This week I received several comments posted to essays that I have written, regarding the errors of PhD Atheist Scholars. I have already published several essays that exposes the errors of Joel Baden and Josh Bowen at this website. This essay describes the Genesis Flood texts from Genesis 7:17-24, and the errors that both Joel Baden and Josh Bowen have published in their books.
- Joel S. Baden is professor of Hebrew Bible at Yale Divinity School.[1]
- Joshua Bowen graduated from the Johns Hopkins University in 2017, with a Ph.D. in Assyriology.[1]
Joel Baden
Josh Bowen
When a person achieves a PhD it is a momentous event. Not many can rise to the position as a Doctor of any study without hard work, dedication, and commitment. The problem in our modern era is that no longer do men and women seek to achieve a PhD in Biblical studies for the purpose of teaching and defending the accuracy, integrity, and truth of the Bible.
Today the Bible is under assault by an enemy disguised as a scholar. Millions of unsuspecting people have been fooled by the deception of best-selling authors that assert the Bible is not to be trusted. What most do not realize is that the persons they have entrusted to provide them with accurate and honest information about the Bible, are not honest, nor accurate.
The Following Is One Such Example Of The Hundreds Of Deceptive Statements Made By Phd Scholars Regarding The Bible
These False and deceptive statements are made with clear malicious intent to deceive the reader and promote the assertion of the Documentary Hypotheses.
PhD’s Josh Bowen and Joel Baden say that the account of the Great Flood narrative presents a contradiction in the text that proves the Bible is in error.
Joel Baden: “How long did the flood last; like we all know it lasted 40 days and nights, except for the verses that say it lasted 150 days!”[2]
What The Book of Genesis 7:17-24 Actually States:
“Now the flood was on the earth 40 DAYS. The waters increased and lifted up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. The waters prevailed and greatly increased on the earth, and the ark moved about on the surface of the waters. And the waters prevailed exceedingly on the earth, and all the high hills under the whole heaven were covered. The waters prevailed fifteen cubits upward, and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved on the earth: birds and cattle and beasts and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every man. All in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, all that was on the dry land, died. So He destroyed all living things which were on the face of the ground: both man and cattle, creeping thing and bird of the air. They were destroyed from the earth. Only Noah and those who were with him in the ark remained alive. And the waters prevailed on the earth 150 DAYS.”
It doesn’t take a PhD to understand this text from Genesis 7: The rain and groundwater lasted for 40 days; the water then remained on earth for another 150 days.
Josh Bowen in his book, “The Atheist Handbook to the Old Testament: Volume 1,” repeats Joel Baden’s error and concurs with his conclusion regarding the Genesis Flood texts of Genesis 7:17-24.
Josh Bowen: “The other apparent literary contradiction in this passage is the length of the flood itself. We have two durations that are repeated throughout the story: 40 days and 40 nights (Genesis 7:4, 12, 17) and 150 days (Genesis 7:24; 8:3). Which is it? Again, as we will see, there are several attempts at reconciling these disparate numbers by Christian apologists.””
Did you see the error PhD’s Bowen and Baden made?
Verse 17 of Genesis 7, states that the rain and groundwater from the earth, continued for 40 days. Then the water that covered the earth, remained on earth for 150 days.
If we merely read Bowen and Baden’s comments they lead us to believe that there are two contradictory statements in the Genesis 7 texts. When we read it for ourselves we see that Josh Bowen and Joel Baden deceived us.
The statement of 40 days of rain, is not the same as how long the water remained on earth for 150 days, after the rain stopped.
This is the type of subtle deception that atheists construct in their comments on the Bible. Josh Bowen and Joel Baden did this because they want us to believe that the Pentateuch is unreliable.
They want to convince us that the Pentateuch contains serious contradictions. Josh Bowen and Joel Baden say these contradictions prove there are multiple writers, and Moses could not have written the Pentateuch.
The fact is, it is Josh Bowen and Joel Baden who have serious issues of dishonesty. We cannot trust that simply because a person has a PhD, they will be honorable in their conclusions. The Bible is always true, but men do not always tell the truth.
