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Preface Introduction Chapters Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Appendices Appendix I Appendix II Appendix III Appendix IV Appendix V Appendix VI Appendix VII Appendix VIII Appendix IX Appendix X Appendix XI Appendix XII Appendix XIII Appendix XIV Appendix XV Appendix XVI Appendix XVII Appendix XVIII Appendix XIX Appendix XX Appendix XXI Indexes References Names Biblical References General Bibliography |
(Reference: p.37) Excerpts from Some
Supporting Authors. This Appendix contains extracts from the works of authors not listed in Chapter 1,
chiefly because they merely affirm what others have said and, with two
exceptions, did not publish their views until the issue between the
Bible and modern Geology had already become a serious one. Most of them can only be quoted as being
among those who adopted the
alternative rendering because they were im- pressed by the geological
evidence as then interpreted. Many
of them were recognized
Hebrew scholars. Included among
these extracts are also a few
cases where admissions are made in favour of my thesis by scholars
who nevertheless do not support it - for example, a note from
Snaith. The names are listed chronologically according to the original author of the quotation
rather than the secondary author who happens to have supplied us with
it - for example, Gleig’s statement is listed under his own name
although my sole source of reference was from Hoare and not from the
author himself. At the end we have included three lists of scholars who wrote in favour of this
alternative, of whom I have very little information but thought it worthwhile to
list with my source of reference, for the sake of those who may be
in a position to examine their works at first hand. Episcopius, Simon (1583 -
1643) of Holland, according to the New pg
1 of 11 Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia
of Religious Knowledge (in Vol.III, page 302, article by 0.
Zockler, "Creation and Preservation") is said to have been the first to
render verse 2, "And the earth became waste and void". Rosenmuller, J. G., a German
Lutheran, 1736- 1815, in his Antiquissima Telluris
Historia,
published in Ulm in 1776, wrote the first serious
scientific defence of this view, according to the New Schaff- Herzog
Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Vol. III, p. 302. Chalmers, Thomas, in his
original Lecture in Edinburgh in 1814: "The detailed history
of creation in the first chapter of Genesis begins at the middle of the
second verse; and what precedes might be under- stood as an introductory sentence,
by which we are most appositely told, both that God
created all things at the first, and that, afterwards, by what interval of time
it is not specified, the earth lapsed into a chaos, from the darkness
and disorder of which the present system or economy of things was
made to arise. Between the initial
act and the details of
Genesis, the world, for aught we know, might have been the theatre of many
revolutions, the traces of which geology may still investigate".
Quoted by Edward Hitchcock, The Religion of Geology, Collins, Glasgow, 1851,
p. 52. Eadie, Dr. John, Professor
of Theological and Biblical Literature in Divinity Hall of the
United Presbyterian Church, Glasgow, (quoted by Dr. T. Fitzgerald in
the Transactions of the Victoria Inst., Vol. LXX, 1938, p. 86):
Dr. Eadie, writing in the early part of the last century, observed:
"The length of time that may have elapsed between the events
recorded in the first verse (of the first chapter of Genesis) and the condition
of the globe, as described in the second verse, is absolutely
indefinite. How long it was we know not; and ample space is therefore
given to all the requisitions of geology. The second verse describes
the condition of our globe when God began to fit it up for the
abode of man. The first day's work does not be gin until the third
verse.... This is no new theory. It was held by Justin Martyr,
Origen, Theodoret, and Augustine - men who came to such a conclusion
without any bias, and who certainly were not driven to it by an geological
difficulties". Bush, George, Professor of
Hebrew in New York City University, in his Notes, Critical
and Practical on the Book of Genesis,
published by Ward, London, 1838, (p.25f.), treated the subject at some length. On page 27 he wrote: "As there is no
distinction of past, perfect, and
pluperfect tenses in Hebrew, we are to be governed solely by the exigency of
the place in rendering any particular word in one of these tenses or
the other. 'Was', therefore, in
this instance, we hold to be
more correctly translated by 'had been' or, perhaps, 'had become' -
ie., in consequence of changes to which it had been subject in the lapse
of ages long prior to the period now alluded to.... "It has, indeed, been generally supposed that it describes the rude and chaotic state
which ensued immediately upon the creating command; but this we think
is contrary to the express declaration of Jehovah himself, Isa.45.18: 'For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself, that
formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created
it not desolate (TOHU)' - ie., the action described by the word
'created', did not result in the state denoted by the word TOHU but the
