Can evolution’s long ages be squeezed into Genesis?
by Charles V. Taylor
Many years ago a biblical scholar named Scofield produced a Bible in the King James
Version with notes for evangelical Christians. In his notes he attempted to reconcile
beliefs in a long-age theory of the history of the world with the account in Genesis.
He was not the first, but he was probably the most influential of those scholars
who tried to reconcile evolution and creation.
Scofield annotates Genesis
1:2 to the effect that the word translated was in that verse can also mean
became. (Even the NIV writes ‘or possibly became’
in a footnote.)
Now if we read ‘and the earth became without form and void,’ it does
suggest that something evil happened, something against what we know as the perfect
character of God and His works, and this paves the way for a theory about pre-Adamic
beings in a world spoilt by Satan, before the Fall of man recorded in Genesis 3.
What are the facts about the Hebrew word hayethah? First, it normally means
‘was,’ not ‘became.’ A typical example is
Genesis 29:17 which says Rachel was (hayethah)
beautiful and well favoured. This word hayethah is the one used about the
earth in Genesis 1:2, and there is no difference in the construction of ‘Rachel was beautiful and well favoured,’ and
‘the earth was without form, and void.’
There is therefore no need to suggest that it has the rare meaning ‘became’
on the grounds of context.
But is there something about the actual words translated ‘without
form, and void’ which would force us to choose the rarer reading?
Scofield seemed to think so, probably because he took the Hebrew words tohu wa bohu
to mean ‘chaotic.’ Today, this word is very negative, but of course
the Hebrew doesn’t say it was, or became, chaotic. It merely
points to a condition of shapelessness, or unformedness.
If we look at the account of creation as a whole, we find a progression, or development.
This is not an ‘evolution’ in the sense used by Darwinians. God does
things in a logical order, and just as He made the plants (that is, the wild plants)
before making the animals, and light before life, so it’s quite reasonable
that He’d make a rough ‘plasticine’ sort of model for the earth
before rounding it off and setting things in motion.
So the best translation of tohu wa bohu is something like ‘undeveloped
and uninhabited,’ with the expectation that the planet would eventually become
developed and inhabited. There is no necessary suggestion of perfection becoming
imperfection in the words of Genesis 1:2.
Millions of years
The most probable explanation of Scofield’s position and that of similar scholars
is that he took as proven the idea that the time of Genesis 1 had to allow for millions
of years suggested by the evolutionists. But some scholars like Scofield really
did believe in a miracle-working God who could bring things into being in six days.
How to reconcile the two? Well, the long ages of the geologists and biologists must
have occurred before the six days. Therefore, to do as little violence
to the text as possible, they tried to see how Scripture could support what most
scientists believe and then hit upon the alternative translation of hayethah.
To further support their case, they suggested that
Isaiah 45:18 means that God didn’t create the world tohu wa bohu,
but formed it to be inhabited. But the implication in Isaiah is not contrary to
a straight-forward reading of Genesis 1:2. The prophet is saying that God’s
intention was not to have an undeveloped, uninhabited earth, but one in which people
would live, and so Israel could expect a prosperous end. The phrase ‘to be
inhabited’ speaks of intention.
No need for ‘is’
In Semitic languages, and indeed in many others, there is no need to use words for
‘is’ and ‘are.’ However, in the past tense it’s necessary
to indicate the past by the use of a word equivalent to ‘was.’ Thus
we have: ‘This now bone-of my-bone’ but ‘Rachel was
fair-faced and-well favoured,’ which are literal translations of Hebrew. Notice
that ‘is’ is missing from the first phrase, but ‘was’ is
included in the second.
Now this word ‘was’ is a long word in Hebrew, as we have seen (hayethah).
But its length should not lead us to think that it has to have a complicated translation,
using a longer word ‘became.’ It just happens to be the only word for
‘was’ in Hebrew, and this word sometimes has to do duty for ‘became.’
One more point, which may be a little difficult to follow, concerns the kind of
adjectives we find in languages such as Hebrew. I’ll try to be as simple as
possible.
Most languages in the world, including Hebrew but unlike English, use verbs where
English uses adjectives. Even English can do without adjectives if it tries:
|
for |
to become old |
we can use |
to age |
|
|
to become red |
|
to redden |
|
|
to become long |
|
to lengthen |
|
|
to become worse |
|
to deteriorate |
|
|
to become empty |
|
to empty |
In Hebrew it’s much more natural to use the right-hand system and make a verb
out of a noun or adjective to give the idea that some change occurs in something.
So if Genesis 1:2 had used hayethah to mean ‘became’ the feeling
of the language would have been violated, and it would have sounded artificial.
For me, this is the most convincing argument against using hayethah to
mean ‘became.’ If you look in Young’s concordance you’ll
find that the KJV rarely translates Hebrew ‘become.’ The use of the
word ‘become’ as a separate word is a characteristic of present-day
English, and wasn’t common 300 years ago.
I am also aware that some use the argument that ‘become’ as a translation
of Hebrew hayah represents a construction with a preposition ‘to’
(94 times) or ‘as’ (11 times) or ‘in’ (twice), when exegeting
the KJV. It can also be stated that hayah is translated ‘was’
some 3,800 or more times in that version.
However, the argument is not 100 per cent secure. In
Exodus 23:29, ‘lest the land become desolate’
has a construction parallel with Genesis 1:2, without a preposition. There are in
all 41 cases of hayah without preposition translated ‘become.’
The most we can say that many of these refer to persons becoming servants, enemies,
etc., and are not quite parallel to Genesis 1:2. For this reason I would not press
the grammar too far here, though on balance Genesis 1:2 is unlikely to include the
meaning ‘became.’
So for all these reasons I don’t find it at all easy to accept that God’s
perfect creation in Genesis
1:1 got spoilt and had to be remade.
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