Evidence for Creation (collected articles)

INTRODUCTION

In February 2013, Richard Dawkins summed up the meaning of the Christian faith in the following Ten Briefs:

1) 'If women are to learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home, for it is a shame for women to speak in the church" [1 Corinthians 14:35]. Makes sense...

2) Isaiah prophesied that a young woman would give birth to a messiah. The prophecy was poorly translated into Greek, and the word young became virgin. So Jesus had to be born of a virgin. Makes sense...

3) All the evil in the world stems from a talking snake. Makes sense...

4) The 12 apostles of Jesus had penis. So who has no penis cannot be a priest. Makes sense...

5) The substance of the wine actually becomes the blood of a first-century Jew. Only accidents are fermented grape juice. Makes sense...

6) Adam never existed, but his sin was so immense that the Creator of the expanding Universe needed a blood sacrifice to atone for it. Makes sense...

7) God did not find a better way to forgive the sin of Adam (who never existed) than running his son (himself). Makes sense...

8) God is both himself and his son (and a spirit). Makes sense...

9) A wafer, when blessed by a priest (whose testicles must be intact) becomes the body of Christ. Makes sense...

10) Joseph Ratzinger became infal-lible when the smoke rose in 04/19/2005. Became fallible again in 28/02/2013. Makes sense...

In an interview published on April, 1st, 2013, in a major Brazilian newspaper, perhaps in celebration of the "Fool's Day," Dawkins affirmed that, if we do not worship Thor, we should neither worship God. One can see why and how the tablets of the Ten reasonings were replaced by the Tem Briefs of the great Moses from Oxford. Makes perfect sense...

The way Dawkins understands society impres-ses me. In chapter one of The God delusion (DAWKINS, Richard. The God delusion. Sao Paulo: Cia. das Letras, 2007), he showed how religion originated. The rest of his work shows how it will end. Both explanations, the alpha and the omega, that of the beginning and the eschatological, depend on the idea of ​​evolution, which for Dawkins excludes creation. The scientist forgets two things: that all human groups which survived were religious and that the social ties of the groups which recognize God were woven by faith. They are not a plastic cup that can be discarded.

And speaking of sense, the text below presents a interpretation of the Bible account of creation that seems to make more sense than the one Dawkins seems to admit. I publish it in a spirit of celebration of the cup of scorn raised by the new Darwin. "An angel like you, when one toasts/ He accomplishes his mission, and the party is over/ Scatters his cup/ And drinks no more".

PILLARS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH

Long before the creation accounts of Genesis 1 and 2 were written, the peoples of the Middle East shared a worldview in which the universe was represented as a semicircle divided into layers resting upon material pillars. The top layer was the empyrean heaven, below which were successively located the celestial ocean, the sidereal heaven, the earth, its ocean and the realm of the dead. The empyrean heaven and the upper ocean rested on the waters below. The sidereal heaven and the earth rose upon columns. In this ravishing vision, the role of the pillars of the world draws special attention.
Traces of a similar representation of the universe can be found in Old Testament texts like Job 9, 26, 28 and 38, Psalms 8, 19, 24, 90, 102, 104 and 148, Proverbs 8, Amos 9,6 and Isaiah 40, among others. In Job 26,11 we read: "The pillars of heaven tremble". Amos 9,6 reiterates: "God builds his abodes in heaven, and has founded his troop upon the earth." The pillars of the earth, in turn, appear in even more numerous texts, such as 1 Samuel 2,8, Job 9,6, Psalm 18,15, 24,2, 75,3, 102,25, 104,5, Proverbs 8,29 and Isaiah 40,18.
So many references to the foundation, in which the heavenly and earthly worlds rest show that the creation accounts of Genesis presuppose the worldview of ancient people. We cannot fail to recognize that this is a particular nuisance, since the mechanisms the ancients believed that supported the heavens and its upper waters were simply mistaken.
What scholars seldom say is that the nuisance began in biblical times and increased in the first centuries of Christian era. One of the reasons was the influence of the works of Greek philosophers and of Egyptian and Babylonian astronomers on theologians like Ambrose and Origen, who conceived nature quite differently from traditional thinking. However, the commitment of these theologians to Scripture was so unwavering that we cannot consider they changed their biblical ideas because of astronomical findings. We rather ask if they did not reinterpret the physical world based on biblical evidence, as well as philosophers and astronomers did it based on their own investigation of nature.
It is impossible to understand what early Christian theologians held concerning the physical world without admitting that they problematized the biblical references to the solid firmament, the columns of heaven and earth and other aspects of the worldview of ancient men. Problematize does not mean reject, but expresses doubt and suggests new interpretations of Scripture expressions that reflect those older conceptions.
I have chosen to start this series on biblical creation from the Christian thinkers of centuries II through VI, because the mistrust they nurtured about the ancient worldview cannot be attributed to the desire to correct it based on scientific findings. If 21th century people suggested an exegesis of creation that harmonized the account of the Bible with modern science, they would be put under suspicion, since it is easier to correct mistakes after they become evident. But ancient authors did not know modern science, which made the mistakes patent. Therefore, the mistrust they kept regarding the archaic worldview should be investigated to check whether they did not find reasons to relativize it in the Bible.
In the sixth century, Boethius summarized the progress made by astronomers and the questioning of Christian theologians, in a famous passage: "The whole earth, as you know thanks to the statements of astronomers, compared to the extent of heaven is but a small point. This means that, compared to the length of the heavens, the magnitude of the earth is nearly nothing. And of such a small region, only a quarter, according to the calculations of Ptolemy, is inhabited by living beings. So, if you take from this quarter the area covered by oceans, lakes, deserts, etc. only a tiny part remains that is inhabited by men" (BOETHIUS, Severino. Consolation of Philosophy. Sao Paulo: Martins Fontes 2012. p. 46).
This description of heaven by Boethius challenges the geocentric conception of the semicircle founded on columns, which placed the earth at the center of the universe. It emerges from an alternative vision of the physical world, which developed in Greece, Israel and other nations.
On the passage of the Book of Job which says that God "hangs the earth upon nothing" (Job 26,7), Ambrose of Milan wrote: "God hangs the earth on nothing. We should not give birth to a controversy by asking if it is suspended in the air or lies on the water. Or how the nature of the air, which is thin and soft, can sustain the weight of the earth. Or how the mass of the land does not fall and sink in the water [...] Just as the earth is suspended in a vacuum and remains motionless due to the balance exercised by every weight, so the water is balanced with the earth because of weights equal or greater than her own. And for the same reason the sea does not spread over the land" (MILAN, Ambrose of. The six days of creation. Sao Paulo: Paulus, 2009. p. 66).
This quotation reflects the belief that the earth rests on solid foundations, as well as on water and air. These three elements are mixed in the soil, and the specific mode of the mixing is responsible for sustaining the earth and the seas.
Therefore, according to Ambrose, "we cannot think that the earth is actually supported by columns, but by the virtue that sustains and maintains its substance" (Op. cit. p. 35). The word virtue is not used here in the moral sense, but with a physical meaning. It indicates a property of matter. And there is no reason to doubt that this use of the term leads to an authentic reinterpretation of the underground columns.
Let us proceed to another aspect of the old view. Not few people argue that the belief in the existence of waters above the firmament was a mistake, but this judgment is possible only if we adopt the perspective of modern man. To the ancients, the word water had an elastic meaning, as appears from the following passage of Ambrose: "The water is one and the same. It generally assumes different appearances [...] It is acid in premature juices, bitter in absinthe, has more intense flavor in the wine, is more sour in other drinks, has bad taste in poisons, is sweet in honey [...] Some varieties produce bitter saps, others produce sweet ones, early or late. Their perfumes can also be distinguished. One is the scent of the vine, another of the olive tree, another of the cherry, another of the fig tree, it is different in the apple tree, unique in the palm tree" (Op. cit. pp. 121-122).
Ancient man did not have the scientific information we have about nature. So he considered that juices, wines, sap and tree resins contained water or were water with special properties. Of course, with so many possible kinds of water, Jews and Christians did not dare to assert accurately what the waters above the firmament were.
It should be remembered that, many centuries before Ambrose, the author of Job acknowledged his ignorance on what existed in heaven: "Does rain have a father? Who generates the drops of dew? Where does the ice come from? And who gives birth to the frost of heaven? [...] Do you know the ordinances of heaven? Do you know how they established their dominion over the earth? [ ... ] Who instilled wisdom in the cloud layers? Who gave understanding to the meteor? Who counted the number of the clouds? (Job 38,28-29,33,36-37)".
Ambrose’s questionings echo the Book of Job. But if the biblical authors formulate so many questions, is it possible to understand their sayings as final judgments about nature? Did not Ambrose have good reasons to delve into the questions of Job, as he did, instead of turning them into peremptory statements?
Ambrose outlined a synthesis of what was known and not known in his time about heaven: "We hear the thunder produced by the collision of clouds [...] but cannot say exactly how the air condenses into clouds and the rain is produced therein. We often see the clouds come out of the mountains and wonder: does the water rise from the land or descend from heaven to the earth? If it rises, it is certainly against nature, because it is heavier and is transported through the air, which is more tenuous" (Op. cit. pp. 62, 65-66).
Ambrose clearly admits that the water rises from the earth to the clouds, but does not explain how a liquid can become air, which condenses into cloud. He knows that rainfall results from the collision of clouds, but does not know how or why it happens.
Ambrose's words on the upstroke of the waters from the earth to the clouds reflect Isaiah's statement: "As the rain comes down and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, until they water the earth and fertilize and make it bear and sprout forth, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so will my word be which goes forth from my mouth ; it will not return to me vainly, but it will accomplish what I delight in, and it will prosper in the matter to which I have sent it" (Is 55:10-11). If the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return without watering the ground and fertilizing the soil, it follows that they return after doing so. That´s what the author of Isaiah stated. Could ancient man find words more consistent with the description that science gives about the evaporation of the water? 
The author of Job also declares that God "stretches out the north over empty space" (Job 26,7). He "is who alone stretches out the heavens" (Job 9,8). The psalmist and the book of Isaiah corroborate: "God extends the sky like a curtain" (Ps. 104:2), "It is he who stretches out the heavens like a curtain" (Isa. 40:22).
The verb stretch used in these verses suggests that heaven is not fixed. It also makes it implicit that the firmament created in the second and fourth days of Genesis 1 is made of air. As such, it is treated as an expansion in Genesis, Job, Psalms and Isaiah. In none of these verses, we find the celestial solid vault seated on columns.
These passages are true seeds of the suspicion developed by patristic authors like Boethius and Ambrose about the archaic worldview. The old view was not abandoned by them, but we consider that it was ransacked and reinterpreted as a series of questions, hypotheses and variations on nature embedded in the Bible.
The conjectures and variations can be translated in a single word: problematization. Modern man feels a strong attraction for ready and established doctrines. But it is clear that Scripture not always contains them. Very few doctrines in it are ready and established. The majority has been affirmed as partial or just possible truths.
It is worth remembering that the questioning implicit in the verses just quoted is amplified by the poetic language in which it was expressed. There is virtually no similar statement in historical or doctrinal texts of Scripture. The big exception is Genesis 1. And since poetic texts are impregnated with figurative senses, it is not even possible to say that biblical descriptions of nature are properly right or wrong.
The authors quoted (Boethius and Ambrose) are two among many others that problematized traditional descriptions of nature. How many similar questionings can we extract from St. Augustine’s three reviews of Genesis? As many as we want. And from Origen? Also as many as we desire. Take the example of a single passage in which the latter conjectures about life and soul. He says: “Among the beings that move, a few are the cause of their own movement. There are many others that move by something external. Those that are moved from outside are objects that we carry, such as wood [...] Animals, plants and everything that has soul have in themselves the cause of their movement. Some people say that metallic veins, fire and perhaps water sources also have in themselves the cause of their movements" (ALEXANDRIA, Origen. Against Celsus. Sao Paulo: Paulus , 2004).
What should be concluded from these considerations, except that patristic authors questioned the ancient worldview based on the Bible? The work of these authors shows that Christian conception of nature has emerged from the disintegration of the old worldview. Therefore it does not reproduce that view. If elements of archaic representation of the world can be found in Scripture, it is much more as problems than as assertions, much more with the meaning of questions than of dogmas.

