"Hogwash" -- nice, informed, intelligent response, Craig. I have noticed something about your responses...somehow we are supposed to take your word for things. Now, I don't mind doing that with God, but I do prefer when a human being can back up his statements with some kind of real facts and/or research. Silly of me, I suppose, but when you spend so much time disagreeing with what the Bible 'seems' to mean, it might be the better part of wisdom to explain, at least, why. "Hogwash" and accusations about the work of others doesn't cut it.
One of the things that IS 'hogwash' is the day-age theory. It requires that there would have been fruiting trees an eon before the sun and a couple of eons before insects. And perhaps that there were birds before any land animals -- by another eon or so... It order to get around that, you have to start squishing even more of Genesis around to fit with preconceived long age/evolutionary ideas.
The gap theory is no better.
First of all, the word for 'heavens' in Genesis 1 is shamayim, which means, essentially, 'high, lifted up, lofty.' The word for 'earth' means 'that which is firm'. In other words, Genesis 1 can read "In the beginning, God created from nothing (bara), that which is lofty and lifted up and that which is firm." -- or space and mass. The lovely thing about the words God chose to tell us about creation is that they not only are correct and fit the traditional 'heavens and earth' choice of translator's words, but that they also keep right up with what is known by physics -- that we live in a time/space/mass continuum.
The second verse simply takes one part of the first -- the eres -- and explains a little more fully. Whether it was the earth itself, or all newly created mass, it was without form -- had no intrinsic organization or shape at the very first. This fits exactly with what God claims twelve times in the Bible -- that He stretched (completed past tense, not continuing...) out the heavens. That stretching would have caused enormous turbulence in the fabric of space, and the resulting swirling galaxies are testimony to that. You can do the same thing by putting your hands together in a tub of water and pulling them apart rapidly. Whirlpools are formed, continue for awhile, and then die out.
Take a little colored jello (easy to see that way) and put some in a bowl of cold water (so it won't dissolve too fast) and mix it all up fast with a spoon for a couple of seconds. Then pull the spoon out and watch. You will see a galaxy form, with the majority of the crystals in the middle and, for a short time, a series of 'spiral arms' swirling around it.
It didn't take billions of years for God, either...
But back to the gap idea -- the Hebrew itself does not allow for it. The structure of verses one and two are common and we still use that technique today. One easy way to picture it is to remember the opening scenes of The Sound of Music and the magnificent camera sweep of the Austrian Alps. Then the camera narrows its focus to one young lady walking through the hills there, and the story begins.
You couldn't have a better picture of what God is doing in Genesis 1:1-1:2.
The gap theory also runs into another problem. Light is not commanded to come forth, or show up, until verse 3. That means that some entire billions of years -- if the gap theory is being argued -- there was a universe functioning with no light at all.
Now, a photon of light is emitted when an electron, after being forced out of its position relative to the nucleus, snaps back into that position, releasing whatever energy caused it to move out in the first place.
So if there was no light for billions of years, you have also just claimed there was no atomic motion, or at least that there was nothing to disturb any electron in the cosmos for that time.
But when we look at verse 2 of Genesis 1, we see something interesting. The word for "deep", which is what there was darkness over, is "t'hom." It means a surging mass, as of water. Thus, we have a great deal of motion! The Holy Spirit is 'hovering' or 'brooding' over this. The verb used there is rachaph, a primary root meaning to flutter, move, shake, or vibrate.
Again, movement.
It is interesting that the very next sentence after these two indications of massive movement, the Lord says "Let there be light." Not "let light shine upon the darkened earth,", but "Let there BE light." "Let light exist."
And there were Job's 'morning stars' -- the population II stars which we find in the middle and 'halo' of galaxies, which are recognized by the red color of the red giants in their midst.
Both the day/age and gap ideas have to contradict all of that and squish new and additional meanings into a clear reading, no matter what language the reading is in.
And Brother David (Blackbird) brings up the classic and best argument: the days are numbered ordinally and marked by evening and morning -- neither of which would happen in a day/age theory and the first day of which is totally massacred in the gap theory.
In other words, there was some actual study and a tiny bit of knowledge behind my 'hogwash.'
Is there behind yours?
You state Genesis is full of spiritual truth. Since when does God couch spiritual truth in myth, lies, distortions, etc? He uses real history, real people, real physical truth to demonstrate spiritual truths. That is what Jesus did in the Parables -- he used what the people knew -- harvests, weeds, pearls, money, trees -- to demonstrate spiritual truths.
Romans 1 says a good portion of truth about God is in the creation itself so that no man has an excuse.
You will also find that when an allegory or poetic license is being used, the Bible is very clear about that -- especially in the Greek and Hebrew -- as the very grammatical form itself changes.
Genesis, however, presents itself as eyewitness history, complete with the various authors signing off on their tablets, exact conversations, exact actions, etc. To allegorize or mythologize it is to refuse it as it presents itself.
What other piece of ancient literature do people do that to?
