Difference between revisions of "Biblical creation account"

Revision as of 01:28, March 14, 2007

The God of the Bible's creation account in the book of Genesis is represented in the original Hebrew by the plural word Elohim ('gods', or 'spirits'). This does not, however, have anything to do with the Christian idea of the Three-in-One God, i.e. the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, since the concept was unknown until the second century AD.

Genesis 1:1 to 2:1 (the chapter- and verse-divisions and numbers are of purely medieval origin) describes how this God created light and darkness, heaven and earth, the seas and plants, the sun, moon and stars, the fishes and birds, the animals and then man over the course of six 'days' (Hebrew yom), before resting on the seventh. This account is contradicted in chapter 2, however, where the creation takes only one 'day' (still Hebrew yom) and man is created before the animals

Until the development of more reliable dating methods, creation was thought to have occurred about 4000 BC. This was proposed, for example, by Dr. John Lightfoot, a 17th century Anglican clergyman, though the idea had been current for centuries before that. It was most famously elaborated on by James Ussher, the Irish archbishop of Armagh. Ussher dated the arrival of Abraham in Canaan to 2126 BC and the Noahic flood to 2349 BC. The time of creation was calculated using the ages of famous pre-flood personages in the Bible to estimate the number of years between creation and the flood.

Sources

• Cruden, A., Complete Concordance to the Old and New Testaments (Lutterworth, 1930)
• The Holy Bible (King James Version)
• The New English Bible (Oxford & Cambridge University Presses, 1970)
• The New Jerusalem Bible (Darton, Longman & Todd, 1990)
• Peake, A.S., Commentary on the Bible (Nelson, 1962)
• Young, R., Analytical Concordance to the Holy Bible (Lutterworth, 1939)