The Clay Tablet Theory

The Clay Tablet Theory posits that the bulk of the contents of the Book of Genesis was developed as Moses compiled the contents of several extant clay tablets.

Wikipedia explains the concept as the Wiseman Hypothesis, so named for its original advocate who offered this in his 1936 book.  The Wikipedia explanation leaves the reader with the impression that this hypothesis has largely been abandoned due to unresolved challenges.

R.K. Harrison kept the concept alive, elucidating it in his 1969 volume, Introduction to the Old Testament.

In 2001, Curt Sewell published an article that is repeated on trueorgin.org here and is commented on at TalkGenesis.org here.  Both articles are fairly succinct and easy to follow, especially if you are familiar with Genesis.

What Curt Sewell accomplished was to provide analysis and resolution to the challenges lingering from Wiseman's original work, namely:

1. Jacob's genealogy appears to be written by rival Esau and Esau's by Jacob, but rather, Sewell proposes that it is included as an embedded sub-Tablet within Jacob's genealogy.
2. Isaac's genealogy appears to be written by rival Ishmael and Ishmael's by Isaac, but similarly, Sewell proposes that Ishmael's genealogy is included as an embedded sub-Tablet within Isaac's genealogy.
3. Joseph authored his own account which was appended to the others, and due to a change in either writing style or materials (such as papyri instead of clay tablets), the format is changed.

With these three issues addressed, the Clay Tablet Theory appears robust in the face of the historical criticisms and appears to rise above competing explanations.

Here then, are the divisions Curt Sewell proposes, which he individually justifies in his post:

Tablet	Starting Verse	Ending Verse	Owner or  Writer
1	Genesis 1:1	Genesis 2:4a	God Himself (?)
2	Genesis 2:4b	Genesis 5:1a	Adam
3	Genesis 5:1b	Genesis 6:9a	Noah
4	Genesis 6:9b	Genesis 10:1a	Shem, Ham & Japheth
5	Genesis 10:1b	Genesis 11:10a	Shem
6	Genesis 11:10b	Genesis 11:27a	Terah
7	Genesis 11:27b	Genesis 25:19a	Isaac
8	Genesis 25:12	Genesis 25:18	Ishmael, through Isaac
9	Genesis 25:19b	Genesis 37:2a	Jacob
10	Genesis 36:1	Genesis 36:43	Esau, through Jacob
11	Genesis 37:2b	Exodus 1:6	Jacob’s 12 sons

Under his discussion of Tablet #1, Sewell states:

I should say here that the following discussion is based on a firm belief that the six days of creation are literal 24-hour days, as the clear phraseology of the Bible states.

I would like to point out that nothing in the Tablet Theory itself is dependent upon taking the day-phraseology as literal days as opposed to days used as metaphors for ages.

In response, Ages of Joy is based on the firm belief that the seven days of creation invoke the metaphor of normal days to represent seven literal ages, each with a definitive period of transition for which evening (night) and morning are the most appropriate comparison, and the seventh of which we are currently living in.  The authorship of Tablet 1 by God Himself would indicate strongly to keep in mind Moses' admonition from Psalm 90:4 "For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night."

That said, there are some implications of the Ages of Joy view.  The first implication is that each Day-Age is at least 1000 years in duration.  This amplifies the view that God is the Author of Tablet #1.  The second implication is that Ages of Joy takes a realistic and encompassing view toward the chronology of human history and the emergence of writing.

Ages of Joy speculatively pins the time frame of Adam and Eve to near that of the Toba supervolcanic eruption which may mark the night of Day 6 and corresponds to the approximate time of emergence of fully modern human beings as distinguished from other hominins, including archaic homo sapiens.

After Toba, from a location near the Persian Gulf, humans eventually migrated all over the world.  In this global expansion, it appears that humans took with them a complex understanding of astronomy and a universal set of symbols, but evidence for a written language is still lacking.

