(1) In the
beginning God created
the
heavens and the earth.
(2) Now the
earth was formless
and empty,
darkness was over
the surface of
the deep, and
the Spirit of
God was hovering
over the
waters.
Genesis 1:1-2,
NIV
There has been great controversy among Christians and some scientists
regarding the first two verses of the Bible.
There are a variety of interpretations of Genesis 1 that suggest there
is a gap of time between verses 1 and 2 that is not explicitly
mentioned. This general idea is known as the Gap Theory, though
there is not just one “Gap Theory” but a number of similar
theories. The primary motivation for putting forward this view
both historically and today is to provide a means to view Genesis that
allows for the Earth (and the universe) to be very old. There are
also some who argue for a gap between 1:1 and 1:2 for theological
reasons.
The first individual to teach about the idea of a gap between 1:1 and
1:2 was apparently a Scottish theologian named Thomas Chalmers (1780 -
1847). There were many authors who wrote about gap theories in
the 1800's, most notably G. H. Pember. Arthur C. Custance is also
known for his book, Without Form and Void, published in 1970. It
is important to note that the Gap Theory (or theories) were not put
forward until after geologists began to say the Earth was very old in
the 1800's. Geologists were setting aside the concept of a global
worldwide Flood and explaining rocks and fossils in terms of slow
effects over long periods of time. The fossil evidence was being
explained by geologists in the context of biological evolution.
Charles Darwin’s book, The Origin of Species was published in 1859,
which was after geologists had begun to reject the historicity of
a Biblical chronology that made the Earth only thousands of years in
age. Gap Theories became widely known partly through the Scofield
Reference Bible (1909) and Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible
(1961). Both of these Bibles have been widely used among
Christians.
Gap Theories have certain common aspects, as well as variations on some
details. Among the ideas common to Gap Theories are 1) that the
days of creation in Genesis 1 are literal 24-hour days, 2) belief in a
very old age for Earth (though often not specified), 3) belief that
much of Earth’s rock strata and fossils formed in a time gap between
Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, 4) belief that there was life on Earth prior to
the week of Genesis 1 that was judged by God in a judgement associated
with Satan being thrown out of heaven to the Earth. Some “Gap
Theory”- like views accept biological evolution and some do not.
Some may accept the biological evolution of any life except
mankind. Those holding to a Gap Theory usually do not take Noah’s
Flood to be worldwide, but see it as local in scope.
For instance, one view known as the Recreation view argues for an
ancient world prior to Genesis 1 that was judged and left totally
without life when Satan was thrown out of heaven. This view says
that Satan’s fall to Earth was prior to the creation week of Genesis
1. Then after some unknown amount of time, God recreated the
Earth and life on it in six literal days. This is generally the
same as the Gap Theory except that in the Recreation view, very little
is said about geology and biological evolution. Individuals with
this view do not necessarily try to harmonize Genesis with science and
they may not accept evolution, they just seem to avoid the scientific
implications. Their arguments for this view center around their
theology of Lucifer/Satan.
The Text of
Genesis
There are several issues about specific terms in Genesis that
frequently come up in debating the Gap Theory. First of these is
the word translated “was” in verse 2. This term is indeed
sometimes translated “became.” But the question is, in the
context of Genesis 1, could it be translated “became?” Richard
Niessen, in his article “Is the Gap Theory a Biblical Option?” points
out that in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament)
258 out of 264 occurrences of this word are translated was.
(Niessen’s article can be downloaded from the download page on
creationanswers.net.)
Some other passages with similar grammar include Jonah 3:3, Exodus 1:5,
and Judges 9:51. In all these cases, using the word became does
not make sense. Also, according to Niessen, if a change of
condition were intended, in Hebrew there would be a prefix, “le” which
would be translated as “into” in English. This prefix is missing
in Genesis 1:2. What this means is that the Hebrew implies Earth
had not been in some other condition and then changed into being
“without form and void.” Earth was initially created “without
form and void.” This was before it was completed.
Furthermore, if “was” should really be “became” in Genesis 1:2, then a
number of other passages have to be changed also to agree with
it! This would include Genesis 2:2 (create would become recreate)
and Exodus 20:11 (made would become remade), for example.
Reinterpreting this Hebrew word as “became” has drawn significant
criticism from Bible scholars, even from some who do not take Genesis 1
literally.
