Is the "Gap Theory" compatible with Biblical inerrancy? -- Pervy vs. DavidfromTexas

[KnightWhoSaysNi]

This thread has been set up for a formal debate between Pervy and DavidfromTexas who will debate the following resolution:

“Resolved: the 'Gap Theory' of creation is not compatible with a Biblical inerrantist hermeneutic.”

Pervy will affirm and DavidfromTexas will oppose. The debate will have 4 rounds and Pervy will go first, per the parameters ( http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showpost.php?p=3269464&postcount=16). The fourth round will consist of brief concurrent statements.

A Peanut Gallery (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?p=3276529#post3276529) is set up in the Biblical Criticism & History forum for the rest of us to comment on the debate.

Enjoy the debate!

- NS, FD Moderator

[Dean Anderson]

Introduction

I would like to start by thanking my opponent for agreeing to this debate, and by thanking IIDB for hosting it.

The title of this debate is Resolved: The "Gap Theory" of Creation is not compatible with an Inerrantist hermeneutic.

I am arguing the affirmative - that is, I am arguing that gap theory is incompatible with an inerrantist hermeneutic. My opponent will be arguing the contrary - that is, he is arguing that the two are compatible.

Before we can get into detailed arguments for or against the compatibility of gap theory and inerrancy, there are two fundamental things that need to be clarified and agreed upon.

1) What is the "Gap Theory"?

2) What is meant by an "Inerrantist hermeneutic"?

Gap Theory

When it comes to the Bible, there are five1 main theological theories about how to interpret what it says about the age of the Earth and the timing of its creation. Two of these are types fall into the category of gap theory. These five theories are:

a) "Young Earth Literalism" The Old Testament is literally correct, and the Earth was created in six 24-hour days about 6,000 years ago.

b) "Metaphor" The Old Testament should not be taken as literal history, but is instead a set of metaphorical stories designed to teach us. As such, it tells us nothing about the age of the Earth.

These first two interpretations of the Bible are by far the most common ones amongst modern Christians. They are also the simplest of the interpretations, either accepting or rejecting a literal reading wholesale without needing to argue any special cases or special contexts.

c) "Day-Age Creationism" The Old Testament is correct, but the English translation of the Hebrew yom2 as "day" throughout Genesis 1 is incorrect and the correct interpretation should be "age". Therefore the Earth is 6,000 years plus 6 "ages" old. Given that an "age" is an indeterminate period of time3, this tells us nothing about the age of the Earth.

Day-Age Creationism is a less common interpretation that the previous two, and is the main alternative to gap theory for people who hold both an inerrantist view and a view that the Earth is older than a straight reading of the Bible would indicate.

d) "Two Perspectives" The Old Testament is historically correct, and the Earth was created in six literal 24-hour days as detailed in Genesis 1. However, there is a gap of unspecified length between this 6-day creation and the creation of Adam and Eve as detailed in Genesis 2-3.

e) "Ruin-Reconstruction" The Old Testament is historically correct. However, there is a gap of unspecified length between the first one (or two) verses of Genesis 1 and the rest of Genesis 1. Therefore, the six literal 24-hour days described in Genesis 1 do not refer to the initial creation of the Earth (and universe) but refer to a remodelling of the Earth 6,000 years ago. Often, the angelic war and Satan’s fall are mentioned by gap theorists as being the possible reason that the Earth required remodelling.

These last two are the two types of "Gap Theory", and are therefore the two theories that this debate will focus on.

Inerrantist Hermeneutic

Rather than quibble with an individual definition of what an inerrantist hermeneutic is, I am going to defer to the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy since this is the standard for most American churches that hold inerrant doctrines. The summary of the Chicago Statement4 is as follows (my own emphasis):

1. God, who is Himself Truth and speaks truth only, has inspired Holy Scripture in order thereby to reveal Himself to lost mankind through Jesus Christ as Creator and Lord, Redeemer and Judge. Holy Scripture is God's witness to Himself.
2. Holy Scripture, being God's own Word, written by men prepared and superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all matters upon which it touches: It is to be believed, as God's instruction, in all that it affirms; obeyed, as God's command, in all that it requires; embraced, as God's pledge, in all that it promises.
3. The Holy Spirit, Scripture's divine Author, both authenticates it to us by His inward witness and opens our minds to understand its meaning.
4. Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God's acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God's saving grace in individual lives.
5. The authority of Scripture is inescapably impaired if this total divine inerrancy is in any way limited of disregarded, or made relative to a view of truth contrary to the Bible's own; and such lapses bring serious loss to both the individual and the Church.
As can be seen from the emphasised clauses, inerrancy of this sort requires historically accurate truth, not simply metaphorical theological truth. In other words, when the Bible says that Adam ate from a fruit that Eve gave him, it is telling a historical truth that there was a physical person called Adam and he did physically eat from a fruit. It is not, for example, merely stating a metaphorical truth about the nature of temptation without the implication that the events described actually happened.