Therefore, Tablets 2 may have been originally communicated either orally or in some combination of oral tradition with a limited symbolic representation, perhaps in the form of a mnemonic aid.  Tablet 3, assume to be authored by Noah could have been written at any time up to 350 years after the Flood.  That means, people could have begun migrating around the globe prior to the advent of a writing system that might have been developed by Noah himself toward the end of his life.  While this is very speculative, it could offer an explanation for how Noah's line would have a writing system, but writing in general was not a wide-spread capability.

Ages of Joy is contributing the following updated version of the Tablet Theory structural arrangement.

Section	Tablet	Content	Colophon	Owner or  Writer
1	1	1:1-2:3	2:4	Melchizedek?
2	2	2:5-4:26	5:1-2	Adam (orally)
3	3	5:3-6:8	6:9-10	Noah
4	4	6:11-9:29	10:1	Shem, Ham &  Japheth
5	5a	10:2-10:31	10:32	Clans (compilation)
6	5b	11:1-9	11:10a	Shem
7	6	11:10b-11:26	11:27a	Terah
8	7	11:27b-25:11		Isaac
	(8)		25:12	by Ishmael, for Isaac
		25:12-18
	7		25:19a	Isaac
9	9	25:19b-35:29		Jacob
	(10)		36:1	by Esau, for Jacob
		36:2-43
	9		37:1-2a	Jacob
10	scroll	37:2b-50:21		Joseph
			50:22-26	Chiastic epitaph by Ephraim?
All reference from the Book of Genesis

Traditionally, Genesis is viewed as being internally divided into ten sections, which has some symbolic appeal to it.  While my divisions differ from the traditional view, I still find that there are a total of ten logical sections to the Book of Genesis.

Section 1: I propose that this section originated in the form of a tablet with a colophon revealed to Melchizedek by God and presented by him to Abraham as legitimizing his priesthood to God Most High, possessor of Heaven and Earth.  Written as a polemic argument against the seven Sumerian gods by invoking a "true history" instead of the cosmogony of the Sumerian religion.  A cosmogony is a "birth story", typically consisting of the births of various aspects of the created order through the actions of  several gods and goddesses.  Instead of appealing to various gods, Genesis 1-2:3 details a genealogy of the Heavens and the Earth as a series of "births".  Each night-morning occurrence should be thought of in the symbolic sense of a "night of distress followed by a morning of bright joy", invoking a "birth" narrative.  Between each night-morning is an "age" during which God creates.  There are six creative ages and a seventh age of rest.  This pattern of seven contrasts to the seven creator gods of Sumerian religion.  Unlike the "just-so-story" of Sumerian cosmogony, the Genesis 1:1-2:3 account details the actual historical stages of creation as testified to by scientific research.  Although the ancient reader may not have fully appreciated it, they were reading the actual history of planet Earth in a simplified, stylized format.  Viewed this way, Genesis 1:1-2:3 functions as a polemic argument relevant for all ages of human history, including our own scientific age.

Section 2: The oral contents of this story, passed down orally from Adam and finally written down.

Sections 2-7:  Collated into the "Book of the History Starting with Adam", comprised of a written version of Adam's story and the Tablets by Noah, his sons, their clans, Shem, and Terah.  Six works collected into one book.  This could be thought of as the first "Bible".

Sections 8, 9, and 10:  Written by Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, primarily, with contributions from Ishmael and Esau regarding their genealogy.

The Tablet of Melchizedek, the Book of Adam, and the accounts of Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph are handed down and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, compiled by Moses into what we call, the Book of Genesis.  At least, this is the theory.  It's easy to justify, impossible to prove.

Toward An Historical Timeline for Genesis 2 through 11

In the Biblical book of Genesis, chapters 2 through 11 record the history of mankind from Adam and Eve to Abraham.  Establishing an historical timeline for this bit of history continues to be a significant and unmet challenge.  Here at Ages of Joy, we are trying to narrow in on what happened when.  Now, a newly published article on Science Daily provides more insight into a horrific cataclysm that occurred at pivotal time deep in human history.

Younger Dryas onset and the Prophecy of Enoch

Headlined as The Day the World Burned and alternately as Major Cosmic Impact 12800 Years Ago, new research detailing evidence from South America lends support to the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis.  This hypothesis states that just as the Earth was emerging from the last Glacial Cycle, a fragmenting comet or astroid struct the earth, simultaneously at multiple locations.

