The Bible is the most important textbook and the most important book ever written.
If there were only the Bible, and no other book except the Bible,
humanity would not be at a great loss, but if we did not have the Bible,
humanity would literally be blind and would not know in which direction to go. The author
of the Bible is God, and the writer of the Bible is man. The one who recorded the biblical account
recorded what he saw, and he writes what he saw in his own words,
he does not engage in commenting or interpreting what he saw, he just
records it, in this case, Moses records what he saw. It is very important to
understand this, and then based on that, and based on the text, and based on the biblical
context, we can draw conclusions about what was meant to be said and its
meaning.
The first five books of the Bible, as many call Moses’ books, are attributed
to Moses, although it is obvious that Moses did not write all the texts in these five books, but they
are attributed to him. These first five books of the Bible are called in Hebrew “Torah”
(Learning or Law). That is the key, that is the heart, that is the foundation of God’s word, that is the foundation
of the Bible, the foundation of God’s revelation. In these five books, the Creation of the world is described,
it describes how God acted before the Flood, how He acted during the Flood,
after the Flood, how He formed a nation through which He wants to inform all
humanity, all people on the planet, about the most important events related
to history, what happened, and related to how people should live, and how
people should enter into a covenant with God, how to connect with God, and therefore the
word “religion” is used, which is a Latin word, not a Hebrew one, and it means “reconnecting with God”,
“legare” means “fastening, binding”, and “re-legare” means “to reconnect”, to bind again to the source of life, to God.
Genesis 1:1-2
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”, in the original it says: “In
the beginning, the Gods created the two heavens and the earth.” This is not extremely important for
a broader understanding, but it is good to understand what is written in the original
text. Here, in this first verse, the name God is used with the Hebrew word “Elohim”.
Elohim is a designation for a masculine plural, because it has the suffix “im”. Before
the noun God, here in Hebrew, Elohim is used, and we will see in some
other places, different names for God are used, such as Yahweh. God’s name
“Yahweh” consists of three statements: “He who was – haya”, “He who is – hove”,
“He who will be – yihye”. When these three statements overlap, the name Yahweh is formed,
this is a divine name that will later be most frequently used. God’s name Yahweh is
a name that literally means “Eternal”. God is eternal, He was not created by anyone. Atheists claim that matter is eternal, that it has existed forever, but this cannot be true because if matter had existed forever, there would be no life on Earth. According to the laws of logic, according to the laws of science (since science is applied logic), there exists a being that is eternal in the universe, that has existed forever, and it created matter, and it created life. However, here at the beginning, in the first verse: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” the name Elohim is used for God. The word Elohim is more like the term “God” in our language, but when we say “God” in our language, it can also refer to false gods. Many people today have various gods they believe in, and they also use the word “god,” just as we do for the biblical God. We are not dealing with religious matters here; this is a scientific analysis. Science confirms that a Creator exists, and science confirms that the Creator, or as they call Him, God, wrote a textbook on how we should live, how to eat, how to marry, how to raise children, how to organize a country – in other words, a complete textbook for all aspects of human life. From a scientific perspective, we are dealing with this, not promoting any religions, beliefs, or religious communities.
From the perspective of the Bible, there are only two groups of people: those who are on God’s side, and those who are against Him. The Bible does not deal with religious communities or other issues that divide people today. So, here in the first verse, the word God, or the Hebrew Elohim, is used. Later, the word Yahweh will be used for this God, the biblical God, to distinguish the true God, Yahweh, from false gods. This name Elohim is also used in the Bible when speaking of judges. Sometimes, the name Elohim is used for angels as well. The word Elohim, which indicates plural, has the singular form Eloah and refers to someone who has power, who is powerful. From the context, we can see that this is talking about God, but it could also refer to those whom God has authorized to enforce the law in the universe, such as judges. Therefore, the name used in the first verse is a general term for God. What is important in this first verse: “In the beginning, God created,” is that the verb “created” is in the singular, while the noun God is in the plural. A literal translation would be: “In the beginning, the gods created.” Since the verb is in the singular, it indicates that there is one God, meaning Elohim is one God, but from the noun Elohim itself, we see that this is one God with multiple dimensions. In Hebrew, there is no “you” as a respectful form of address like we have in our language when we address someone with “you.” You cannot address God with “you.” In the Bible, when someone addresses God, they address Him with “you.” So, in the first verse, we see that there is one God with multiple dimensions. The next text says, “God created the heavens and the earth.” Here, the word “shamajim” is used for “heavens,” which literally means “two heavens.” God initially created two heavens and the earth. Later, we will see which two heavens these are, as we will later see the Apostle Paul speaking about knowing a man who was taken to the third heaven with God. Obviously, based on the biblical text, God created two heavens, and He Himself has His throne in some third heaven. We don’t know where that is, somewhere in the universe.