THREE INTERPRETATIONS OF GENESIS

In the first post of this series, we saw that a paradigm or interpretive model of creation was designed by the fathers of the Christian church, and accepted for centuries. This paradigm emerged from distrust of the literal interpretation of the texts that described the universe as a semicircle divided into layers, which rested on material columns. But though it mitigated the literal meaning of this picture of the world, the patristic paradigm interpreted literally chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis.
With the development of the theory of evolution by Charles Darwin, scholars and interpreters of Scripture, such as G. H. Pember, promoted the first major reinterpretation of Genesis 1, based on new scientific evidence. This rereading gave birth to a second model, which did not abandon the Patristic one, but adopted it and added one or another new element, such as the gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 or the interpretation of the six days as eras.
However, the knowledge of an increasing number of facts about the origins in the subsequent years has caused this second model to become as obsolete as the first one. It is not possible to describe the obsolecence in detail within the limits of this short text. I'll limit myself to show how it manifests itself in the interpretation of Genesis 1 by Pember. The number of times this author mentions the fossils, in his classic Earth’s earliest ages, shows how his reading of Genesis 1 was motivated by the development of natural sciences. In his own words, "We see, then, that God created the heavens and the earth in the beginning, in a beautiful and perfect way [...] As the fossil deposits clearly show, there was not only disease and death [during that period] - which were inseparable companions of sin so prevalent among the living creatures of the time - but even ferocity and slaughter" (op. cit. São Paulo: Editora dos Clássicos, 2002. Vol. 1, pp. 59-60). If the fossils mentioned are plants and animals, death and violence exercised their power over primitive creation, as Pember wrote. So, he explained both death and the fossils by the gap he proposed to have existed between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2.
But in almost all other respects, Pember's interpretation reaffirmed the patristic model. Let's see why. To him, before the fall, "the spirit that God breathed into [Adam and Eve] kept full power and force [...] and shining through the physical form, it cast a halo around both" (idem. p. 152). This is a clear reaffirmation of the patristic idea that the bodies of Adam and Eve were ethereal and different from our own. Referring to the temptation of Eve by the serpent, the English author said: "The serpent approached and spoke to her. The fact that she was not scared seems to indicate the existence of an intelligent communication between man and the lower creatures before the fall "(idem. p. 140).
Here, the text of Pember admits the literal interpretation of the communication of the serpent with Eve through which sin came, "the fatal deed that six thousand years have not been sufficient to obliterate" (idem. p. 146). The words six thousand years make clear that, for Pember, the events of the Garden of Eden happened at that time. And on the Flood, he declared: "The world shook with the rapid raindrops falling, the first it had ever contemplated "(idem. p. 217th). At this point, his interpretation reaffirmed the common understanding of Genesis 2:5-6, according to which the Lord God had not made it rain in the planet.
By these examples, we see that Pember strongly adhered to the old model of interpretation of Genesis, which in itself was quite problematic, and added new difficulties to it. For example, the cataclysm that destroyed the planet, resulting in the environment of Genesis 1:2, was described by him as follows: "The ruined land [...] was flooded by the waters of the ocean, its sun was extinguished, the stars were no longer seen, its clouds and atmosphere, having no attractive force to keep themselves suspensed, had fallen" (idem. p. 101). Pember even compared this catastrophic event with the Flood of Noah, when "the ark floated on the waters, and the earth was again covered up to the highest peak, almost as it had been before the six days of restoration" (idem . p. 217).
Against these descriptions of the cataclysm of Genesis 1:2 and the Flood as universal phenomena, argues the fact that there is no hint of total floodings of the Earth in the last three billion years, much less in the last few thousand. There is also the passage of Earth's earliest ages that says the cataclysm led the planet to "a state of complete desolation, and to become totally lifeless. Not only its fruitful places became desert, but all its cities were destroyed" (idem . p. 59). In this excerpt, Pember supposed the existence of real cities at the time of the cataclysm of Genesis 1:2.
Therefore, the theory of Pember (like those of most authors who added some kind of patch to the old literal interpretation) is far from fulfilling what he intended when published it in 1876. His book does not explain a number of facts and collide with other even more numerous.
It seems obvious that we have no alternative, but to seek a third interpretive model of Genesis 1. More than that: we also have no alternative, but to make the new model deny, not just one point or another of the literal exegesis, but its whole range. This does not mean denying that the Bible makes statements about Natural History. That's exactly what it does, as will be shown ahead. However, it is worth remembering that the Bible makes its statements in the general framework of six metaphorical days with evenings and mornings.
This first metaphor that frames the text of Genesis 1 creates an important precedent for allegorical interpretation of other aspects of creation, very much like the ones Origen suggested in the third century: "The garden and the way it is said that God planted it 'in Eden, in the East', and its kinds of trees that were beautiful to look at and good to eat, and the tree of life in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil [...] all these can be interpreted figuratively without inconvenience" (ALEXANDRIA, Origen. Against Celsus. São Paulo: Paulus, 2004. p. 318).
Even so, Pember's contribution to the exegesis of Genesis 1 must be taken as quite valuable. His theory of the gap is up to date and valid, although it can (and should) be made compatible with the interpretation of the six days as ages. But to harmonize the theories it is useful to trim the excesses of literal exegesis Pember inherited from the patristic model. We are no longer in the third or the fourth century, or in the century of Pember, to reinforce such errors. Or do we still think that literal exegesis of creation fits into our current knowledge?

DARWIN'S CHALLENGE

In the third and fourth centuries, patristic theologians Origen of Alexandria, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose of Milan and Augustine of Hippo published several works on the Jewish idea of ​​creation of the world by God. These texts were not only well accepted, but set a new paradigm, a yet unheard model of thought , that passed through the Middle Ages and Modernity until the time of Charles Darwin.
The patristic model emerged from the ashes of the worldview presented in the first post of this series, which depicted the universe as a semicircle divided into layers, which rested on material columns sometimes called pillars of heaven and earth. This worldview, shared by several ancient people, was treated with increasing suspicion in certain places. Egyptian and Babylonian Astronomy, as well as Greek Philosophy launched challenges to it. And it was not otherwise in Israel, whose cosmology was formed in reaction to the traditional worldview of the Middle East.
Contrary to what is usually thought, Darwin did not demolish the patristic paradigm of creation to affirm the Theory of Evolution. In the classic The Origin of Species, he adopted the paradigm as a starting point for the presentation of his revolutionary theory. Consider two passages in which he made this clear: "I believe that animals have descended from at most four or five progenitors, and plants, from a lesser or equal number" (The origin of species. In Great books of the western world. Vol. 49. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1993. p. 240-241). And again: "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one. From so simple a beginning, while the world spinned according to the steady law of gravity, endless forms of beauty and wonder insurmountable evolved and continue to evolve to this day "(idem. p. 243).
In the texts above, Darwin made all forms of life recede to less than ten prototypes or fundamental groups created by God. This shows that the father of Evolution did not reject creation, but adopted it as the starting point of his theory.
However, half a century after his death, the paradigm of creation was devastated, destroyed. Not destroyed in the religious sphere, in which it continues to be accepted, but within science, i.e. knowledge regarded as the most accurate about reality.
Who was responsible for this great transformation? What reasons justify or warrant it? The first question is not so difficult to answer: the demolition of the patristic paradigm of creation was carried out by scientists who addressed the Evolution after Darwin. It is true that other thinkers emulated scientists in the execution of their task, and were regarded as fathers of several kinds of materialism, such as Nietzsche, Feuerbach, Marx and Freud, but removing the creationist paradigm was not their work, but the scientists' who remade Darwin's Theory of Evolution under the new name of Synthetic Theory.
The second question above resurfaces at this very point: what reasons led the authors of the Synthetic Theory to reject the paradigm of creation? The main one was the discovery of a number of natural mechanisms which explain how certain pieces of DNA known as genes undergo transformations which originate new species. These mechanisms received complicated names, such as errors of duplication, chemical and physical changes of DNA, adaptive and maladaptive changes in phenotype and intensification of the mutation rate. Through them, Darwin's Special Theory of Evolution (on the emergence of new species) was largely confirmed, but his general theory (about the origin of larger groups) was not. So much so that multiple points of it were corrected or explained differently in the Synthetic Theory.
The misunderstanding involved in the elimination of the paradigm of creation occurred exactly in this transition from the General Theory of Evolution, created by Darwin himself, to the Synthetic Theory of Neo-Darwinists. Several facts have contributed to it. The most important were: a) that the paradigm of creation works in theological language, and the Synthetic Theory in biological language, b) the stoppage of exegesis of Genesis 1-5 at the stage where the patristic writers left it. I will deal with the last issue in the following paragraphs.

