Higher Criticism and the Interpretation of Genesis 1-2

From "The CASB VOLUME IV: The Book of Genesis Chapters 1-11" by Robert Sungenis...

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Higher Criticism and the Interpretation of Genesis 1-2

Ever since Copernicus and Galileo, the Bible has been the subject of intense scrutiny and much criticism. The prevailing question for the last 500 years, and even more intensely in the last 100 or so years with the onset of Darwinism is: Can the Bible be trusted to give us factual and truthful statements of history and the cosmos, or is theology the Bible’s only reliable and exclusive domain? It cannot be dismissed that the debate between modern science and biblical science is a unique glimpse into a much larger and more critical area of controversy today, an issue that centers squarely on the very veracity of the Bible and how we are to interpret its words.

As we have shown repeatedly, we can safely believe that the Bible is to be trusted in everything it says, not only in theology, but in every area it puts its divine stamp of truth, including history and the cosmos.

Unfortunately, a large number of biblical scholars who have embraced the Higher Critical theories of secularism have begun to advocate a departure from both the inerrancy of Holy Writ and a literal interpretation of its words. Liberal Catholic scholars of today collectively voiced their dubious opinions in the New Jerome Biblical Commentary:

...of Dei Verbum....debates show an awareness of errors in the Bible. Thus...Scriptural teaching is truth without error to the extent that it conforms to the salvific purposes of God.296 In other words, these neo-orthodox theologians believe Scripture is subject to error when it speaks on issues of history, chronology, science, mathematics or the cosmos. It is no coincidence that most of the theologians who espouse biblical errancy are also evolutionists. Ever since the Church’s confrontation with Galileo, they simply don’t trust the Bible to give accurate historical information. Fr. Raymond Brown, editor of the New Jerome Biblical Commentary, criticizes what he calls “the Catholic right” who insist on (a) the literal interpretation of the Genesis account, namely, creation in six days or six periods of time; (b) that human beings did not evolve from lower species; (c) that woman was formed from man’s body; and (d) that life at the beginning of time was in an idyllic state.297

In their reinterpretation of Genesis, neo-orthodox scholars posit that the creation accounts in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, respectively, are contradictory. In addition, they hold that Genesis 1 is not real history but merely a Jewish recapitulation of the Babylonian creation myth Enumu Elish298 concerning the ancient god Marduk and his conquering of the “waters of chaos.”299 They also believe that Genesis 1-2 is: (a) not historical but merely a contest between two literary forms, the so-called Yahwist and the Elohist; (b) that the Genesis writer had no interest in astronomy or biology and was as primitive in his thinking as the average pygmy today in Africa; and (c) that too much insertion of God into the cosmos is “akin to the monophysite heresy of the fourth century.”300 All of these assertions can be dismissed by remembering that Scripture is very clear that, to Moses, the writer of Genesis, God spoke “face to face,” and in those encounters revealed to him things about the world that could never be known by reason, observation or least of all “historical criticism.”301 Because of these encounters, starting with God’s speaking to Noah, Abraham and Jacob, the Jews knew things about God and the creation that “Marduk” wouldn’t even hear of for more than a millennia.302 As Moses told them in Dt 4:6-7:

The people of the world will hear of these statutes and say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.

For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as is the Lord our God whenever we call on Him?303 As Keil and Delitzsch note:

…the introduction of the name Jehovah in connection with Elohim. That the hypothesis, which traces the interchange in the two names in Genesis to different documents, does not suffice to explain the occurrences of Jehovah Elohim in chap.

