3. Summary of the Six Days of Creation (§§1-25)

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3. Summary of the Six Days of Creation (§§1-25)





1. The Bible Principle is:

Psalm 90. 4 “For a thousand years in thy [God’s] sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. There are several meanings implied here. 1) Time is relative to God. One thousand human years are the equivalent of one day to God, yet also are equivalent to what is termed a “watch in the night.” There were three such watches during the night hours in Old Testament times, each watch varying, according to the length of the night darkness in different seasons, between around 3.26 hours in midsummer and 4.64 hours in midwinter. This implies different experiences (plural) of time to God, longer and shorter. 2) A long time (1000 years) is equivalent to a short time to God, when it has passed, yet, as God experiences the time, while it is passing, a small division of time seems like one thousand years (like a watchman in the night to whom every moment seems to last “for an eternity”). 3) The long time and the short time in God’s experience swap over like changing watches (the Hebrew word “watch” means literally a “change” or “swap” of duties); as we would say, “... vice versa.” On this principle, as we shall see, one day in God’s experience of time, as it is passing, is equivalent to 360,000,000 years in the normal human experience, and six of those periods comprise the era of creation, which is precisely equivalent to six night-watches (the number of complete watches in one 24 hour day), of 3.6 hours each (falling between the minimum of 3.26 and the maximum of 4.64 hours per watch). 4) Time in this case, as in a watch of the night, is measured by reference to the stars rather than the sun.

2 Peter 3. 8 “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”




2. Explanation of the Bible Principle:

1000 human years, once they have passed, correspond to one day in God’s time, AND vice versa, i.e. each single human day of that period corresponds to 1000 years in God’s time. That means, God’s experience of time is the opposite of man’s: a long time (1000 years) is a short time (one day), and a short time (one day) is a long time (1000 years). Isaiah 55. 8: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.” The days of Creation in Genesis 1 are God’s days, because no human being existed at that time. That means each day of Creation lasted 1000 human years. Furthermore, God experienced each and every day of each 1000 year-period as 1000 human years and did 1000 years-worth of creative work in it. In the original Biblical calendar there were 360 days in a year. So each of the 360 days in each year of the 1000 years, lasted 1000 years. The total number of years in one Creation day was therefore 360 × 1000 × 1000 = 360,000,000 years. This period is the time it takes for the outer edge of our Galaxy, the Milky Way, to complete one full revolution. God’s Creation day is equivalent to a Galactic day.


3. This scheme was known to the Rabbis. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 97a) says: “The world will exist for 6000 years, and in the 7000th year, it will be destroyed.” This is based on the divine principle that a thousand years correspond to one day of God’s time in Genesis 1. Thus there will be 6000 years from Adam till the end of the present age. According to Sefer Ha-Temunah, a work ascribed to Rabbi Nehumya ben Ha-Kanah of the first-century AD, the 7000 years of Sanhedrin 97a represent a cosmic Sabbatical cycle, parallel to that ordained in ancient Israel by which the fields were planted for 6 years and left to lie fallow in the 7th (Leviticus 25. 4). After 7 Sabbatical periods in the agricultural cycle, a total of 49 years, came the Jubilee or 50th year (Leviticus 25. 11), in which freedom was proclaimed throughout the land. This Jubilee typed the era of Redemption when the universe will finally be released from the bondage of corruption. Thus the universe will last for 7 Sabbatical periods of 7000 years each and then the age of Redemption will be ushered in. The total lifetime of the universe, according to this scheme, will be 49,000 years.


4. There is a difference of opinion amongst the Rabbinic sources regarding which Sabbatical cycle we are currently in: Derush Ohr Ha-Hayim says that we are in the second cycle; Livnat Ha-Sapir says the seventh. The world would have been, according to these opinions, either 7,000 or 42,000 years old when Adam and Eve were created.


