Earliest multicellular organisms had animal-level complexity

Another researcher has gleaned additional insight into the first animal life on earth.  According to the Ages of Joy creation model, the Ediacaran period, which served host to the first complex life on Earth, corresponds to the beginning of the Third Day of creation.   AOJ expects life to appear suddenly and with great complexity as the result of God's creative acts.

The article, Fat from 558 million years ago reveals earliest known animal, provides evidence that the Ediacaran-era organism Dickinsonia is likely one of Earth's first animals.  Analysis of a fossil recovered by Ilya Bobrovskiy of The Australian National University has yielded evidence of biomarkers for cholesteroids, a category of fat that is only known to occur in animals.  These organisms are believed to have lived as early as 571 million years ago, or possibly slightly earlier, although the tested fossil dated to 558 mya.  What this study indicates is that the very first multicellular organisms were very complex indeed.  This is precisely what the Ages of Joy creation model anticipates: that God is the Author of these complex life forms and the raw material God used in creating them, He infused with a great deal of complex genetic information.  Naturalistic evolution would posit a transition from simple to complex, but here is an example of a huge jump in complexity.

Aside:

Each Creation Day corresponds to an Age of time for which a Day is a fitting metaphor.  Like a 'Day', each 'Age' of creation is a time period in which God works followed by a Night (Evening to Morning), and then the dawn (Morning) of a new Age.  Rather than interpreting Day (Hebrew 'yom') as merely a "long period of time", which is also our view, AOJ sees it as a metaphor for an Age.  Using metaphorical language, the Hebrew words for Evening and Morning can stand for a "Night of Distress and a Morning of Bright Joy".  This signifies the large-scale transitions that mark boundaries between Geologic time periods on the largest scales.  The distress of a major extinction event (think of the extinction of the dinosaurs) gives way to the joy of new kinds of creatures (think of the rapid proliferation of thousand of amazing bird species filling vacated ecological niches).

First Animals Formed Complex Communities

One of my passions for Ages of Joy is to be able to share a Biblical perspective on exciting new scientific discoveries and significant research results. This new (September 17, 2018) article Earth's oldest animals formed complex ecological communities on Science Daily is one such opportunity.

An Aside for Young Earth Readers

Some of you may be following this blog from a young earth perspective.  The Ages of Joy - Young Biosphere (AOJ-YB) model is for you.  AOJ-YB posits that each Day of the Creation week is 1000 or more years in length, but not millions or billions of years.  This is based in part on the following verses with the understanding that the story is told from God's perspective, not man's and that the events of each day would take time to unfold.

For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night. (Psalm 90:4)

But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. (2 Peter 3:8)

"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding." (Job 38:4)

The AOJ-YB perspective is important because it allows us to place the events of this scientific article into the Creation Week context in the same manner as the standard AOJ old earth model.  To clarify, the article refers to the Ediacaran Biota which existed 570 million years ago.  AOJ identifies that time with the Morning (final event) of the Second Day.  Under the standard AOJ model, we simply accept the 570 million year estimate and move on.  Under the AOJ-YB model, this event would have occurred at least 4000 years before Adam (before Day 6, Day 5, Day 4, and all or most of Day 3).  The fossil record was largely formed during the Creation Week.  The absolute dating is not as critical as the Sequence of Events.  The reason AOJ maintains two models, standard and young biosphere, is because many Christians come from the Young Earth perspective and I want to give them a bridge into the wonders of God's creative miracles that can only be seen by appreciating the time and steps He took in preparing a habit for humanity.

Pitching the Tent

The work God performed on the Second Day of Creation involved creating the Firmament which is the protective shield of the atmosphere which makes life on Earth possible.  During the Second Day, tiny photosynthetic cyanobacteria living in the Deep churned away under the good Light that shone forth on the First Day, liberating oxygen from water.   During the so-called Boring Billion,  (boring thousand for AOJ-YB readers), Earth enjoyed a great deal of stability.  This period of Earth's history is known as the Proterozoic.  Only single-celled lifeforms and aggregates of single-celled organisms existed on Earth during this time.  The atmosphere was being transformed, enriched with oxygen, and an ozone layer was forming to protect life from damaging UV radiation.  While some creationists equate billions of years with evolution, this era shows that unless the conditions are just right AND unless God chooses to act, life just chugs away with only minor, incremental micro-evolutionary changes.  It would have been just as easy, and far more likely, for life to have gone extinct than to evolve under only natural forces into anything significantly more complex.