2:4-3:24, even the supporters of this hypothesis cannot possibly deny. Not only is God called Elohim alone in the middle of this section, viz. in the address to the serpent, a clear proof that the interchange of the names has reference to their different significations; but the use of the double name, which occurs here twenty times though rarely met with elsewhere, is always significant. In the Pentateuch we only find it in Ex 9:30; in the other books of the Old Testament, in 2Sm 7:22, 25; 1Ch 17:16, 17; 2Ch 6:41, 42; Ps 84:8, 11 and Ps 1:1, where the order is reversed; and in every instance it is used with peculiar emphasis, to give prominence to the fact that Jehovah is truly Elohim, whilst in Ps 1:1 the Psalmist advances from the general name El and Elohim to Jehovah, as the personal name of the God of Israel. In this section the combination Jehovah Elohim is expressive of the fact, that Jehovah is God, or one with Elohim. Hence Elohim is placed after Jehovah. For the constant use of the double name is not intended to teach that Elohim who created the world was Jehovah, but that Jehovah, who visited man in paradise, who punished him for the transgression of His command, but gave him a promise of victory over the tempter, was Elohim, the same God, who created the heavens and the earth.304 In opposition to interpreting Genesis as recording literal and historical events, much opposition is raised today claiming, “Scripture is not a science book.” This is designed to have a chilling effect on the biblical literalist. The non-literalist will claim that science has shown, for example, that the light of Gn 1:3 and the sun of Gn 1:14 are one in the same, so there cannot be two different creation days.305 He will claim that science has shown that, in opposition to Gn 1:2, the earth could not have been the first object in the universe, since the Big Bang says that matter exploded and then formed stars and galaxies billions of years before the earth appeared. He will claim that Gn 1:6’s insistence on a “firmament,” which the Bible at times describes as a “vault” and at other times as being “spread out,” does not match anything science has discovered in the near or far reaches of space. And even if these ideas of science have not been proven, the non-literalist believes that the circumstantial evidence for their validity is enough to put in doubt the rather primitive descriptions in Scripture. A common mantra is, if science hasn’t yet found the answer, it will find it someday, but in the meantime it is justifiable to dismiss the Bible’s primitive cosmology and cosmogony.

So what is the biblical literalist to do? He firmly believes that, although unsophisticated, by modern standards, the historical items in Scripture are true and trustworthy in their essence. He finds it very difficult to accept that God, who he believes inspired every word of Scripture, would record something as if it happened but in reality never happened. For him, the very veracity of God and Scripture are at stake.306 Whereas the non-literalist may give a token effort to solving some of the exegetical difficulties in Genesis, he is more comfortable concluding that such solutions are not really necessary, for, after all, “Scripture is not a science book” and was never meant to be pigeon-holed into scientific cages. Moreover, he believes that because of its primitiveness Scripture is susceptible, if not prone, to error in matters too sophisticated for it to handle, but science is relatively free of error, for in confronting the questions of the modern age it relies on sophisticated tools and precise methodologies. Conversely, the literalist will strive to harmonize both Scripture and science, seeking to balance the two, always holding Scripture as the final authority. For there is one thing the literalist believes for certain: Scripture cannot err, whether in matters spiritual or physical, soteriological or historical. Conversely, science, whether the non-literalist wants to admit it or not, has one devastating handicap: its history is riddled with the overturning of one theory after another; one popular belief, which was thought to be fact, so quickly discarded for another popular belief, now proposed as fact.

Seeing the determination of the literalist, today it is not uncommon for theistic evolutionists, progressive creationists and Galileo admirers to counter such efforts by appealing to the words of St. Augustine regarding the interpretation of Scripture. In his book, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, he writes:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world....Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.

Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books.307 Seizing on Augustine’s words, the non-literalist chides the literalist, accusing him of “presuming a meaning on Scripture” that in scientific terms is “nonsense,” which causes an “embarrassing situation” and a “laughing to scorn” of the “wiser brethren” of Christianity.308 The literalist will grant that there are many difficulties in arriving at a consistent one-to-one correspondence between Genesis and science (e.g., how to interpret the appearance of the earth in water in Gn 1:2; the light of Gn 1:3 coming prior to the sun and stars in Gn 1:14; the identity and extent of the firmament in Gn 1:6; the appearance of plants in Gn 1:11 before the sun in Gn 1:14). In his search for solutions, the literalist retorts that he is certainly has no intention of causing an “embarrassing situation,” and he can prove it by bringing Augustine to his aid. He will tell the non-literalist he is misconstruing Augustine’s words, and in reality, the words are more of an indictment against the non-literalist. For Augustine goes on to explain to whom he is applying his words a few pages later. In Book 2, Chapters 4-5, the question of the “waters above the firmament” (Gn 1:6-9) comes to the fore. These distant waters have been one of the more divisive issues between literalists and non-literalists, since the firmament is, according to Genesis 1:14-17, the heavens in which the sun and stars were placed, yet Genesis 1:7 insists that there are waters above the firmament, that is, above the heavens. The logical question is: if the “water above” is to be taken literally, then when, where, why and how is this possible, for it seems to contradict the established facts of science. In answer, Augustine begins by referring to vaporous waters in the air as a possible solution. He writes:

Taking these theories into account, a certain commentator [Basil] has made a praiseworthy attempt to demonstrate that the waters are above the heavens, so as to support the word of Scripture with the visible and tangible phenomena of nature....

Hence, from the existence of the air between the vapors that form the clouds above and the seas that stretch out below, our commentator proposed to show that there is a heaven between water and water. This painstaking enquiry is, in my opinion, quite praiseworthy. But Augustine goes even further in the next analysis, for now he tries to show that there are waters even above the starry heavens. He does so by calling into question the prevailing scientific theories, and in the end, relying on the veracity of Scripture, no matter how hard it may be to accept. He writes: Certain writers, even among those of our faith, attempt to refute those who say that the relative weights of the elements make it impossible for water to exist above the starry heaven.

They base their arguments on the properties and motions of the stars. They say that the star called Saturn is the coldest star, and that it takes thirty years to complete its orbit in the heavens because it is higher up and therefore travels over a wider course.

We notice that Augustine is challenging the prevailing scientific opinion current in his day regarding the nature of stars. Augustine will go on to argue that Saturn, which was then understood as a star, generates heat as it makes its orbit, but that it is cooled by the waters near it, above the heavens, even though some in Augustine’s day denied that these waters existed. He writes:

It is true, indeed, that by its own motion, moving over a vast space, it takes thirty years to complete its orbit; yet by the motion of the heavens it is rotated rapidly in the opposite direction...and therefore, it ought to generate greater heat by reason of its greater velocity. The conclusion is, then, that it is cooled by the waters that are near it above the heavens, although the existence of these waters is denied by those who propose the explanation of the motion of the heavens and the stars that I have briefly outlined. Finally, although admitting he may not have the precise solution to the issue, nevertheless, Augustine maintains that Scripture is the greater authority in this realm, and if it says that the water is above the heavens, then it is there:

With this reasoning some of our scholars attack the position of those who refuse to believe that there are waters above the heavens while maintaining that the star whose path is in the height of the heavens is cold. Thus they would compel the disbeliever to admit that water is there not in a vaporous state but in the form of ice. But whatever the nature of that water and whatever the manner of its being there, we must not doubt that it does exist in that place. The authority of Scripture in this matter is greater than all human ingenuity.309 In contrast to Augustine’s determination to take Scripture at its word and afterward seek for evidence, Catholic scientist Stanley Jaki sees Augustine’s resolve as misguided. After recognizing that “Augustine looked for it in a vaporous layer in the orb of Saturn,” (p.

26), Jaki writes:

Augustine’s search for the firmament should seem baffling. It certainly seemed to slight the very sound principle he had already laid down in respect to reconciling truths known by reason about the physical world with corresponding propositions in the Bible.310 Jaki characterizes Augustine’s search for the firmament and the water above it as “baffling”; an approach of Augustine’s that seems inconsistent with his previous principle of giving the first place to scientific truths and only then finding the corresponding proposition in Scripture which match them. In reality, it is Jaki who has misunderstood Augustine’s so-called “very sound principle.” It was never Augustine’s intention to give absolute authority to science. All along, although trying to be fair with science, Augustine always held that Scripture’s propositions took the first place, and only then could one search for a corresponding scientific truth, not vice-versa. This is obviously the case with Augustine’s view of the waters above the firmament, since for him, regardless of whether he had the right scientific answer to its location and composition, he maintained: “the authority of Scripture in this matter is greater than all human ingenuity.” The most penetrating aspect of Augustine’s bold defense of Scripture is that it is said in a context in which the objector doubts whether water above the firmament exists at all. Augustine’s answer is simple: we may not know where or in what form it resides there, but based on Scripture we know for certain that it exists. This is where Augustine starts. It is his bedrock of truth. The Scripture said, and he believes it.311 Hence we can safely say that, for Augustine, the “embarrassing situation” does not necessarily occur when a faithful expositor tries to find scientific support for biblical propositions, but occurs when the biblical skeptic tries to elevate scientific theory into fact, requiring Scripture either to conform to the theory, or be totally ignorant of the theory.

