In the Genesis
narrative, the stages of creation are organized in days. Creation activity begins
with the universe on the first day, and ends with the first human couple on the sixth
day. In modern terms a day is 24 consecutive hours. On first reading Moses'
account, many people think that he is wrong about the timing of creation. To the
naive reader Moses seems to say that the creation of the universe took just 144
consecutive hours from the beginning to the creation of the first human beings. That
contradicts what we now know. The universe is about 10 thousand million years
old. Modern history is only 6 to 10 thousand years old. But the discrepancy
disappears when one considers the definition of a day as Moses puts it in his
narrative.
Definition: Long before a child can gauge an hour or even
count to 24, the child can distinguish night and day. Anyone can do the same by
observing the outside world and noting the absence or presence of light. The most
primitive definition of a day is a cycle that alternates between generalized darkness in
nature and light. The dark phase of the cycle is "night." The word
"day" is also used just for the lighted phase. In the Genesis account the
first three days are simply three cycles of darkness and light. In the beginning
when God created the heavens and the earth, there was darkness all over the
universe. Then God created the light. Immediately the account is interrupted
by declarations and definitions. God calls the light day and the darkness
night. Moses adds that the evening and the morning were a day.
He mentions the phases in this order because the darkness was first, then the light.
This
definition does not mention the word "hour." That definite interval of
time does not appear in any other part of the Hebrew Scriptures, either. The Romans
introduced the hour when they invented reliable artifacts to measure the passing of
time. When Moses wrote, such technology did not exist. People measured time by
the apparent movement of the sun or the stars. The identification of a day with the
duration of an interval of time is a derived, secondary definition. It is incorrect
to say that the first three days have to be interpreted as "literal, 24-hour
days." No interpretation can be "literal" if it depends on a word
("hour") that is nowhere mentioned.
The duration of a usual day: Nowhere in the first three days
is there any indication of the duration of those days. God took charge of separating
the light from the darkness. All that He did was found to be "good."
His regulation of the passing of the first three cycles of darkness and light must also
have been good. Only later do we find the determining factor for the duration of a
day, and it only applies from the fourth day on. On the fourth day God delegated to
the sun the function of separating the light from darkness. He gave the sun
governing authority. Having received this task and commission, since then the sun
has ruled the day with rigor and precision. We may be sure that days four, five,
six, seven, and all days since have been 24-hour days.
The first three days: God had no obligation to limit the
duration of the first three days to the 24 hours that would afterwards be normal on the
surface of the earth. Before the earth was formed it could hardly turn on its
axis. From the beginning, night and day have always been determined by the absence
or presence of light. According to cosmology and astrophysics, there have been three
epochs of darkness in the development of the universe. These were interrupted by
three epochs when the material of the earth in formation was flooded with light. The
alternating cycles of darkness and light were the first three days. Together they
added up to 10 thousand million years. The first three nights and days, and the
transitions between them, have all been photographed.
The darkness
and light of the first three days are scientifically observable data. They establish
an exact correspondence between the Genesis narrative and another modern discovery.
Nuclear physicists and astrophysicists have determined the origin and development of
atoms, stars, and the life-giving chemical richness of the crust of the earth. Their
development is interrelated. To make atoms, stars, and a habitable planet one needs
exactly three cycles of darkness followed by light. Moses anticipates the findings
of nuclear physicists and astrophysics by more than 3,000 years! Let us look closely
at the parallels between the narratives told by Moses and by physicists.
First evening: In the beginning God created the heavens
and the earth. And the earth was without form and empty, and darkness was upon the
face of the abyss, and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.
In the beginning the universe consisted of very energetic gamma rays, darting to and fro
through empty space. A part of these rays was the energy that would later
materialize as the earth. The earth had no form at all, because the rays were going
in all directions. Before it materialized, the earth was empty but it still existed,
because the energy existed. The rays were invisible. All was dark, the first
evening.
Energy has
density and exerts pressure like any fluid. It is also attracted by gravitation
toward regions of greater density. But at the beginning there was almost complete
uniformity, which made the attraction almost equal in all directions. There was no
perceptible gravitation. Therefore the earth was a great abyss full of fluids, where
one would be in free fall with nowhere to stand. The waters existed, as well as the
earth, in an unformed, empty state.
This early
condition of the universe has not yet been photographed directly. However, it is
simulated daily in laboratories around the world. The pictures taken of the darkness
of X-rays coming from cyclotrons and producing atomic particles are also pictures of the
first evening.