See the many errors Joel Baden and Josh Bowen have published in their books and essays:
- Impeaching The Poor Scholarship Of Yale Professor Joel Baden
- A Debate With Josh Bowen, PhD, Regarding The Source Of The Pentateuch
- Impeaching Dr. Josh Bowen And;The Atheist Handbook To The Old Testament
- Dr. Josh Bowen: An Illustration Of His Inability To Understand The Scriptures
- Dr. Joshua Bowen, PhD, Falsely Asserts The Old Testament Endorses Slavery
- Is Yahweh A Terrorist? Dr. Joshua Bowen Says, “Yes”
- Impeaching Yale Professor Joel Baden And His Views On The Documentary Hypothesis
- Proving Moses Wrote Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, From Historical Evidence
- Proving The Exodus Happened, And Moses Wrote The Pentateuch
- The Historicity Of Moses
See: “Proving The Pentateuch: Impeaching The Documentary Hypothesis,” by Robert Clifton Robinson
NOTES:
[1] Descriptions from public information found in a Google search.
[2] Cited In a Podcast with Joel Baden, on August 25, 2020, he tells us that the reasons he does not believe Moses is the single author of the Pentateuch, is due to several inconsistencies he finds in the texts of the first five books of the Bible.
[3] “The other apparent literary contradiction in this passage is the length of the flood itself. We have two durations that are repeated throughout the story: 40 days and 40 nights (Genesis 7:4, 12, 17) and 150 days (Genesis 7:24; 8:3). Which is it?” Bowen, Joshua Aaron. The Atheist Handbook to the Old Testament: Volume 1 (Kindle Locations 2493-2495). Digital Hammurabi Press. Kindle Edition.
Categories: Apologetics, Atheists, Agnostics and Skeptics, Bible, Common objections by Atheists, Contradictions in the Bible, Historical Moses, How Salvation Occurs, Jesus is the Messiah, Joel Baden, Josh Bowen, Messianic Prophecies, Old Testament Apologetics, Proving The Pentateuch, Proving The Pentateuch: Impeaching The Documentary Hypothesis, Reliability of the Bible, Religion vs. Relationship, Robert Clifton Robinson, Salvation through Jesus, The Existence of God
Robert Clifton Robinson 
I don’t see the big deal about the Documentary Hypothesis. You can’t accept it and still be a good Christian? It seems to me that it nicely explains the Bible’s weird doublets (the one I find most intriguing: the second, incompatible set of 10 Commandments in Ex. 34).
As for Noah’s Flood, the issue that I find most interesting is how parts of Genesis refer to the Sumerian cosmology. In Gen. 1:6–10, we get a vault that separates water in the sky from water underground. And then in the Flood story, we see more of this, with water coming up from below (“the springs of the great deep burst forth”) and above (“the floodgates of the heavens were opened,” both from Gen. 7:11. You’re not saying that this is actually how the earth is put together, are you?
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Every building that will endure over time is built upon a strong foundation. The foundation from which the entire Bible is built upon is the first five books of the Bible—the Pentateuch. If Moses did not write these texts, then every book penned after it is also unreliable.
All of the writers after the Pentateuch depended upon the certainty that Moses is the only author. The entire New Testament rests upon Moses as the writer of the Pentateuch. Jesus, Paul, and the writers of the New Testament cite Moses as the author of these texts, over 80 times.
Paul cites ten texts from the Pentateuch in his letters from the New Testament, in order to give authority to the doctrines and principles he is teaching.
Critics often date the flood of Gilgamesh, earlier than the Biblical account of Noah, found in Genesis 6-8. This is due to the assumption that Moses could not have written these texts during the period ascribed to him in 1450 B.C. An important assertion made by the Documentary Hypothesis, states that there was no alphabet or writing system in use when Moses is alleged to have written the Pentateuch at this early date. This assertion has been impeached by the archeological record.
Today we know from archeological evidence that the Jews created the world’s first alphabet, and were writing texts by the time Moses began writing the five books of the Pentateuch.
The assertion that Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, are fabrications written by many authors, much later than the events these texts describe, is without any evidence to prove this assertion.
The Masoretic Text of the Torah places the Great Flood 1,656 years after Creation, or about 3,500 B.C., long before the flood of Gilgamesh.
In the 17th century B.C., Joseph Scaliger cited the Creation at 3950 B.C., Petavius stated it took place in 3982 B.C.,and according to James Ussher’s conclusions, Creation happened in 4004 B.C., placing the Great Flood at 2348 BCE.