reverse - he formed it to be inhabited". Smith, J. Pye, Lectures
on the Bearing of Geological Science upon Certain Parts of the
Scriptural Narrative, London, 1839. "A philological survey
of the initial sections of the Bible, (Gen. i, l, to ii, 3) brings out
the results 1. "That the first
sentence is a simple, independent, all-com- prehending axiom, to this
effect: that matter, elementary or com- bined , aggregated only or
organized, and dependent, sentient, and intellectual beings have not existed from
eternity, either in self- continuity or succession,
but had a beginning; that their beginning took place by the
all-powerful will of one Being, the self-existent, independent, and infinite
in all perfection; and that the date of that beginning is not made
known. 2. "That at a certain
epoch, our planet was brought into a state of disorganization,
detritus, or ruin, (perhaps we have no perfectly appropriate term) from a
former condition. 3. "That it pleased the Almighty, wise and benevolent Supreme, out of that state of ruin
to adjust the surface of the earth to its now existing condition, the
whole extending through the period of six natural days. "I am forming no hypothesis in geology; I only plead that the ground is clear, and that the dictates of
the Scripture interpose no bar to observation and
reasoning upon the mineralogical constitution of the earth, and the remains
of organized creatures which its strata disclose. If those investigations should lead us to
attribute to the earth and to other planets
and astral spheres an antiquity which millions or ten thousand
millions of years might fail to represent, the divine records forbid
not their deduction". From his Lect- ures on Scripture and
Geology, London,
4th ed. , p. 502, as quoted by Edward Hitchcock in his
The Religion of Geology, Collins, in Glasgow, 1851. Harris, John, The
PreAdamite Earths-Contributions to Theol- ogical Science, Ward and Co., London, no
date, p.354: "On the whole, then, my firm
persuasion is, that the first verse of Genesis was designed, by the
Divine Spirit, to announce the absolute origin- ination of the material
universe by the Almighty Creator; and that it is so understood in other parts
of Holy Writ: that, passing by an- indefinite interval, the
second verse describes the state of our planet immediately prior to the
Adamic creation; and that the third verse begins the account of the
six days' work. "If I am reminded
that I am in danger of being biased in favour of these conclusions by the
hope of harmonizing Scripture with Geology, I might venture to
suggest, in reply, that the danger is not all on one side. Instances of
adherence to traditional interpretations chiefly because they are
traditional and popular, though in the face of all evidence of their
faultiness. are by no means so rare as to render warning unnecessary. The
danger of confounding the infallibility of our own interpretation
with the infallibility of sacred text, is not peculiar to a party. "If, again, I am reminded, in a tone of animadversion, that I am making science, in this
instance, the interpreter of Scripture, my reply is that I am simply
making the works of God illustrate his word, in a department in which
they speak with a distinct and authoritative voice, that 'it is all the
same whether our geological or theological investigations have been
prior'; and that it might be deserving con- sideration, whether or not
the conduct of those is not open to just animadversion, who first
undertake to pronounce on the meaning of a passage of Scripture
irrespective of all the appropriate evidence, and who then, when that
evidence is explored and produced, insist on their a priori
interpretation as the only true one. "But in making these
remarks I have been conceding too much. The views which I have
exhibited are not of yesterday.
It is important and interesting
to observe how the early fathers of the Christian church should seem
to have entertained precisely similar views: for St. Gregory
Nazianzen. after St. Justin Martyr, supposes an indefinite
period between the creation and the first ordering of all things. St. Basil, St.
Caesarius, and Origen, are much more explicit. To these might
be added Augustine, Theodoert, Episcop- ius, and others, whose
remarks imply the existence of a considerable interval 'between the
creation related in the first verse of Genesis, and that of which an
account is given in the third and following verses'. In modern times, but long
before geology became a science, the independent character of
the opening sentence of Genesis was affirm- ed by such judicious and learned
men as Calvin, Bishop Patrick, and Dr. David Jennings. And 'in some old editions of the English Bible, where there is no
division into verses, and in Luther's Bible (Wittenburg, 1557), you
have in addition the figure 1 placed against the third verse, as being
the beginning of the account of the creation of the first day'. Now
these views were formed independently of all geological considerations.
In the entire absence of evidence from this quarter - probably
even in opposition to it, as some would think - these conclusions
were arrived at on biblical grounds alone. Geology only illustrates
and confirms them. The works of God prove to be one with this
preconceived meaning of his word.