THE SIX DAYS

The word day (yom in Hebrew), in the first chapter of Genesis may mean a period of 24 hours or of indeterminate length. Based on this latter meaning, it has been proposed that the six days of creation took place in six eras.
When published Earth's earliest ages, Pember fought the interpretation of the days as geological ages. He said the word yom can mean an indefinite period, but the terms evening and morning, in which the days of creation are divided, can only indicate the halves of cycles of 24 hours (Earth's earliest ages. 2nd ed. 1884. pp. 87-88).
And on rejecting the understanding of days as ages, Pember had to explain the fossils of organisms that lived millions of years ago through the gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. The first of these verses describes the original creation of the heavens and the earth. Pember said the fossil remnants were accumulated during that period, since the Earth was then largely inhabited by living beings. But a cataclysm introduced the environment described in the second verse. Then, during the six days, God recreated what was destroyed by the cataclysm.
We must remember, however, that after more than a century since Earth's earliest ages was published, it became clear that no extinctive event may have occurred a few thousand years ago, as Pember assumed. The impression one gets is that the gap theory, as it was drawn up, exchanges a creation 6,000 years ago by an extinction and a recreation at that time, which does not change the imbalance between Genesis and science, since there is no more evidence for a mass extinction a few thousand years ago than for a young Earth.
The problems of the theory of Pember only disappear when we adopt it along with the interpretation of the days as indefinite periods, which makes the great cataclysm and the recreation retreat indefinitely. In this interpretive context and only in it, we understand the six days were a gradual transition from chaos to order that elapsed ages ago.
This transition explains why the words evening and morning were employed in each of the six days. The former word was metaphorically used to refer to the chaos (or lower order) that existed before God intervened; the later indicates the new order established by the divine intervention.
This reinterpretation of evening and morning also helps explain other features of the text on creation. For example, all the first six days end with the words "There was evening and morning". Only on the seventh day, these words do not appear. The omission can be explained on the basis that, on the seventh day, God's work was complete. There was no more chaos or lower order, only the sublime order of divine creation.
However, despite these advantages, as occurs with the gap theory, the interpretation of the days as ages is not sufficient to eliminate the difficulties of the creation account. Taken alone, the eras of Genesis 1 form a sequence that is different from what science has discovered. The main instances of this divergence are the flying birds and great whales of the fifth day, whose appearance before the earth reptiles contradicts scientific data. But it is notable that, taken simultaneously, the theories eliminate every incompatibility of the creation account with the findings of science.

CREATE AND MAKE

The importance of the idea of ​​creation out of nothing increased in the last centuries before Christ, when the key Old Testament verse of 2nd Maccabees was written: "I beseech thee, my son, to look to heaven and earth and all things that are therein, and think well that God created them and all men from nothing" (2 Mc 7:28). It is too doubtful that we have followed the old book's advice to the extent we should. Somehow, the appearance of modern science made the habit of "thinking well" about creation increasingly rare.
However, in spite of the effervescence of the idea of ​​creation, between centuries VI and I b. C., no record of the doctrine of Earth's rebuilding appeared. Neither the Book of the Maccabees nor Josephus or Philo mentioned it. We can know for sure that a Genesis variant as fundamental as that would have been recorded if it had been considered. So, the absence of records or traces of it in the ancient literature indicates that the idea remained unknown for many centuries.
The permanence of recreation in the background of Genesis 1 does not contradict the literary practices of centuries before Christ. Esoteric methods of composition and transmission of texts were very common at that time. There is little doubt that they were employed also in Israel, as a defensive strategy against the mechanisms of ideological control concentrated in the Temple of Jerusalem.
Not to be marginalized or persecuted by the religious authorities, who saw creation quite otherwise, the author of Genesis 1 inscribed the recreation in the background of the text he drafted, reserving the first plan for the original creation. That background was not perceived by the compiler or final editor of Genesis, nor by the people who successively approached the chapter.
But though hidden, the presence of the idea of recreation in Genesis 1 is not to be denied, as Pember showed. To the Hebrew mind, the chaos in verse 1:2 could not be understood in the way Greek mythology did. Rather than being a consequence of many gods ruling the world together, it should indicate a radical change in the condition of God's original work. And the words which describe that work at the end of the six days also demand the idea of recreation, since they do not say God carried out all his creation in Genesis 1, but only finished it: "Thus the heavens and the earth and all their host were finished. And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had done" (Gen 2:1-2).
So, the same text describes the original creation and shows hints of the recreation in its background. One of the best ways to discern the dimensions of creation and recreation, in Genesis 1, is to consider the meanings of the verbs used. In Earth's earliest ages, Pember differentiated the words bara and asah, used by the sacred writer to describe the creative acts of God. According to him, bara means to create out of nothing, and asah, to make with a material.
But if adopt this difference, we have to conclude that it is effective in chapter 1, but not in chapter 2, since the birds were created, in 1:21, and formed from the earth, in 2:19. Similarly, the woman was created, in 1:27, and formed from the rib of man, in 2:21-22. So, Pember's distinction does not match all texts' data.
Anyway, the differentiation between bara and asah in the first and not the second chapter of Genesis confirms that the editor of the book did not realize it. If had noticed the difference, he would have kept it in chapter 2 and made it more likely to be discovered and recorded by other authors, which has not happened.
These ideas are reinforced by the common assignment of the early chapters of the Bible to distinct authors, who lived in different times. The assignment helps explain why the first chapter adopts the distinction, whereas chapter 2 does not. In fact, the first text was written by one author at one time, and the other, by another author at another time. Thus, as the doctrine implied in Genesis 1 was not disclosed, the divergence between the chapters has not been recorded or debated.
E. F. Kevan slightly modified the differentiation proposed by Pember. He said asah is employed to the creation of preexisting beings and bara, for the creation of totally new beings. In his own words, "the main thing is to underline the meaning of bara, that only supposes the production of a completely new being that did not exist before. "
The note is drawn from a succinct review of the Book of Genesis (The New Bible Commentary. Sao Paulo: Vida Nova. Vol I, p. 83). It is not followed by a demonstration that the difference suggested is true. We may propose one, by stating that bara is used only for the creation of beings that receive God's blessing. Such is the case of birds, the great whales and man. The creation of all other beings is described by other verbs.
The underlying principle of the difference is that God does not give his blessing in vain or at random. In the context of creation, he does it when a being comes into existence for the first time. And if it is really so, the word bara must be associated only to beings that came into existence during the six days, while asah (and other verbs) applies to beings which were recreated. So, to the original author, to create was not only to generate or to produce, but also to bless and to consecrate. The divine blessing is what starts the history of a species.
Another way to express the difference between bara and asah consists of asserting that the act of recreating (asah) recapitulates the origin of beings in an earlier era, when they were created and blessed. The biblical foundation of this recap is verse 2:4, which states: "This is the genesis of the heavens and the earth when they were created."
The word genesis (in Hebrew, toledot), in this verse, means history. It points either to the story of chapter 1 or of chapter 2. As the last one does not narrate the creation of the heavens, but of a garden and Adam, it can only refer to the seven days. And the words "when they were created" indicate that the seven days narrate the origin, the initial formation of the heavens, the earth and the beings therein. So, the days in which the verb bara does not appear not only deal with the recreation, but recapitulate creation.
The above observations allow us to identify two sequences of acts of creation, that overlap one another in Genesis 1: a sequence designated by the word asah and another formed with bara. The sequence indicated by asah includes the formation of the firmament (v. 7), the lights (v. 16), reptiles, wild animals, domestic animals (v. 25) and man (v. 26). If we want, we can add items that are not designated by any of the verbs, as the light of the first day, the ocean and the clouds. And the sequence of bara is composed with birds, great whales (v. 21) and man (v. 27).
In short: there must be a difference between bara and asah. Otherwise, the cosmogony of Genesis would not employ the two verbs. However, the differences proposed until today usually fail. The sole one that seems to withstand criticism is that which recognizes bara refers to acts of original creation, and asah to acts of recreation. And this difference brings in the peculiar corollary of suspending the sequence of origins of the six days in the items of the fifth day, which were created (bara). It is significant that such items (flying birds and whales) are exactly the ones scientific evidence showed that could not have come before the sixth day's creation. They are the main items whose position in the biblical sequence seems incompatible with scientific evidence. But the suspension of the sequence of recreated items, on the fifth day, by the appearance of created beings (bara), brings in a change that restores that compatibility.

THE SEQUENCES

We saw that the verb bara (create) is used only for beings that God formed for the first time. With this meaning, the term appears in Genesis 2:4: "This [the story of the six days] is the genesis of the heavens and the earth when they were created [bara]." Clearly, the verse refers to the days of Genesis 1 as the creation of the heavens and the earth. I want to show that, compared to scientific data, this sense of the days of creation 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 day was much weaker than that which came with the luminaries of the fourth. If the days describe the original creation, we can surely compare the first one with the state of the Earth, when it was created. Physicist Fred Hoyle describes that state as follows: "This is the picture of the first few hundred million years of Earth's history [...] a period of tremendous devastation, during which the surface of the Earth was hit by a rain of objects that, because of the higher gravity of Earth, must have been more destructive than the intense bombardment which simultaneously produced the sculptured 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 in the following terms: "The earth is a billion years old. There is a chill in the air, because the sun is a star young and relatively weak, radiating only half of the heat and light which it will later produce" (Jastrow, Robert. Until the sun goes out. Rio de Janeiro: Francisco Alves, 1980. p. 29).
If at a billion years of age, the earth was bathed by half the light existing today, because the sun was too young, an even smaller amount of luminous radiation existed when it was created. 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 further. Does anyone deny that this scenario is convergent with the faint light of Genesis 1:3? If the six days record the creative acts of God, we can conclude that the first one does so with admirable precision.
After that, on the second day, God made the firmament (the atmosphere) between the waters bellow (the sea) and above it (clouds). Robert Jastrow says: "Once the earth was formed, radioactive atoms contained in the planet began to crumble one by one. By releasing their small power loads, they heated the rocks inside [...] Seven hundred million years after that [...] the molten rock burst through the weakest points of the earth crust, a volcano erupted and a torrent of lava was poured. Surprisingly, this wash was the source of the atmosphere and oceans of the earth" (pp. idem.. 29-30). A third scientist, Hubert Reeves, thus recounts the formation of the seas: "When the planet was covered with a vast and dense atmosphere, the water condensed. It rained as it will never rain again. It rained all oceans" (REEVES, Hubert. A little more blue - the cosmic evolution. Sao Paulo: Martins Fontes, 1986. p. 91).
By these descriptions, we see that the atmosphere and the ocean were formed after 700 million years of the Earth spinning in space. This milestone represents the start of the second day of Genesis, in which the seas and atmosphere were formed. So, once again, 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 the ocean is described by the scientist as follows: "A shallow sea covered the surface of the planet. Its waters were sterile; in them, life will spring up later, but has not yet come" (Jastrow, Robert. Op. cit. p. 31). If the land emerged from the waters, on the third day, it is because it had been flooded, as the text quoted clarifies. At that time, no flesh had been formed. Again, the description of Genesis is beautifully shown to be compatible with that of science.
Jastrow continues: "The earth has just completed its first billion years, when in the second day of life [metaphor used by him to facilitate the understanding of evolution], the planet stirs up tirelessly [...] The intensity of the movement increases, as the depths are devastated by seizures, and the top of the first continents rises above sea level "(idem. p. 35). A billion years takes us back to the period that followed the formation of the atmosphere and oceans, that is, to the third day of Genesis, when the land emerged from the waters. Are we not before another astonishing convergence between the Bible and science?
We could stop the analysis at this point, since the structural formation of the planet, before the emergence of living beings, is complete. It has an independent meaning, which cannot be abolished by what is stated about the other days. But let us proceed. Maybe our eyes are fooling us... Or a spell, like those of Jannes and Jambres, has paralyzed us.
Still on the third day, Genesis recounts the creation of terrestrial plants. Scientific data show that the first land plants in the fossil record are 500 to 470 million years old (Nature Magazine, 11/30/2000). The first large trees, called Archaeopteris are 370 million years old (Nature, 4/22/1999). This period can perfectly match 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 luminaries is chronicled. On this point, the ever useful narrative of Jastrow asserts: "Rocks a thousand miles below the planet's surface, partially melted and transformed by intense heat and pressure, began to open way up. Molten material reached the surface, volcanoes erupted [...] These changes occurred in the interior and on the surface of the earth, three hundred and fifty million years ago. During the hundred million years before that period, the interior of the earth rested in calm "(Jastrow, Robert. Op. cit. p. 40).