The Gilgamesh flood narrative is alleged to have been written before 2,000 B.C., but it was assembled from material dated as early as 3.300 B.C.
The problem with assuming that the Gilgamesh flood happened and was written before Noah, is due to the assumption that Noah had no ability to write about this event, since the early Hebrews did not have an active writing system. This assumption is not only incorrect, and impeached by archeological evidence that proves the first alphabet did not come from the Phoenicians, but from the early Hebrew people.
Moses Received The Information He Recorded In Genesis, Directly From God
“Now God saw that the earth had become corrupt and was filled with violence. God observed all this corruption in the world, for everyone on earth was corrupt. So God said to Noah, “I have decided to destroy all living creatures, for they have filled the earth with violence. Yes, I will wipe them all out along with the earth! “Build a large boat…” ~Genesis 6:11-14
This testimony written in Genesis 6, is similar to Paul’s account of God giving him information about events that were previously unknown before that time: “We tell you this directly from the Lord…” (1 Thessalonians 4:15). “I received this by direct revelation from Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:12).
God told Moses everything about the flood of Noah, so that he could accurately, and truthfully, record these events for us in Genesis. We see many places in the Old Testament where the Lord spoke to Moses and gave him specific and detailed instructions and information of specific events:
“God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: Yahweh, the God of your ancestors—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.” ~Exodus 3:15
“Then the LORD said to Moses,…” ~Exodus 4:6
“Then the LORD said to Moses, “Give the following instructions to the people of Israel. ….” ~Leviticus 4:1-2
“The LORD said to Moses…“Be sure that you make everything according to the pattern I have shown you here on the mountain.”~ Exodus 25:1, 40
One of the reasons that atheist scholars do not accept that God spoke to Moses, results from their view that God doesn’t exist, therefore, it is not possible He could speak. This demonstrates how an incorrect assumption can lead to further errors.
The Bible is replete with statements that “God spoke.” This is the entire premise of the Bible: That God has spoken to man and revealed Himself to us. This communication comes to us by 66 books, written by 40 authors, over a 1,450 year period of time. God spoke to Moses, and this is how he knew many of the details he wrote in the Torah.
The narratives regarding creation and the flood from the Sumerian records, were written as poetic epic narratives. The Creation and Flood accounts in the Bible were written as genuine, historical events. We know this from the internal evidence of these texts.
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“If Moses did not write these texts, then every book penned after it is also unreliable.”
I see that argument, though I find it very fragile. I’m still not clear about your position with respect to the Documentary Hypothesis. You don’t like it, but why? Presumably the Documentary Hypothesis being true means that the Pentateuch must be false? It seems to me that it simply suggests that the Pentateuch’s story makes more sense when re-sorted.
Any thoughts on the second 10 Commandments in Ex. 34?
“The assertion that Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, are fabrications written by many authors, much later than the events these texts describe, is without any evidence to prove this assertion.”
Fabrications? I hadn’t seen it that way. Imagine that the Pentateuch is a jigsaw puzzle that got partly scrambled, and the DH shows you how to put it back together. Seems to me that it’s doing you a favor.
“The Gilgamesh flood narrative is alleged to have been written before 2,000 B.C., but it was assembled from material dated as early as 3.300 B.C.”
Huh? Why are you treating the Gilgamesh story as if it’s historical? Isn’t it just mythology from a culture that’s false? Seems to me that the Gilgamesh story is as historical as The Odyssey and The Iliad—that is, not very.
“Yes, I will wipe them all out along with the earth! … Build a large boat…” ~Genesis 6:11-14”
And just a few verses earlier, we read, “the Lord regretted making human beings on the earth, and his heart was grieved” (Gen. 6:6). How is it possible that God regretted anything?! He’s omniscient!
“One of the reasons that atheist scholars do not accept that God spoke to Moses, results from their view that God doesn’t exist, therefore, it is not possible He could speak. This demonstrates how an incorrect assumption can lead to further errors.”
Yeah, and one of the reasons for your statements here is your view that God *does* exist. I agree that any atheist who simply starts with a groundless assumption that there is no supernatural is no scholar, but isn’t that what you’re doing?