Similarly, when the Bible says that God created fruit bearing trees before he created the sun and moon, it means that he physically created fruit bearing trees before he created the sun and moon (whether it was the "day" before or the "age" before depending on how you want to translate yom).

One further clarification of inerrancy is needed. The Bible is only considered inerrant in the original manuscripts. Naturally, since we do not have any of the original manuscripts, this poses something of a problem. Therefore, for the sake of argument, I will be assuming that the ancient texts we do have (the Septuagint, the Masoretic Text and the Dead Sea Scrolls) are likely to be closer to the original manuscripts than modern English translations, due to both their age and the fact that they have been through fewer (if any) translations. For the purposes of this debate, I will assume that these ancient texts are the same as the inerrant original autographs in all cases where they are in concordance with each other, and only in cases where they differ from each other shall I assume that they also differ from the original autographs.

The Incompatibility of Gap Theory and Inerrancy

Now we have got the definitions and assumptions out of the way, we get to my actual argument - that Gap Theory is incompatible with an inerrant reading of the Bible. In this initial round, I will be ignoring the "Two Perspectives" version gap theory, and concentrating instead on the "Ruin-Restoration" version of gap theory. This is partly because this second version is the more sophisticated version of the theory, and partly because it is the version that my opponent has previously claimed is close to his own views.

My main arguments in support of this incompatibility are as follows:

1) The wording of the creation account itself
2) Other Biblical references to the creation of the world

The Wording of the Creation Account

The Biblical account of the creation of the world and everything in it is found in the first two chapters of Genesis. A common English translation (the one used by the King James Bible) of the first chapter is as follows:


Gen 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Gen 1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
Gen 1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
Gen 1:4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
Gen 1:5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
Gen 1:6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
Gen 1:7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
Gen 1:8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
Gen 1:9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
Gen 1:10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
Gen 1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
Gen 1:12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
Gen 1:13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
Gen 1:14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
Gen 1:15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
Gen 1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
Gen 1:17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
Gen 1:18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
Gen 1:19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
Gen 1:20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
Gen 1:21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
Gen 1:22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
Gen 1:23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
Gen 1:24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
Gen 1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
Gen 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
Gen 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Gen 1:28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
Gen 1:29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
Gen 1:30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
Gen 1:31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
Gen 2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
Gen 2:2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
Gen 2:3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

As can be seen, on a plain reading of the English, this appears to say that from when God started creating the Earth to when he had finished took a total of six consecutive days - normal days with mornings and evenings. Needless to say, the Ruin-Reconstruction theory says that this plain reading is a misinterpretation - based on inaccurate translation of the Hebrew and that when translated and interpreted properly, the first two verses should be as follows (my emphasis):

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. [Gap of thousands or millions or even billions of years goes here] The earth became ruined, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

By this interpretation, God creates the Earth, in an unspecified time frame, and then - an unspecified amount of time later - the Earth is ruined. Then God reconstructs the Earth in six days.

So, does the Hebrew support this translation?

Unfortunately for Gap Theorists, it doesn’t.

Firstly, let’s look at the start of verse 2 where the alleged gap is. When doing so, we should remember that the splitting of the text into verses is a relatively modern phenomenon - and that the original texts have no such divisions.

Verse 2, starts with the Hebrew waw, which is a general purpose conjunction that can be translated into English as "and", "but", "then" and so on. The particular waw in Genesis 2:1 is what is called the "Disjunctive Waw" or "Copulative Waw". This Hebrew grammatical structure (where a waw precedes a non-verb word) is rather specific in meaning. The best English equivalent is punctuation rather than a word, and is the opening of parentheses. Another acceptable translation would be the English phrase "to wit".5

This usage is distinct from the other uses of waw to join phrases or clauses in the Genesis 1 account between the descriptions of what happens on each day. These waws are "Consecutive Waws" - where the closest English meaning is "and" or "and then" and - as the name "Consecutive Waw" implies - the word is used to separate consecutive events.

Therefore, the meaning of the join between verses 1 and 2 is best written by having the first part of verse 2 as a parenthetical adjunct to verse 1.

The next bone of contention is the word hayetah in verse 2. All English translations of the Bible that I have seen translate this word as "was" - as in "the Earth was...". Gap theorists claim that the proper translation for this word should be "became", as shown above.

Again, this is grammatically impossible. The verb is used in the "qual", third person, perfect tense in this verse. In every other instance of the word being used in this tense in the Old Testament (and there are several hundred of them) the proper translation is the English "was" - indicating a static past tense state of being.

The word is occasionally used (a total of six times) to show a change of state of being (translated as "became") in other contexts, for example in Genesis 19:26 where Lot’s wife becomes a pillar of salt, but in each of these cases there is a specific one-thing-changing-into-something-else context to support this usage.

Finally, there are the words tohu and bohu. These are interpreted by gap theorists to have a perjorative meaning indicating that the world was corrupted (by Satan’s fall) or cursed (by God in reaction to Satan’s fall). Whilst there are two occasions where these words are used in such a perjorative manner (e.g. in Isaiah 34:11), the vast majority of their usage merely indicates desert like conditions with no perjorative meaning attached.