So now we come back to the question of whether Scripture is a science book. Obviously, the answer to that question is not a simple yes or no. Even the heliocentrist, John Henry Cardinal Newman noted that Scripture teaches the Earth is immovable: It is true, then, that Revelation has in one or two instances advanced beyond its chosen territory, which is the invisible world, in order to throw light upon the history of the material universe. Holy Scripture, it is perfectly true, does declare a few momentous facts, so few that they may be counted, of a physical character. It speaks of a process of formation out of chaos which occupied six days; it speaks of the firmament, of the sun and moon being created for the sake of the earth; of the earth being immovable; of a great deluge and of several other similar facts and events.312 For all his fear about “concordism,” even Jaki admits that the language of Genesis 1 is absolutely unique, both in comparison to other biblical passages and to various ancient documents on cosmology. He writes:

The lucidly streamlined character of Genesis 1 should suggest that its author wanted to offer something very different from the cosmological myths of surrounding cultures. Even according to those who want to see in Genesis 1 at least the remnants of some myths composed in mythological times, Genesis 1 appears conspicuously void of mythical elements....

this also explain why Genesis 1 is so different from all the other chapters of the Book called Genesis, indeed from almost all chapters of all the Books of the Old Testament. Unlike all those chapters, whatever their great variety, this chapter is not the story of a battle, of an encounter, of a plot. It is certainly not a history. It is not a moral exhortation, a parable, a prophecy, and not even a song as some claimed, and certainly not a ledger for stock-talking as is the case in Numbers throughout. All these literary forms were present in the Hebrew scriptures...313 Nevertheless, we must also insist that interpretations such as Jaki’s are not really interpretations at all. They are anti-interpretations, fearful of applying just about anything to Genesis 1, except, as Jaki claims, that it demonstrates a literary technique of “allowing the part to represent the whole.”314 But this is no great revelation. It goes without saying that in any type of discourse the part will invariably represent the whole. In fact, all people who write narratives, whether intentionally or not, incorporate that very principle. Obviously, no one could ever list all the parts of something since such a number would be astronomical and impractical.

Yet Jaki is insistent that the Hebrews “did not take Genesis 1 for a physics textbook, for the very simple reason that they had no physics.”315 They “had no physics”? None at all? Does it take a mathematical equation such as F = ma or E = mc2 to say that men know physics?

Certainly the Hebrews knew that objects dropped from heights fall to the ground; that axe heads do not float on water unless by miracle; that birds fly by flapping their wings against the air. Mathematical formulas do not make physics, they only give a numerical proportion of one value compared to another. In fact, mathematical formulas can be quite deceiving, since formulas deal only with mental intuition that may or may not represent reality. The irony of ironies is that the very concepts of Galilean, Newtonian, and Einsteinian physics, especially the latter’s Relativity theory, are just that, numbers that have no way of proving that they describe physical reality. In fact, modern man’s ignoring of certain fundamental facts of “physics” established in Scripture has led him to postulate some of the most fantastic and absurd theories to avoid having to submit to Scripture.316 Someday we may come to realize that the simple notions of the Hebrews are closer to the truth than the sophisticated theories of modern man. As noted previously, there is one thing about science common to all its branches (including philosophy, psychology, medicine, chemistry, biology, etc.), that is, its history shows that it cannot cease from overturning its own theories, whereas the Bible’s “science” always remains the same. In actuality, what little verifiable truth is discovered in science, the more the Genesis account is vindicated as being a precise record of what occurred in the past.

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296 The New Jerome Biblical Commentary (© 1990), p. 1169, edited by Fr.

Raymond Brown, along with Fr. Joseph Fitzmyer and Fr. Roland Murphy.