First morning: And God said, "Let there be
light," and there was light. We do not know how much time there was until
the gamma rays collided. Therefore we do not know how long the first evening
lasted. We do know that a light wave needs a thousandth of a millionth of a
millionth of a second to complete one vibration and make one wave. The first evening
must have lasted at least that long. Then the gamma rays collided with one another
and materialized as atomic components. The leftover energy became light and
heat. The Cosmic Background Explorer's instruments proved that this light was
exactly like the light produced by any hot object, like the filament of a light
bulb. Moses called it light in the ordinary sense of the word, as a child would
understand it.
The first light is the most perfect light ever analyzed. Sunspots, Fraunhofer lines, and solar flares mar the light of the sun. Strong X-ray lines disrupt the flash of an atomic explosion. The first light is not like the flash of an explosion. In four years of measurements the instruments detected no deviation from the distribution of wavelengths discovered by Max Plank in 1900. The first light conforms very closely to a theoretical law, the first law ever proposed in quantum mechanics. It is the light from an act of creation. Therefore Georges Lemātre and George Gammow were mistaken when they said that the universe began with a "big bang." Explosions are destructive, but the first light was created perfect.
The dawn of
the first day has not yet been observed with a telescope, because the mixture of light and
particles was translucent but not transparent. Free particles with an electric
charge, such as electrons, scatter light in random directions, like a morning fog.
There was plenty of light, but no object could be seen clearly.
Nuclear
physicists speak of many strange particles produced in the high temperature and enormous
pressure of that mixture. Eventually the components of ordinary atoms
predominated: protons, neutrons, and electrons. Some protons and neutrons made
combinations of two, three, four, six, or seven particles, while other protons remained
free. In this way they formed the nuclei of the three chemical elements of lowest
weight: hydrogen, helium, and lithium. The formation of nuclei was almost
complete in the first three or four minutes after creation. There were no
combinations of five or eight, because those nuclei are not stable. The lack of them
impeded the formation of larger combinations, those with more than seven particles in
all. The heavy elements could not be formed in the first minutes of the
universe.
Second evening: Then God said, "Let there be
expansion in the midst of the waters, and separate the waters from the waters."
And God caused the expansion, and separated the waters below the expansion from the waters
above the expansion. And it was so. And God called the expansion heaven.
The expansion proves that the universe had a beginning and therefore had a Creator, the
First Cause.
The Hebrew
word translated here as "expansion" is used in the same sense throughout the Old
Testament. Some translations call the heavens the "firmament." A few
critics took advantage of this translation to accuse the Hebrews of believing that the
heavens were a metal plate. In fact, the Bible uses the same word to describe how a
small lump of gold was beaten until it expanded into a broad thin sheet (Exodus
39:3). Malleable metals expand under the pressure of repeated blows.
The pressure
in the original heavens also forced the expansion of the universe, and the expansion
cooled it. Almost all the high-energy rays were broken up by that time, and the
particles collided with each other less and less frequently. After half a million
years, when the temperature had dropped to only 3,000 degrees Celsius or centigrade (5,000
degrees Fahrenheit), the nuclei could at last capture the free electrons and form the
first atoms. The scattering of the light diminished, as it does when a morning fog
dissipates. The light also became less intense and redder, like a fire that is going
out. The last light traveled freely in all directions, from every place toward every
other place in the universe. The universe became dark and transparent, open to our
inspection, and the second evening began.
Second morning: Once the dense regions became compact, they
had strong gravitation that defined the directions "up" or above and
"down" or below. The fluids above, which were other compact
regions, separated from the fluids below, the region where the earth would later be
formed. The gravitational energy of the matter falling into the lower region heated
it up again until it began to emit light. The region became the galaxy now called
the Milky Way. Primitive stars were formed, and the second morning began.
We cannot see
the origin of our own galaxy, because we are inside it. However, the Hubble Space
Telescope and the Keck Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, have photographed the most distant
galaxies. These are also the earliest, because light takes the longest time to come
to us from them. Beyond them (and therefore preceding them in time) there is
darkness. The darkness is the end of the second evening and the light of the
galaxies is the dawn of the second morning.
The first
stars were composed of elements of the lowest weights, namely, hydrogen, helium, and
lithium. Deep in the interior of the more massive stars, these elements were bathed
in light and heat, under high pressure. This time the heat and pressure lasted about
five billion years. The nuclei collided and occasionally stuck to one another.