Putting this together, we see that the best translation of Genesis 1:1-2 is as follows:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth (and the earth was desolate, and empty; and darkness was upon the face of the deep). And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

As you can see, there is simply no place for a gap of any significant time between verses 1 and 2 and there is simply no indication that the events of verses 3 onwards should be taken as a recreation of a ruined Earth rather than as a description of the events taking place during the original creation talked about in verse 1.

Other Biblical Reference

As well as the wording of the Genesis 1 creation account not being compatible with gap theory, the theory also conflicts with what is said elsewhere in the Bible.

The most prominent of these conflicts is with the version of the 10 commandments in Exodus 20:9-11, which says...


Exo 20:9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
Exo 20:10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
Exo 20:11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

There is no need to pay special attention to the Hebrew here. It is quite plain and unambiguous. The reason for keeping Sabbath is because God made heaven and earth in six days. Not because God made heaven and earth in an indeterminate amount of time and then spent six days repairing it.

This emphasis is repeated in Exodus 31:


Exo 31:14 Ye shall keep the sabbath therefore; for it is holy unto you: every one that defileth it shall surely be put to death: for whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people.
Exo 31:15 Six days may work be done; but in the seventh is the sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD: whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.
Exo 31:16 Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant.
Exo 31:17 It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.

I will leave other Biblical references until a later round, since they rely on the specific theological reasoning for Gap Theory that its proponent gives forth.

Summary

In this first round, I have shown what I mean by "Gap Theory" and what I mean by an "Inerrantist Hermeneutic".

I have shown that when the Hebrew of Genesis 1 is examined, there is no reason to come to a conclusion that the author intends us to understand that there should be a gap in time between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2 - and indeed the author appears to have gone out of his way to distinguish this from the verses later in the chapter where a gap (of a day) is indicated.

I have also shown (one example of) how gap theory contradicts other places in the Bible.

To sum up, I have demonstrated that there is no textual reason for an inerrantist to embrace (or even accept) gap theory.

If my opponent wishes to argue for a gap theory on theological grounds - rather than purely textual ones - he is welcome to do so. I have left any theological arguments out of this round until I know what theology I am arguing against (since I don’t want to be accused of arguing against a strawman version of my opponent’s theology).


1 Obviously, there is also the theory that the Bible is simply completely wrong, but this debate is about what the Bible says, not whether it is right or not.

2 Throughout this debate I will be using Latin Alphabet transliterations of the Hebrew rather than including Hebrew characters themselves, in order to minimise issues with Unicode Hebrew characters not always being displayed properly.

3 A common interpretation cites Psalm 90:4 and/or 2-Peter 3:8 (which both say that to God, a thousand years is like a single day) in order to argue that a yom should be interpreted as a thousand year span and that the Earth is therefore 12,000 years old (6,000 years of recorded history plus 6 x 1,000 year periods.

4 The full text of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy can be found here (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Chicago_Statement_on_Biblical_Inerrancy).

5 See, for example: F. Brown, S.R. Driver, and C.A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford.

[DavidfromTexas]

Introduction

I would like to thank Pervy for challenging me to this debate, and also the IIDB for hosting this opportunity to explore this fascinating topic.


Why are we debating the gap?

In the dinosaur thread, a misconception developed that I am a YEC (young earth creationist). My arguments questioning the scientific conclusions for the ages of the dinosaur bones led many to presume that my beliefs must be YEC. When I tried to reassure others that I am not a YEC, many had their doubts and repeatedly posted questions trying to “pin me down” to giving an age of the earth.

My response was to reveal some of my personal beliefs regarding the age of the earth. Those who hold to gap theology, myself included, believe that the earth was created in the dateless past… certainly older than 6000 years. I posted a link giving a fairly good description of “gap” theology. Many who looked at the link dismissed it saying that the “gap” is biblically indefensible. Pervy is one of those persons who has dismissed the gap. Although Pervy presumably no longer believes that the Bible is true, he has taken the difficult position of using a Biblical inerrancy argument against the gap.

A few words regarding my personal experience with the gap… My first exposure to gap theology was when I was a child, although it was not referred to then as the “gap”. Rather, I was informed of the concept of a “pre-Adamite” earth from a book written by Clarence Larkin. The book contains numerous charts reflecting Larkin’s mechanical engineering and drafting skills. Larkin did not cite sources; the preface of the book indicates that his material was the Bible itself “aided by some books that fell into his hands”. I had always wondered what those other books were… Not until the advent of the Internet, was it practical to explore possible sources of Larkin’s ideas. The dinosaur thread compelled me to read some of Larkin’s material again. Some subsequent searches on the Internet revealed an impressive library of materials pertaining to the gap. One of the surprises for me in doing this search was learning that the gap has been in the minds of many for a very long time… A common misconception is that it is the theory developed mainly for the purposes of reconciling the Bible with science. Gap theology predates the scientific revolution by at least 1400 years (probably much longer).