Brown deceased in 1998, but probably remains one of the most influential liberal Catholic scholars of the past fifty years. In another of his works Fr. Brown writes: “In the last hundred years we have moved from an understanding wherein inspiration guaranteed that the Bible was totally inerrant to an understanding wherein inerrancy is limited to the Bible’s teaching of ‘that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writing for the sake of our salvation’” (Raymond Brown, S.S., The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus, New York, Paulist Press, 1973, pp. 8-9).

297 Origins, May 7, 1981, p. 739. Fr. Brown also calls his Catholic critics “fundamentalists,” and has some very harsh words for those who criticize his methodology of biblical hermeneutics. But as Stephen Clark has written: “Many who use the term [fundamentalist] in an inaccurate, derogatory way have come under the strong influence of secular humanism (liberal Protestantism, Modernism). They use the word as a term of abuse to discredit their more orthodox opponents. These people interpret scripture as a book which does not have God as its author in any significant sense, and as a book without real authority. Their approach to interpretation comes out of a line of thought which has compromised the fundamentals of the faith (including the articles of the creed and the commandments), and that seeks to interpret scripture in a way that allows that compromise” (Man and Woman in Christ, p. 350).

298 Enumu Elish means “When on high.” Some of the lines of Enumu Elish read as follows: When above the heaven had not been named; and below the earth had not been called by a name; when Apsu primeval, their begetter; Mummu, and Ti amat, she who gave birth to them all; still mingled their waters together; And no pasture land had been formed and not even a reed march was to be seen; When none of the other gods had been brought into being; When they had not yet been called by their names, and their destinies had not yet been fixed; at that time were the gods created within them; Lahmu and Lahamu came into being; they were called by their names; Even before they had grown up and become tall; Anshar and Kishar were created; they surpassed them in stature; They lived many days, adding years to days; Anu was their heir presumptive, the rival of his fathers; Yea, Anu, his first-born, equaled Anshar; And Anu begot Nudimud, his likeness; Nidimud, the master of his fathers was he; He was broad of understanding, wise, mighty in strength; Much stronger than his grandfather, Anshar; He had no rival among the gods of his brothers... (The Babylonian Genesis, Alexander Heidel, 2nd ed. University of Chicago Press, 1951, p. 8).

It is amazing that scholars would once claim that Enumu Elish is the very “model” of Genesis, adding that the latter is a poor copy of the former. Enumu Elish is almost twice the length of Genesis 1, meandering from topic to topic; it is not a creation story, whereas Genesis clearly is; it is mythical poetry, whereas Genesis is didactic and academic, devoid of myth; Marduk appears on the scene very late, whereas Elohim is the only agent making his world; Marduk struggles, whereas Elohim merely speaks and the work is done; Marduk is picked by the gods because they want revenge, whereas Elohim is in competition with no one and serves no one; Marduk is a bloody warrior and creates mayhem, whereas Elohim creates beauty and order; Marduk is constantly agitated and anticipating his next battle, whereas Elohim rests contently after his constructive work. If anything, Enumu Elish appears to be a corrupt form of Genesis 1.

299 Richard Clifford, S. J., in the New Jerome Biblical Commentary, states: “In Mesopotamian culture, evidently the model for most of the stories in Genesis 1-11, scribes explored beginnings through stories and cosmogonies, not through abstract reasoning....Genesis 1-11 then is a single story, an unusually sustained ‘philosophical’ and ‘theological’ explanation of the human race....The biblical writers have produced a version of a common Mesopotamian story of the origins of the populated world, exploring major questions about God and humanity through narrative” (pp. 8-9). In contrast, Bruce Vawter in A Path Through Genesis (Sheed and Ward, 1958) and On Genesis: a New Reading (Doubleday, 1977) admits that the author of Genesis 1 intentionally crafted a sharply different cosmology than Enumu Elish. Vawter writes: “Genesis took itself seriously as serious history….Genesis has been written out of an historical experience that was independent of the materials of which it fashioned its history, or better, which found in these materials resonances and insights that corresponded with the experience….Genesis stands apart from the rest of the Near Eastern myth and folklore to which it is otherwise so evidently related” (On Genesis, pp. 30-31). The contrasts are: many gods versus one god; gods as part of the world versus God not part of the world; matter exists first versus God exists first; stars help create the world versus stars being created on the fourth day; sea creatures rival the gods versus sea creatures as mere creatures. As Sir Frederic Kenyon states: “There is almost nothing to link the [Babylonian] narrative to that of Genesis” (A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture, London: Nelson, 1953, p. 184). Clifford’s reinterpretations of Genesis contradict the finding of the 1909 Biblical Commission: “Whether we may, in spite of the character and historic form of the book of Genesis...teach that the three aforesaid chapters do not contain the narrative of things which actually happened, a narrative which corresponds to objective reality and historic truth; and whether we may teach that these chapters contain fables derived from mythologies and cosmologies belonging to older nations....Answer: in the negative to each part.”