The intense volcanism that Jastrow referred to coincided with a meteor collision with the Earth, 360 ​​million years ago. The collision resulted in a gigantic crater discovered in 2013 in the East Warburton Basin, South Australia, which has 10 to 20 km in diameter. According to Andrew Glikson, visiting professor at the Australian National University, " what most impressed us is the extent of the impact zone of at least 20 km in diameter, which makes it the third largest crater in the world opened by a heavenly body". Glikson concluded that the fall of the asteroid, 360 million years ago, caused "both regional and global impact" ( Glikson , Andrew. UOL News. 02.20.2013, 19h32). Needless to add that this cataclysmic event fits precisely into the final part of the third day of creation. Thus, the work of the fourth day consisted of removing the thick layer of smoke and other caotic effects of the collision of the meteorite and the volcanic outbreak mentioned before.

The fifth day does not apply to the original creation of the Earth, because the originated items were created and blessed by God. We must then jump to the sixth day, when reptiles , wild and domestic lives were formed. In the Bible, reptiles are creeping things endowed or not with wings and legs.
The biblical reptiles appeared abundantly in the fossil record between 350 and 250 million years ago, which means after the end of the fourth day's volcanism. The first four-legged animals, which have complicated name (thecodonts and terapsids), date from the same era. On them Wikipedia elaborates: "The thecodonts [...] first appeared in the Permian and flourished until the end of the Triassic period"; "The therapsids appeared in the Permian period." The same encyclopedia situates the Permian between 299 and 251 million years ago. So the four-legged animals also appeared at the exact point of Earth's history in which the biblical sequence locates them.
Now, let us return quickly to the fifth day, when only created beings are mentioned, and to the part of the sixth day that deals with the origin of man, all described by the verb bara. These periods come after the original creation of beings associated with asah and other verbs. In the preceding text, we have shown that the opposition of these verbs points to consecutive sequences, and that the sequence linked to asah comes before that of bara. It is important to note that the scientific data corroborate both the first and the second sequences. Paleontology shows that flying birds, whales and humans arose, after thecodonts the terapsids: the first ones 212 million years ago (06/27/2002 Nature. Quoted in Folha de S. Paulo. 06/27/2002. p. A 15), whales ancestors (Plesiosaurs) by 150 million years from today (Folha de S. Paulo. 28/02/2008. p. A 18), and man at approximately 200 thousand years ago.
The above paragraphs sum up the result of the application of the six days to the original creation and to the recreation. The comparison with scientific findings shows that the days reconstitute the exact sequence of structural items and of living beings on Earth. Jannes and Jambres would not have done better, even though they had used the best kept Egyptian secrets.
Faced with such convergence, can we still think the seven days only describe the recreation of God and not his original creation? More than that: is it still possible to think that Genesis 1 is a simple human story and not a divine revelation? Or that it does not constitute an irrefutable evidence of creation?

THE REPTILES AND TIME

The creation of reptiles is narrated in verses 24 and 25 of Genesis 1 as follows: "And God said, Let the earth bring forth living animals according to their kind, cattle and creeping things and animals of the earth according to their kind; and it was so. And God made the animals of the earth according to their kind, and the cattle according to their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind, and God saw that it was good."

To understand these verses it is first necessary to grasp the meaning of the word kind. It is frequently understood as if it had been used in the plural, but in Hebrew the word is in the singular number. Therefore, each group of living beings mentioned in the text includes one kind and not several.

This particularity changes the interpretation of the verses transcribed. If God had created the animals according to their kinds, in the plural, we would have to understand that he created all of their species. But Genesis tells us something different. It tells us that God created the cattle after their only kind, the wild animals after their kind, and the reptiles also according to their unique kind.

This means that the domestic animals form one kind in the biblical sense of the word, the wild beasts, one kind, and the reptiles, also one kind. Fortunately, it is not difficult to establish the meaning of each of these groups or kinds for the Jews, since the Bible contains only one animal classification, that of Leviticus 11 repeated in Deuteronomy 14:3-21. No information is available that the Jews have ever used any other classification until a long time after the New Testament was written.

In Leviticus 11:2-8, one group of quadrupeds is mentioned, including the camel, the dormouse, the hare and the pig. The same group appears in Deuteronomy 14:4-8. But beyond these four animals, several others are mentioned: the ox, the sheep, the goat, the deer, the gazelle, the doe, the mountain goat, the antelope, the mountain sheep and the fallow deer. With the exception of the dormouse and the hare, all others are animals with four large legs. This is the main anatomical feature of the group. The other one is that it includes animals having the nail split and the hoof divided, in addition to not being plantigrades (not walking on the soles of the feet).

Some animals in this group are domesticated, others are not. The mountain goat is described as not domesticated in Job 39:1-4. The deer, the gazelle, the doe, the antelope and the fallow deer can be kept in captivity, but not domesticated. They are wild animals. The camel, the ox and the pig, in their turn, are domestic. Although not cited, the dog, the cat and other animals are also included in this group. Therefore, the biblical quadrupeds include both the domestic and the wild animals of Genesis 1.

Let us skip those groups that are not mentioned in the first chapter of the Bible, such as fish and insects, which are clearly defined as categories in Leviticus. The birds of the fifth day appear in Leviticus as a defined group, and the reptiles are mentioned in verses 29-30 and 43-44.

Thus, a complete classification of animals is provided in Leviticus, including a group of quadrupeds (domestic and wild), one of fish, one of birds, one of insects and one or two of reptiles. The basis of the classification is the means of locomotion: on legs, on the belly, on feet, by flippers or by wings. And in order to avoid all doubt that the groups are well defined and stagnant, each is reported to have a distinct criterion of ritual purity: for quadrupeds, the criteria are rumination, possession of split nails and cloven hooves and not being plantigrade; for fish, they are the flippers and scales; for birds it is belonging to a defined list of species; for insects, it is to have longer hind legs.

There are two reptile groups in Leviticus. This conclusion is based on several reasons. First, verses 29 and 30 mention no arthropods (millipede, arachnid etc.). Verse 42, in contrast, cites basically arthropods ("whatever goes on its belly, and whatever goes on all fours, or whatever has many feet"). Therefore, from an anatomical point of view, there are as good reasons to differentiate the animals of 29 and 30 from those of verse 42 as there are to distinguish them from the quadrupeds of verses 2 to 8.

In addition, the criteria of purity for the groups mentioned in 11:29-30 and 11:42 are different. All members of the first group have four feet, but most are considered pure. Only eight species are impure. In the second group, in contrast, all four feet animals and all beings that have many feet (millipedes) are unclean. By exclusion, therefore, only those with six feet (hexapods) are considered pure. These criteria confirm that we deal with different groups.

Both reptile groups are mentioned in Genesis 8:19, which states that "every animal, every creeping thing, every bird and everything that moves upon the earth" came out of Noah's ark. The group of Leviticus 11:29-30 is that of the "creeping things" mentioned in Genesis 8:19; that of Leviticus 11:42-43 is formed by "everything that moves on the earth." So, there is no doubt that the Bible refers to two groups of reptiles and not to one.

However, Genesis 1:25 says that God made "every creeping thing of the earth after its kind." The term kind in the singular means that only one group of reptiles of Leviticus 11 and Genesis 8:19 was created on the sixth day. Again, there is little doubt that the group is that of which arthropods are excluded because, on the fourth day, God created the lights in order to provide "signs and seasons" to animals. Plants are not guided by signs from celestial bodies. They also do not recognize seasons. Therefore, the arthropods seem to have been created in the fourth day or before, leaving only the other group of reptiles to be identified with the one created on the sixth day.

Based on the difference between the verbs create (in Hebrew bara) and make (asah), which we discussed elsewhere, we know that the created beings had not existed before, while those made in Genesis 1 were recreated. One of the reasons I adopt this interpretation is that Genesis 1:1—2:4 was written in order to tell the story of the origins, which is clear not only from the narrative of the seven days, but also from the last verse of the passage, which states: "This is the origin of the heavens and of the earth" (Genesis 2:4).

As the sacred author chose to narrate the origins in a sequence of days, we face two and only two alternatives: if we do not admit that God recreated the Earth after a catastrophe devastated it, Genesis will convey only one sequence of creative acts by God; but if we adopt the interpretation that there were an original creation and a re-creation, two series of divine acts will appear instead of one. In the latter case, the days will be applied in sequence both to the original creation and to the re-creation, with the sole exception of the fifth and the last part of the sixth day, for the beings mentioned in them were created (bara), and did not exist before. 