I believe that mankind is young (but no younger than 6000 years). I also believe that the earth came into existence in the dateless past… the approximate age of the earth is not known, nor can it be deduced from the pages of scripture. The age of the earth has not been given to us by Providence… at least not as of yet. Modern science says that the age of the earth is on the order of 4.8 billion years... but science has often been wrong, and will likely be wrong again. Gap theology is consistent with my beliefs. Gap theology is supported in the scriptures, and has been passed down for generations.


What is the Gap?

The two verses in the Bible that will be our main focus is Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. The gap is seen at the beginning of verse 2, specifically with the word “was”, which should be better translated as “had become”. The Hebrew text of both of these verses is quoted below. Hebrew is written from right to left. Verse 1 is on the first line, verse 2 is on the second.

http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h162/davidfromtexas/Gen11-2Hebrew.jpg


The Hebrew of Genesis 1:1-2 is also reproduced below in reverse order (left to right as in English, but the letter order of the Hebrew remains the same). A crude English translation (my own) is also placed below each Hebrew word… Please note the relative positions and order of the nouns, verbs, and articles…

http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h162/davidfromtexas/Gen11-2crudetranslationwithHebrew.jpg


The word order of the sentences is different in verse 1 compared to verse 2. The importance of this will become apparent later. As can be seen from the above, crude translation is not easy to read. In contrast, good translations provide “elaboration” which yield close approximations of the meaning of the original language. One of the best translations of the Bible in the English speaking world has been the KJV… it has been the most recognized for English readers for nearly the past 500 years. Genesis 1:1-2 in the KJV is depicted below…


KJV Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.


Please note that the KJV often has italicized words and phrases. In the example above, the second “was” of verse 2 is in italics. The reason for this is to alert the reader that the word had been inserted by the translators in order to make the reading flow better, and to make the translation more understandable. Italicized words in the KJV are therefore extra-biblical because they indicate that there is no underlying Hebrew word in the original language to which the added word corresponds to.

Comparing the KJV to my crude translation indicates that there are also other words that seem to have been inserted such as articles and prepositions. The reason that those words are not italicized is because there is justification to say that they represent the underlying Hebrew words. For example, the phrase “In the beginning” is a fairly good English representation of the underlying Hebrew word בךאשת ... (re’shiyth).

Theologians who support the gap claim that the first “was” in verse 2 is better translated as “had become”. This is based upon the observation of the word order of the sentence in verse 2. The most common word order of sentences in Hebrew follows the pattern of Conjunction-Verb-Subject-Object as is seen in verse 1. The first phrase of verse 2 has the pattern of Conjunction-Subject-Verb-Object (more common in English). As will be demonstrated later, this less common word order in the Hebrew renders the pluperfect tense of the verb. Therefore, the second verse should read “the earth had become without form and void…” This forms the basis for the gap. The amount of time in the gap between verse 1 and verse 2 is not known, but it could have encompassed large amounts of time in the dateless past.

The following translations, in my opinion, give a better representation of some of the underlying Hebrew words as compared to the KJV translation…

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now, the earth, had become waste and wild, and, darkness, was on the face of the roaring deep,--but, the Spirit of God, was brooding on the face of the waters. (Rotherham)

In the beginning of God's preparing the heavens and the earth -- the earth hath existed waste and void, and darkness on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God fluttering on the face of the waters… (Young’s Literal translation)

The big question, however, is whether the above translations accurately reflect the underlying Hebrew. Answering this question is the crux of this debate. The following is an excerpt of the writings of Arthur Custance which gives reasons as to why the Hebrew verb hayah (to be) in verse 2 is actually the pluperfect tense rather than the perfect tense…

The normal order for a Hebrew sentence is:

Conjunction--Verb--Subject--Object

Because of the comparative simplicity of the verb system, only two tenses are indicated in Hebrew, present and past. It is as though the Hebrews simplified their thoughts by considering a thing as either being done or already completed. All suppositions regarding the future, where man is concerned, are void; it is pointless for a man to say with any certainty that he will be doing something on some future occasion, for he does not know what a day may bring forth. The "future" tense is not represented by a designed form…

…But there were sometimes necessary refinements--such as the pluperfect. In this case, the lack of a distinct tense form was overcome by a change in the order of words. For the most part it appears that the established order of words was departed from under only two circumstances, exclusive of poetic license: the first, when a new subject was introduced, and special emphasis upon this fact was required; and the second, when the pluperfect was to be understood. This matter receives considerable attention in textbooks of grammar and syntax. A. B. Davidson, in his Hebrew Syntax, deals with this question in some detail and shows how the word order may be used to indicate the English pluperfect. (4) He states that this use is most common in dependent (relative or conjunctive) clauses. And having pointed this out, he adds, "It is of great consequence to observe it in translation." He specifically states that when the dependent clause is introduced by and (waw, in Hebrew), the subject usually precedes the verb in such clauses. Illustrations of this will be found in Genesis 20:4: "But Abimelech had not approached...." Other examples are in Genesis 31:19,34; I Samuel 9:15; 25:21; 28:3 (twice); II Samuel 18:18; etc.