Isaiah 40:21-22 English Standard Version (ESV)

Do you not know? Do you not hear?
     Has it not been told you from the beginning?
     Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,
     and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
     who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
     and spreads them like a tent to dwell in

During the Second Day, God was transforming Earth's atmosphere into a life-sheltering tent.

The work of the Second Day, the accumulation of oxygen and transformation of the atmosphere, lead to a dramatic decrease in greenhouse gases, namely carbon monoxide and also carbon dioxide.  This plunged the Earth into a Deep Freeze - literally the Deep froze over.  This period of time is known as the Cryogenian.  In the AOJ model, a Day corresponds to a Work-Night-Morning cycle.  The Cyrogenian is the Night of Distress which is followed by a Morning of Bright Joy.  It was a frosty morning at that, because the first part of the Ediacaran era, which follows the Cryogenian, included the Gaskiers Glaciation at about 579 million years ago.

What was happening that was so important on the Morning of the Second Day (yes, each Day ends with a Morning)?  According to this article:

About 650 million years ago a dramatic event happened called Snowball Earth. The Earth was frozen over for million of years. Huge glaciers ground entire mountain ranges to powder that released nutrients, and when the snow melted during an extreme global heating event rivers washed torrents of nutrients into the ocean. Extremely high levels of nutrients in the ocean, and cooling of global temperatures to more hospitable levels, created the perfect conditions for the rapid spread of algae. This rise of algae triggered one of the most profound ecological revolutions in Earth's history. A transition occurred from oceans being dominated by bacteria to a world inhabited by more complex life. These large and nutritious organisms at the base of the food web provided the burst of energy required for complex ecosystems, where increasingly large and complex life forms could thrive on Earth.

This isn't just Theistic Evolution at work, this is Theistic Engineering!  God pulled off an amazing miracle with a carefully controlled and profoundly effective series of events.  The Boring Billion shows us that evolution can't drive change, it can only try to respond to it.  It takes a purposeful Creator, enacting coordinated feats of Genetic and Geologic Engineering to advance life to the next level.  Just look at Mars to see what happens when no One intervenes.

So, after God's Work of creating the Firmament, the Night of the Cryogenian and Frosty Morning of the Gaskers Glaciation, we get the Bright Joy of Complex Life.

To life, to life, l'chaim

Now, back to the original article that inspired this post.  Simon A. F. Darroch, assistant professor in Vanderbilt's Earth and Environmental Sciences Department, and his team of researchers investigated all available data on Ediacaran fossils, even going so far as to conduct field work in Namibia to characterize additional Ediacaran fossils.  Fossil beds containing Ediacaran fossils host a unique, and some say bizarre, set of creatures that existed for a time and then seemed to suddenly disappear, with no currently known relationship to other creatures.  Ediacaran fossil sites exist in Newfoundland, Namibia, Australia, and England, showing this to be a world-wide phenomena.

Existing in lower strata than the Cambria fossils of "Cambrian Explosion" fame, these fossils represent the first appearance of macroscopic life on Earth.  The question explored by the researchers is whether or not the Ediacaran biota existed in a "simple" ecosystem or a "complex" ecosystem.  A default assumption of naturalistic evolution would posit that life moves from simple to complex over time.  Since this was the first ecosystem with macroscopic organisms, it might be assumed that these "organisms were universally primitive, sharing the same basic ecology and all competing for the same resources."  A complex model, Darroch describes, "would instead suggest that they likely competed for a variety of different resources, just like modern animals."

The results of their research is summarized as follows:

The team found that the signature of complex communities extends all the way back to the oldest Ediacaran fossils. In other words, as soon as macroscopic life evolved, it began forming diverse ecological communities not unlike those in the present day.

How did this amazing biota come to exist, seemingly in the blink of an eye, in geological terms?  The Bible gives the clearest answer.