Thus, the difference between create and make is the criterion that allows us to compose the sequence in which the original creation occurred. This sequence consists of the first four days and the first part of the sixth. When it is compared with the information provided by science, we have the following picture:

Bible	Science
Origin of light on the 1st day	Origin of light 4,5 to 3,9 billion years ago
Origin of the atmosphere, clouds and ocean on the 2nd day	Origin of the atmosphere, clouds and ocean 3,9 to 3,5 billion years ago
Origin of the Earth’s crust, herbs and fruit trees on the 3rd day	Origin of the Earth’s crust, herbs and fruit trees 3,5 billion to 360 million years ago
Origin of lights on the 4th day	Origin of lights 360 million years ago
Origin of earth animals on the first part of the 6th day	Origin of earth animals 360 to 50 million years ago

As I showed in detail in the book Darwin's hypothesis, the table above points out that, according to scientific data, the items of the original creation arose in the exact sequence indicated by the days of Genesis 1. Of course, this interpretation depends on taking the days of Genesis as ages, but that is one of the possible translations of the Hebrew word yom (day).

It is important to remember that the origin of celestial bodies mentioned in the table consisted of the clearing of the atmosphere, after a meteor collision with the Earth, 360 ​​million years ago. The collision was proven by the discovery, in 2013, of a crater in the East Warburton Basin in South Australia, with no less than 10 to 20 km in diameter. The scientist Andrew Glikson, from the Australian National University, declared that the fall of the asteroid that opened the crater caused a "regional and global impact" (Glikson, Andrew. UOL News. 20.02.2013, 1932 hours).

This cataclysmic event marks the time when the work of the fourth day took place. The age of the reptiles began not long after, from the viewpoint of geological time. Thus, in addition to the items mentioned in the table (light, atmosphere etc.), we have to place the creation of "every creeping thing" between 360 million and 50 million years ago.

Fortunately, the geological date of the origin of most forms of life can be found in available sources like the Wikipedia. Of 123 families of animals with the characteristics of the reptiles mentioned in Genesis 1:24-25 and Leviticus 11:29-30 I could find 92 which originated between 360 and 50 million years ago, only five that came after, and none preexistent. About 26 families no information was provided.

This means we have 92 correct locations of living creatures besides those listed in the table. To form a concept, albeit rough, of what that means, consider how many combinations of the 92 items with the others mentioned in the four and a half days are possible. The link http://matematica2.no.sapo.pt/12Year/Matemilhoes2.htm helps us to estimate this number as it calculates how many bets combinations of six numbers out of the 49 of the lottery known as Lotto are possible. The answer is 13,983,816.

The calculation is simple. To win the Lotto, a gambler needs to hit the combination of six of the 49 numbers included in the draw. It is not necessary to add that the chance of someone hitting the "right" combination is almost zero, because otherwise the lottery would not exist for lack of means to pay the premiums.

What about the 92 families of living beings located correctly in Genesis 1? In fact, the selection of the living beings that make up the biblical sequence is much more unlikely than that of the lottery numbers, since 92 is not the number of options from which we must take the items of our sequence. The 92 families of reptiles are for the biblical sequence as the six drawn numbers are for Lotto. Therefore, the number of options from which the 92 families were taken is much higher. It equals the number of varities of living beings that were known in Antiquity. That means all kinds of plants, trees, fish, arthropods and other living beings that old man knew.

This number is much higher than 92, which increases the difficulty in choosing the correct sequence. If that sequence is made of 92 items (of more than 100, in fact, since it also includes inanimate things), the universe from which they were taken is much higher. It certainly includes thousands of groups of living beings that could have been placed in the biblical sequence.

How many different forms of fish, insects, arthropods did old man know? The truth is that we do not know. But we know that they were too many. How many fish, insects and other arthropods did Aristotle know, when he wrote his History of animals with hundreds of pages? When it mentions "all reptiles" and other groups of animals, the Bible utilises a knowledge of kinds that was probably not inferior to that of Aristotle, for a simple reason: the Jews needed to separate clean animals from unclean, which forced them to create one of the most comprehensive and rigorous classification of animals known in ancient times.

This is a very important point. Historical data show that the Jews needed to separate clean and unclean animals not only for religious, but also for social reasons. Therefore, they created the broad classification of clean and unclean animals found in Leviticus and Deuteronomy that is rigidly repeated throughout the Bible. It is essential to realize that the only way a Jew could always decide whether an animal was pure or impure was by creating a comprehensive ranking. That was what they did, from the time of the Babylonian Exile, when the Jews were exposed to a different diet, and were forced to differentiate not only a few, but all kinds of clean and unclean animals.

Thus, we are forced conclude that, when Genesis 1 refers to the broad groups of living beings, such as herbs, trees, birds and quadrupeds, without adding the word all, the origin of the groups as wholes is mentioned. But when verse 25 mentions all reptiles something different is involved. The reference is no longer to the broad group of reptiles, that is, to the first species of it that ever existed, but to all the varieties comprised in the group. That makes a big difference, since it adds hundreds and not only one form of life to the biblical sequence. 
For all that, the main requirement for one to understand the chances of mentioning the correct sequence of origins by chance is not the number of broad groups cited in Genesis 1, but the number of varieties known by the ancient Jews. Only this last number allows a realistic idea of ​​the degree of difficulty involved in composing the sequences of creation and re-creation. It is amazing that this number is not 49 or 92, but thousands! And from that number we should take not only one, but 92 groups in the correct sequence!

It is not easy to understand the comparison of the Genesis sequence and the Lotto. As the structure of the sequence is composed not only by the reptiles of the sixth day, but by all the items that originated on other days, to put one group of reptiles in the correct place of the sequence corresponds to hitting the Lotto once. And placing the 92 groups in the right order is equivalent to hitting the Lotto 92 times in a row. Not forgetting, of course, that the Lotto draws 6 numbers out of 49, while to make up the Genesis sequence 92 groups of reptiles are to be chosen out of hundreds or even thousands of other categories.

Let us reason calmly: how many combinations of hundreds or thousands of integers are possible? We can calculate, but it will be in vain. We have no idea of ​​the difference between a million and this defiantly high number. The magnitude of the number involved is so high that we cannot understand it.

Have we finished? Not yet. We still have to consider other factors that may possibly influence the number of combinations. The results of the draws of Lotto are sets of numbers. The task of choosing the right sequence of origins is infinitely more complex because, in addition to choosing the right items among thousands of others, we have to locate them in the correct time frame, as living beings were not created in a week or in a month. It will be useless to put the right sequence in the wrong places of the timeline. Only the right sequence in the right places will be of advantage.

Someone will say that the biblical sequence is undated. That the Bible merely puts the items created one after the other, without locating them here or there in time. Only the scientific sequence is dated. I agree in part. Scientific sequence is really dated, but Genesis does not state its sequence is timeless. Quite otherwise, the implication is that it fits into the timeline in one way among infinite others.

The same sequence can be seen differently, as we stretch it more or less on the timeline. In how many ways can it be seen? Under how many chronological variations can it be conceived? In infinite ways and under infinite variations, since time and numbers are infinite. However, the claim of the biblical text is not that any one of the infinite ways and of the infinite variations is true. The intention is to say that one way and one variation are correct.

This implies that, as a single event (e.g. the origin of the ocean) is identified with a particular event on the timeline, the place of all the others will necessarily be before or after it. This conception does not lead to random distribution of the biblical sequence in time. It leads to a specific location. So, the more we identify the statements of Genesis with facts of Cosmic History, the more determined the chronological meaning of the sequence will become. Since time is infinite, the selection of the right sequence can be described as a number among infinite others.

This seems to be the most correct way to deduce the meaning of the sequence of origins in Genesis. But let us make a concession to skepticism. In fact, a big one. Let us admit that the correct sequence was not taken from endless others. Given this hypothesis, we have two ways to estimate the correctness of the sequence. One is to consider that it comprises a hundred items among thousands of others that could have been cited, since the Jews knew thousands of groups of living beings. The number of combinations of these thousands is very high, but finite. On the other hand, we can consider that the parallel between the divine acts of creation and the corresponding cosmic events implies that the items of the sequence are distributed in a limited section of time. Thus, the chance of reaching the correct sequence by chance should be assessed as one in an infinite number.

For a non-alienated science, what practical difference can be said to exist between one or two trillions and an infinite number? The chances of random selection of a number out of the two are not equal for all relevant purposes? The method employed to come to both numbers is not scientific? Why cannot that method be used to establish a fact?

What is a fact? Is creation a fact? And evolution? In Darwin's hypothesis, I admitted evolution as a fact, and that creation was considered a hypothesis by Darwin. Is it not necessary to consider that the hypothesis was confirmed?

In the fourth century, Hilary of Poitiers expressed the difference not only logical, but existential between believing that the world is a fluke and that it was created by God in the following words: "It would not be worthy of God to let man take part in counsel and wisdom in this life [...] in a way he would be brought into this world in order to cease to exist. Therefore, it must be discerned that the reason for our creation is not that what started to exist should cease to be, but that what was not should start to exist" (POITIERS, Hilary Treaty on the Trinity. São Paulo: Paulus, 2005. p. 31).
Is it possible to ignore so huge a difference? Is it possible not to consider that unbelief implies the contradiction of a being who aspires immortality due to his rational tendency existing only in order to cease to exist? Is it not more rational to think, with Hilary, we were lovingly created by God, so that also by him we would have access to immortality?