And there is no ground to expect
that this early interpretation will grad- ually come to be
universally accepted as the only correct one." A footnote gives the references for the quotes in the above as being from Dr. S. Davidson's Sacred
Hermeneutics; Principal Wiseman's Lectures on the Connexion Between Science and Revealed Rel- igion; and Dr. J. Pye Smith's Scripture
and Geology. Gray, Rev. James, in his
book, The Earth's Antiquity in Harm- ony With the Mosaic Record
of Creation
(referred to by William Hoare in a footnote on p. 145
of his book Veracity of the Book of Genesis), stages the view
(Chapter IV, p. 211, 2nd. edition) "that the first verse in Genesis
is not to be understood according to the currently entertained
notion, as merely giving a summary account of the after-recorded work
of the six days, but is an independent proposition enunciating
THE CREATION, primordial as to time, - the reference being
retrospective rather than prospective". In a subsequent footnote on p.
151, Gray is again quoted (p. 120 and 144 of his work) on
Gen. 1.2 as follows: "Such a disturbed condition of terrestrial things is here
narrated, as we should naturally conclude would be found after the
violent action of one or another of those grand disturbing agents, either
of fire, by earthquakes, or of water by deluges, which we know
to be Nature's ordinary mighty destroyers and renovators on the earth..... a state following upon the last catastrophe anterior to
the period of its divinely recorded re-organ-
Hoare, Willam H., Veracity
of the Book of Genesis, (Long- man, Green, Longman, &
Roberts, London, 1860), has this statement in a footnote on p .143:
"Episcopius and others thought that the creation and fall of the bad angels
took place in the interval he has spoken of; and misplaced as such
speculations are, still they seem to show that it is natural to
suppose that a considerable interval may have taken place between the
creation related in the first verse of Genesis and that of which an
account is given in the third and following verses". Gleig, the Rt. Rev.
George, Bishop of Brechin and Primus of the Scots Episcopal Church
(quoted by W. H. Hoare, Veracity of the Book of Genesis, etc. p. 179); "Moses
records the history of the earth only in its present
state. He affirms indeed, that it
was created, and that it was
without form and void when the Spirit of God began to move on the face
of the fluid mass; but he does not say how long that mass had been in
a state of chaos, or whether it was or was not the wreck of some
former system which had been inhabited by liv- ing creature sofa
different kind from those that occupy the present. "We read in various
places of Scripture of a new heavens and a new earth to succeed the present
earth and visible heavens, after they shall again be
reduced to chaos by a general conflagration, and there is nothing in the
books of Moses positively affirming that there was not an old earth
and old heavens, or, in other words a former creation.... "There is nothing in the sacred narrative forbidding us to suppose that they are ruins of a
former earth deposited in the chaotic mass of which Moses informs us
that God formed the present system. How long it continued in such
a chaotic state it is in vain to enquire...." Jameison, R., Commentary:
Critical and Expository: Genesis - Deuteronomy, (Nisbet, London, 1871,
p. 3); the author notes that in many Hebrew manuscripts
a mark indicating a pause occurs after Gen. 1.1. "This break between Gen. 1.1 and 1.2
is observed even where no verse division
exists". Browne, the Rt. Rev. E.
Harold, Lord Bishop of Ely, Genesis: Or the First Book of Moses (Scribner, New York, 1873, p. 32), writes, under comment on Gen.
1.5: "Literally, 'and it was (or became) evening, and it
was (or became) morning, day one'", thereby bearing out the more
precise translation of the verb hayah. Under
verse 2 he merely acknowledges
that this may be a picture of either primeval emptiness or
"desolation and disorder succeeding to a former state of life and
harmony...." He feels the issue
cannot be settled conclusively
but he does say that the two words tohu and bohu "express devastation
or desolation", listing several passages in which the meaning of tohu
is clearly this: viz.. Job 12.24; 26.7; Isa.24.10; 34.11; and
Jer.4.23. Garland, G. V., Genesis
With Notes (Rivingtons, London, 1878, p. 3): With reference to Gen.