300 As stated by Georgetown theology professor John Haught, Commonweal, January 28, 2000.

301 Exodus 33:11. As Basil writes: “We are proposing to examine the structure of the world and to contemplate the whole universe, beginning not from the wisdom of the world, but from what God taught his servant Moses when He spoke to him in person and without riddles” (The Hexameron, Homily 6, 1; 1, 1)

302 Unfortunately, some Catholic exegetes have been heavily influenced by the historical-critical theory that Genesis 1 was not written until the return from Babylonian captivity between 515 and 445 B.C. Stanley Jaki states: “And since Genesis 1 is, on stylistic grounds alone, a patently post-exilic document...” in Bible and Science, p. 45, yet Jaki equivocates in Genesis 1 Through the Ages, pp. 25-26 and says that “accepting higher criticism about the three or more different sources of Genesis that almost force one to date Genesis 1 as post-exilic” (ibid., p. 62). He traps himself, however, in his remarks on Psalm 104.

After quoting, “You have spread out the heavens like a tent-cloth; you have constructed your palace upon the waters,” Jaki states that the phrase, ‘Nor shall they cover the earth again’ “includes a post-diluvian perspective” which “ does not seem to bother the Psalmist.” This means that the Psalmist would have had the information both of Genesis 1 and Genesis 7-9 in order to make such a comparison between the two waters. If, as Jaki claims, Genesis 1 is “post-exilic” (a sixth century BC occurrence), Psalm 104, having been written about the eleventh century BC, would have no record of the “waters,” and thus, contrary to Jaki, Genesis 1 could not be “post-exilic.” We see the same sort of logic in Jaki’s view that the book of Ezekiel is “certainly a post-exilic product” (ibid., p.

5). Jaki simply ignores the fact that Ezekiel makes it quite clear that he is predicting, and eventually in the midst of, the Babylonian captivity, not subsequent to it. To claim, as Jaki does, that Ezekiel is “post-exilic” means that there is no real prophecy in Ezekiel; rather, Ezekiel merely poses his after-thoughts as prophecy to give the impression of divine revelation. Modern scholars do the same with Daniel. All of Daniel’s prophecies are said to be written “after the fact,” and thus the so-called “prophecies” are merely historical recountings, not predictions of the future. Although holding to evolution, Jaki does admit: “...the evolution of the universe, from very specific earlier states to a very specific present state, nothing is, of course as much as intimated in Genesis 1. Much less should one try to find there the idea of a biological evolution...” Jaki also admits: “In other words, nothing can any longer gloss over the fact that the fossil record defies the mechanism of evolution proposed by Darwin...the paleontological record was never known to have contained clear transitional forms, let alone a series of gentle gradations leading up to man....The only solid ground for holding evolution is belief in the createdness of the universe, and therefore in the strict interconnectedness of all its parts, a feature demanded by the infinite rationality of the Creator” (ibid. pp. 145-146). It is hard to say why Jaki feels he must limit God’s “rationality” to evolution as opposed to instantaneous, ex nihilo, creation.