Imagine a swarm of meteorites from a disintegrating comet raining down on the Earth, setting most of the forests of North America on fire, destroying North American megafauna and people groups, striking numerous European locations and plunging the Earth back into an ice age cycle for 1200 years known as The Younger Dryas.

At the end of this period, the earth passed through a phase of rapidly warming climates to emerge into an era with phenomenally more stable global temperatures and seasonal variations.  This in turn empowered the nascent agricultural revolution to rapidly emerge, changing the course of human history.

c. 10850 BCE    Comet Impact triggers Younger Dryas
c.   9650 BCE    End of the Younger Dryas Ice Age brings climate stability (1200 years)
c.   9600 BCE    Jericho established as a seasonal camp
c.   9500 BCE    Jericho begins to support a pre-pottery, agricultural culture with sedentary dwellings
c.   9400 BCE    Jericho town has more than 70 dwellings
c.   9130 BCE    Oldest date measurements of Gobekli Tepe Sanctuary built with stone (1720 years since comet)

Biblical chronology:

Enoch was 65 when he became the father of Methuselah; lived 365 years
Methuselah was 187 when he became the father of Lamech; lived 969 years
Lamech was 182 when he became the father of Noah; lived 777 years
Noah lived 600 years before the flood and 350 years after it
2 years after the Flood, Shem was 100 and then lived 500 more years

Sequence:
0 - Enoch born
65 - Methuselah born to Enoch
252 (65+187) - Lamech born to Methuselah
365 - Enoch was no more
434 (65+187+182) - Noah born to Lamech
934 - Noah becomes father of Shem, Ham, Japheth
1029 - Lamech died
1034 - Flood, Methuselah died, 669 years since Enoch's death
1384 - Noah died
1536 - Shem died (Flood + 502 years)

Enoch (comet impact)  - Judgment from the sky, thousands of fireballs devastate the Earth

Jude 14 Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about them: “See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones 15 to judge everyone, and to convict all of them of all the ungodly acts they have committed in their ungodliness, and of all the defiant words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”

Noah (promise of climate stability)

Genesis 8:22 
“As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.”

From the time Enoch was born to when Noah died was a span of at least 1384 years.  From the comet strike to the stabilized climate was approximately 1200 years.  Therefore, it is possible that Enoch prophesied the Younger Dryas comet and Noah, before his death, was witness to a stabilized climate and received God's promise regarding seedtime and harvest.

Let's call YD 0 the year of the Comet which starts the Younger Dryas

YD 0 - Comet strike witnessed by Enoch (assumed age of 65 years old, year of Methuselah's birth)
YD 969 - Flood (year of Methuselah's death)
YD 1200 - End of the Younger Dryas (Noah, age 831, receives a promise of a better climate)
YD 1250 - Founding of Jericho
YD 1319 - Noah's death at age 950 years old
YD 1350 - Jericho has agricultural culture (enabled by better climate)
YD 1450 - Jericho has at least 70 dwellings
YD 1471 - Shem's death at age 600 years old
YD 1720 - Gobekli Tepe founded commemorating comet strike prophesied by Enoch.

It is likely that gaps are present in the genealogy recorded in Genesis.  We also do no know whether Enoch's prophesy corresponds to the comet strike that started the Younger Dryas or whether he witnessed the event himself.  We also do not have reason to believe that Shem ever lived in or visited Jericho, but we should expect Jericho, the oldest known city in the world, is a post-Flood city.  This interesting exercise shows that it is at least theoretically possible to line up a portion of the Biblical historical record with some of the most pivotal and dramatic events in human history.

The site at Gobekli Tepe is only 5% excavated, so it is possible that many more details will emerge regarding this pivotal point in human history.

Building the Ark of Noah

The building of Gobekli Tepe continues to be a marvel of ancient accomplishment.  From wikipedia,

"It remains unknown how a population large enough to construct, augment, and maintain such a substantial complex was mobilized and compensated or fed in the conditions of pre-sedentary society."