What are the two heavens that God created?
Based on the biblical text, we can conclude that one is the atmospheric heaven where we live, which allows us to breathe, where birds fly, etc., and the other is the starry heaven, where the sun, moon, stars, galaxies, etc. are located. It further says: “The earth was without form and void,” there was nothing on the earth, “and darkness was upon the face of the deep,” obviously, the earth was like submerged in water, and there was no light. God created the Earth, He created two heavens, but there was no light, no stars, and no galaxies. The Spirit of God was present, and now God, through His Spirit, will inhabit the planet Earth and create the environment in which life will exist on this planet.
Genesis 1:3-5
There was darkness, the planet Earth was submerged in water, and God said: “Let there be light,” and light was made. We do not know what kind of light it was in the beginning, it was some kind of light. In the Bible, it says, as we will see later, that God is the light which cannot be approached. What the source of that light in the beginning was, we do not know, and it does not matter. What matters is that there was light in the beginning. Here we see that light was separated from darkness. On planet Earth, there was a period of light, and there was a period of darkness, just as we have today. The light part of the day, what we call daytime, God called “day,” and the darkness He called “night.” It says: “And there was evening, and there was morning,” God created during the day, then evening came, morning came, and it says “the first day,” not “the first day,” because this was not the first day of the universe. Obviously, there were days before the creation of our planet and our universe, God created before our world, so this is “one day,” one day in the history of God’s creation. We will see later why this typology is important, that this creation week is actually the beginning of another 7,000-year week of creation. God created for six days, on the seventh day He stopped creating. The Bible does not say that God rested on the seventh day as some think, but rather that God ceased to create. Likewise, we will see that there is another period when God creates for 6,000 years, and then on the seventh thousandth year, God will stop creating. We are at the end of that great week of six thousand years. What is important here is that on the first day, God created light, and there was light on the Earth, and there was a day, as we will see from the later biblical text, a day of 24 hours.
Genesis 1:6-8
We saw that God at the beginning created the Earth which was submerged in water. On the first day, He created light, and on the second day, He created the firmament which He called “heaven.” Obviously, God created two heavens at the beginning, the atmospheric heaven and the starry heaven, that was on the first day, and then on the second day, He separated the waters above the firmament. It is as if God made a boundary, as if He made a water covering that separated the atmospheric heaven from the starry heaven. That “firmament,” the atmosphere, He called “heaven,” that is one heaven, and we have the other heaven – the starry heaven. In the beginning, there were two heavens, based on the biblical text, which were not separated by water, and now here, God separates them with water, and there is water above the atmosphere, and water below the atmosphere, these are the water basins. We do not know in what form that water was, in what aggregate state, we do not know those details. There is a book written by an American scientist named Joseph Dillow, the book is called The Waters Above, and he deals with the analysis of how that water envelope around the planet Earth could have looked. It is important that God prepared this atmosphere because He will create life here, and there must be suitable conditions for life on planet Earth. God in the first two days prepares the environment for creating life and for enabling life to develop on planet Earth.
Genesis 1:9-13
From this text, we see that now God separates the land from the water. When God separated the water above the atmosphere from the water below the atmosphere, planet Earth was still submerged in water on the third day, meaning it was under water. And then God separated the land, obviously raising the continent, and He hollowed out the sea basins and created seas on planet Earth. Later, we will see that it was one continent, that there were no more. When we look at a cross-section of planet Earth, the planet has a thin crust, 40 kilometers thick. The radius of the Earth is about 6730 km, and only 40 km makes up the Earth’s solid crust, with the lower part of that rock being a rock called basalt, and above it is granite, which forms the foundation of the continents. On this continent, three types of plants were created, and later, when humans rebel against God, a fourth type will be created. Here it is mentioned: 1. Grass, 2. Herbs that bear seed, and 3. Trees that bear seed. These three types of plants were created by God.
