The Validity of the Bible: Part One

By Allen Epling

     While working on a book that I was writing, I felt the need for an example to use that would confirm the validity of the Bible. I had always felt that there were truths in the book of Genesis that were discernable yet were not obvious. I found the following verse to be the perfect example that I was looking for. As I developed the idea, insights popped up spontaneously. I have illustrated the sequence of thoughts as highlighted text, exactly as they came to me.

     There is one verse in Genesis that reveals more information than any other statement in the Old Testament. That sentence is contained in Genesis, chapter 6, verse 7. 

      "And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the Earth."

      At first reading, the meaning of this statement seems clear and very straightforward. The traditional interpretation is that God intends to destroy all mankind and wipe him from the face of the Earth.

     The true meaning of the sentence came to me as a series of moments of inspiration, I will illustrate the exact moment when these insights and thoughts came to me in the following narrative in boldface.

     It says basically that God is making a statement that He will destroy something. It is the part about "from the face of the Earth" that bothered me. It seemed awkward and out of place. I read it as everyone else did, as if it said, "I will destroy from the face of the Earth, Man, whom I created".

     Why didn't God just say, "I will destroy Man"? Ask yourself the following question, "What did God say he would destroy in Genesis 6:7?"

      Group everything following the word 'destroy' together as the object of the destruction.

     If we just look at the phrase "Man whom I created, from the face of the Earth" we see that it can be misunderstood. To begin our analysis of this statement, let us back up to Genesis 2:7, which says, "And the Lord God created man from the dust of the ground." This verse is extremely important to understanding what is being said in Genesis 6:7.

     If we accept the premise that God is perfect and would write a perfect document, then why does he add the phrase,"from the face of the earth', which sounds a little awkward? If something is destroyed, nothing else needs to be said. If man is destroyed, we know already that he no longer exists on the Earth.

     If we submitted this statement as part of an English assignment in college, it would come back with red ink from the professor and a statement that the sentence is redundant for saying something twice within the same sentence.

     There are two ways this statement can be interpreted according to how we group the parts of the statement. One is, "I will destroy (Man whom I created), from the face of the Earth". This is the traditional interpretation. The second way is, "I will destroy (Man, whom I created from the face of the Earth)".  Now let us look again back at Genesis 2:7.

      The phrase "face of the Earth" means the same thing as "dust of the ground"

     If man was created from the dust of the ground, could it be that the phrase "face of the Earth" means the same thing as "dust of the ground?  I believe it does. In the ancient Hebrew language that the original Torah was written in, the word for Earth is "erets", which has multiple meanings. It can mean "the Earth", "world", "land", and also "ground". This word, "erets" was used in both passages, but was translated 'ground' in Genesis 2:7 and 'Earth' in Genesis 6:7.

     Consider the layers of the Earth. Down deep you have bedrock, which is solid rock. On the bedrock are the different layers of soil. On top of this is actually another layer of 'DUST' that settles from the air. If you were to say that the Earth has a "face" which of these layers would it be?

     The phrase "from the face of the Earth" means exactly the same as "from the dust of the ground". This interpretation is grammatically correct where the first is not. In other words, is Genesis 6:7 really saying, "I will destroy man whom I created from the dust of the ground." Reading the statement this way changes the whole meaning of Genesis 6:7 from our traditional interpretation, and makes it grammatically correct, but it also suggests something else.

     I suddenly realized that the whole sentence was unnecessarily specific about what would be destroyed. God still could have said "I will destroy Man", and it would have been perfectly understood.

      There was 'another' man on Earth that was not created from the 'dust of the ground'.

     Does the Book of Genesis say that man was created in two separate places? It does, in chapter 1, verse 26, and chapter 2, verse 7. Throughout history we have always assumed the two creations were the same event. What if we read the Bible 'literally' and accept these as two different events, without any 'assumptions'? In the first case, Genesis 1:26, it doesn't say that man was created from the 'dust of the ground', and in the second case, Genesis 2:4, it does. The phrase "Man whom I created from the face of the Earth" is referring to the second case.