5. In the 13th century AD, Rabbi Isaac ben Samuel of Akko (Acre),who held, like Livnat Ha-Sapir, that we are in the seventh Sabbatical cycle, — made the observation that, since Sabbatical cycles existed before man was created, time before Adam and Eve must be reckoned in divine years, not human years. On the basis of Psalm 90. 4 he propounded that each day of each year before Adam was equivalent in God’s time to 1000 years. That meant that each 1000-year-long “day” in each cosmic Sabbatical period actually lasted for 1000 × 1000 × the number of days in one year, precisely as postulated here. On the understanding that the year comprises 365.25 days, each 1000-year-long cosmic “day” would last 365,250,000 years. The correct figure is 360,000,000. On either reckoning the total age of the universe is in the range of 15 billion years, i.e. 42,000 years multiplied by 360 × 1000 (= 15,120,000,000 years), or multiplied by 365.25 × 1000 (= 15,340,500,000 years). It is estimated that 15 billion years, more or less, have transpired since the Big Bang. In terms of this scheme, we are currently in the second cosmic Sabbatical cycle, as some have maintained, if the starting-point is taken to be the creation of the earth approximately 4 billion years ago, — since each cycle comprises roughly 2.5 billion years, — and also in the seventh Sabbatical cycle, as others maintain, if the starting-point is taken to be the creation of the heavens (space) approximately 15 billion years ago.





The First Day of Creation


6. The First Day of Creation was 1000 years long, one day in God’s time, and 360,000,000 years long in relative or geological time. The word “relative” means here, as reckoned in terms of the creative work performed within it, and the word “geological,” as observed and measured by geologists. The First Day of Creation was 6 Creation days prior to the present point in time, which is near the dawning of the 7th day Millennium Rest.



Excursus on the Present Point of Time Near the Dawning of the 7th Day




7. Hebrews 4. 3-11 “3 For we which have believed do enter into rest, as he said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. 4 For he spake in a certain place of the seventh day on this wise, And God did rest the seventh day from all his works. 5 And in this place again, If they shall enter into my rest. 6 Seeing therefore it remaineth that some must enter therein, and they to whom it was first preached entered not in because of unbelief: 7 Again, he limiteth a certain day, saying in David, To day, after so long a time; as it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts. 8 For if Jesus had given them rest, then would he not afterward have spoken of another day. 9 There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. 10 For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his. 11 Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.” Genesis describes the 7th day as a past event. Paul explains that that is from God’s eternal point of view, and that faith enters right now into that eternal rest of God through the world of time (the latter part of the present 6th day of Creation), in which God still works: John 5. 16-17: “16 And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay him, because he had done these things on the sabbath day. 17 But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” John 9. 4-5: “I [Jesus] must work the works of Him that sent Me, while it is day: the night cometh [the start of a new Day in the evening], when no man can work [= the Sabbath]. As long as I am in the world I am the light of the world.”


8. The commission given to man on the 6th day of Creation was to have dominion over the earth and the creatures of the earth. That is yet to be fulfilled, it having proved necessary for man to be crowned with that dominion only after testing and trial through suffering. Jesus Himself was the first of many brethren to be thus crowned: Hebrews 2. 6-10: “6 But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him? 7 Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands: 8 Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him. 9 But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man. 10 For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.” The inherent weakness of man was demonstrated in the Fall of Adam and Eve. Hence the absolute necessity for the mediatorship of the Redeemer, the perfect Man, Who won the crown for us, Jesus Christ.


9. Genesis 2. 7ff. takes up the account where Genesis 1. 31 left it, on the 6th Day of Creation, i.e. within the last 360,000,000 years in geological time, with the formation of Man from the dust of the earth. The account of the Fall follows in Genesis 3. 1-7. Then is described how God encountered the fallen pair, Adam and Eve, as they hid after the Fall. The event is described as having occurred “in the cool [literally, breeze] of the day” (Gen. 3. 8). This is a special Hebrew term designating the early evening just before sunset, when cooler breezes begin to blow. No other Day having been mentioned in the interval, we understand by the use of this term that the 6th Day of Creation was now about to close and a new Day to commence, as it did in the Hebrew system, at sunset. It is a fact that towards the end of the last 360,000,000 years in geological time, the global climate has been much cooler than in preceding phases. This cool period (the onset of the Ice Ages) has coincided with the appearance of the human species. The Fall of Man and the rest of human history up to the present is therefore dateable to the very end of the last cycle of 360,000,000 years, in geological time, the 6th Day of Creation.