The construction of Gobekli Tepe, some 6,000 years before other similar architectures in the world, indicates that the similarly amazing feat of building Noah's ark, although using different materials, must at least be considered plausible.  In fact, the building of the ark may have been the "moon shot" project that enable Noah and his sons to develop critical techniques for organizing and managing large-scale projects.  Those techniques may have been applied to Gobekli Tepe.

The Tower of Babel

After the flood, some people migrated east to the Mesopotamian region and built the Tower of Babel from baked bricks.  The oldest known use of baked bricks in antiquity is in the Indus Valley Civilization in India, dating as far back at 3200 BC (long after the Younger Dryas).  However, baked brick technology takes significant resources, including skilled laborers and specific natural resources.  In the Indus Valley Civilization, the technique was eventually abandoned.  Unlike Gobekli Tepe, which was made of stone, the Tower of Babel was made from baked bricks.  It may have been the first such structure in the world.  With the abandonment of the project, it may have been thousands of years before conditions were right to resume the use of baked bricks for construction, and the technology may have had to be re-invented, even if the memory of its use was preserved in the intervening time span.

Noah’s Flood: When did it occur?

The following was posted as a comment to: 

https://oldearthcreationism.wordpress.com/2018/01/12/noahs-flood-when-did-it-occur/comment-page-1/#comment-67

https://www.reasons.org/explore/blogs/todays-new-reason-to-believe/read/todays-new-reason-to-believe/2018/12/17/did-a-giant-collider-help-give-us-extreme-climate-stability

The Younger Dryas 10,900 BC to 9,700 BC (nominally) preceded the improving climate that would have made agriculture sustainable. While a bit of progress might have been made on that front prior to 10,900 BC, the Younger Dryas would have been punishing to those efforts. 

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+8%3A22&version=ESV

Genesis 8:22 English Standard Version (ESV)

22 While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”

Genesis 8:22 promises the needed climactic stability for sustainable agriculture. Noah lived for 500 years after the Flood, so sometime during his post-flood life, he received this promise.

I would nominally date the Flood to around 9700 BC, a time of rapid warming, rising sea levels, and rising ocean temperatures that might trigger super storms. 

The Younger Dryas itself may have been precipitated by an exploding comet 1200 years prior. 

Jude 14-15 “It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, 15 to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”

Judgement by 10,000s holy angels may correspond to the punishment of the blazing shards of an exploding comet, possibly witnessed by Enoch.

That would put Enoch at about 10,900 BC.

Structure of Genesis: Colophon Examples

In a previous post, I wrote about the Book of Genesis being structured through the use of colophon postscripts to each narrative or genealogical section.  The postscripts appear to resemble the pattern of colophons as used in Mesopotamian writings suggesting that source material for the Book of Genesis was written contemporaneously to other ancient works that exhibit similar structure.

The Book of Genesis includes multiple uses of the following phraseology:

"These are the toledot (generations/account/historical writings) of..."

In the Tablet Theory, these phrases are taken as postscript colophons for the preceding narrative or genealogical text in Genesis.

Here are some examples of colophons from other ancient writings for comparison:

Mathematical colophons: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00048-012-0071-z

“26 sections on canal”
“31 sections on trenches”

Musical colophon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurrian_songs

"This [is] a song [in the] nitkibli, a zaluzi … written down by Ammurabi"

Medicinal colophon: https://recipes.hypotheses.org/8805

Palace of Ashurbanipal, king of the world, king of the land Assyria, to whom (the gods) Nabû and Tašmētu granted understanding, (who) acquired insight (and) a high level of scribal proficiency, that skill which among the kings, my predecessor(s) no one has acquired. I (i.e. Ashurbanipal) wrote, checked, and collated tablets with medical prescriptions from head to the (toe-) nail, non-canonical material, elaborate teaching(s) (and) the advanced healing art(s) of (the gods) Ninurta and Gula, as much as exists, (and) I placed (them) within my palace for my reading/reciting. (BAK, no. 329)

As we can see, the content of a colophon may vary greatly between one document and another, and we see some diversity between colophons used in Genesis.  As text was transcribed from clay tablets to scrolls, colophons that were originally on the side, back, or end of a tablet would be placed at the end of the content as a postscript.  The practice of summarizing or terminating a narrative with a postscript is not limited to Genesis.