A second issue related to the terms in these verses is the “waw” (pronounced like "vav" with a soft a) in
Hebrew that is translated as “and” or sometimes “now” at the beginning
of the sentence of verse 2. Thus the NIV has this verse as “Now
the earth was . . . .” The issue here is how are verses 1 and 2
to be connected or related to each other, from the grammar and use of
the “waw.” The sources I have indicate the “waw” means
there is a direct chronological relationship between the events that
are described. So, everything in 1:1-5, or at least 2-5, took
place on the very first day of existence. It seems to be incorrect to take verse 1 as a summary of the creation week. Verse 1 is the first creative action, then the "waw" beginning verse 2 pauses the sequence of events to give more explanatory detail on what happened. The "waw", like "Now" in the NIV translation, is signaling a pause in a sequence of events, marked out by the days of creation. But an implied
gap of time between verses 1 and 2 does not seem to be
possible grammatically. This means that when it says in verse 1, "God created the heavens and the earth" there are a number of possibilities for what this may have included. I suspect time, space, matter, and energy were all created or initiated then. [Note: To explore this in more
detail, I would recommend the book "Unformed and Unfilled" by Weston
Fields, available from Answers in Genesis. Fields does a careful analysis of the Hebrew grammar regarding the kind of "waw" that begins verse 2.]
A third issue from the first two verses is regarding the Hebrew terms
that can be translated as “make,” “made,” “create,” etc. There
are three such terms in Hebrew that are used in Genesis. These
can be transliterated into English as “bara,” “asah,” and
“yatzar.” Exodus 20:11 is very explicit that everything in the
heavens, the Earth, and the sea were all created in six days.
Apparently, in order to deal with Exodus 20:11 without contradicting
Genesis 1, Gap Theorists say that the term “bara” is always used to
refer to God creating something that had no prior existence but that
“asah” refers to God forming prior existing materials into something
new. Exodus 20:11 uses “asah” but both “asah” and “bara” are used
in Genesis 1.
There does not seem to be a real distinction in the meaning of these two
words, at least in the creation account. They are used
synonymously. For example in Genesis 1:21 it uses bara regarding
God creating the great sea creatures but it uses asah in 1:25 to refer
to God making the beasts of the Earth. Genesis 1:26 and 1:27 both
refer to God making or creating man but 26 uses asah and 27 uses
bara. In Isaiah 41:20 bara and asah are found used in synonymous parallelism. Other passages could be sited as
well. It is therefore valid to take asah and bara as synonymous
in Genesis 1. They do not support the Gap concept because Exodus
20:11 has an explicit reference to God creating everything in six days,
supporting a literal view of Genesis 1.
A fourth issue regarding the terms in Genesis 1:1-2 has to do with the
words rendered “formless and void”, or “formless and empty” by modern
translations. In Hebrew, these terms are transliterated “tohu
vabohu.” Isaiah 34:11 and Jeremiah 4:23 speak of tohu and bohu as
resulting from God’s judgement of sin. Gap Theorists argue that
because that is how these terms are used in Isaiah and Jeremiah, that
Genesis 1:2 should be taken as a result of a judgement also. It
is also argued that God would not create the Earth “formless and void,”
so it must have become that way as a result of judgement. But, in
Genesis 1:2 there is no mention of judgement and even if it were, it
does not indicate who is being judged. All of that is read into
the text by the assumption of the gap and God judging the first Earth
(sometimes called the Pre-Adamite world).
The context of Genesis 1 is quite different from Isaiah 34 and Jeremiah
4. Doesn’t God have the right to create the Earth in stages over
a period of days if he wants to? Is there something wrong with
God making the Earth so it was uninhabitable, incomplete, and
uninhabited on the first day? The Earth was completed in a
logical fashion in the first three days of the creation week and then
it was filled with living creatures and humans during the fifth and
sixth days. Just as a potter starts with an “unformed” lump of
clay, God started with the Earth incomplete and unformed. There
was no hint of judgement or evil in how God created.
Satan in the Gap
The Gap Theory proposes that long before the creation week described in
Genesis 1, there was another Earth that was populated with the various
prehistoric animals that we find in fossils. Some would say that
there were prehistoric hominids (partly ape, partly men) and humans as
well. On this point there is some variety of opinion. Some
would say that there were “soul-less men” that had no eternal
soul. This world that would have existed long ago but was
destroyed is often called the Pre-Adamite world because it was long
before Adam was created. For some reason, there is no description
of this Pre-Adamite world in the Bible. However, it is said that
Genesis 1:1 refers to this prior world. Gap Theorists then say
that sometime in the long period between verses 1 and 2, Lucifer (now
called Satan) rebelled against God and was expelled from heaven, taking
some of the angels with him, who became known as demons. Somehow
the Earth was judged when Satan was thrown out of heaven and this left
the Earth covered with water as well as “formless and empty” as verse 2
says. This meant that ALL life on the first Earth was gone and
there was much thick rock strata and an abundance of fossils left from
organisms that perished in the judgement against Satan. This
judgement is sometimes called “Lucifer’s flood.”