End of Excursus



10. It is remarkable that recent discoveries concerning the origin of life on earth show that there was a pattern to the emergence of increasingly complex forms, in complete agreement with the Biblical account, and in the sense that critical stages in that development occurred at 360-million-year junctures of time. These junctures are particularly noticeable when the development of living organisms is considered. Genesis 1 tells us that the first vegetation emerged on the Third Day of Creation, the first sea-creatures on the Fifth Day and the first land-animals on the Sixth Day. Precisely at the corresponding junctures, viz. at 1,440 million years, 720 million years and 360 million years Before Present, the fossil record shows those types of life emerging. At the appropriate points on the Second and Fourth Days, likewise, the atmosphere was formed (from 1,800 million years), and acquired near its present-day composition (from 1,080 million years). This is powerful confirmation of the correctness of the scheme. The following summaries and Chart supply further detail.





11. The First Day of Creation (Continued): The First Day of Creation lasted the first 1000 years, or 360,000,000 years, approximately from 2,160,000,000 to 1,800,000,000 years ago in geological time. During that day light appeared through the darkness which shrouded the desolate, water-covered, earth.



The Second Day of Creation


12. The Second Day of Creation lasted the next 1000 years, or 360,000,000 years, approximately from 1,800,000,000 to 1,440,000,000 years ago in geological time. During that day the absorption of light by prokaryotic cells, already present in the earth from the original Creation of heaven and earth before the first day, produced, through photosynthesis, a pulse (Heb. raqi’a, lit. “something beaten out”) of oxygen which formed a primitive atmosphere. God called this atmosphere “heaven.”



The Third Day of Creation


13. The Third Day of Creation lasted the next 1000 years, or 360,000,000 years, approximately from 1,440,000,000 to 1,080,000,000 years ago in geological time. On this day eukaryotic cells, of that type “whose seed is in itself,” appeared on earth, as dry land now emerged, here and there, from the primeval ocean. These cells were primitive forms of vegetation, lichen and fungi, which reproduced, not like prokaryotic cells by cell division, but by a simple form of sexual reproduction, resulting in similar but not precisely identical offspring, each “according to its kind.”



The Fourth Day of Creation


14. The Fourth Day of Creation lasted the next 1000 years, or 360,000,000 years, approximately from 1,080,000,000 to 720,000,000 years ago in geological time. No new life forms emerged on this day. The atmosphere, however, cleared, to the extent that the patches of light of the primitive atmosphere crystallized into distinct concentrations of light, the sun, the moon and the stars, which produced regular, seasonal variations and fluctuations in the earth’s weather-patterns and ecosystem.



The Fifth Day of Creation


15. The Fifth Day of Creation lasted the next 1000 years, or 360,000,000 years, approximately from 720,000,000 to 360,000,000 years ago in geological time. On this day a great profusion of life appeared in the oceans, beginning with primitive trilobites and ammonites and similar creatures, and ending with fishes, huge marine animals and flying creatures, the earliest species of insect.