Perhaps the most compelling examples come from the books of Numbers and Leviticus.

Leviticus 27:34 These are the commandments that the Lord commanded Moses for the people of Israel on Mount Sinai.

The last sentence in Leviticus is an especially potent example.  Read out of context, one would expect a list of commands to follow.  But in fact, it is the final line of the book, stating what the content was that was just read.  This is precisely the style that the Tablet Theory proposes for the Book of Genesis.

Numbers 36:13 These are the commandments and the rules that the Lord commanded through Moses to the people of Israel in the plains of Moab by the Jordan at Jericho.

As seen above, the book of Numbers finishes in the same manner.

We should not wonder that the books containing the Law would end with colophons since they were originally created by God as tablets.

Exodus 24:12 The Lord said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain and wait there, that I may give you the tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction.”

The original tablets may have had a colophon statement such as, "These are the law and commandment of the Lord".  Copied onto scrolls, these colophon statements may have been written at the end of the scroll including a postscript identifying the communicator (in this case Moses), the audience (Israel), and the location (Mount Sinai, the plains of Moab).

As we analyze the colophon statements of the book of Genesis, it is prudent to consider how the original statements from multiple tablets may have been augemented when being collated into a longer document.  For example, Genesis 2:4 reads

a:   "These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created,
b:   in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens."

Sometimes the colophon for the creation account is considered to be Genesis 2:4a.  Genesis 2:4b, on the other hand, has two possibilities:

1. the phrase was part of the original colophon identifying the time (in the day) and the author (the LORD God) and the content (the making of the earth and the heavens).
2. it was added, under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, as a parallel statement to Genesis 1:1 identifying Elohim of Genesis 1:1 with Yahweh.

In either case, Genesis 2:4 comprises the complete colophon for the creation account of the heavens and the earth.

Other Biblical Colophon Examples

Within the Bible itself, see Numbers 5:11-31 for a possible example.

Author Michael Fishbane describes Numbers 5:29-30 as a "colophon-like resumptive subscript purporting to summarize the content of the preceding text."  This he compares to the title-lines and colophons found in cuneiform and other ancient Near Eastern literature.

Numbers 5:11-28 starts with

11 Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 12 “Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘If any man’s wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him... 

This is followed by a narrative description of the somewhat strange legal procedures.

Finally, Numbers 5:29-31 contains a postscript summarizing the previous 18 verses. 

29 ‘This is the law of jealousy: when a wife, being under the authority of her husband, goes astray and defiles herself, 30 or when a spirit of jealousy comes over a man and he is jealous of his wife, he shall then make the woman stand before the Lord, and the priest shall apply all this law to her. 31 Moreover, the man will be free from guilt, but that woman shall bear her guilt.’”

The colophon title phrase is "This is the torah [law] of ..." is similar to the Genesis colophon title phrase "This is the toledot [account] of ...".

While Numbers 5 may provide an example of usage of an extended colophon, much of the Law is presented without such a pattern, indicating that the use of a colophon is up to the needs of the scribe.

Other Suggested Biblical Colophon Examples

Job 31:40 "The words of Job are ended."

Psalm 72:20 "The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended."

Postscripts Used At The End of Biblical Narratives

The Book of Genesis ends with a beautifully structured postscript pertaining to Joseph.

Genesis 50:22-26

• So Joseph remained in Egypt, he and his father's house. 
• Joseph lived 110 years.
• And Joseph saw 
• Ephraim's children of the third generation. 
• The children also of Machir the son of Manasseh were counted as Joseph's own.
• And Joseph said to his brothers, 
• “I am about to die, but God will visit you and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.”
• Then Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, 
• “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here.”
• So Joseph died, being 110 years old. 
• They embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.