When you send forth your Spirit, they are created (Psalm 104:30a)

God rapidly engineered a thriving community of interacting organisms.  The published article, High complexity in benthic Ediacaran communities, calls some of these creatures "ecosystem engineers" because they create niches for other creatures to exist in.  Of course, these animals are not the real engineers of this system.  They are the product of engineering and exist in "engineered ecosystems".  God is the True Engineer of this ecosystem.  Ironically, by dismissing the work of a Creator, the author must attribute to these creatures powers beyond their ability, as if cars were ecosystem engineers of their own roads and gas stations.

None-the-less, we can be very grateful to the researchers who are detailing God's Handiwork.  We owe them a debt of gratitude for uncovering the mysteries of creation and for not just assuming a simple ecosystem existed at that time.  We also recognize that some of these researchers may be Christian believers and are compelled to use the prevailing vernacular of academia in discussing their results.  These researches challenged the assumption of simplicity and demonstrated that Earth's oldest animals formed complex ecological communities.

The Third Day

The Bible does not explicitly mention the creation of the first macroscopic organisms that pre-dated the seed plants and fruiting trees created on the Third Day.  AOJ attributes the Early Ediacaran and the rise of the Ozone shield at 600 million years ago to the Second Day.  The ability of Earth to host the Ediacaran biota is the fruit of the Work of the Second Day, because even with the cover of water, an ozone shield is necessary to protect life because UV penetrates water to quite some depth.

As the article mentioned, the Ediacaran biota began to fade prior to the Cambrian Explosion.  While some Progressive Creationist and Old Earth authors attribute the subsequent Cambrian Explosion to the Fifth Day, AOJ does not.  We see the Cambrian as part of the Third Day.  In the AOJ model the Fifth Day begins with the renewal following the extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs and a majority of other non-plant life forms.

So what happened to the Ediacaran biota, and why was it replaced with the Cambrian biota?  Again, the Bible gives the most straight forward answer:

Psalm 104 (ESV)

    27 These all look to you, to give them their food in due season.
    28 When you give it to them, they gather it up;
         when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
    29 When you hide your face, they are dismayed;
         when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust.
    30 When you send forth your Spirit, they are created,
         and you renew the face of the ground.

There was a turnover between the Ediacaran and the Cambrian, and there would be many subsequent turnovers as God engineered each successive ecosystem on His steady cadence to a world habitable by mankind.

Genesis 1:1-2:4 The Whole Story

When studying the topic of creation, a lot of focus is put on Genesis chapter 1.  Chapter 1 ends with the evening and morning of the sixth day, which seems like a reasonable stopping point.  However, this chapter break is not part of the original text and it can make it difficult to actually determine where the first narrative of Genesis ends and the next begins.  However, we can, and should, turn to language experts for this.  We return to Interpreting Genesis One for this nugget of understanding: "The narrative finally ends with a "colophon," a statement that identifies a document's contents, which we generally put at the beginning of a book."  This refers to Genesis 2:4.

This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made earth and heaven. (NASB)

These [are] births of the heavens and of the earth in their being prepared, in the day of Jehovah God's making earth and heavens; (YLT)

These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. (ESV)

There is some disagreement among scholars as to whether Genesis 2:4 is a summary wrapping up the creation account that begins in Genesis 1 or whether it is an introduction to the story of Adam and Eve that follows.

Either way, Ages of Joy considers Genesis 2:4 to support the concept that the six days of creation represent six periods of time that are only like days, rather than being actual days.  Taken as a summary, Genesis 2:4 supports the idea that the creation week involved multiple generations, or beginnings.  This perspective is further developed in another post.

The phrase translated "these [are] births" (YLT) appears 10 times in Genesis 1 and are considered to provide the structure of the Book.  Is it necessary that all 10 occurrences must function the same way?  It's not clear.