The heavier chemical elements had time to form as clumps of the lighter ones. Carbon
nuclei were formed, with six protons and six neutrons in each. Complex molecules of
carbon and hydrogen are the raw material of all life on earth. Without oxygen (8
protons, 8 neutrons) we could not breathe. Iron (26 protons, 30 neutrons) is
indispensable to the red blood cells for transporting oxygen to all parts of our
bodies. All 92 natural chemical elements were needed to make our life
possible. The heaviest natural element, uranium (92 protons, 143 or 146 neutrons)
produces heat in the center of the earth. This raises the mountains and continents
and leaves other, lower places as the ocean basins. All the elements
"simmered" slowly, at temperatures of millions of degrees, in the centers of
massive stars, while the stars burned their fuel, hydrogen. How could the elements
get out to form a habitable planet? The outer layers of the stars covered
them.
Third evening: Also God said, "Let the waters under
the heavens come together in one place, and let that which is dry be uncovered."
When a massive star has consumed all of its hydrogen, it starts to burn helium. When
this secondary fuel is exhausted, energy production diminishes. The outward
radiation pressure drops. The outer layers of the star begin to fall toward the
center, producing even more heat and pressure in the interior. The heavy elements
all reach their ignition temperature almost at the same time. For a few days the
star becomes brighter than all the other stars in its galaxy put together. From afar
it seems to be a new star, a "nova," because before the star became so bright
perhaps it was too dim to see. Very soon the conflagration becomes an
explosion. A supernova exploded in our galaxy and was photographed in 1987.
Some four billion years ago, another exploded, and dispersed its insides as dry dust over
a great region in space. "That which is dry" was uncovered.
Part of the
dust contained oxygen. Powerful winds and jets from other stars forced shock waves
in the clouds of dust and gases, heating them up. This favored the reaction of
hydrogen with oxygen, producing water. In 1998 the Infrared Space Observatory
observed the Orion nebula. There water is continually being made. The
production rate is enough to fill the oceans of the earth five times every two
hours. In some other place long ago the waters of the earth came together.
The extinction
of the star and the sudden cooling of its interior brought on the third evening. As
when a hot iron is taken out of the fire and quenched in water, the light disappeared with
the heat. The dust contained the iron that would later be the center of the
earth. The dust also had all the elements found in the crust of the earth.
They provide a rich chemistry, the basis of life.
We cannot
photograph the end of our own second morning and the beginning of our own third evening,
because the earth itself is made of the material ejected from the star that exploded so
long ago. The photograph taken in 1987 of a supernova shows the end of the second
morning and the beginning of the third evening for some other planet near some other
star.
Third morning: The first stars had formed on the second
morning, mostly in the centers of the galaxies. On the perimeters of the galaxies
there were still clouds of cold gases, like hydrogen, that would take billions of years to
become compact and produce stars. When some of the first stars exploded and
dispersed the contents of their interiors, the dust formed long streamers threaded among
the clouds of gases. Many galaxies turn as windmills and the streamers of dust look
like threads partly wound around their centers. Some of the dust mixed with the
clouds of hydrogen. When the clouds formed new stars, the heavy elements made them
shine with colors like yellow instead of the intense blue-white of the first stars.
One of these yellow stars was under the heavens because it was in the dusty
region that was to form the earth. This star circulated in the arms of the Milky
Way, collecting a dusty disk that later accumulated into a "court" of
planets.
"Pillars
of Creation," a photograph made by the Hubble Space Telescope, shows fingers or
pillars of dust a light year in length. In the picture a yellow star plunges through
one of the pillars and drags after it a trail of dust about the diameter of our solar
system. Is that what the earth's third morning was like?
The words "Let
the waters under the heavens come together in one place, and let that which is dry be
uncovered" also describe another event. It was the moment in the third day
when the earth was formed and had a surface. The mountains and continents rose up
and dried off, and the waters of the oceans sought their basins.
The first
microbes conditioned the soil, and made things ready for the creation of vegetation.
The trees grew from seeds. They took many years to become tall, if they grew with
the normal slowness. The vegetation conditioned the atmosphere for animal and human
life by releasing oxygen. With the rotation of the earth darkness and light
alternated on its surface. However, seen in its totality, the earth was always close
to the sun, bathed in light. All these events therefore count as part of the third
morning. God still retained for Himself the authority to separate day and night.
Moses is right
again! In terms that a child can understand he narrates correctly the modern story
of formation of chemical elements, astrophysics, and the creation of our habitable
planet.