When written out in prose, it is easy to miss the parallelism that is evident upon closer inspection.  This structured text was obviously not written by Joseph since it records his death, but was added as a finale.  Joseph's narrative in Genesis was not necessarily written on clay tablets using cuneiform, since he would have had access to the writing technology and conventions of Egypt.  So it is reasonable that Joseph's narrative would not have a tablet-style colophon, but rather contributed a more modern (at the time) postscript.

We see this style used in other Biblical texts.

Ecclesiastes is considered to end with a colophon comprised of 12:9-14.

The book of Ruth ends with a colophon comprised of the genealogy of David.

And the book of Job ends with a colophon comprised of a summary of blessings experienced after Job's time of testing.

In Conclusion

The practice of introducing a "postscript" at the end of a section of text in the Bible is an occasional, but not rare, occurrence.  The examples on this page are provided to help readers of Ages of Joy evaluate the colophon-based Tablet Theory of the structure of Genesis.  The postscript-colophon as used by Cuneiform clay tablets may be largely peculiar to the Book of Genesis, with Genesis being perhaps the oldest content in the Bible, but we also see shades of it in Leviticus and Numbers, whose content expressly comes in part from tablets.  Furthermore, we understand that in transcribing a colophon from a tablet to a scroll, especially when compiled as part of a larger work, the author, under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, may have augmented the original colophon-title.  Therefore, we must strive to correctly identify where each section of text is joined to the next.

The Structure of Genesis

The Tablet Theory of the origin of Genesis, as further developed by Curt Sewell (here), identified 11 tablets, and minimal colophon content.  Here I have expanded the colophon content to include relevant verses according to context.  Sewell's primary contribution to the Tablet Theory was to propose Tablets 8 and 10 as sub-tablets of 7 and 9, respectively.  I have preserved that below.

In addition to expanded colophon content, I propose that Tablet 5 may really be two separate documents.  Additionally, instead of listing section 11 as spanning the end of Genesis and the beginning of Exodus, as Sewell does, I recognize that Genesis ends with a highly structured postscript of it own.  The Joseph Postscript adopts a different style than that of the earlier colophon-derived postscripts, probably because it was written under a different literary era.  None-the-less, its presence indicates the writer's intent to maintain the "postscript structure" of Genesis.

The end result is a proposal in which Genesis is composed of the 10 sections as listed below.

For those not familiar with the word "colophon" it refers to a postscript, as used in Babylonian and Mesopotamian writing, that is often located at the end of a text and provides information relative to the scribe who wrote the text, and sometimes additional information about the place it was written, its content, its purpose, or its owner.