“The narratives regarding creation and the flood from the Sumerian records, were written as poetic epic narratives. The Creation and Flood accounts in the Bible were written as genuine, historical events. We know this from the internal evidence of these texts.”
The Pentateuch’s cosmology is the same as that from Sumer (water in the sky above + water under the earth). I’m sure you’ve seen diagrams of this, but here’s one: https://www.webpags.uidahow.edu/ngier/gre13.htm . If that cosmology from Sumer is false, why is the Bible’s any better?
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None of us should like it when men seek to corrupt or change what God has said. From the beginning, and throughout the entire Bible, God said that Moses is the only one He spoke to in writing the first five books of the Bible. God said that He only trusted Moses, and He rejected all others.
Numbers 12:6-8
And the LORD said to them, “Now listen to what I say:
“If there were prophets among you,
I, the LORD, would reveal myself in visions.
I would speak to them in dreams.
7 But not with my servant Moses.
Of all my house, he is the one I trust.
8 I speak to him face to face,
clearly, and not in riddles!
He sees the LORD as he is.
So why were you not afraid
to criticize my servant Moses?”
Not only that God said only Moses was allowed to write what we find in the first five books, but that anyone would think 3,200 years later, they know better what took place, is utterly preposterous.
There is no record prior to 1700 AD, where the original stewards of what God said to Moses (Hebrew people), stated that four other writers who are unknown, wrote the five books.
It is clear today that this is simply an attempt to impugn the texts that God gave Moses, and cause people to doubt all of the Bible and what God said. This has been the tactic of satan from the beginning: “did God really say?”
There is no evidence that the JEDP hypothesis is true. It only exists in the opinions of those who refuse to accept that God spoke only to Moses, and he wrote these texts.
Instead of seeking to understand these texts, when men like Bowen and Baden, seek to explain what they don’t understand, by a new and unprovable theory, the Documentary Hypothesis.
There are no second 10 commandments, only a restating of the commandments that were on the original tablets that Moses broke after he came down from the mountain and found the Israelites had already abandoned God.
Exodus 34:1 “Then the LORD told Moses, “Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones. I will write on them the same words that were on the tablets you smashed.”
You see these things from the place of an unbeliever. God makes it clear, as did Jesus, that He does not permit those who are militant against Him and His Word, from understanding fully, the texts of the Bible.
First He requires that you admit you are a sinner, in need of His salvation, then come to Him with a desire to have your sins removed from your record. Upon these sincere events, God gives you the gift of the Holy Spirit, who enables your to understand the depth of His Word.
Jesus illustrated this in Matthew 13:
Matthew 13:11-12 Jesus replied, “You are permitted to understand the secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven, but others are not. 12 To those who listen to my teaching, more understanding will be given, and they will have an abundance of knowledge. But for those who are not listening, even what little understanding they have will be taken away from them.
It may be a epic these cultures recorded that resembles the true events that took place during the flood described by the Bible, and later recorded by Moses in Genesis. These events are recorded by several nations around the world. The origin of these events, however, come from what God told Moses by direct revelation, and he recorded in Genesis.
This origin predates all the stories we find from cultures on earth who also described these events from God’s perspective, and He is the source of these events.
God does not regret, He does not change, but in order that we might understand these unchanging attributes of God, He often expresses Himself in human terms that we can understand. God is Spirit and He does not have a human form, yet He describes Himself as having hands, eyes, ears, as well as wings, feathers and other descriptions. This does not indicated that God has these bodily parts, but He describes Himself in these ways so that we can understand as humans who He is.
These are anthropomorphic language God uses to describe Himself, so we might understand Him.
The English word, grieved, has the same origin in Hebrew that is also used to describe painful labor. God feels emotion as we do because we were created like Him. When God sees us suffering because of sin, He feels emotion, as a human Father feels when his son or daughter makes poor decisions and ruins their life. This expression is placed in Genesis so that we can understand that God is a person, though He is also eternal and exists as Spirit.
The English word Regret, or sorrow, is from a Hebrew word that means pity. Again an emotion felt by God in our constant refusal to believe Him and do what He has said, which is always in our best interest. God knows what will bring blessing to our life, and what will destroy our lives. When God saw that the choice Adam had made to embrace evil instead of the Good God wanted for him, and this evil spread to all people after Adam, God felt pity, a sorrow of emotion that every person who choses evil will suffer loss of all the good things God wants us to have.