16. How were these living creatures produced? According to Genesis 1 God first caused vegetation to spring out of the earth in two varieties: 1) the Herb yielding seed, and 2) the Tree producing fruit. That was on the Third Day of Creation, as already recounted. On the Fifth Day, God created animate creatures. Animation was achieved by a special act of creation on the Fifth Day of animal “spirits” (or “souls,” Heb. nefesh). God first created the animal spirits, then the waters “swarmed with” the material bodies of the various different types mentioned. The animal spirits are said to have been contained “within” the material bodies (Genesis 1. 30). Some of these animal spirits were destined to be embodied in material forms which emerged out of the dry ground, rather than the water, on the following Sixth Day. But the spirits of these same creatures of the Sixth Day were created, along with those of the water-creatures, on the Fifth Day. On the Fifth Day only water-creatures emerged in material form. This is the precise import of Genesis 1. 20a, which reads in the King James: “And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature [Heb. nefesh, animal soul, spirit] that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.” The word fowl here is Hebrew ôf, pronounced oh-f, which can and does mean “fowl, bird, flying creature,” even in the following phrases. But this word is also a verb (an Hebrew infinitive) “to fly,” and here it clearly is a verb, as otherwise there is no origin ascribed to the bird or flying creature life-form: the Hebrew reads literally: “Let the waters swarm with a swarming mass of living spirit (nefesh), and let ôf fly continually over the surface of the firmament of the heavens.” The King James adds a “that” (“fowl [ôf ] that may fly”) to make it more sensible, but the word does not appear in the Hebrew, and, as afore said, it is not in accord with the other phrases relating to the origin of life in Genesis 1 for a place of origin to be omitted. Translated properly as a verb, an infinitive, the phrase now reads: “Let the waters swarm with a swarming mass of living spirit (nefesh), and let it (viz. the spirit) continually and at the same time fly [lit. “flying fly continually” or “continually fly with a flying”] over the surface of the firmament of the heavens.” This is a reference to the fact that the animal spirit or soul existed in a separate realm (hence the dual form, infinitive plus active verb, giving it a compound sense in Hebrew), both in the spiritual and the material world, flying over the material body which emerged from the waters.

17. As regards the production of the material bodies, these developed from seed-forms, germs of life, already present in the waters and the earth. This is clear from the Biblical account, as explained hereafter. No mention is made of any act of creation ex nihilo (Heb. bara) in the case of the material bodies at this point in time. To background the nature of the process it is necessary to deal very briefly with the controversial subject of Biblical creation and the theory (or theories) of evolution.


18. The Bible is against evolutionism, not against evolution. The term evolutionism means here the atheistic belief that all life arose spontaneously from dead matter, and from a single original spontaneously-produced life-form, which branched out into all current life-forms. The Bible teaches creation and evolution, the latter only in the true sense of the word, and in a form that agrees with one of the alternatives propounded by Darwin in the first edition of the Origin of Species (1859) that all current life-forms developed by a process of evolution from a few original life-forms (rather than from one, which was the other alternative suggested by him), and that the origin of all life could be traced back to what Darwin hinted in the same passage was the inspiration of God. Darwin’s words are: “(p. 303, my emphasis:) These intervals will have given time for the multiplication of species from some one or some few parent-forms …. (p. 484, my emphasis:) I believe that animals have descended from at most only four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number. Analogy would lead me one step further, namely, to the belief that all animals and plants have descended from some one prototype. But analogy may be a deceitful guide. Nevertheless all living things have much in common …. Therefore I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed.” (Darwin saw himself as a Christian and in private conversation with the Christian missionary Lady Hope towards the end of his life expressed his profound regret that his theory had been seized on by activists with an agenda far different from his own and abused to promote atheism.)


19. Much misunderstanding in the fight against evolutionism has been caused by well-intentioned apologists for the Biblical account through the wrongful application by them in the debate of the Biblical word “kind” (Heb. min). It is commonly asserted by a certain school of fundamentalism that God created different “kinds” (roughly equivalent to “species”), and that these “kinds” have remained the same throughout their existence to the present time. Against this theory are the plain statements of the Bible which show us what a “kind” actually is. Examining the Bible’s lists of ritually clean and unclean animals (Leviticus chapter 11 and Deuteronomy chapter 14), we find that the “kind” could be less than, a smaller sub-set of, for example, the raven: the restrictions on eating applied to the raven “according to its kind” (Leviticus 11. 15), meaning to the raven and other kinds within the set raven. But the word kind in this context has a wider and a more limited meaning. Thus “flying creature” in Genesis 1 (Heb. ôf, pronounced oh-f, here used as a noun) is a kind and produces according to its kind, (cp. Gen. 1. 22 and 24, see infra, also Gen. 7. 14), but within that group of flying creature is the raven (Leviticus 11. 13, 15), and it too produces “according to its kind.”