THE ORIGIN OF ADAM

The geography of the early chapters of Genesis is shrouded in mystery, in large part because the biblical text does not clarify it. However, the mystery is made worse, due to the reader's habit of substituting the physical layout of Palestine or the contemporary view of space for the pre-flood geography. None of these prevailed when the text was composed, and Genesis 2-4 does not seem to have been written under similar viewpoints.
Let us first consider three verses of these chapters. Genesis 2:8 says: "And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, on the east side." A few lines later, 3:23-24 say that God cast man out of that garden, "to till the ground from which he was taken, [...] and placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden [...] to keep the way of the tree of life. " Finally, after having withdrawn from the Lord, it is recorded that Cain "dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east side of Eden" (Gen 4:16).
As much as the allusion to the rivers Tigris and Euphrates (Genesis 2:14), these verses help to situate the locations of the first chapters of the Bible. If we consider that the editor of Genesis called east the lands that lay east of the Holy Land, we understand that Eden was east of Palestine. We also understand that God planted the garden in the land of Eden, that the cherubim were placed east of the garden and that Cain was the first one to leave the territory called Eden, perhaps toward India.
By this information, we see that Adam was not kicked out of Eden, but of the Garden of Eden. And the place where he lived, when left paradise, was that "he was taken from", that is, the site of man's creation in Genesis 2:7. All these facts happened in the land called Eden, from which Cain turned away.
The above geographical framework allows us to understand not only that the creation of Adam occurred in a circumscribed place, but that the whole story of his life was spent in that territory. When God told him to "fill the earth and subdue it" (Gen 1:28), the land alluded was that place. The people of the Bible and its writers knew only a tiny part of the globe. So, when said land, they referred to that tiny portion of the planet or to an even smaller one. It was not different with the command to populate the Earth, which also had the land of Eden in view.
Therefore, the creation of Adam was that of a people among many others, which inhabited a territory also among many others. Cain's wife and the city he built are not mentioned so naturally in Genesis 4 by chance: the sacred author clearly admited that the population from which the first came and to which the other was built originated before and apart from the facts he narrated.
What justifies the biblical assertion that mankind descends from one man (Acts 17:26) is not the idea that Adam was the first of all human beings, in an absolute sense, but that Noah's sons occupied most parts of the world the ancients knew. Neither that occupation nor the story of creation were absolute geographical or historical claims to them.
For all that, what we have in Genesis 2 is the creation of a remote people, that served the only God, but lost that condition. That people inhabited the land on which the Lord God had not made it rain yet (Gen 2:5), i.e., a desert, and took refuge in a garden inside of Eden. Although desert, the Eden had a river, which was divided into four heads. The first two (Pison and Gihon) were probably temporary. But the other two arms of the river of Eden were permanent, for they were identified with the Tigris and Euphrates (Genesis 2:14).
It is curious that the four tributaries receive names, but not the main river. That may be due to it no longer existing at the time the text was written. Perhaps the mist that rose from the ground to water the earth (Gen. 2:6) and the rest of the action of God to form the garden eliminated it. We know that the delta of the Tigris and Euphrates has undergone radical transformations in the past, and that distances from the same points to the sea changed several times. One of such transformations must have consisted of the advance of the sea on the one river, so that only its tributaries remained.
In Genesis 2, God and Adam are both described as farmers. It is said that God planted a garden in Eden (Gen. 2:8), in which he put Adam to cultivate it (Genesis 2:15). These are traits of an older story that had more materialistic assumptions than that of chapter 1. All created beings in this story are taken from a material. So it is with man formed from the dust of the earth, the birds and the beasts of the field (Gen. 2:19), that were molded from the ground, and with man's wife, formed from his rib.
As a vegetarian diet is affirmed in chapter 1 (Gn 1:29), agricultural practices are justified as God's gift to Adam, in the second text. Not surprisingly, among the practices adopted or initiated by Cain's (fallen) descendants, in chapter 4, agriculture is not included. More than grazing, the cultivation of earth is related to sedentarization. Therefore, to civilization, which is not presented as a corollary of the fall (like the activities of Cain's descendants are), but as a gift of God to men before the fall.
So manifest an exaltation of agriculture, compared to herding and nomadism, is not natural in a people like Israel, whose survival equally depended on the two first ones and whose origin was nomadic. So, it must not have been conceived at the time of the divided kingdom. Much less in the period of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Its original drawing is better located, at a time when the agricultural activity was newly discovered and underwent exceptional development, which does not correspond to any period of Hebrew history, but to a golden age of agriculture in the delta of the Tigris and Euphrates. From that age and from that delta the memory of the events of Genesis 2 seems to come.

ADAM’S AGE

The concept that humanity has existed for 6000 years has been extracted from five Bible verses: "This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day God created man, in the likeness of God he made him. Male and female he created them, and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created. Adam lived a hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image, and called his name Seth. And the days of Adam after he begat Seth were eight hundred years, and begat sons and daughters. All the days that Adam lived were nine hundred thirty years, and he died" (Gen. 5:1-5).
The literal interpretation of these verses is as old as Genesis itself. Even attentive writters such as Augustine have adopted it, as can be drawn from the text in which he criticized the interpreters who "did not pay attention to the gaps of Scripture, and considered that Cain had sexual relations with his mother to give birth to the offspring of Adam and Eve, since Scripture does not mention the sisters of Cain and Abel in the narrative about them. However, Scripture recalls the sons and daughters of Adam (Gen. 5:4) which it had previously omitted in the narrative about Cain and Abel" (HIPON, Augustine of. On nature and grace. 3rd. ed., Sâo Paulo: Paulus, 2007, p. 154).
Non-Christians, however, like Celsus (second century) and Porphyry (third century), did challenge the biblical genealogies. However, the first one was fully refuted by Origen of Alexandria, and the last, by Eusebius of Caesarea. With such refutations, the discussions on the historical truth of Christianity almost ended up, in the fourth century. The entire Roman world accepted Christianity not only as a religion but as history.
However, nothing prevents us from reflecting some more on the age of Adam. Genesis is divided into several sections, which usually begin with the words "These are the generations of" or "This is the story of". Today, it is accepted that such sections are derived from independent traditions, which an editor brought together to compose the first biblical book. The words quoted were simply the glue that he used to put them together.
The sections in the first eleven chapters of Genesis almost always begin with a chronological retreat. For example, after the account of the six days of creation, Scripture says: "God completed on the seventh day the work he had done, and rested on that day from all the work which he had done." Then starts the story of Eden, by a retreat to the "day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens" (Genesis 2:4).
Similarly, chapter 5 brings a new story: "This is the book of the generations [i.e. the descendants] of Adam." And immediately backs up to "the day that God created man" (Genesis 5:1). I do not proceed to quote all the other retreats following these not to make this text too tiring, but it is certain that the traditions in the early chapters of Genesis were stuck together by a technique of retreat and recapitulation.
Thus understood, the five verses that seem to affirm the recent age of Adam (Genesis 5:1-5) start with a retreat, as all that are used to glue the sections of Genesis 1-11. But if verses 1 and 2 are a retreat, the whole passage does not say what is in verses 3-32 (the genealogy of Adam) begins with the creation of the first patriarch. The biblical author went back to creation, to recapitulate it, before transmitting the genealogy, as he did in all other stories he narrated.
Darwin shocked the world by showing that humanity has not existed for six thousand years, but for tens of thousands. From his time to today, much evidence accumulated to support his conclusion. So long a demonstration not only introduced a new vision of old Adam. After the triumph of Biblical History, the demolition of one of its main foundations (the age of Adam) triggered the Western world's dechristianization. But we must ask: did Evolution actually demolish the historical message of the biblical genealogies?
The demolition will only be considered true if the retreat is considered false, since they are absolutely antithetical. If we consider Genesis 5:1-2 a retreat with connective function, the genealogy of Adam will not begin with his creation, and that patriarch will not have 6,000 years. But if we do not recognize the existence of the aforementioned retreat, Adam will remain with his classic literal age. And in this case, as we know, we will be able to keep faith only by a stubborn obstinacy against verified scientific facts.