In the Garden God gave us the same unique privilege He has, the right of self determination. He gave us choice, as He has. There can be no choice, however, unless God gives us a choice between good and evil. This is what God gave to Adam and all of us. We can choose good, to obey God who gives us His Law that leads to a blessed life; or we can choose evil which will destroy our lives.
The world and all its evil is a creation of man, because of our choices. Everything that God made was good. When we find evil on earth, God did not create this, we did.
The cosmology of Genesis is the truth as described by God who created the universe; the cosmology of all other accounts is an attempt by transient men on earth to explain what they see and understand regarding creation.
The purpose of the Bible is to give us the truth concerning the creation of all that exists, why it exists, why we exist, and what God is doing to save out of this present fallen world, a people who love and believe Him.
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“There is no record prior to 1700 AD [I assume you mean 1700 BCE], where the original stewards of what God said to Moses (Hebrew people), stated that four other writers who are unknown, wrote the five books.”
OK. You’ve got your data points, and you’ve arranged them to support your conclusion. Not much more to say.
“It is clear today that this is simply an attempt to impugn the texts that God gave Moses, and cause people to doubt all of the Bible and what God said. This has been the tactic of satan from the beginning: “did God really say?””
Seems to me that the serpent (no, not Satan) is the Prometheus of the Garden of Eden story. At great personal expense, he gave moral knowledge to humans. It’s hard to see how that could be a bad thing.
As for Satan, Job 1 makes clear that he’s on God’s payroll. (Haven’t we discussed this before?)
“There is no evidence that the JEDP hypothesis is true. It only exists in the opinions of those who refuse to accept that God spoke only to Moses, and he wrote these texts.”
Hypothesis 1 is that the Pentateuch was written only by Moses, even (presumably) Deut. 34:5, where Moses dies. Hypothesis 2 is JEDP, where doublet stories are disentangled. This undoes many contradictions, like the different sequence of creation in Gen. 1 and 2. Examples of the two creation accounts from P and J:
“There are no second 10 commandments, only a restating of the commandments that were on the original tablets that Moses broke after he came down from the mountain and found the Israelites had already abandoned God.
Exodus 34:1 “Then the LORD told Moses, “Chisel out two stone tablets like the first ones. I will write on them the same words that were on the tablets you smashed.””
Precisely! God assures Moses that they will be the same, but just read Ex. 34—completely different!
“You see these things from the place of an unbeliever. God makes it clear, as did Jesus, that He does not permit those who are militant against Him and His Word, from understanding fully, the texts of the Bible.”
There are mystery religions like Gnosticism and Mithraism, and Christianity isn’t one of them. Or is it?
“First He requires that you admit you are a sinner, in need of His salvation, then come to Him with a desire to have your sins removed from your record. Upon these sincere events, God gives you the gift of the Holy Spirit, who enables your to understand the depth of His Word.”
Nope—I’m already saved. See Rom. 5:18-19. No prerequisites needed (except the sacrifice of Jesus, and that’s already happened).
“God does not regret, He does not change, but in order that we might understand these unchanging attributes of God, He often expresses Himself in human terms that we can understand. God is Spirit and He does not have a human form, yet He describes Himself as having hands, eyes, ears, as well as wings, feathers and other descriptions. This does not indicated that God has these bodily parts, but He describes Himself in these ways so that we can understand as humans who He is.”
How can he not have a human form, and yet we were created in his image? The naturalistic explanation—that beliefs evolved over time, from God as human-like to God being spirit—neatly explains things without having to resort to the supernatural.
“These are anthropomorphic language God uses to describe Himself, so we might understand Him.”
But if the Bible says that God is spirit, where’s the problem? The Bible assumes that people can understand that God is a spirit, so then no need for the false claims that God walked in the Garden, God visited Abram with 2 angels, God regretted, God had to send spies to Sodom to get intel, we’re created in God’s image, and so on.
“God feels emotion as we do because we were created like Him. When God sees us suffering because of sin, He feels emotion, as a human Father feels when his son or daughter makes poor decisions and ruins their life. This expression is placed in Genesis so that we can understand that God is a person, though He is also eternal and exists as Spirit.”