The most similar phrase in the OT is in Numbers 3:1 harkening back to Numbers 1:1:

And Jehovah speaketh unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the tent of meeting, on the first of the second month, in the second year of their going out of the land of Egypt, saying: `Take ye up the sum of all the company of the sons of Israel by their families, by the house of their fathers, in the number of names -- every male by their polls; (Numbers 1:1-2 YLT)

And these [are] births of Aaron and Moses, in the day of Jehovah's speaking with Moses in mount Sinai. (Numbers 3:1 YLT)

This structure supports the idea that Moses would use a phrase such as Numbers 3:1 or Genesis 2:4 to sum up the preceding section and possibly also as a continuation into the following section.  Since Mosaic authorship is attributed to both Genesis and Numbers, the connection is highly relevant.

I think this argument supports the concept that Genesis 2:4 summarize the creation week as a series of births and thus a development over signifiant amount of time.

Whether or not you agree this analysis, perhaps you agree that we want to know what the "whole story" is when we set out to understand it.  Knowing where a story starts and ends in of some importance.

Free Genesis 1-11 Commentary

Bible Lessons International has made available a number of Bible commentaries that appear to provide a high quality guide to help with the interpretation of Scripture from what appears to be a solidly Biblical perspective.  The resource on Genesis 1-11 is a treasure mine of information available as a downloadable PDF file.

One point the author makes is that the job of interpretation lies with you, the reader, not with the commentator.  To this end, this resource does not try to interpret the text for you, but rather provide information relevant to the task of interpreting.

Furthermore, in our context of "creation", this resource does not take a strong position regarding the age of the earth, the length of the creation days, or even the extent of Noah's flood, but does provide insight into the meaning of the words in the relevant passages.

Genesis 1:1-2:4 Interpreting the Story

Charles E. Hummel, Director of Faculty Ministries for Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, has written an informative article titled Interpreting Genesis One.

In this article, Hummel argues for the Framework interpretation of Genesis 1 and supports that argument by elucidating the spiritual messages that can be gleaned from the text by reading it from that point of view.  He also argues against building a concordant model that tries to harmonize Scripture with science by warning that "any apparent success in harmonizing the message with modern science guarantees a failure when current scientific theory is revised or discarded".

Ages of Joy benefits from these comments and adopts the following responses:

1. By all means, readers should plumb the depths of the Spiritual messages of Genesis 1 by considering the Framework model and comprehending it.  It is a valuable model.
2. Ages of Joy recognizes that a harmonized, concordant model will always be a "work in progress" but we reject that means it's a failure. The mission of AOJ is to constantly present the best possible concordant model, updating it as necessary.  We poll Science Daily to help with that task.
3. The book of Genesis should be interpreted from its historical context and a concordant, harmonized, scientific model must honor the perspective of the original readers.  AOJ attempts to do so and we recognize that some possible linkages between science and Biblical statements cannot be definitively made - they must be held lightly.
4. We recognize that Genesis 1, while conveying actual history, is a blend of prose and poetry.  We believe that while it presents a chronological sequence, it also embeds topical content, and we learn from the Framework model and Cultural-Historical perspective, that strict chronological accuracy was not necessarily a constraint on the author nor an expectation of the original readers.

Armed with this guidance, we believe that a helpful, harmonized concordant model can be developed and maintained without bending the text of Scripture and without resorting to complex, contorted twists on science.

We recommend reading the article and checking back here for new posts that glean a few more insights from Mr. Hummel.

Genesis 1: A Tale of Labor and Delivery

This post is dedicated to the women at my church who are embarking on a study of the book of Genesis.  Many of these women are mothers and I hope they will take a special delight in my analysis of Genesis chapter 1.  Some have school-aged children who may have questions that arise in science class this year that this post could help them to address.

Genesis chapter 1 is a unique passage of Scripture with an expansive scope that literally addresses all of space and most of time.  It also adopts a unique writing style.  On the one hand, it moves to a climax, like prose.  On the other hand, the prominence of repetition is similar to poetry.

In an article written for Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, the author cites the following opinion of Genesis 1:

Sometimes called a "hymn," it appears to be a unique blend of prose and poetry.1

One of the most powerful phrases in Genesis 1 goes like this: (New American Standard)

"And there was evening and there was morning, one day."

"And there was evening and there was morning, a second day."

"..., a third day.", "..., a fourth day.", "..., a fifth day.", "..., a sixth day." 