As with English, so in Hebrew, there was a poetic license which permitted departure from the correct word order for no other reason than rearrangement for euphony. However, this applies chiefly to the poetry of the Psalms and other Writings; since the Massoretic text of Genesis 1 is not written as poetry, it does not apply to the verse under consideration.
Now, the order of the Hebrew in the second verse is irregular. This was evidently intended to draw attention to one of the above special circumstances. Either the order was changed (1) to put the tense into a pluperfect, or (2) to lay emphasis upon a new subject, or (3) by poetic license. The third alternative cannot apply here.

The second alternative is not likely either, because the introduction of a new subject in such circumstances generally implies the recurrence of the original verb and the word create does not recur in this instance. We have such antitheses as "Moses said this, but the Lord has said that." The verb continues the thought, but the subject is pointedly changed. In this verse it is obviously not an effort to set the subject earth in contradistinction with the former subject God. It must therefore be intended to signify the use of the pluperfect. To apply this rule here means a change in the wording of verse 2 which we shall propose shortly.

http://www.creationdays.dk/Arthur%20C.%20Custance/2.php


Therefore, based upon the word order demonstrated in our crude translation example, the word order for Genesis1:1-2 is as follows

Genesis 1:1 Conjunction - Verb - Subject – Object

Genesis 1:2 Conjunction – Subject – Verb – Object, etc.

Since the order of verse 2 is different than the norm in Hebrew, the pluperfect tense of the verb must be considered. The pluperfect tense would render the Hebrew verb היתה (hayah) as “had become” instead of “was”. This would therefore suggest that there is a gap of time between the first and second verses of the Bible.



Addressing Several of Pervy’s points…


Inerrantist Hermeneutic

Rather than quibble with an individual definition of what an inerrantist hermeneutic is, I am going to defer to the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy since this is the standard for most American churches that hold inerrant doctrines.

I appreciate the above and agree with the Chicago Statement.


Needless to say, the Ruin-Reconstruction theory says that this plain reading is a misinterpretation - based on inaccurate translation of the Hebrew and that when translated and interpreted properly, the first two verses should be as follows (my emphasis):


Disagree. The Ruin-Reconstruction theory can be seen in the “plain reading” regardless of whether it is from a good translation or from the Hebrew itself. In other words, “plain reading” is in the eye of the beholder. I can make a case that the KJV gives a plain reading for the gap… but that is not the focus of this debate.


Firstly, let’s look at the start of verse 2 where the alleged gap is. When doing so, we should remember that the splitting of the text into verses is a relatively modern phenomenon - and that the original texts have no such divisions.

The splitting of the text into chapter-verse divisions of the scriptures is not important to the gap. Gap theology predates such historical divisions. In fact, the verse divisions may have actually contributed to the problem of people NOT seeing the gap.


Verse 2, starts with the Hebrew waw, which is a general purpose conjunction that can be translated into English as "and", "but", "then" and so on. The particular waw in Genesis 2:1 is what is called the "Disjunctive Waw" or "Copulative Waw".

Theologians who support the gap argue that the “general purpose conjunction” waw is disjunctive in Genesis 1:2 as will be explained below…


This Hebrew grammatical structure (where a waw precedes a non-verb word) is rather specific in meaning. The best English equivalent is punctuation rather than a word, and is the opening of parentheses. Another acceptable translation would be the English phrase "to wit".5

The source footnoted above seems to give a different impression and explanation than what Pervy provided above. The citatation for Genesis 1:2 in Brown, Driver, and Briggs is quoted below…

http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h162/davidfromtexas/BDBcitation.jpg

Where in the above does the conjunction waw pertain to “punctuation rather than a word”? Although some of the earliest Masoretic texts may have had punctuation marks in Genesis 1:2, it is important to recognize that the earliest extant Masoretic texts date to about 900 A.D. Gap theology predates the Masoretic texts. Note that the lexicon above states that waw “was not merely copulative… but possessed a demonstrative force…” Nowhere in the above do I get the impression that this verb is expressed as “to wit” in the English. Yes, it can express a parallel idea, but it can also demonstrate opposed ideas as in Genesis 1:2. The lexicon that Pervy cited does not come down either way, and actually seems to lean toward the disjunctive.


This usage is distinct from the other uses of waw to join phrases or clauses in the Genesis 1 account between the descriptions of what happens on each day. These [I]waws are "Consecutive Waws" - where the closest English meaning is "and" or "and then" and - as the name "Consecutive Waw" implies - the word is used to separate consecutive events.

Therefore, the meaning of the join between verses 1 and 2 is best written by having the first part of verse 2 as a parenthetical adjunct to verse 1.

I have never heard of the conjunction waw in Hebrew acting as a “parenthetical adjunct”. A quick search on Google reveals that the Mormons use such an argument in some of their literature. Parentheticals are certainly part of the Genesis narrative, and an argument can be made saying that portions of Genesis 1:2 are parenthetical, but I would argue that the parenthetical is not derived on the basis of the conjunction.