God saw everything, from start to finish, when he created the world. We feel compassion when we see someone hurting, but it doesn’t work that way for God. He’s seen and felt the consequences of all the calamities of my life. When they hit me, I feel regret because they’re new. Looking *back* in time is different. It seems odd to imagine God feeling anything like that when he sees this, when he’s known about it since the beginning.
“God saw that the choice Adam had made to embrace evil instead of the Good God wanted for him, and this evil spread to all people after Adam”
And yet Adam didn’t understand evil/sin before eating the apple. Why charge him with a crime? And if you want to blame his actions, put the blame on his Maker. And how could Adam’s actions affect others? I didn’t eat the apple; I didn’t inherit Adam’s sin.
*Now* you could complain that people choose bad options, but don’t complain about the immoral actions of someone who didn’t understand morality.
“The world and all its evil is a creation of man, because of our choices. Everything that God made was good. When we find evil on earth, God did not create this, we did.”
Did Adam do evil? Did God create Adam? Do the math.
“The cosmology of Genesis is the truth as described by God who created the universe; the cosmology of all other accounts is an attempt by transient men on earth to explain what they see and understand regarding creation.”
So you believe that there’s water above the dome of the sky and that water “burst from the deep” during the Flood? And that any science (like a 4.6 billion-year-old earth) that contradicts the Bible is false?
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There are no records in the history of the Jewish or Hebrew people, prior to 1700 AD, where multiple writers are asserted for the Pentateuch.
This false assertion of the JEDP theory, began in the 1700’s by atheist’s who wanted to find a way to impeach the foundation of the entire Bible, the first five books written by Moses.
If there really are a J,E,D, and P authors, who are they? The fact that no one knows who they are, nor can we find anywhere in history that they wrote anything, is very telling, that they never existed.
Simply read the Bible the way it is written; Moses is the only author asserted throughout the Bible, for the first five books.
It is a fundamental principle that the serpent is satan speaking his lies to Eve, who is deceived by his assertion: “Did God really say…” and “You will not die…”
I am repeating what I have told you many time, in many answers to you for the same question:
1. Genesis was not originally written with chapters.
2. In the chapter we now designate as Genesis 1, we find an outline by God for creation.
3. In the text we now designate as Genesis 2, God fills in the details of the outline He first gave us.
4. There are not two creations, there are not two gods, there are not two writers.
5. In order to arrive at this conclusion, you had to get this idea from those who assert the JEDP hypothesis, which cannot be proven.
You see them as different because you want to impose two writers (JEDP). Those of us who read the texts with the understanding that there is only Moses writing Deuteronomy, which means, “a second telling,” or “a reminder…” we see additional details of the same event, just as we see the Synoptic Gospels written by three independent writers, with different details of the same event, all possible at the same time.
I have known you for many years, Bob. You and I understand that you are not a believer, and you are not saved. Unless you are now proclaiming faith in Jesus by your repentance from sin, and abandonment of all theses foolish arguments, thenn no, you are not saved.
God, in His eternal existence for eternity, has always been a Spirit. He has, however, taken the form of a human being on many occasions, seen throughout the Old Testament. The most vivid was when He came as a man, described as Jesus, in the New Testament.
The text of Genesis says that everything God created is Good.
The condition of this present world, since Adam brought sin into the lives of human beings, has been filled with many things which are very bad.
Since God only creates what is Good, and the world has attributes that are bad, God did not create these things, humans and satan are their source.
The atmosphere above earth before He made the earth ready for man in six days, was a water vapor canopy that covered the whole earth. All the land on earth was also covered with water.
In the six days described by Genesis 1:3-31, God removed the water vapor canopy above the earth so that the land he brought out of the water, could have the light from the Sun that already existed. The seeds already on earth began to sprout once the light was seen from the Sun, and there was land to grow.
It’s all in Genesis 1:3’31, read it just as it is written.
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
When was that beginning? We don’t know, God doesn’t tell us. Scientist say the Cosmological evidence of the universe make it 13.799 billion years old. This does not conflict with what God said: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
The earth was the product of the creation of the universe, resulting about 4.56 billion years ago. God made it ready for us in six literal 24 hour days.
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