THE GARDEN OF EDEN

The characteristics of the text on the creation and the events of Eden indicate that its meaning is allegorical. It is not wrong to say even that the narrative is an authentic biblical parable.
But though being a parable, the text recalls actual events. The symbols comprised in it, such as man, the woman and the serpent, represent those events and their theological meaning. Therefore, the first care we must take as we approach it is to not think that its meaning can be drawn from the letter, but from the symbols.
The allegorical interpretation of Genesis 2-4 (and other Bible texts) is not something new. It was developed by biblical authors and by Philo, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa and other heirs of the Alexandrian school. The battle waged against it by St. Augustine was due to linguistic segregation imposed on the allegorical interpretation by the replacement of Greek by Latin. Because they did not understand Greek, Augustine and other Latin-speaking fathers were not able to know the writings of Origen in depth. Nor could they read the rest of the theological literature in Greek, in which the principles of allegorical interpretation had been recorded. The three long books on Genesis which Augustine wrote, for example, earned the highest authority in the Middle Ages, but keep an astounding silence about Origen. Therefore, when the Second Council of Constantinople, held in 553, accused this father of heresy, the conditions were set for the banning of his books and for extinguishing the light of the allegorical school, not because of its merits or demerits, but as a result of the condemnation of other doctrines.
Origen never expressed much doubt on the interpretation of the text of the Garden of Eden. He enclosed it within the range of the allegorical thinking he identified in the Scriptures. Incidentally, for Origen and his followers, neither the six days of Genesis 1 were 24-hour periods, nor the trees of life and of knowledge of good and evil were literal; neither the serpent spoke to Eve, nor all kinds of animals in the world entered the ark with Noah. These are important lessons that the allegorical school handed us.
However, there are other lessons to be learned from later representatives of that school. In the fourth century, Gregory of Nyssa wrote on the garments with which God covered Adam and Eve after they sinned: "On hearing the term skin [of animals], I understand the animal nature, with which we were covered when were united to passions [...] The skin we received from irrational animals is illustrated by sexual union, birth, impurity, breastfeeding, nutrition, eliminating craps, gradual growth, youth, advanced age, diseases and death "(Nyssa, Gregory. On soul and resurrection. St. Paul Paulus, 2011. p. 272).
If the skin that Adam and Eve received was a symbol of animal nature, understood as sexual union, conception, birth, uncleanness, breastfeeding etc., as Gregory admitted, we must conclude that the animals already had these things before the fall. Only man did not possess them. And note that this doctrine is not affirmed, by Gregory, as a novelty or something difficult to understand, but as a common interpretation of Genesis.
As all fathers of Christian church, Gregory believed that evil or sin lay in human will. Therefore, he wrote: "No evil exists in itself out of the will" (Nyssa, Gregory of. The great catechesis. São Paulo: Paulus, 2011. p. 307). Elsewhere, he differentiated the evil that is in the will and is designated by the word pathos from the processes of generation and corruption in nature: "What is in relation to the will and causes us to pass from virtue to vice is truly a pathos, but the things we see in all the extent of nature and its development should more properly be called a state of being than a passion. Such is the case of birth, growth, preservation of man through the process of absorption and evacuation of food, as well as the comig together of elements to form the body, and conversely the dissolution of the compound and its return to the elements" (idem. p. 326th).
In the first passage above, Gregory said that sexual union, conception, birth, breastfeeding and impurity were present in the animal kingdom, before the fall, but were only transmitted to man when he sinned. In the second, he differentiated these things from what he called pathos (sinful passion). Therefore, to Gregory and many Christians of his time, the processes of generation and corruption, including death, are intrinsic in nature. They are not consequences of man's fall.
We can conclude from these teachings that death and sufferings already existed before the fall of Adam, though did not affect man. However, we must not think that the absence of death to men was the same as immortality. In the Greek culture, that Gregory absorbed and of which he became an exponent, immortality was an attribute of gods, not of men. As Theophilus of Antioch wrote, "if were created immortal from the beginning, man would have been made a god" (ANTIOCH, Téofilo of. Books to Autolycus. Apud GOMES, C. F. Anthology of the holy fathers. São Paulo: Paulinas. p. 108).
What was then the state of man in Eden? To the best patristic authors, that state was at the same time of life and death, as represented by the trees of life and of knowledge, in the center of the Garden of Eden. It was not, however, a state of uncertainty between life and death or between the tree of life and the tree of death. The golden age of Eden consisted not of this indefiniteness, although it was somewhat ambivalent.
Here, we need to add something to the doctrine found in fhe fathers who have adopted the allegorical interpretation. The state of life and death in Eden tells us little about man's body. The lesson of the parable of Genesis 2 and 3 is not physical, but spiritual. The symbols contained in it are truly physical: a garden, four rivers, trees, a man, a woman, agricultural labor, a serpent. But the lesson the parable teaches is not. It tells us that man could have spiritual life or death. And how could he? He could have life, by knowing God, and have death, by knowing good and evil by himself. This is the main lesson of the parable.
But if Genesis 2 and 3 do not teach anything about the body of Adam, what are we to conclude about it? We must conclude what we know about the body of all living beings, i.e., that it was mortal. Wherever the Bible does not make statements, we are allowed to follow empirical evidence.
Neither the Pharisees nor Josephus, neither Palestine Judaism nor the patristic authors seem to have recognized this fact of Scripture. But it is the only conclusion that can be drawn from the following statement of Gregory: "I am fully convinced that the mortal condition, once reserved to the irrational nature, has been inflicted on men [during the fall]" (Nyssa, Gregory of. The great catechesis. St. Paul Paulus, 2011. p. 309).
But we should not conclude that man was created mortal only by natural or philosophical reasons. The Bible gives us a good basis to assert the same fact. In Romans 5, Paul wrote: "By one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin [...] through the offense of one, many died [...] one sinned, for judgement came from one offense [...] through the offense of one and through one man, death reigned [...] by one man's offense, judgment came to all men [...] For the wage of sin is death" (Rom 5:12,15,16,17,18; 6:23).
I apologize for quoting this text with several breaks, but they highlight the parallels between sentences. Within the framework provided by these parallels, the apostle uses the words death and judgment with the same meaning. For him, the death that entered the world through Adam was a kind of judgment, not physical death. Here we have the first evidence that the death Adam suffered was spiritual.
But if someone requires an even more thorough proof, it can be found in 1st Corinthians 15: "What you sow does not grow unless first die [...] Thus is also the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption, and raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor, and raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, and raised in power. It is sown a natural body, and raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. For it is written, The first man became a living soul. The last Adam, however, is a quickening spirit" (1 Cor 15:36,42-46).
If we follow Paul's reasoning carefully, we will see that the quickening spirit, in verse 45, corresponds to the spiritual body of verse 44, and the living soul corresponds to the natural body. We will also conclude that Adam was cited as an example of a natural body, as indicated by the word "for" in the following passage: "If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. For it is written, The first man became a living soul. The last Adam, however, is a quickening spirit". It is clearly said that Adam had a natural body, while Christ is a quickening spirit.
And if we go back a little further, we will see that Adam was also cited as evidence that there is corruption, dishonor and weakness. Note that the passage does not refer to Adam after the fall, but to his "seeding", i.e. to the creation of Adam by God: "The man [Adam] became a living soul. " It was therefore in Paul's mind that the man created by God had a corruptible body.
With these clarifications, we can reconsider the question about the fall. We can establish that this fact did not mean the beginning of physical death of animals or humans, the onset of aging, pain, disease and corruption. It meant the beginning of sin, of blasphemy, violence, curse, separation from God, slavery, depravity, darkness and spiritual death.
Physical death is not and has never been a punishment due to Adam's disobedience. It is a result of God's creation. God created man mortal. Therefore, Romans 8:38-39 does not call death a penalty, but a creature: "For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature" and so forth. If height and depth mentioned before the words "any other creature" are, for this very reason, creatures, the items quoted before them are also. Therefore, death is a creature, and, as such, was introduced into the world by God's creation.
The lesson from Genesis 3 is totally spiritual. It portrays the dungeon, in which man entered because of the movement of his free will. Someone will cry: "You are dust, and to dust shall return" (Gen 3:19), to suggest that Adam began to die physically from this sentence. But God showed a feeling which is unlike all human feelings, his magnanimous and not retributive feeling, through this statement. We could only situate physical death from the fall, if we understood that God's statement about man returning to dust demonstrates his human feeling, his sense of immediate and ruthless retribution, his feverish pay of evil with evil, but God is not a man to pour his wrath instantly.
As the woman received the promise that her seed would bruise the serpent's head (Gen. 3:15), God reminded Adam that he would return to dust not because of the fall, but because he was taken from dust, i.e., because of creation. God gave him the promise that his body would die, but his spirit would be freed from the dungeon of corruption.

THE FALL

Adam's sin in Genesis 3, and Cain’s in the next chapter are presented in strict parallelism, as indicated by a number of circumstances. The transgression of Adam was preceeded by the command not to eat of the tree of knowledge, which he did not obey (Gen. 2:17); Cain was commanded to control his urge to sin, and also transgressed (Gen. 4: 7). Adam was accused by God after he sinned (Genesis 3: 11-12), and Cain also was (Gen. 4: 10-15). The ground was cursed due to Adam's sin (Genesis 3: 17-19); the same occurred in consequence of the transgression of Cain (Gen. 4:12). Adam was expelled from the Garden of Eden because of his sin (Gen. 3:23); Cain was driven from the land where he dwelt (Gen. 4: 14,16). Despite of having coped with the consequences of his act, Adam was treated in a mild way by God after sin (Gen. 3:17), as well as Cain (Gen. 4:15). God killed animals to clothe Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:21), and allowed the shedding of human blood by Cain after he transgressed (Gen. 4:15).
So meticulous a parallel cannot be casual. It is rather deliberate. We can even say that no other pair of transgressions, throughout the Bible, is described in terms so symmetrical, which indicates the intention of the author of Genesis to identify the sins of Adam and Cain. They surely constituted two violations, but had only one principle. Therefore, the purpose of the story of Cain is to interpret and continue that of Adam. The nature of Adamic sin remains hidden, as far as we seek it in the account of the fall, which cannot have consisted of eating the fruit of a tree, but of a moral action which remains unknown. However, the story of Cain and Abel dissolves the mistery, and reveals the nature of Adam’s transgression.
The purpose of all accounts in Genesis 1 through 11 is to transmit historical lessons. In chapter 1, the lesson is the creation of the planet, in chapters 7 and 8 it is the Flood, and so on. This is manifest in the text, and was recognized by interpreters of all ages. However, when we read Genesis 1, 7 and 8, we realize the facts the text conveys right away and without difficulty. The same is not true when we turn to Genesis 3. We realize that the last text conveys Adam's sin, but not its nature. We know that nature was not to eat the forbidden fruit, but we cannot establish what it was.
Now, the purpose of a parable like that of Genesis 2 and 3 is frustrated if we do not understand what it teaches us. We may think the purpose of the text is to teach that one must obey God. But what is to obey? If God wants us to fulfill his commandments, we need to know what he commands. If he does not demand that we eat certain fruits and refrain from eating others, if this commandment is just a symbol of other behaviors, which acts are allowed by God, and which are prohibited?
Genesis 3 does not explain. Thus, we can say that the purpose of the text is frustrated as far as we remain within it. But when we read the story of Cain and Abel, the nature of Adam's sin becomes as evident as the conclusion that the earth was created in chapter 1, and that the Flood occurred in chapters 7 and 8. By the parallel between the sins of Adam and Cain, we understand that the first consisted of shedding human blood, just like the last. Thus, the nature of the act of Adam is elucidated.
This conclusion is not only drawn from chapter 4, but also from the earlier stories. After having created man and woman in Genesis 1:29, God gave them a dietary commandment: "Behold, I have given you every herb that produces seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit that produces seed. They shall be for you as food." We must consider with due attention the similarity between this commandment and that of Genesis 2:16: "Of every tree of the garden you may eat freely."
Genesis 1:29 and 2:16 are one and the same commandment. They are God’s dietary commandment to Adam and his wife. However, the precept transmitted to Adam and Eve is symbolic. God's purpose is not that they eat this and do not eat that, but that they keep certain conducts and refrain from others. What does God want man to practice, and what does he forbid him? The answer is that he wants man to feed, just like he wants him to multiply, without spilling the blood of other living beings. This is the meaning of the precept of eating exclusively vegetables. It is easy to see that this precept implies the prohibition of killing.
The tree of knowledge of good and evil does not indicate anything different from what its name manifests. What could Adam and Eve understand to be good and evil, if God had only given them one dietary commandment? They could only understand that good was to keep that commandment, and evil was to break it, that is, to shed blood.
This conclusion makes the sin of Adam even more similar to Cain's. Adam having eaten the forbidden fruit means that he started to kill. Not only to kill animals for food, which was forbidden him, but also to kill other human beings due to hatred, like Cain killed Abel.
For all these reasons, the original sin, the sin of Genesis 3, must have been the shedding of human blood. Nothing as light as eating a fruit, or less mild, although serious, like killing an animal, would justify erecting Adam's transgression in the principle of all human evil, as Scripture clearly does. Only an intrinsically serious transgression as murder would justify that treatment.
We must remember, however, that the stories of Genesis 1 through 11 are intended to portray a past event. Creation, the Flood, the building of the Tower of Babel are some of these events. To match facts as clearly defined as those, the sin of Adam should be better detailed than it has been so far. If it consisted of a murder, what sort of murder was it? When and where did it take place? Who practiced it and who was its victim?
We saw in the previous topics that Adam was a people, not an individual. Therefore, his sin may have been committed and suffered by many people. I think both the authors and victims of Adam’s murder (murders, in fact) were individuals from the people from Adam, who lived in Mesopotamia. And as that people lived around 4000 B. C., it can only be identified with the ancient Sumerians. It was probably a fraction of the Sumerian civilization, whose existence was proven by archaeologist Charles Leonard Woolley.
Among the places in which Woolley found Sumerian remnants, one of the oldest is Ur. Several artifacts found there date back to the fifth or fourth millennium before our era. One of the findings of Woolley at Ur was described by archaeologist C. W. Ceram in frightening terms: "In the tomb of a queen, rich burial offerings, two small canoes, one made of copper and the other of silver, were found [...] Another highly instructive finding is the standard mosaic of Ur (which Woolley dated from 3500 BC). It consisted of two rectangular panels [...] that portray a banquet (this informs us about the costume and utensils they used), in which some people appear conducting animals to sacrifice (which tells us what cattle were raised at that time), a group of prisoners and one of warriors (which provides information on the weapons and armor), and finally war chariots, which inform us that it was the Sumerians who introduced the cars in war at the end of the fourth millennium BC "(CERAM C. W. Gods, tombs and sages - the romance of Archeology. 7th edition, Sao Paulo, 1958. pages 268-269).
The author continues: "Then Woolley made the terrible discovery. Those tombs of the kings of Ur contained other bodies besides the corpses of sovereigns. They appeared to have been the theater of a true carnage. Soldiers of the royal guard laid in them, with copper helmets near their skulls, and spears near their hands. Assassinated! In a burial chamber laid nine ladies of the court with lavish headdresses, which they evidently used at funeral ceremonies. At the entrance two heavy cars were found […] with the bones of the coachmen. In front of the horse skeletons were the bones of the servants. Also killed!
In the tomb of Queen Schub-ad, court ladies were found in two parallel rows. They had also been murdered. At the end of those lines stood the skeleton of a man – a musician, a harpist. The bones of the arm were crossed over the precious instrument, which he evidently embraced by the time he was hit. Along the coffin of the queen were the skeletons of two men, in the position they stood when were slaughtered" (op. cit. p. 269).
The scenario is of a widespread carnage that happened in various royal tombs of Ur, during funeral ceremonies. Ceram concludes: "What did all that mean? There was only one explanation: the slaughtered were offered to mortal beings as the greatest possible sacrifice – that of human life! Woolley stood before a scene of human sacrifice premeditated by fanatical priests wishing to carry out the principle of the god-king [...] The sacrifice was pure murder! Bloody torture in honor of dead kings! "(op. cit. pages 269-270).
After one hundred years, Woolley’s discovery remains firmly grounded in the archaeological landscape. Surveys conducted in 2009 in the royal cemetery of Ur not only confirmed it, but counted nearly "two thousand funerals in which human sacrifices were offered" (WILFORD, John Noble. "At Ur, Ritual deaths which were anything but serene." New York Times. 27/10/2009). The interpretation of the practice also continues to be the one Woolley suggested: "On the occasion of the death of kings or even before it, courtiers, servants, warriors and other people were killed. Their bodies were almost always arranged in orderly fashion, with women in sophisticated robes, and warriors with their weapons beside".
I do not suggest that the holocausts committed by Sumerian kings (since the commanders of the killings must have been the successors of the kings honored, i.e. other kings, and their helpers) was Adam’s original sin. But I propose that something of this nature so shocked people in Ancient Mesopotamia that the report of an extremely serious offense originated. Genesis 3 is an echo of that vague report which was transmitted from generation to generation.
It is possible to understand Genesis 3 as a parable about mass murder carried out in honor of Sumerian kings. The dense symbolism of the parable can be due to its origin from an oral tradition. If the murder had been known with precision, a much clearer statement would have been written about it. But that was not the case, since people no longer remembered the past homicides. They only kept the feeling of disgust and guilt that they had brought forth. Thus, instead of reporting the killing as a fact, they represented the vague, though broad sentiment that Genesis 3 keeps, that is, the sense of guilt for facts long lost in the fog of time.