Note that Christian scholars have no consensus on when the fall of
Satan took place, so having Satan’s fall prior to the creation week is
not the only possibility. By this scenario, Satan would have been
on the Earth before any of the events of the creation week in Genesis
1. Gap Theorists argue for this entire scenario regarding Satan’s
fall using Isaiah 14:12-17, Ezekiel 28:1-16, and Revelation
12:7-9. At the end of the time gap, God recreates or reconstructs
the Earth and the life on it in six literal days. Thus the Gap
Theory is sometimes called the “ruin-reconstruction”
theory.
There are several logical problems with the entire scenario
above. First of all, how could God say his creation was all “very
good” in Genesis 1:31 if under the topsoil of the Garden of Eden were
the fossilized remains of many organisms that were buried in the prior
cataclysm? Secondly, why would Earth have been judged for Satan’s
sin when Satan’s rebellion took place in heaven? There is no
indication in the Bible that Satan’s fall had any kind of physical
effects on Earth. Obviously we don’t know much about how Satan’s
fall took place. But the whole idea of “Lucifer’s flood” is very
questionable. Thirdly, the material making up the Earth, and
possibly material making up stars and galaxies, rather than being
created from nothing in the creation week, was merely reformed and
reorganized from the previous "Earth" into our present Earth and universe. This is contrary
to the creation account and contrary to Exodus 20:11. Note that it is possible some materials could have been created in some form on day one that may not have been used to form anything until later in the creation week. But Exodus 20:11 makes it clear that everything in our universe was created within the creation week.
Considering Earth’s geology also leads to difficulties with the Gap
Theory. The Gap Theory is supposed to allow for the geological
evidence for an old Earth and allow for evolution to occur in the gap
period (though some would disagree with this aspect). But if
there was a judgement so severe as Lucifer’s flood, it would surely and
quickly wipe out all evidence for the long geologic ages prior to
Genesis 1. It would have been even more severe a judgement than
Noah’s Flood! We have about three full chapters in Genesis on
Noah’s Flood, but no description of Lucifer’s flood (or whatever this proposed
early judgement was).
Also, if Lucifer’s flood was so severe, then what was Noah’s
Flood? Genesis chapters 6-8 are extremely explicit over and over
about Noah’s Flood being a global Flood. Yet, if Noah’s Flood was
global, it would destroy evidence of Lucifer’s flood and the
Pre-Adamite world. And if Lucifer’s flood explains the rocks and
fossils, there’s not much left for Noah’s Flood to explain. Or,
perhaps we should see evidence of two global floods in the rock
record! This is all too hard to accept. This is why most
Gap Theorists see Noah’s Flood as a local or regional event, not a
global one. Though many have tried to use the Gap Theory to
accommodate modern historical geology, it would not really satisfy a
geologist anyway. Modern Geology would not accept any global
flood, whether Lucifer’s or Noah’s. Also, evolution is believed
to tie all life together over long ages of time, from the first
single-celled life form to man.
The Gap Theory, depending on how it deals with human beings in the first
Earth, could also seriously undermine the basis for Jesus Christ’s
death. If there were a race of “Pre-Adamite men” then were they
judged for Satan’s sin? Also, the judgement of this prior race
would mean there was human death before Adam’s sin.
This contradicts I Corinthians 15 and Genesis 3 about how physical
death and sin relate. There cannot be human physical death prior
to the sin of Adam and Eve. As to whether there may have been
death of animals prior to sin, that is not clear from Scripture. It is possible there would have been no death of animals prior to sin.
But sin clearly brought suffering to the living world, and apparently even affected the
universe as a whole. Physical death did not come about in the
human race because of the competition and death of animals as evolution
says. Furthermore, animals did not begin to kill each other to
eat until after the sin of Adam and Eve. Adam was the first man
according to I Corinthians 15:45, and the origin of the first man has
no connection with the origin of other living things. If the Gap
Theory were true much of the logic in I Corinthians 15 would make no
sense about the basis for Christ’s death and
resurrection.
It is important not to allow ideas from science to determine how we
interpret Scripture. Many Christians who hold to a high view of
the authority and inerrancy of Scripture inadvertently allow their view
of the Bible’s authority to slip when it comes to the early chapters of
Genesis. I cannot believe that the Hebrews of Moses’ time would
have ever thought of the Gap Theory or anything like it. If they
would not have understood Genesis 1 this way, then how can we? We
all need to evaluate what we hear in the light of all that Scripture
says. I think we can take Genesis chapter one as a
straightforward record of the events of creation. If that
conflicts with evolutionary science, so be it.
Wayne Spencer
Taken from the March-April 2004 issue of the Creation Answers newsletter.
Updated 10/9/2014