20. Consistently in the account in Genesis the life-forms are pictured as being “produced from” the earth, or the water “swarmed with” them, or the earth “brought them forth,” and in each case the process is represented as “according to their kinds, or, its kind.” It is not said that each individual kind brought forth a multitude of specimens of that identical kind, but that the original life-form was brought forth according to its kind, or kinds. Gesenius-Tregelles s.v. le (A)(9) says the Hebrew preposition here translated “according to” means “as applied to a rule or standard, according to.” The standard was the “kind” and the offspring were produced in accord with the characteristics of that kind. Therefore the different kinds and sub-kinds branched off from one another into a vast multitude of kinds in the wider and lesser senses.


21. The words in Genesis 1 are all indicative of a process by which various kinds developed out of a germ of life, a seed-form, which was already in the sea and earth before the development occurred. This is the “seed” of living creatures referred to in Genesis 7. 3, which God preserved at a later time through the catastrophic effects of the Noachide Flood, and in Jeremiah 31. 27. Consider the horticultural nature of the words used to express the development in Genesis 1: “spring forth,” “produce,” or, in the case of sea-creatures, “swarm,” like insects from eggs in a nest, or, in the case of flying creatures “proliferate, multiply, or, literally, become many.” There are, in fact, nine different, primary, life-form “germs” mentioned in Genesis 1. These nine were specially created by God and are the root forms from which all current life developed. Each was commissioned by the Creator in Genesis 1 to develop “according to its kind, or, kinds.” Since the descriptive words employed are similar to those used of vegetation emerging from seeds, or insects from eggs, we should see each basic life-form as an original seed or germ of life which sprang forth when external conditions were ripe, and developed, as a seed or egg would, in something like an evolutionary tree, the development proceeding in accordance with the characteristics of that type (kind) of life-form. God created nine original seeds, or germs of life on a single, particular, Creation Day “in the beginning” (Gen. 1. 1, 2. 4f.), prior to the Six Days of Creation. (See further §§40-41, below, >>.) No details are given of this process, but the singular form of the noun “seed” in Genesis 7. 3 implies all nine germs of life were once one, for as the Apostle Paul says in relation to the identical Hebrew word “seed” (in this case, the seed of Abraham), “He saith not, And to ‘seeds,’ as of many; but as of one, And to thy ‘seed,’ which is Christ.” (Galatians 3. 16.) The nine germs of life were, subsequent to their creation, entombed within the primeval chaotic mass into which the original heavens and earth were reduced (Genesis 1. 2), and which was eventually separated out into something like the present earth and atmosphere over the Six Days of Creation (Genesis 1. 3ff.). Once the earth and atmosphere had stabilized to the extent necessary for the sustenance of each particular life-form, God then let these seeds germinate and develop into the multitude of species, as described further on in the chapter. The divine instruction was that they were not to mix or cross-breed, as the process was strictly “according to its kind.” That is not to say that cross-breeding between kinds would not be possible, but that it would be in all cases detrimental or harmful to the soundness of the kind.


22. This is God’s “great evolution,” or “macro-evolution.” The same school of fundamentalism which misinterprets the word “kind” also denigrates the concept of macro-evolution, and only accepts “micro-evolution,” in the sense that development occurs within the kind (species), like the production of different breeds of dogs. This is completely contrary to the Biblical picture in Genesis 1: that chapter describes a process of “macro-evolutionary” (tree-like) development from a few (nine material) divinely created life-forms. A tree consists of several different “kinds” in an analogous sense, i.e. elements which do not merge, like leaves, bark, flowers, fruit etc. etc. Yet these all spring from the same seed by a process of “evolution” or “rolling out.” So also the different kinds sprang from the few original life-forms by a process of macro-evolution, and could not healthfully mix.