I agree that Hebrew word waw in Genesis 1:2 is distinct from other uses of the waw in the first chapter. However, Pervy has not adequately defined how it is used in verse 2. Pervy has said that it is “distinct” from the “consecutive” (or copulative), and I would agree, but I do not agree that it is used to establish a “parenthetical adjunct” to verse 1. A closer examination reveals that the use of waw in verse 2 is DISJUNCTIVE, meaning that it would be better translated as “but” instead of “and”. This is also based upon observation of translations made in antiquity as will be referenced below. Once again, I quote Custance…

... The conjunctions and and but are not distinguished in Hebrew, and there are good reasons for thinking that but would be a better translation of the first word than and. In fact in Genesis 20:4, already referred to, the waw is logically and correctly rendered but.

This conjunction actually has upward of seventy meanings. It is a particle which discharges in the Hebrew the functions of all the conjunctions, both conjunctive and disjunctive, its sense being determinable in each particular case only by the relation of the context and the practice and genius of the language.

When we look to the most ancient Hebrews themselves, who were well exercised in and conversant with the peculiarities of their native tongue, we find that in this particular instance they all interpreted it by the disjunctive particle but, and none of them by the copulative and. Thus it was rendered by the first interpreters of the text, the Jews of Alexandria, nearly three hundred years before the Christian era:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth; but earth...

In the same sense it was understood by the learned Jew, Josephus, who thus paraphrased the passage:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth; but, the latter not coming into view....

In the same manner we find it in the Chaldee paraphrase, the Targum of Onkelos, which in the Latin is rendered thus: "In principio creavit Deus coelum et terram; terra autem erat...."-- i.e., "the earth, however, was..."

The old Latin Version renders the conjunction in the same manner: Terra autem, etc...Likewise does the Vulgate, translated by Jerome from the Hebrew original with the aid of the other translations of his time.


Therefore, it can be safely said that waw in verse 2 is DISJUNCTIVE… A better understanding of the verse, therefore, is the following… “But the earth had become without form and void…”



Returning to Pervy’s points…

The next bone of contention is the word hayetah in verse 2. All English translations of the Bible that I have seen translate this word as "was" - as in "the Earth was...".

Pervy has therefore not seen all of the English translations because the following English translations (quoted earlier) use the word “became” or a variation thereof…

(Rotherham) Genesis 1:2 Now, the earth, had become waste and wild, and, darkness, was on the face of the roaring deep,--but, the Spirit of God, was brooding on the face of the waters.

(Young’s Literal translation) the earth hath existed waste and void, and darkness on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God fluttering on the face of the waters…


Yes, it is true that most English translations use the word “was” instead of “became” or “had become”, but this does not mean that the English translations exclude the pluperfect tense. A simplistic reading of Genesis 1:2, even with “was” can still give the sense of the pluperfect when reading the passage in context.


Gap theorists claim that the proper translation for this word should be "became", as shown above.


Actually, theologians who support the gap claim that the proper translation for this word should be “had become” (pluperfect).

Again, this is grammatically impossible. The verb is used in the "qual", third person, perfect tense in this verse.

How is it “grammatically impossible”? An explanation is required.


In every other instance of the word being used in this tense in the Old Testament (and there are several hundred of them) the proper translation is the English "was" - indicating a static past tense state of being.

Actually, no, the above is incorrect. The following verses use the word “became” for the same verb in the IDENTICAL TENSE as before (“qual, third person, perfect tense).

KJV Exodus 9:24 So there was hail, and fire mingled with the hail, very grievous, such as there was none like it in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation.

KJV Lamentations 1:1 How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she [I]become tributary!


The KJV translation is not the final authority on this matter. Other English translations have translated this verb to forms other than “was”. In Genesis 3:20, this verb, IN THE SAME TENSE ("qual", third person, perfect tense), is rendered “became” or a variation thereof. Examples are listed below…

NIV Genesis 3:20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.

NAB Genesis 3:20 The man called his wife Eve, because she became the mother of all the living.

GWN Genesis 3:20 Adam named his wife Eve Life because she became the mother of every living person.

NLT Genesis 3:20 Then the man-- Adam-- named his wife Eve, because she would be the mother of all who live.

YLT Genesis 3:20 And the man calleth his wife's name Eve: for she hath been mother of all living.



Furthermore, there is evidence that the Hebrew verb hayah (to be) is more often pluperfect in tense than what is commonly recognized. Consider the following words of Hebrew scholar Martin Anstey regarding Genesis 1:2…

The Hebrew verb hayah (hayah = to be) here translated was, signifies not only "to be" but also "to become," "to take place," "to come to pass." When a Hebrew writer makes a simple affirmation, or merely predicates the existence of anything, the verb hayah is never expressed. Where it is expressed it must always be translated by our verb to become, never by the verb to be, if we desire to convey the exact shade of the meaning of the Original. The words tohu va-bohu (tohu va- bohu), translated in the A.V. "without form and void" and in the R.V. "waste and void" should be rendered tohu, a ruin, and bohu, a desolation. They do not represent the state of the heavens and the earth as they were created by God. They represent only the state of the earth as it afterwards became - "a ruin and a desolation." This interpretation is confirmed by the words of Isaiah 45:18, "He created it not tohu (a ruin): He formed it to be inhabited (habitable, not desolate)." This excludes the rendering of Gen. 1:2 in the A.V. and the R.V. as decisively as the Hebrew of Gen. 1:2 requires the rendering of hayah by the word "became " instead of the word "was," or better still "had become," the separation of the Vav from the verb being the Hebrew method of indicating the pluperfect tense.

http://www.creationdays.dk/MartinAnstey/1.html

Therefore, there is no good reason NOT to translate the word “hayah” in Genesis 1:2 as “became”, instead of the word “was” or better still “had become”.


