24 October 2022
Let me reiterate that I have no particular interest in settling the question of why science sees billions of years in the universe's past and the Bible appears to give it only a few thousand years. I'm simply not concerned; the Bible is not addressing the question at all, if you ask me. However, there is one other idea that I haven't mentioned regarding the apparent disconnect between science and the Bible about human origins and the universe. It's more complicated, so it warrants its own article.
Please note that I don't subscribe to Occam's Razor, either. Simplicity is convenient for the intellect, but moral truth is seldom simple or convenient. Moral truth transcends mere intellect; moral reasoning in the heart is on a completely different level. The Hebrew culture and intellectual traditions assert just that. It is not necessary to satisfy human reason; it is necessary to make peace with God. He is at times most unreasonable, when viewed from the human perspective of reason.
Thus, when the Bible addresses universal origins, it approaches the question from a non-rational perspective. It does not care about meeting the concerns of human curiosity. Rather, it meets the mission of declaring God's requirements. The Genesis account of origins serves the purpose of establishing our duties to God.
One of the primary implications of the Creation Account is that the seven-day cycle is hard-wired into the universe itself. It serves to justify the Hebrew obsession with that cycle, and implies that the Hebrew reckoning of time and calendar is wholly God's doing, not simply the traditions of a rootless nation of tent-dwelling Arameans. By the way, most other nations and civilizations from the Ancient Near East also adhered to that same basic rhythm of life.
There are other implications; it's not that hard to trace a lot of threads in the Law of Moses back to that account. And there is no excuse for not understanding that the order of Creation is a matter of moral logic, not a literal historical sequence. It is not some kind of perverse deception to say "God did thus" and not mean it the way our western minds assume it should mean. It's a moral statement of who is responsible for certain moral concepts, not an attempt to answer human curiosity of the facts. Please, do remember that mere intellectual curiosity is included under the Hebrew concept of "Lust of the Eyes" (you can't wait to see something).
The first Creation narrative is neither history nor science, and is a symbolic telling of moral truth about God and His character. You aren't supposed to infer from that narrative historical facts. Don't build there; it stands on nothing factually solid. Rather, it stands above our fallen "reality" as a thing that should inspire us to aspire to eternal reality. The second Creation narrative regarding Adam and Eve and the other creatures in the Garden has a similar purpose, but is told aiming at a wholly different moral target. It explains something about how we got into this awful situation under the Fall, but the narrative remains non-historical in nature. Whether or not there are historical details revealed is not the point. Most of the story takes place outside of our space-time constraints.
Now we are ready to grasp this: Parts of the story of Adam and Eve may be cyclical, just as so much of the Book of Revelation is. Some elements in the early chapters of Genesis may have happened repeatedly. In other words, the Bible we have now may be one of a series of revelations that varies somewhat with each reset coming every 12,000 years, and perhaps every 6,000 years on the half-cycle. Thus, the solar catastrophes coming in the next 25 years may see God calling another prophet after it's over to start a new cycle of divine revelation. It would be the same basic truth, but told in a different context.
Some parts of Genesis are universal, and predate Moses by countless years. He didn't compose Genesis; he was the human editor as God revealed to him which legends to include and which to exclude. Somewhere down the road after the coming destruction, the Lord may raise up a new Moses to perform a similar task. Indeed, it could well start farther back in the story, with another Noah rising up to establish a new covenant for what God plans to do in the next cycle.
Who knows what God will call the characters in the new Scriptures, using an entirely different language and culture He will build up to reveal Himself, as He once did with the Hebrew nation? It's not the book that matters so much as the message behind the book. For our cycle, the Bible is The Book. In the next cycle, it could very well be another Bible will be put together for that cycle.
Ever hear of the "Gap Theory" regarding the first verses of Genesis? This theory posits the between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 is a vast set of events that brought the world to such a messy condition as to call it "formless and void". The popular version says it was the war in Heaven, wherein Satan rebels in a battle that makes a mess. After God puts the Devil in his place (Luke 10:18), He now cleans up the mess and makes the current world we all see. If what I suggest about the 12,000 year (or maybe 6,000 year) cycle of human experience holds water, then the "gap" may be more about a repeating cycle of solar catastrophes than Satan's one-time rebellion.
Just so you'll know: The reason things can be so catastrophic, as with the Flood of Noah, in a half-cycle is because that massive galactic gravity wave that brings us micro-novas every 12,000 years has a polarity to it. And half-way between two waves, that polarity reverses as it passed over our solar system. Every crest and every trough of the wave passing far outside of our solar system reverses the polarity of gravity regardless of the distance. That polarity reversal affects the earth's mantle, causing it to shift rather quickly, and generates disasters like the Flood of Noah. Earth's crust shifts dramatically, and it causes radical changes in the topography and water distribution, along with massive global storms, when this polarity swap comes through our part of the galaxy, as it did about 6,000 years ago.
At any rate, it's not that I assert this theory as true. Rather, it seems to me a plausible explanation. It does account for things other ideas might not cover so well. However, it's just a tentative notion that is not necessary to understand what God demands of us. It's not exactly cycles of Creation itself, but cycles of God's dealing with fallen humanity. How many cycles have there been? It's still possible that the apparent cycles haven't really happened, but are simply part of the backlog of this fallen universe as a simulation in God's imagination.
I do most firmly assert that this reality is not real. It's one massive deception that we chose when we rejected God's choices for us. The fundamental moral issues remain the same, regardless of how you look at it.
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