23. The three types of animal spirit created on the Fifth Day were “great [or rather, reflecting more precisely the root meaning of the word, sinewy] tanninim [literally, stretched-out creatures],” “living spirit which moves [by appendages],” and “winged flying creature.” These categories comprise creatures which 1) move laterally by muscular or bodily contraction/expansion, 2) move by appendages like fins, flippers, or feet, 3) move by flight with wings. All material life forms, embodying these animal spirits, fall within one of these three categories. The three animate material forms with which the sea swarmed on the Fifth Day of Creation were the embodiments of these animal spirits, and the original three seed-forms retained the names, as given here, of each category.


24. At the end of the Fifth Day God blessed the creatures and added: “Let flying creature(s) proliferate on earth.” Unlike other days no mention is made that “it was so,” following this divine command, and the next “it was so” occurs in the account of the Sixth Day. “Flying creature(s)” denotes something different from the “winged flying creature(s)” with which the waters of the Fifth Day swarmed, and the same word is used elsewhere in the Bible for “birds.” (Compare Leviticus 11. 13 with Deuteronomy 14. 11 and 20. Birds, like the quail, could still be termed “winged flying creature,” as in Psalm 78. 27, cp. Numbers 11. 31, because they had within them the “winged flying creature” spirit.) These “flying creatures,” therefore, were bird-like forms based on land. They appeared only on the Sixth Day, and produced according to their “kind” (Gen. 7. 14), as demonstrated by the phrase “it was so” contained within the account of that Sixth Day.