Returning to Pervy’s arguments…


The word is occasionally used (a total of six times) to show a change of state of being (translated as "became") in other contexts, for example in Genesis 19:26 where Lot’s wife becomes a pillar of salt, but in each of these cases there is a specific one-thing-changing-into-something-else context to support this usage.

The above argument that “one-thing-changing-into-something-else” context is what determines the translated word is not necessarily true. Such an approach could easily be used to retranslate many of the “was” verbs to “becomes” in the KJV. Some of the reasons why the KJV translators stuck with “was” instead “became” most of the time may have been for simplicity sake… There is no good reason why they could NOT have rendered “became” instead of “was” in many of the verses cited thus far.

I am not sure of what is meant by the “total of six times”, but the frequency by which the word is translated to “was” versus “became” is not overwhelmingly important because both can mean the same thing in various contexts. I agree that the English translations use the word “became” less often, but this may have been a function of convenience, or even of convention of the time in which it was translated. For example, the phrase “had become” cannot be found anywhere in the KJV. Just because this phrase is absent in the KJV, it does not mean that its meaning is absent from the original Hebrew. Perhaps the translators in the 17th century were reluctant to use the phrase “had become”, either because it was an awkward construction then, or because it was not yet in use? Another reason may have been that there was a failure to recognize the pluperfect tense in most cases, particularly when word order of the Hebrew sentence had not been fully taken into account. In fact, in those places where the English translations render “was” instead of “had become”, particularly when the word order of the Hebrew indicates pluperfect tense, a change from “was” to “had become” does no harm to the meaning of the English translation. To the contrary, the meaning is actually made clearer when the word is changed to “had become”. This is particularly evident when the word order of the underlying Hebrew is concerned.

The following passage quoted from the gap link that I provided in the dinosaur thread illustrates this point quite well…



"…the heaven and the earth. And the earth was (hayah) without form, and void…" (Genesis 1:2)

"…bare his brother Abel. And Abel was (hayah) a keeper of sheep…" (Genesis 4:2)

In both sentences the first sentence ends with a noun (earth/Abel), which completes the sentence. In the second sentence both begin with the word "And." Then the original noun repeats (earth/Abel). Then this repeated noun is followed by the word "was"—hayah. In every way the grammar and structure of both sentences is identical. Obviously upon examining Genesis 4:2 it is understood that Abel was not born a keeper of sheep and that over the course of time he became a keeper of sheep. In this sense hayah could be translated "…and Abel became (hayah) a keeper of sheep…" It therefore follows that verse two of Genesis 1 can be translated as follows:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth became (hayah) without form, and void (indicating confused and disordered); and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters." (Genesis 1:1-2)

Other examples of this principle, where the word hayah has been translated was and more properly means a change in state (became), occurs in the following verses:

" And Adam called his wife's name Eve, because she was (became-hayah) the mother of all living." (Genesis 3:20)

" And Adah bore Jabal. He was (became-hayah) the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock." (Genesis 4:20)

http://www.biblestudy.org/basicart/gapgen2.html


I am sure that there are multiple other examples of how “hayah” would be better translated as “had become” in the English translations. The argument over this word is no trivial matter. Entire false theological systems have been supported on the basis of misunderstandings of the meaning of this word as in Genesis 1:2.


Conclusion

Because of space limitations due to the rules of this debate, I do not have room to respond to Pervy’s last two main points… namely the topic regarding the words tohu and bohu, and the issue of Exodus 20:11.

In my opinion, Exodus 20:11 is the biggest challenge to gap theology…

KJV Exodus 20:11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

In my next post, I will address both topics above, and will explain how the six days mentioned in Exodus 20:11 does not rule out the gap, and may in fact support it!

Thank you for your attention.

[Dean Anderson]

Introduction

Welcome to round two of this debate. In this round, I will be addressing the points made by my opponent in his previous round. I was also intending to address whatever theological arguments my opponent made to support gap theory - but this is now unnecessary, since he has not yet given any theological support. This is despite claiming to embrace the theory for theological, not textual, reasons.

To be fair to my opponent, I will assume that this is due to space and word count constraints rather than due to there being a lack of sound theological support existing. However, I urge my opponent to present what theological support he can in his round 2 post - since as round 3 is the last full round of the debate, we will not be able to discuss any new issues that are introduced in that round.

