1In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2And the earth
was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. Gen 1:1,2 KJV
The concept that there is a time gap between v.1 and 2 is called the GAP theory. And there are a number of websites that disagree with that. However, the ones I've checked haven't acknowledged all that is involved in the concept. For example, AIG seems to treat anyone who believes that the earth is much older than Adam as an evolutionist up front. There is one link on the "gap theory" written by Henry Morris in 1987 on the AIG site. However, his critique seems to miss the whole argument, pluse he makes some simple mistakes in a few of his statements.
My position is that the earth is quite a lot older than Adam, which I believe can be discerned from Scripture, which I shall share. And, I accept the account of Genesis 1 as
literal. Now, from AIG's perspective, how can that be?? My objective is to take 1 point at a time, allowing for any questions, or discussion, or debate.
First Point: please note the underlined words in v.2 above. The discussion will consider what these words mean, and how they are used in the rest of Scripture. Plus, I will demonstrate from the NT several verses that provide indication that something occurred between v.1 and 2 in Genesis 1.
The first word underlined is "was". It is the Hebrew word "hayah"; meaning, to exist, i.e., to be or become, come to pass (always emphatic, and not a mere copula or auxiliary).
The word is spelled a number of different ways in the Hebrew lexicon, and the word is translated a number of different ways in the OT. The word occurs some 3560 times. Here are the different ways it's found:
become, became, came to pass, came, was, were, shall be, will be, were even. Morris claimed in his article on the AIG site that the Hebrew word can only be "become"
when context requires it. Since there is only 1 verse "in context" with v.2, that seems hardly a fair claim. We need to see what the whole counsel of God says regarding creation and Genesis 1. That would be proper context, not just what precedes v.2 in Genesis 1. And I will provide verses from both the OT and NT that do require that "hayah" in Gen 1:2 be rendered "became".
Also, keep in mind that Moses, the author of Genesis, didn't write "was". He used the Hebrew word, which can be rendered in several different ways. We will determine his meaning from comparing the word with other verses, plus examining some NT verses.
The exact spelling form of "hayah" as found in v.2 occurs 4 more times in the OT, ALL of which are translated "become". These are: Gen 47:26, Ex 9:24, 1 Sam 10:12 and Joshua 14:14. In fact, the word is translated as "become" or "became" about 56 times in the OT, but I have focused only on the 5 verses where the spelling in the lexicon is exactly the same as Gen 1:2, which is: "haayataah", with the "a" following the "y" as a superscript.
My point here is that it is legitimate to understand Gen 1:2 as saying "and the earth became…" For reasons to follow. My point here is to demonstrate that the earth
became something different than the original creation in v.1.
Questions, comments, etc?