This phrase not only provides a repetitive element of poetry, but simultaneously executes the progress toward the climax of the seventh day like prose.  To interpret the phrase in an entirely literal manner is to ignore the poetic content.  To treat it as mere poetic decoration is to lose its narrative meaning.  The true sense of the phrase is a blend of the two possibilities.  To discern this blend, however, requires an examination of the Hebrew text itself.  Helpfully, Studylight.org contains powerful, easy-to-use tools for the exploration of the Bible in its original Hebrew language.  I encourage you to delve into these resources.  They can help enrich any Bible study.

Here we see that the word translated as "evening" is the Hebrew word 'ereb, which can literally mean "night, sunset, or evening".  In the scope of the Genesis 1 narrative the "greater light" does not come to govern the day until the fourth day of creation.  Therefore, we can exclude "sunset" as an intended meaning of the author.

There is another word for "night", the Hebrew layil, meaning, "night (as opposed to day)" or "of gloom, protective shadow".  That is a different kind of "night" and contrasted to "day".  In our target phrase, 'ereb is not contrasted to but a companion of the word for morning.  Therefore, the meaning is the sum of two meanings.  This is similar to how the words "heaven and earth" taken together form a merism that means "the totality of everything".  In this case, we are not studying a merism but we still need to look at the word for morning before we can interpret the word for evening correctly.

The word for "morning" is the Hebrew boqer, which is a complex term.

Brown-Driver-Brigg's Definition

• 1) morning, break of day 
• 1a) morning
• 1a1) of end of night 
• 1a2) of coming of daylight 
• 1a3) of coming of sunrise 
• 1a4) of beginning of day 
• 1a5) of bright joy after night of distress (figuratively) 
• 1b) morrow, next day, next morning

Because, in the narrative, boqer ends the Day instead of beginning the Day and because boqer is not associated with sunrise or the "rule of the greater light", which does not happen until the Fourth Day, I struck out some of the possible definitions listed above.

We now have two possible translations of the target phrase:

"And there was night and there was an end of night, one day."

or

"And there was night and there was a bright joy after a night of distress, one day."

Now at first, it might seem prudent to immediately discard the figurative meaning because it seems odd to associate any type of distress with the creation week in which we find the repeated term used, "good" which means "pleasing".

But the contrast between distress and joy is intriguing to explore in this context.  We have to keep in mind:

• the creation was not declared "very good" until it was finished
• only specific aspects of creation were declared "good" during the week
• distress, while it seems "bad", is not necessarily so from God's perspective

The concept of a "night of distress followed by a bright joy" immediately brings to my mind the childbirth process.  Some of you women are moms and can relate to this.  I am not a mother, but I have been through the childbirth process ten times with my wife, and this is a pretty apt description in my experience.

So we could see this phrase as "And there was labor and there was delivery, one day."

We have another clue.  The phrase "evening and morning" do not define a Day, as in "the second day" and so forth.  But rather, it wraps up the work of the Day in which God created.

The poetic structure of Genesis 1 then comes out as follows:

"And God said, "Let..."
(creative acts occur and it was so)
"And there was labor and there was delivery, one Day", "... a second Day",  and so forth

The Spirit of God overshadows His creation and then God tends His creation and at end of the term of development, there is tumultuous event that results in a bright joy which is the revelation of His creative intent.  The Day then, is a period of development much longer than the labor and delivery at the end.  These are not "time markers" per se but markers of phases of God's creative works.  One follows the other in orderly procession.

Now, this is perhaps clever, and as mothers you might enjoy this view, but we have to test this interpretation rigorously with Scripture.  It is not enough to satisfy ourselves with an interpretation that makes sense to us in our own experience.  To rightly divide God's Word requires testing our interpretation by God's Word.

Test Number 1

Even before the Book of Genesis was given to the Israelites by Moses, back during the time of Abraham, there lived a man named Job.  Job had an encounter with God who revealed to Him the wonders of His mighty acts of creation.

Job 38:4-11 English Standard Version (ESV)

4 “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.
5 Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it?
6 On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone,
7 when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
8 “Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb,
9 when I made clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band,
10 and prescribed limits for it and set bars and doors,
11 and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?