1.1 and 2: "The first of these verses declares that the
universe, and particularly that portion of it 'the earth', of which the
second verse specially treats, as being the future habitation of man, was
originally created by God. The second verse then proceeds to describe
the condition of the earth at the period when God made (
Heb. 11.3), out of the
then existing materials for the use of man". Reusch, Dr. Fr. H., Nature
and the Bible: Lectures on the Mosaic History of Creation
In Its Relation to Natural Science, (translated from the 4th
edition by Kathleen Lyttelton, T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, Vol. 1, 1886,
p. 120). He says: "Those who hold this theory;- with its many
individual modifications - are men of no little authority, they are, among
men of science and philosophers, Jacob Bohme, Friedrich Schlegel,
Julius Hamberger, Heinrich von Schu- bert, Karl von Raumer, Andreas
Wagner; among theologians, Kurtz, Baumgarten, Dreschler,
Delitzsch and others among Protestants; Leopold Schmid, Mayrhofer,
and Westermayer among the Roman Catholics". In a
footnote he adds this information: "Kurtz, Bible and Astronomy, Delitzsch, Genesis;
Dreschler on Delitzsch; and Keerl, Schopfungsgesch;
Raumer, Kreuzzuge; Hamberger in the Jabrh. fur Deutsche Theol; Wolf, Die Bedeutung
der Weltschopfung, Mayrhofer, Das dreieine
Leben; Westermayer, Das Alte Test", Exell, J. S., Pulpit Commentary
on Genesis, (Kegan Paul, Tren- ch, Trubner, London, 1897,
p. 4). Exell in commenting on verse 2 mentions Delitzsch's view
of this verse as signifying "the ruin of a previous cosmos" and
adds that he attributed the ruin to the fall of angels basing his view on
Job 38.2 - 7). He gives as reference Biblical Psychology, Section 1, p. 76, in
Clark's Foreign Theol- ogical Library. Edersheim, Alfred, The World Before the Flood and the His-
tory of the Patriarchs (Religious Tract Society, London, no date, p. 18,19); "Some have
imagined that the six days of creation repres- ent as many periods,
rather than literal days, chiefly on the ground of the supposed high
antiquity of our globe, and the various great epochs or periods, each
terminating in a grand revolution, through which our earth seems to
have passed before coming to its present state, when it became a
fit habitation for man. There is, however, no need to resort to any
such theory. "The first verse in
the Book of Genesis simply states the general fact that 'in the
beginning (whenever that may have been) God created the heaven and the earth'.
Then, in the second verse, we find the earth described as it was at
the close of the last great revolution preceding the present
state of things: 'and the earth was without form and void; and
darkness was upon the face of the deep'. "An almost indefinite space of time and many changes may there- fore have intervened between
the creation of heaven and earth as mentioned in verse 1, and
the chaotic state of our earth as described in verse 2." Pember, G. H., Earth's Earliest Ages, which title is extended to read as: and Their
Connection with Modern Spiritualism and Theosophy (Hodder and Stoughton,
1901, 9th ed., 494 pp.). The author's thesis is that
Gen. 1.2 pictures a world brought into ruin as a result of the
judgment of God against the rebellion of the Angels who under Satan had been
responsible for the government of the Old World while it was being
prepared for man, but had thought to become independent of Him. Satan was cast out of heaven along with
the Angels who had followed
him, and they have since tried in various ways to bring God's reconstituted
world order, including man, into a like state of chaos. He believes these Angels to be, to a
large extent, still free to
intrude into human affairs and to act upon man's will - always with a view
to making him disobedient to God.. Their increasing activity
in the present age Pember believed to be a sign of the nearness
of the second great judgment to be brought on the World, of which the
Flood of Noah's time was the first. Pember does not present his thesis as a Hebrew scholar, but rather as a student of
ancient and present day forms of spiritism and demon worship. Anstey, Martin, The
Romance of Bible Chronology; (Marshall Brothers, London, 1913, p.
