.  Therefore the difference between hominids and humans is far greater than cave-man cartoons and Rosny novels would suggest.

Just as the hominids of chapter one are not the humans of chapter two, so also the times are different.
YACC proposes some time has elapsed between the 7 days of creation culminated by hominids, and the events of chapter two. Neanderthals showed up about 200,000 years ago, and rapidly vanished with the appearance of Cro-Magnon about 30,000 years ago. The last ice age, about 12,000 years ago saw the sea subside enough for Clovis peoples to cross into North America, and quickly exterminate (dominate) the mega-fauna of mammoths, horses, and sloths. All of this is a consequence of chapter one. None of it requires language.

Now in chapter two, God apparently takes a break from making new hominids, and decides to plant a garden. He clears out the Mediterranean basin, perhaps by extending an ice-bridge across the straits of Gibraltar. (Recent sonar data suggest that a similar ice-bridge collapse gouged out the English Channel, as it emptied a large lake someplace over Eastern Europe.) He waters the basin with four rivers. He plants trees. And finally, he places in it a hominid that has been given the gift of speech, the breath of life. (Notice how God never stops creating, which is yet another reason Deism is wrong. Also notice how His creative methods are changing, which is why Theistic Evolution is also wrong.)

This gift of humanity is demonstrated by Adam's name, by his naming the animals, and by the difficulty in finding a wife. But with this gift also comes new responsibilities, the prohibition about certain fruits. Not unsurprisingly, Adam isn't satisfied with hominid pets, and so God has to do a second act of breathing language, but He does it differently than before, using a rib. Adam gratefully names his partner, and we are told that this institutes marriage.

What does science have to say about Genesis 2? Quite a bit. When do we have the first evidence of language? About 4000 years ago. When did the Jewish calendar have the year zero? 3750 BC. When were the first cities built? About 4000 years ago (I have reservations about sporadic earlier claims for 6000 BC.)  In other words, Eden was so recent, we should have abundant scientific data to support or contradict the hypothesis. But even more important than Eden's impact on historical linguistics and archaeology, is Eden's impact on anthropology, the science of man, his makeup and his meaning.

Which is the subject of the next post...