303 This is especially significant, since the oldest extant copies of Enumu Elish come from the 11th century B.C., four hundred years after Moses, and twelve hundred years after Abraham. W. G. Lambert writes: “...has shown evidence that Marduk...rose to officially sanctioned preeminence only in the late 12th century under Nebuchadnezzar I” (New Catholic Encyclopedia). If anything, this means the likelihood is the Hebrew tradition had influenced the surrounding pagan cultures, rather than vice-versa, but modern Scripture scholars refuse to admit this possibility.

304 Keil and Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, The Pentateuch, pp. 72-73

305 Jaki shows his displeasure by stating: “...that fourth day, perennially troublesome for those fond of waving their Bibles” (Genesis 1 Through the Ages, p. 168).

306 As one who feared not to apply the science of his day to Genesis 1, Augustine stated: “...the credibility of the Scripture is at stake” (Confessions, Book 2, Chapter 9).

307 The Literal Meaning of Genesis, Bk 1, Ch. 19, No. 39: through the ages, pp. 90-91; 141; 174). But even before Augustine, the first “concordist” Jaki attacks is the allegorist Philo, since, “as much as he took Genesis 1 not for its own sake and in its own true character but as an illustration and embodiment of some thing else” (ibid., p. 43). What we find in Jaki’s book is essentially a search through history to find anyone who agrees with Jaki’s interpretation of Genesis 1. If the author is a “concordist,” Jaki summarily dismisses him, which he ends up doing about 95% of the time. A concordist is understood as anyone who attempts to apply science, to whatever degree, to Genesis 1. Jaki’s favorite litmus tests are: (a) what does the author do with the Light on the first day in contrast to the sun’s light on the fourth day; (b) what does the author do with the Firmament made on the second day, as well as the waters above it; (c) what does the author do with the Hebrew word bara in Genesis 1:1, a word Jaki is adamant cannot mean “created” but “to split” or “to slash.” (We will address this point in detail later). (See pages 79, 94, 97, 116, 119, 130 for further evidence of Jaki’s litmus tests). To his dismay, Jaki finds hardly anyone who even mentions, let alone sides with, his view of Genesis 1 (ibid., p. 64), which, being a repetitive droning in his book, is the proposition that the only thing with which the Genesis 1 writer was interested is demonstrating the creative power of God by means of stating the “whole” (“In a certain beginning God created the heavens and the earth”) and then stating some of its “parts” (some, but only few of the things created). (See pages 21, 61, 72, 95, 132, 156 to see the repeated emphasis of Jaki’s theme). To Jaki, Genesis 1 was written to the “reader at that time” (ibid., p. 61) and only inadvertently for others, and therefore it could not even broach the complicated area of cosmogony, let alone explain it. For Jaki, Genesis 1 is merely “post-exilic” literature designed to reinvigorate the Jews coming out of seventy years of Babylonian captivity; not to serve as an historical model of origins, even on an elementary level.

309 The Literal Meaning of Genesis, Bk 2, Ch. 5, No 9.

310 Bible and Science, p. 95.

311 Aquinas said the same thing regarding the superiority of Scripture to decide such matters: “Whether, then, we understand by the firmament the starry heaven, or the cloudy region of the air, it is true to say that it divides the waters from the waters, according as we take water to denote formless matter, or any kind of transparent body, as fittingly designated under the name of waters...” (Summa Theologica, Bk. 1, Ques. 68, Art 3).

312 The Idea of a University, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959, Regency Publishing, 1999, pp. 396-397.

313 Genesis 1 Through the Ages, pp. 22, 27.

314 Jaki makes this his constant theme throughout Genesis through the ages (cf. pp. 21, 61, 72, 95, 132, 156).

315 Ibid., p. 25.

316 As the sixth century theologian John Philoponus stated: “...nothing in the makeup of this world is different from the Prophet’s treatment of it; in actuality, most of the things whose origins were investigated by scientists have their origin in Moses’ book” (cited in Jaki’s book, Genesis 1 through the ages, p. 99, from De opificio mundi, ed G. Reichardt, Leipzig: G. B. Teubner, 1897, p. 6. It is no coincidence that, after his instruction at the Bavarian schools which included teaching on the Catholic religion, especially of the six-day creation, which ended at age twelve, Einstein said that after the “reading of popular scientific books” he “soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true” (ibid., p. ix, Einstein: The Life and Times).