62 and 63 - with his emphases): "The opening verse of Genesis speaks
of the Creation of the heavens and
the earth, in the
undefined beginning. From this point we may date the origin of the world
but not the origin of man. For the
second verse tells of a
catastrophe - the earth became a ruin and a desolation. The Hebrew verb hayah
('to be') here translated 'was'), signifies not only 'to be' but also 'to
become', 'to take place', 'to come to pass'. When a Hebrew writer makes
a simple affirmation, or merely pre- dicates the existence of anything,
the verb hayah is never expressed. Where it is expressed it
must always be translated by our verb 'to become', and never by the
verb 'to be', if we desire to convey the exact shade of meaning of
the original. "The words
Version 'without form and void' and in the Revised Version 'waste and void' should be
rendered 'a ruin; and a desolation'. They do not represent the state of the
heaven and the earth as they were created by God. They represent
only the state of the earth as it afterwards became - a ruin and a
desolation.... or better still 'had become', the separation of the waw
from the verb being the Hebrew method of indicating the pluperfect
tense.... "Gen. 1.2 does not
describe a stage in the process of creation, but a disaster which befell
the created earth: the original creation of the heaven and the earth is
chronicled in Gen. 1.1. The next
verse, Gen. 1.2, is a statement of
the disorder, the ruin, and the state of desolation into which the
earth subsequently fell. What
follows in Gen. 1.3-31 is the story
of the restoration of a lost order by the creative word of
God". Fitzgerald, Dr. Thomas (in
The Transactions of the Victoria Institute, London, Vol. LXX, 1938)
lists the names "of several scholars of high repute
who can be cited in support of the translation which Dr. Hart-Davies
finds it impossible to accept. The
whole question has been very thoroughly
argued in the works of John Harris, D.D., The Pre-Adamite
Earth and Primeval Man: The Principles of Geology, by Rev. David King,
LL.D. (2nd. edition, -enlarged and revised): The Bible and
Modem Thought, by Rev. T. R. Birks, M.A.: Neology Not True,
by Rev. Charles Herbert, M.A. (2nd edition): Daniel the
Prophet, Rev. E. B. Pusey, D. D., Regius Professor of Hebrew,
Oxford: and Jameison, Fausset and Brown's Commentary - Genesis. There is also a valuable paper on the subject by Rev. A. I. McCaul,
M.A., Lecturer in Hebrew at King's College, London, published
in The Transactions of the Victoria Institute, London, Vol. IX. On p.150 of that volume, the Rev, A. I. McCaul states his
belief that the Septuagint intended by its
rendering that the earth
was "invisible" because in darkness, and "unfurnished"
because its life had been destroyed. Smith, Professor T.
Jollie, in a Paper in The Transactions of the Victoria Institute, Vol. LXXVIII, 1946, p.
29, wrote: "I think that verse land verse 2 in
Genesis 1 may be legitimately separated .... Hayah does generally mean
'became' or 'came to pass'.. .. Its
use as a mere copula is most extraordinary". Snaith, Norman H., Notes
on the Hebrew Text of Gen, I - VIII (Epworth Press, London,
1947, p. 8 and 9), has the following against Gen.1.2 and 3: "verse
2. be', though more often it means
'to become'). "Verse 3:
qal (
there came to be
(ie., there became). Thus
he indicates the admissability of rendering
English. Sauer, Erich, Dawn of World
Redemption (Revell, New York, 1953) on p. 35 says:
"About 1000 A.D. Edgar of England espoused (the interpretation). In
the 17th century it was especially emphas- ized by Jacob Boehme, the
mystic.... "Many German upholders
of this teaching.... as for instance the Professor of Geology
Freiherr von Heune (Tubingen);.... from the Catholic point of view
there are Cardinal Wiseman and the philoso- pher Freiderich von
Schlegel". Ramm, Bernard, in his Christian
View of Science and Scrip- ture (Eerdman's, Grand Rapids,
1954, p. 196) has a footnote in which he gives the following
information: "Dr. Anton Pearson sets forth the history of the gap
interpretation as follows: "It was first broached in modern times by Episcopius
(1583-1643), and received its first scientific treatment by J.
G. Rosenmuller (1736-1815) in his Antiq- uissima Telluris Historica (1776). It was also used
by theosophic writers in connection with
notions suggested by Bohme, e.g. F. von Meyer and Baumgarten. It was picked up by such theologians as Buckland, Chalmers, J. P.
Smith and Murphy. (An Exegetical Study of Gen. 1.1-3, Bethel Seminary
Quarterly, 11.14-33, November, 1953). "This theory was also
defended by J. H. Kurtz, Bible and Astron-
omy,
(3rd. German edition, 1857) and in the footnote of p 236 it is traced from Edgar, King
of England in the tenth century to modern scholars as
Reichel, Stier. G. H. von Schubert, Knieival Dreschler, Rudleback,
Guericke, Baumgarten and Wagner". Other men listed include
Adam Sedgewick, Discourses on the Studies of the Universe, Cambridge, President of
the Geological Society (England); and
Pratt, Scripture and Science Not at Var- iance. * * *
Copyright © 1988 Evelyn White. All rights reserved
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