AND METHUSELAH?

The hundreds of years of Adam's descendants, in Genesis 5, are often cited as evidence that a book with false information about the origins of humankind cannot be the word of God. As the biblical character who lived longer (969 years), Methuselah has become a symbol of this serious accusation.
However, the Bible text can be seen differently. One reason for this is the 1st Book of Chronicles. It is unlikely that the numerous lists of Jewish ancestors (including those of Genesis 5 and 11), in the early chapters of this book were invented. And it is impossible that they were brought to light by magic means. It is more likely that they were prepared by methods historically plausible and understandable.
We should, therefore, ask what the function of those lists was, in antiquity, and by which methods they were prepared. In the most populated places of the ancient world, nations and other groups lived nearby and had to compete for natural resources and wealth. So, some of them often exercised domination over others. As wealth and political power were transmitted to the firstborn of the leading families, leaders needed to know and to show who were their firstborns and those of the rival families.
In this context, the powerful clans not only kept records of their generations, but also of those of rival families, in order to better monitor them and prevent their strengthening. And the most powerful of all families, called royal families, even came to employ staff (scribes and chroniclers) specialized in this activity. It is not without interest to note that, in Exodus, the Hebrew word used to denote the supervisors of the Israelites' slave work, in Egypt, means developers of lists. This did not mean that the lists they elaborated were exclusively of genealogies, but the Hebrew word reminds us of the ingrained habit of using schematic writings, such as lists, to exert dominance.
With time and the increasing complexity of courts, the genealogical records evolved into lists a lot more complex and of much greater range. At Jesus' time, data on the descendants of families that had exercised royal power in the territory of the Roman Empire were compiled by the authorities during the censuses. That does not mean that the enrolments promoted by the Empire had the sole purpose of keeping records of the dethroned royal families, but they also allowed that. An example of such a function is given in the Gospel of Luke, which tells that Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem to register because Joseph was of the house of David (Luke 2:4), who had exercised royal power in Israel.
In remote antiquity, lists like those of 1st Chronicles 1-9 and Genesis 5 and 11 were simplified and rude means to exercise the same kind of control that Roman censuses later allowed. Thus, the centers of civilization that received more migratory waves, like the Nile Delta and the banks of Euphrates, eventually accumulated a huge amount of lists.
When the most educated Jews were taken captive to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar (Dan 1:3-4), it became inevitable that they first got in touch with the stories and names on those lists and, secondly, with the lists themselves, in libraries or in the royal archives. Comparing the lists with the Jewish accounts on the early worshipers of the one God, these men probably wrote the stories of Genesis 1-11 in the form we know them.
However, it is not reasonable to assume that the lists of ancient Mesopotamian cities did not contain gaps and obscurities. Or that the old papyrus and scrolls on which they had been recorded were not mutilated here and there. So the Jewish discoverers of the lists had to decipher and reconstruct them, the best they could. And the best way they found was to compare them with memories that the Jews had preserved about their past, especially about the remotest ones. The comparison was consistent, because many or even all characters of Bible Prehistory had lived in Mesopotamia and its surroundings.
One method that the exiled Jews must have used to compare their lists with the Mesopotamian traditions was the fusion of generations. The practice is exemplified in the genealogy of Christ in Matthew, that jumps several names to trace the generations from Abraham to Jesus or, if one prefers, fuses them under unique characters. What the exiled Jews did was similar to that. As found no complete lists of important generations from Mesopotamia, they developed others of royal families and clans, each one with several generations. The finished product of that work was the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11.
The difference between a list of generations and one of families or clans needs to be clearly understood. In antiquity, a generation extended by 30 or 40 years. A clan or family could last hundreds of years. One thing, therefore, was to write a list of generations; another was to prepare a list of clans.
The high ages of the patriarchs in Genesis 5 and 11 indicate that each one of them is a clan or a people. The years of the life of each one are the sum of the time their generations lived, because each person is the head of a clan or a people. Thus, the clan or the people of Methuselah, for example, survived 969 years, prior to being extinguished or at least disappearing from the lists that the Jewish exiles reconstructed.
We saw earlier that Adam, the first name on the list of Genesis 5, was a people and not only an individual. When we read Numbers 24:17, we see that the same happens with Seth, son of Adam. The "sons of Seth" mentioned in this verse are nothing else than the people of Seth, as well as the sons of Israel are the Hebrew people. Applied to characters as old as Israel and Seth, the expressions cannot have other meanings. Therefore, the second generation of the lists of Genesis (Seth), as well as the first one (Adam) represent peoples. And if they do so, it is natural to assume that the same happens with the others.
For such reasons, the names on the list of Genesis 11 are openly presented as nations in chapter 10. This is a undeniable. Genesis 10 became known as the List of Nations. And if this happened, why the names on the list of chapter 5, which is so similar to the one in the 11th, cannot be of families or of peoples? Someone will object that the lists of Genesis 5 and 11 cannot be collective, for they were composed with phrases like "Seth lived so many years, and begat Enos"; "after begat Enos, he lived so many years and had other sons and daughters." But, if these expressions describe the life of an individual, they can also represent a clan. How does a family group originate, unless from another group? And how can we express this succinctly, unless by stating that one group spawned the other?
As we have seen, in antiquity, the transfer of wealth and power was done by the custom of primogeniture. The eldest son inherited a double portion or all the assets of his father: how could the formation of a new center of wealth and power be explained better than by stating that a patriarchal chief begat his firstborn, who formed another clan?
This statement assumes the identity between the clan and its chief. But that identity is a well-established fact. More than that, it has always been very vigorous. In many peoples, the identity was affirmed with such emphasis that the founder of the clan came to be worshiped, and each member identified mystically with him. Given this, why not say that the founders of the monotheistic peoples of Genesis 5 and 11 have generated their firstborn, who constituted other peoples?
Both the genealogy of chapters 5 as 11 have rigid formal structures. Each name on them is said to have lived so many years, generated a firstborn, lived so many other years, and begotten sons and daughters. But a noticeable difference is manifest between the lists: the first one contains the additional phrase "and he died." Why is it so? And why does not the list of chapter 11 contain it? Because, for the editor of Genesis, the clans of chapter 5 did not survive the Flood, while those of the eleventh chapter became nations. The first ones died, the latter did not. Of course, if we interpret the names of genealogies as individuals, the omission of the death of those of chapter 11 will seem unmotivated.
This exegesis of the genealogies may seem casuistry. But other than by the internal evidence of Genesis, it is confirmed by the treatment 1st Chronicles dispenses to the genealogical lists. In fact, between the generations of Genesis 5 and 11, the author of Chronicles inserted numerous references to clans, families and peoples. For example, he presented the descendants of Canaan as "the Jebusites , Amorites , Girgashites, Hivites, the Arkites, the Sinites, the Arvadite, the zemares and the Hamathite " (1 Cor 114-16 ). Similarly, the descendants of Kirjathjearim and of the scribes of Jabez are called "families" ( clans , in the Bible of Jerusalem): "The families of Kirjathjearim were: itritas the puteus the sumateus and misraeus [ ... ] the families of the scribes which dwelt at Jabez the Tirathites , and the Shimeathites Suchathites : these are the Kenites that came of Hamath " (1 Cor 2,53 and 55 ). All these people are genealogical generations.
Explanations like these may seem unnecessary to those who are not concerned about the historical truth of Scripture. But how can a person live the Christian faith today without explaining the ages of the patriarchs? How can he do so without getting isolated in a mental ghetto or in a monastery created by imagination in the desert? Is the faith that excludes reason any better than reason without faith? Or else can reason alienated from faith be better than faith alienated from reason? Is there any difference between A being alienated from B, or B from A?