Tablet	Verses	Content	Owner or  Writer
Section 1
1	Gen. 1:1-2:3	{Creation of the heavens and the earth}	revealed by God (to Melchizedek?)
Colophon 1	Gen. 2:4	These are <toledot> of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven.
Section 2
2	Gen. 2:5-4:26	{Story of Adam and Eve; the fall; sin}	as first told by Adam (probably transmitted orally until finally written)
Colophon 2	Gen. 5:1-2	This is the book of the <toledot> of Adam. In the day when God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. 2 He created them male and female, and He blessed them and named them Man in the day when they were created.
Section 3
3	Gen. 5:3-6:8	{Adam to Noah, death ages, but not of Noah; corruption of mankind; mentions 3 sons of Noah}	by Noah
Colophon 3	Gen. 6:9-10	These are <toledot> of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God. 10 Noah became the father of three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
Section 4
4	Gen. 6:11-9:29	{The flood narrative with some repetition. The death of Noah.}	by Shem, Ham & Japheth (possibly blended account)
Colophon 4	Gen. 10:1	These are <toledot> of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah; and sons were born to them after the flood.
Section 5
5a	Gen. 10:2-10:31	{Descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth}	by the Clans of Shem, Ham, and Japheth (compilation by ?)
Colophon 5a	Gen. 10:32	These are the families of the sons of Noah, according to their <toledot>s, by their nations; and out of these the nations were separated on the earth after the flood.
Section 6
5b	Gen. 11:1-11:9	{Tower of Babel story}	by Shem
Colophon 5b	Gen. 11:10a	These are <toledot> of Shem.
Section 7
6	Gen. 11:10b-11:26	{Simple genealogy from Shem to Terah, including death age of all individuals except Terah}	by Terah
Colophon 6	Gen. 11:27a	Now these are <toledot> of Terah.
Section 8
7	Gen. 11:27b-25:11	{Abraham's life and death beginning with his father Terah, Terah's death, Isaac's life and details about Rebecca, details about Ishmael}	by Isaac
Sub-Title 78	Gen. 25:12	Now these are <toledot> of Ishmael, Abraham’s son, whom Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah’s maid, bore to Abraham
78	Gen. 25:13-18	{12 sons of Ishmael; Ishmael's death}	by Isaac, from Ishmael (Isaac lived to 180, Ishmael to 137)
Colophon 7	Gen. 25:19a	These are <toledot> of Isaac, Abraham's son:
Section 9
9	Gen. 25:19b-35:29	{Jacob's life story and the death of Isaac}	by Jacob
Sub-Title 910	Gen. 36:1	These are <toledot> of Esau (that is, Edom).
910	Gen. 36:2-43	{Esau's descendants and chiefs of Edom, some redundancy}	by Jacob, from Esau
9	Gen. 37:1	Jacob lived in the land of his father's sojournings, in the land of Canaan.
Colophon 9	Gen. 37:1-2a	These are <toledot> of Jacob.
Section 10
11	Gen. 37:2b-50:21	{Joseph's life story, but not his death; story about Judah; Jacob's death}	by Joseph
Postscript 11	Gen. 50:22-26	{Structured postscript to Joseph's intimate account of his life: Joseph...Egypt -Joseph lived to 110 --Ephraim's children --Manasseh's children --Joseph's promise --Joseph's command -Joseph died at 110 Joseph's body...Egypt }	by Ephraim?

Quick Quotes: Understanding how GOD engineered major evolutionary advances

One of the purposes of this blog is to help Christians appreciate scientific discovery washed of it's metaphysical naturalism bias and also see where the discoveries fit in a Creationist perspective on Genesis 1.

The article on sciencedaily.com Early animals: Death near the shoreline, not life on land includes reference to a few supporting facts for the Ages of Joy creation model, as well as a quote worth looking at.

The article's author, not the scientists themselves, sums up the article with this quote:

Understanding how life engineered major evolutionary advances within environments, and the rate and impact of these advances on the functioning of the Earth system, provides vital context for understanding global change at the present day, and underlines the inseparable relationship between life and the planet.

The AOJ perspective is that "life" cannot "engineer".  Life is an abstract phenomena.  It can't "plan, design, operate", aka engineer, on it's own, per se.

 The quote would better stand as:

Understanding how life GOD engineered major evolutionary advances within environments, and the rate and impact of these advances on the functioning of the Earth system, provides vital context for understanding global change at the present day, and underlines the inseparable relationship between life and the planet.

This quote would then reflect the Theistic Engineering philosophy behind the Ages of Joy creation model.

We can use this quote to differentiate three views:

• Metaphysical Naturalism:  "life engineered major evolutionary advances"
• Theistic Evolution: "God used major evolutionary advances"
• Theistic Engineering: "God engineered major evolutionary advances" 

Reflect on these differences and please post your thoughts below.

The conclusion of the research finds the following:

Shillito notes, "It reveals how even surprising events can be preserved in the ancient rock record, but -- by removing the 'earliest' outlier of evidence -- suggests that the invasion of the continents happened globally at the same time."

This is consistent with the descriptions in Genesis 1 of God working powerfully to engineer life and bless it to flourish.  The "simultaneous explosion of complexity" is something AOJ attributes to God's engineering prowess.

Facts uncovered in the article include:

• first animals on land emerged globally during the latest Silurian.

The Silurian is part of the mid-Paleozoic which AOJ places in the first part of Day 3 at about the same time that the first vegetation appeared, such as the bryophytes.  These first land animals were created by God when He first separated the land from the seas, but, unlike the plants created on Day 3, they would later go extinct to be replaced by the fauna created on Day 5 and Day 6.