     It is obvious from the genealogy and chronicles of the Bible that Adam was created around 6 thousand years ago. Science books tell us that man began to be a separate species from the animal kingdom about 2 million years ago. In Genesis 1:26 is the statement "Let us make man in our image". This is well before the Bible describes the creation of Adam. If God created man at this point in history it could have been an announcement of the creation of a form of man that was not yet fully developed but had the "image" of God.

      There was more than one 'creation event' described in the first two chapters of Genesis.

      This would mean that 'the creation' as described in chapters one and two of Genesis was actually separate creation events because a form of man was created on two separate occasions.

      If the preceding hypothesis and interpretation of Genesis 1 and 2 are correct, then there was another form of Man on the Earth at the time Adam was created. This would validate the statement "I will destroy Man whom I created from the face of the Earth"; because God is saying that He will destroy ONLY the form of man that was created from the "dust of the ground".

     The 'other' form of man on the Earth at that time would not be destroyed.

     It would be easy to overlook another "truth" that is subtle, but implied in this interpretation, one that is extremely important to the history of man. If God is destroying ONLY the man that He created from the dust of the ground, He is saying that the "other" man will live through the coming destruction of the flood.

     The flood of Noah was local and not global.

     This would mean that the flood of Noah only included the region of Adam's descendants, or the area the Bible calls Eden. Eden was the larger area of which the "Garden of Eden" was only a part, in the east.

     This scenario of the flood is much more logical and realistic because it would have necessitated only a limited number of animals to be saved on the ark instead of the millions traditionally accepted and taught. Only the animals, plants, and the form of Man created in the Garden of Eden were to be saved.

     The historical interpretation for over 3,000 years, of a "universal flood" that destroyed all life on Earth was based on the assumption that ALL mankind was destroyed, and also on a later statement in Genesis 7:21 & 22 that "all flesh that had the breath of life that God created was destroyed". If you read Genesis 1:26 again, you notice that the man with the "image" of God did not receive the "breath of life". Only Adam and his descendents received the "breath of life".

     This error in interpretation was made by ancient Jewish scribes who had no knowledge or way of knowing that the creation of the heavens and the earth took place billions of years ago in a separate event from the more recent "Garden of Eden" creation. They didn't know of the coexistence with Adam at that time, of the "other" form of man. The only things mentioned in Genesis that received the "breath of life" from God, were created in the Garden of Eden, which they assumed was the beginning of all things. What God was actually saying was, "All that I created" (in the Garden of Eden) "was destroyed".

      This passage could only have been read correctly, at the time it was written, by someone from the future, or the present age of understanding.

     Only someone from the present age that has knowledge of the true history of the universe and the Earth, as revealed in this century through archeological and other scientific discoveries, could have read this statement with perfect understanding.

       Finally, and most important of all, we now see and understand that the statement "I will destroy Man whom I created from the face of the Earth", is perfect both grammatically and in its meaning. It should also be obvious that this meaning would only be apparent to someone who had knowledge of the "other" man that descended from the animal kingdom, and was able to discern that the book of Genesis describes two different creation events.  Before the present generation, that would not have been possible.

      Only God could have written such a statement.

     This is proof that God Himself wrote the book of Genesis and knew in advance that a future generation would understand exactly what He was saying. Only a perfect, intelligent being who could foresee the future, could have constructed such a perfect, timeless statement. This is evidence that every word of the book of Genesis can be believed, but we must first make sure our interpretation of those words is also perfect.

     This article is part of a continuing feature dealing with the Evolution Vs Creationism debate. Each week a new topic will be dealt with presenting, hopefully, a balanced, educated viewpoint, while ALWAYS upholding the divinity and sanctity of the Bible. The basic tenet of this article is that every word of the book of Genesis is factually, historically, and scientifically true.

      For the book from which these thoughts were taken, visit

 http://www.beyondgenesis.com