Genesis 1:14-19
On the fourth day, God creates the sun and the moon. The main reason why God created the sun and the moon on the fourth day is to show that the light on planet Earth does not depend on the sun, the moon, and the stars. The light on planet Earth depends on God. In the beginning, God created light, perhaps He was that light, there was day and there was night, meaning the sun and the moon are not necessary for us to have light on Earth. People will later worship the sun and the moon as deities, but God placed the sun and the moon on the fourth day. The sun and the moon are just batteries that God turned on in the heavens; they are not gods or deities that people will later worship. Why is it important that there be the sun, moon, and stars? To separate the day from the night, to know when it is day, when it is night, to know when the holidays are, to know what day and year it is. “Special days/times,” in Hebrew moadim, in our translation “holidays,” point to important events in human history that we should never forget. One of these events is that God created this world. The seventh day of the week is like a kind of birthday for planet Earth, a reminder that we should never forget that this world was created. People will later forget that this world was created, and in schools, they will teach that we evolved from monkeys, that this world was created by an explosion in the universe, the Big Bang 15 billion years ago, and other such nonsense.
That is why these ‘special times’ or ‘holidays’ are important, some point to the creation of the world, and some point to important events in human history that need to happen and about which God will speak. The sun and the moon are important to shine upon the earth, as the text says, the plants, which are the only producers of food on the planet Earth, use sunlight and, in the process of photosynthesis, create plant tissue which is later consumed by animals and humans.
Genesis 1: 20-23
On the fifth day, God creates aquatic organisms and flying organisms, and the intention was for them to multiply, it says He created them according to their kinds. Also, on the third day of creation, God says that the grass, herbs that carry seed, and trees that carry seed, will be created according to their kinds. These are not the species that we use in biology today, it refers to something at the genus level, for those who know a bit about biological classification. God created the basic types of plants and basic types of animals that, by crossing among themselves, can give rise to new types, that is, new species of organisms.
Genesis 1:24-25
This is the first part of the sixth day when God creates land organisms.
Genesis 1:26-28
In the Hebrew original, it says: ‘God said,’ ‘Let us make man,’ meaning there are more of them, we will see later in the biblical text that it refers to the Trinity, that there are three dimensions of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God, in His being, is something different than us. We cannot limit God. He created us in His image, but one is the Creator, and the other is the created. A writer can write a book, and when we read the book, we see many character traits of the writer, the book is written in the image of the writer, but one is the writer, and another is the book. The book has pages, letters, covers, etc., while the writer has a heart, kidneys, lungs, etc. So, God created man in His image in a spiritual sense, in a character sense. God created man to live on planet Earth and entrusted him with everything He created on Earth to use and be a blessing to him. God, as a good parent, prepares the environment for the creation of His children, and He leaves His children to manage the planet Earth in an appropriate way. The first commandment God gave was ‘Be fruitful and multiply,’ and that is the first commandment God gave in history, and there is no greater joy and happiness than having your child, and for this reason, God created humans to rejoice in them, just as parents create children to rejoice in them.
The Bible was divided into chapters and verses somewhere in the 12th century. In the original text, there are no divisions into chapters and verses; this was added later. The person who did the division in the 12th century, a priest, did it somewhat awkwardly, but it has remained until today. Just because today’s Bible is divided into chapters and verses does not mean that these are separate entities; that is how the priest divided the Bible, but we will see that in many places this division is not a division into entities, but that the texts overlap, which is very important. So, we have that verse 31 of the first chapter and the first three verses of the second chapter actually represent one unit.
Genesis 1:29-31
What is important here is that God says what people will eat. We saw that God created grass, herbs that bear seeds, and trees that bear seeds. God gave people to eat the second and third, the herbs that bear seeds and trees that bear seeds, He did not give them to eat grass. So, the herbs that bear seeds and trees that bear seeds. Today, we can see which plants those are, simply put, God gave people at the beginning to eat fruits. These are: grains, fruits, nuts, or seeds. There are some types of vegetables that have fruits, such as: tomatoes, peppers, with them we do not eat: the root, the tree, the leaf, but we eat the fruits. Seeds and fruits, that is what God gave people to eat at the beginning. At the beginning, people were not given to eat leaves, trees, and roots, as they would later be given when they rebelled against God. Based on the text, God gave animals to eat all green plants. Within His green plants, there is one part that was given to man to eat, that is the herbs that bear seeds and trees that bear seeds. People were not given to eat all green plants, but only one part within the green plants. This is very important when we later read what happened after the Flood when God introduced corrections to the diet for the second time.