The language of childbirth is associated with the work of creation in God's revelation to Job, as is the element of joy.  This passage describes the origin of "the deep" over which the Spirit of God hovers in Genesis 1, thereby setting up the entire process as a series of birth experiences.

Test Number 1: Passed

Test Number 2

Romans 8:18-22 English Standard Version (ESV)

18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.
20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope
21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.

In this passage, childbirth is associated with the work of the creation itself.  The ultimate product of this birth experience is the revealing of the sons of God, which in Romans refers to the children of God saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.  The original revealing of the "sons of God" was through the creation of Adam and the godly line of descent through Seth.  Clearly this "revelation" has been progressive.

While the human sufferings of the present time are associated with sin and the Fall of man, the original "sufferings" of creation are associated with the natural processes of wear and decay, apart from sin.  God created a world in which man could both sin and die in order that He might provide salvation through death, and even death on a cross.

Test Number 2: Passed

Test Number 3

John 16:21 English Standard Version (ESV)

21 When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world.

How can the days of creation be declared "very good" if they contain elements of distress?  This is clearly answered by analogy to the process of childbirth.  Joy wipes away the memory of the anguish.    Elements that we see in the natural world such as fossils of animals that lived and died before God made man can be seen as part of God's greater plan.  They are "good" in their own sense because God willed it to be so.

The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God.  Psalm 104:21

We see that "good", "very good", and "joy" can be consistent with purposeful distress because of the benefit of the final outcome.  A fossil record "red in tooth and claw" does not stand opposed to a sovereign God executing His ultimate plan of "revealing the sons of God".

Test Number 3: Passed

Test Number 4

Psalm 104 (ESV)

24 O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.
...
27 These all look to you, to give them their food in due season.
28 When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
29 When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust.
30 When you send forth your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground.
31 May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in his works,
32 who looks on the earth and it trembles, who touches the mountains and they smoke!

On the Seventh Day, God rests from all His work of creating.  Therefore, when Psalm 104 refers to creatures being created, it must be reflecting on the creation week.  In the referenced event, God has filled the earth with creatures, then taken away their breath such that they die, and then created anew by His Spirit.  He rejoices in His work in which the earth trembles and the mountains smoke.

This is an apt description of an extinction-renewal event such as the demise of the dinosaurs and most other animals (at the end of the Fourth Day) and the subsequent rapid replacement with all-new species of birds and fish (on the Fifth Day) and finally with livestock and mankind (on the Sixth Day).

God rejoices and is glorified by events in Earth's history that we might at first struggle to reconcile with His goodness and sovereignty.  By seeing creation as story of travail and joy, not unlike the birth process, we see the goodness of our Heavenly Father and understand how much love and patience He really has for us.

Test Number 4: Passed

Test Number 5

Genesis 2:4 Young's Literal Translation (YLT)

4 These [are] births of the heavens and of the earth in their being prepared, in the day of Jehovah God's making earth and heavens;

Here I leverage Young's Literal Translation to expose the underlying literal meaning of Hebrew words.  The word births is often translated generations (ESV) or the even more bland account (NASB), thereby masking the rich imagery the Author means to convey.  God makes the earth and heavens by preparing them for the sons of God through a sequence of births.  The imagery presented in Genesis 2 which details the story of Adam and Eve is clearly tied to the poetic narrative of Genesis 1 by following the theme of births.

Test Number 5: Passed

In my analysis, I present Genesis 1 as a series of six successive experiences of overshadowing by the Spirit, growth and development caused by God, the distress of labor, and the joy of delivery.  After these six successive, back-to-back pregnacy-birth experiences, God rests.   Who can blame Him! (a little humor)

Now, you may not agree with my analysis and whether all these tests were appropriately constructed and truly pass, but I do hope that you see the importance of delving into the original language, of being curious and exploring God's Word, and of submitting your interpretation to God's Word for testing.

I hope you enjoyed this post and that you have a new appreciation, as mothers and as women, that your Heavenly Father can relate to all that you go through.  Please feel free to post comments below or send feedback and questions to agesofjoy @ gmail.com.

1 Henri Blocher, In the Beginning (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press,
1984), pp. 31-33.