The verb bara (create) is used only to beings that God formed the first time. With this meaning, the term appears in Genesis 2:4: "This [the story of the six days] is the genesis of heaven and earth when they were created [bara]."
Clearly, the verse refers to the days of Genesis 1 as the creation of heaven and earth. In other words, it makes them a detailed explanation of verse 1:1: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth". I want to show that this sense of the days of creation, when compared to scientific data, allows us to make a truly wonderful find.
On the first day, God said "Let there be light. And there was light" (Gen 1:3). The light of the first first day was much weaker than that of the fourth. If the six days describe the original creation, we can compare the first one with the state of the Earth when it was created. The physicist Fred Hoyle describes that state as follows: "Such was the situation in the first few hundred million years of Earth’s history [...] a period of tremendous devastation, during which the surface of the planet was hit by a rain of objects that, due to the greater gravity of Earth, must have been more destructive than the intense bombardment which simultaneously produced the deeply carved landscape of the Moon "(Hoyle, Fred. The intelligent universe - a new perspective of creation and evolution. Lisbon: Presence, 1983. pp. 70-71).
Another physicist, Robert Jastrow, describes the end of the first billion years of Earth as follows: "The earth is a billion years old. There's a chill in the air, because the sun is a star young and relatively weak, producing only half of the radiating heat and light that will produce later "(Jastrow, Robert. Until the sun goes out. Rio de Janeiro: Francisco Alves, 1980. p. 29). If the Earth was bathed with only half the light that exists today, when it was one billion years old, because the sun was too young, an even smaller amount of light radiation existed when she came into being. And if the planet was constantly bombarded by celestial bodies, we have to agree that the dust thus raised caused the brightness on its surface to decrease even more. Does this scenario agree with the dim light of Genesis 1:3? If the six days synthetize God’s original creation, we can conclude that the first of them does so with admirable precision.
Let’s proceed to the second day, when God made the firmament (atmosphere) between the waters below (the ocean) and above (clouds). Robert Jastrow says: "Once the land was formed, the radioactive atoms contained in the planet started to crumble, one by one. By releasing their small power loads, they heated the rocks inside [...] seven hundred million years after [...] the molten rocks burst through the earth's crust, a volcano erupted, and a stream of lava was poured. Surprisingly, this lava was the source of the atmosphere and oceans of the earth" (pp. idem. 29-30). A third scientist, Hubert Reeves, thus reports the formation of the seas: "When the planet received a vast and dense atmosphere, the water condensed. It rained as it will never happen again. It rained the waters of all the oceans" (Reeves, Hubert. A bit of blue - the cosmic evolution. New York: Random House, 1986. p. 91).
In these descriptions, we see that the atmosphere and the ocean were formed after 700 million years of the Earth spinning in space. This milestone is the beginning of the second day of Genesis, in which the seas and the atmosphere were made. Once more there is clear coincidence between the biblical account of origins and the sequence painfully discovered by science.
The period following the formation of the atmosphere and ocean is described by the scientist as follows: "A shallow sea covers the surface of the planet. Its waters are sterile; there, life will bloom later, but has not yet emerged" (Jastrow, Robert. Op. cit. p. 31). If the soil emerged on the third day, it is because it had been flooded, as the text above informs. At that time, no living creature had been formed. Again, the Genesis account proves wonderfully compatible with science.
Jastrow continues: "The earth has made its first billion years, in the second day of life [metaphor used to facilitate the understanding of evolution], the planet stirs restlessly [...] The intensity of the movement increases, the depths are devastated by convulsions, and the top of the first continents rises above sea level "(idem. p. 35). A billion years refers to the period that followed the formation of the atmosphere and seas, that is, to the third day of Genesis, when the land emerged from the waters. Are we not before another amazing convergence between the Bible and science?
We could stop our analysis at this point, since the structural formation of the planet before the emergence of living beings is complete. If we did, we would have the formidable challenge of explaining the agreement of the biblical text with scientific discoveries made millennia after its writing. Of course, the challenge would prove insurmountable, no matter what conclusion we came to about the formation of living beings.
However, let us go on. Perhaps our eyes are fooling us... Or a spell like those of Jannes and Jambres has paralyzed us. Still on the third day, Genesis narrates the creation of terrestrial plants. Scientific data show that the first fossil records of terrestrial plants are between 500 and 470 million years old (Nature, 30/11/2000). The first large trees called Archaeopteris appeared 370 million years ago (Nature, 22/04/1999). This period may well correspond to the second part of the third day (yom), if each day (yom) is taken as an era of indefinite duration.
On the fourth day, the creation of lights is reported. On this point, the ever-useful narrative of Jastrow asserts: "Rocks a thousand miles bellow the planet’s surface, partially melted and transformed by intense heat and pressure, began to find their way upwards. Molten material reached the surface, volcanoes erupted [...] These changes occurred within and on the surface of the earth, three hundred and fifty million years ago. During the hundred million years prior to that period, the interior of the globe rested in quiet "(Jastrow, Robert. Op. cit. p. 40).
The intense volcanism mentioned in the text appeared soon after the onset of early plants, and raised a thick layer of gas in many parts of the world. These gases prevented the lights (sun, moon and stars) from being seen in the sky. Thus the work of the fourth day coincided with the end of volcanism, and the purification of the atmosphere 350 million years ago. Another wonderful agreement between the Biblical and scientific discourses can be seen.
The fifth day is not applicable to the original creation of the Earth, since the items in it were created (bara) and blessed by God. We must then jump to the sixth day, when God formed reptiles, wild beasts and domestic animals. In the Bible, reptiles are creeping and wingless beings, endowed or not with legs. Such biblical reptiles appeared abundantly in the fossil record between 350 and 250 million years ago. That means after the volcanism of the fourth day.
The first four-legged animals, with complicated names (thecodonts and therapsids), date from the same time. About them, Wikipedia elaborates: "Thecodonts first appeared in the Permian, and flourished until the end of the Triassic period," "The therapsids arose in the Permian period." The same encyclopedia places the Permian between 299 and 251 million years ago. Therefore, the first four-legged animals appeared, at the exact point of Earth's history where the biblical sequence locates them.
The lines above summarize the result of applying the six days to the original creation, in accordance with Genesis 2:4. The comparison with scientific findings shows that the days wonderfully reconstitute the exact sequence in which the structural items and the living beings originated on Earth. Jannes and Jambres would not have done better, even though they had used the best Egyptian secrets.
Before the intellectual landscape thus glanced, is it still possible to consider the seven days a mere account of the restoration of the Earth, after the devastation which made it chaotic and void? Is it still possible to think that the first chapter of Genesis is a mere piece of human craft, and not a divine revelation to man? That it is not an irrefutable evidence of creation?