The Sixth Day of Creation


25. The Sixth Day of Creation lasted the next 1000 years, or 360,000,000 years, approximately from 360,000,000 years ago in geological time to the modern era. On this day, living creatures appeared on the dry land, first amphibians, later mammal-like creatures, then dinosaurs and other reptiles, and birds, and finally more developed mammals and man. The four seed-forms which began to proliferate on this Day were 1) “flying creature” (see under the Fifth Day), 2) “living [or, more literally, according to the root-meaning of the word, breathing] creature of the earth [earth = dry land, as opposed to sea],” designating amphibians and similar creatures, 3) “beast,” which includes mammal-like creatures and true mammals, and 4) “that which moves [by appendages] over the ground [adamah],” i.e. dinosauria etc. Discounting the flying creatures, which are grouped with the winged flying creatures of the Fifth Day, the order of the creatures individually named on the Sixth Day (2-4) follows the order revealed in the fossil record: first amphibians, then synapsids, an early mammal-like group, then dinosaurs and other creatures. At one period of time within this Day the land formed a single land-mass, which has been given the name Pangea, and the waters formed a single ocean, Panthalassa. It is remarkable that up to this point in time Genesis 1 speaks of “seas” (plural), but on the Sixth Day only of “sea” (singular). Towards the end of the first half of this Day an event of great significance occurred: the creation of man “in the image of God,” i.e. man in spirit-form. This occurred during the period Panthalassa existed. Shortly thereafter the single sea was “broken up.” This was in the Jurassic period, when dinosaurs proliferated on land. At the end of the following Cretaceous period, a massive destruction occurred, it is thought by a meteor impact, in which the dinosaurs on land and the sea-monsters which had emerged for the first time on the Fifth Day of Creation, were obliterated. These events, — the break-up of the single sea, followed by the obliteration of dinosaur-like creatures and sea-monsters, — at a time when man had conscious existence under the dominion of God, are referred to in Psalm 74. 13f. After the obliteration creatures of the dry land, particularly mammals, predominated. The latter, too, are referred to in Psalm 74. 14, as the species who ate the destroyed monsters of the preceding period. Three “eras” are recognized as comprising the period of the Sixth Day, the “Paleozoic” (“Ancient Life”), the “Mesozoic” (“Middle Life”) and “Cenozoic” (“Recent Life”), which describe the time-periods when pre-dinosaur, dinosaur and post-dinosaur life-forms respectively flourished. The Bible likewise refers to three different environments on the Sixth Day, “Eretz” i.e. “Yabbashah,” the Dry Land, first, “Adamah,” the Red Land, second, and “Sadeh,” the Grass Land, last. The earth in the Paleozoic era, the era of “Eretz” or Dry Land, was, as Genesis 1 describes it, a natural development of the environment on the Fifth and earlier Days, except that it was now for the first time populated with living creatures. The second or Mesozoic era, the era of the “Adamah,” was the period when the single sea existed, and it was at this point in time, according to Genesis 1, that man was created in spirit-form. “Adamah” means Red, or literally Blood-red, Land, which is an appropriate description of the blood-soaked, arid, land of the era of the dinosaurs. At the beginning of the last era, the Cenozoic, the era of the “Sadeh,” grasslands emerged for the first time, and then savannah. The latest environment which witnessed God’s creative work is appropriately named in the Bible “Sadeh,” “Grass Land,” and is described as the habitat of different forms of grasses and similar vegetation. Human-like creatures (“hominids”) and modern man (“homo sapiens sapiens”) appeared now. Towards the end of the Sixth Day earthly man, Adam, was formed and infused with the special spirit or soul which had been created previously “in the image of God.” He was translated into the Garden of Eden in the North-East of Africa. Beyond the boundaries of the Garden spread the “Sadeh” or Grass Land. Creatures of the Grass Land were formed by God even after earthly man was translated into the Garden, and brought to him there for him to identify. The latest species discovered by modern investigators appeared accordingly not long after the emergence of “homo sapiens sapiens.” Finally, from Adam’s body, by an act of divine genetic engineering, was formed Adam’s companion, Eve. The race of Adam, the human race (Heb. b’ney adam, lit. “the sons of Adam”), is specifically termed “beast” in the Bible (Heb. b’hemah, Ecclesiastes 3. 18), therefore Adam’s physical body was “formed, or, fashioned” by God (the word means molded out of pre-existing material) out of the 6th class of primary animate life-form, the “beast.” However, Adam’s own physical makeup was unique, as demonstrated by the subsequent extraction from his body of the female of the species, and his spiritual makeup likewise, and more importantly, by the infusion of the soul (the “Life Soul” or “Spirit of Life”) in the image of God. The fashioning was done “from the dust [surface soil] of the ground [adamah],” because the beasts absorbed dust of the earth through the food chain, and thus proliferated into their various kinds and sub-kinds. Of the Serpent, who was, before being cursed by God, the most advanced pre-human hominid, it is said: “dust shall be the Serpent’s food” (Isaiah 65. 25). In his case, dust shall continue to be his food, whereas for Adamic man, as the Lord Himself vouchsafed (Matthew 4. 4): “Man [Heb. adam, Deuteronomy 8. 3] shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”



Day

Animating Spirits (Nef-esh) of Seed-forms 3-9


Seeds of Material Life

THIRD DAY


1

Herb (esev) yielding seed



2

Tree (etz) bearing fruit





FIFTH DAY

Sinewy stretched-out creatures
(tann-in-im ha g’dol-im)

3

Sinewy stretched-out creatures
(tann-in-im ha g’dol-im)


Living spirit which moves by appendages
(nef-esh ha ha-yah ha ro-mes-et)

4

Living spirit which moves by appendages
(nef-esh ha ha-yah ha ro-mes-et)


Winged flying creature
(oh-f ka-naf)

5

Winged flying creature
(oh-f ka-naf)





SIXTH DAY


6

Flying creature
(oh-f)



7

Breathing creature of the dry ground
(ha-yat ha ar-etz)


Life Soul or Spirit of Life of Adamic Man
(Nish-mat hayyim)

8

Beast
(b’hem-ah)



9

Creature which moves over the ground by appendages
(ro-mes ha a-dam-ah)





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