I have not posted anything here for some time. Bigger fish to fry; bigger battles to fight. Or maybe not. Maybe I have my priorities mixed up.
I spent many years in a church that taught that the account of creation in Genesis 1, upon which Genesis 2 elaborates and expands, is really an account of a re-creation. The thought was that the earth came into being a very long time ago and its surface was destroyed. Then God, brought into being new species. The teaching was that between the first two verses of Genesis is a big time gap. I was reminded of that now when someone directed my attention to a discussion involving Victor Kubik of the United Church of God and found at https://www.ucg.org/members/united-news/inside-united/inside-united-podcast-093-steven-britt-sound-science-and-the-bible-part-3.
I have a problem with the teaching, otherwise known as the gap theory. The theory has a history. So far as I know, it was first promoted by Thomas Chalmers a bit over 200 years ago. And about120 years ago, Bullinger took the baton and ran with it. The chief voice of the gap theory in the twentieth century was Herbert Armstrong.
Supporters of the gap theory are trying to reconcile the Bible to what they think science has proven. In doing so, they contradict the Bible. Based on notes I gathered years ago (largely from David Hocking I suspect), I will now provide detailed comment on Genesis 1:2: the gap theorists say that instead of being rendered “Now the earth was…..” the correct reading should be “the earth had become….” I bought into that teaching for almost 40 years until I realized that had become is an impossible translation of the Hebrew text of that verse. Some versions start the verse with and instead. The point is that there is a conjunction, signified by a waw. ‘Waw’ is the name of the Hebrew letter which is used as the conjunction. It can mean ‘and’, ‘but’, ‘now’, ‘then’, and several other things depending upon the context and type of waw involved. It occurs at the beginning of Genesis 1:2 and is translated in the KJV, ‘And [waw] the earth was without form, and void.’ While gappists use their own translation to support the gap theory, the most straightforward reading of the text sees verse 1 of Genesis 1 as the principal subject-and-verb clause, with verse 2 containing three ‘circumstantial clauses’. This is what Hebrew grammarian Gesenius terms a ‘waw explicativum’ [also called waw copulative or waw disjunctive] or explanatory waw, and compares it to the English ‘to wit’.’
Such a waw disjunctive is easy to identify in the Hebrew, because it is formed by waw followed by a non-verb. It introduces a parenthetic statement, i.e.: it’s alerting the reader to put the succeeding passage in brackets as a descriptive phrase about the previous noun. It does not indicate something following in a time sequence. This would have been indicated by a different Hebrew construction called the waw consecutive, where waw is followed by a verb [the waw consecutive is in fact used before the different days of creation . Thus the Hebrew grammar shows that a better translation of Genesis 1:2 would be, ‘Now the earth …’, and it could be paraphrased, ‘Now as far as the earth was concerned …’
It is as if the author of Genesis (under God’s direction), by the use of such a joining word, is going out of his way to stress that there is no break between the two verses. ‘Was’ [Hebrew “Hayah” (haw-yaw)] in Genesis 1:2 is translated ‘became’ by gappists, giving the reading, ‘And the earth became [or had become] without form and void.’ Gap theorist A.C. Custance devotes nearly 80% of his book Without Form and Void, including 13 Appendices, to advocating this translation, especially with the pluperfect, ‘had become’. However, recognized grammarians, lexicographers, and linguists have almost uniformly rejected the translations ‘became’ and ‘had become’. It is a basic exegetical fallacy to claim that because Strong’s Concordance lists ‘became’ as one of the meanings of haya, it is legitimate to translate it this way in the particular context of Genesis 1:2. It is simply grammatically impossible when the verb haya is combined with a waw disjunctive. In the rest of the Old Testament, Waw + a noun + haya (qal perfect, 3rd person) is always translated, ‘was’ or ‘came’, but never ‘became’.
Moses could have chosen to employ a noun-clause (omitting a verb) in place of the disjunctive clause of verse 2. However, he chose (under the supervision of God) not to employ a noun-clause. The verb he chose is hayetah (“it was”). The qatal (perfect) of the stative verb indicates that the force of the verb involves a state of being (a static stative). In other words, the focus is on the existing condition of the earth. Had Moses employed a yiqtol (imperfect), the force of the verb would have been on a state of becoming, transition, change, or occurrence (a dynamic stative). Ultimately, the text depicts the earth as it existed following the act of creation in verse 1.
Interestingly, the choice of Greek verb in the Septuagint translation of verse 2 demonstrates that the Jews 250 years before Christ understood that the qatal (perfect) of hayah in the Hebrew text is equivalent to a form of the Greek eimi (“to be” = static stative) rather than an equivalent to a form of ginomai (“to become” = dynamic stative). This confirms the observation that the Hebrew verb refers to existence rather than to change.
The Bible has another beef with the notion that the earth was made and then billions of years later the stuff on it was made --- Exodus 20:11, which plainly says that God created the heavens, the land, the sea, and everything in them in six days.
The efforts to reconcile science and the Bible are wasted on the gap theory. Another approach is needed.