Origin of Gap Theory


One of the surprises for me in doing this search was learning that the gap has been in the minds of many for a very long time... A common misconception is that it is the theory developed mainly for the purposes of reconciling the Bible with science. Gap theology predates the scientific revolution by at least 1400 years (probably much longer).

This passage from my opponent does not support his case in the slightest.

Firstly, the implication of stating that gap theory predates the scientific revolution is that this defends it from charges that it was only invented in order to reconcile the Genesis account with the scientific age of the Earth. Since such charges are not being made - and indeed are explicitly out of the scope of this debate, such defence is irrelevant.

Secondly, whether gap theory was invented in 500 BC or whether it was invented yesterday bears no relation to whether or not it is compatible with an inerrantist reading of the Bible, which is what this debate is about1. It appears that my opponent is committing an Argumentum Ad Antiquitam (http://www.logicalfallacies.info/appealtoantiquity.html).


Gap theology is consistent with my beliefs. Gap theology is supported in the scriptures, and has been passed down for generations.

Again, I feel I must point out that my opponent is merely asserting that gap theory is consistent with (and supported by) his theological readings of the Bible, without actually giving any of this theology that allegedly supports it.

Textual Support

My opponent starts by looking at Genesis 1:1-2, just as I did. First he takes time to make the point that there is not a one-to-one match between the Hebrew words and the words in English translations, using the KJV as an example:


Please note that the KJV often has italicized words and phrases. In the example above, the second "was" of verse 2 is in italics. The reason for this is to alert the reader that the word had been inserted by the translators in order to make the reading flow better, and to make the translation more understandable. Italicized words in the KJV are therefore extra-biblical because they indicate that there is no underlying Hebrew word in the original language to which the added word corresponds to.

Comparing the KJV to my crude translation indicates that there are also other words that seem to have been inserted such as articles and prepositions. The reason that those words are not italicized is because there is justification to say that they represent the underlying Hebrew words. For example, the phrase "In the beginning" is a fairly good English representation of the underlying Hebrew word ????? ... (re'shiyth).

This is not under dispute - and indeed, the difference between italicised and non-italicised words in the KJV is irrelevant.

We both agreed that no English translation is word-for-word with the Hebrew before this debate started, which is why the debate is concentrating on the older non-English texts.

My opponent then goes on to talk about the word order in Genesis 2, as I did in my previous round.


Theologians who support the gap claim that the first "was" in verse 2 is better translated as "had become".

Note this Freudian slip by my opponent. He does not claim that linguists think that the "was" is better translated as "had become", or that scholars of Hebrew think that the "was" is better translated as "had become". He claims that theologians who support the gap claim that the "was" is better translated as "had become".

In other words, the people who claim that this is the best translation are the people who already embrace the theory which needs it to be translated in this way. The conflict of interest here should be obvious for all to see.


Theologians who support the gap claim that the first "was" in verse 2 is better translated as "had become". This is based upon the observation of the word order of the sentence in verse 2. The most common word order of sentences in Hebrew follows the pattern of Conjunction-Verb-Subject-Object as is seen in verse 1. The first phrase of verse 2 has the pattern of Conjunction-Subject-Verb-Object (more common in English). As will be demonstrated later, this less common word order in the Hebrew renders the pluperfect tense of the verb. Therefore, the second verse should read "the earth had become without form and void..." This forms the basis for the gap.

I agree with my opponent that the first phrase of verse 2 uses a relatively uncommon word order. That was one of the main premises of my own argument. However, by comparing the verse to verse 1, he is comparing apples and oranges.

For a start, of course verse one does not have the same Conjunction-Verb-Subject-Object construction. The grammar is completely different to verse 2. If we are to compare verse 2 to other verses in the passage, then the later verses (that also start with a waw conjunction) are obviously far more appropriate. As I pointed out in my previous round, a comparison with these later verses shows that the word order is indeed distinct from the consecutive waw structure that the later verses take and therefore that whereas those other forms indicate that each event happens after the previous - the "and..." being best rendered as "and then..." - verse 2 does not indicate such a passage of time.

My opponent also appears to be somewhat confused about Hebrew verb tenses. He appears to be claiming that the Hebrew is specifically indicating the Pluperfect tense, when actually Hebrew verbs only (generally2) take two tenses - the Perfect, indicating a completed or done action; and the Imperfect, indicating an ongoing action3. There is no Hebrew Pluperfect tense.

Given the source (an explicitly pro-gap-theory apologetic source, rather than a more objective and scholarly Hebrew-grammar source, I hardly need point out) that my opponent quotes, it looks as though he is confusing his source's claim that...


A. B. Davidson, in his Hebrew Syntax, deals with this question in some detail and shows how the word order may be used to indicate the English pluperfect.

Note that this source only claims that a change in word order may be used to indicate the equivalent of the English pluperfect tense in some instances - but my opponent claims explicitly that...


[...]this less common word order in the Hebrew renders the pluperfect tense of the verb.

...as if the word order must indicate a non-existent Hebrew pluperfect tense in this individual case.

Besides, the whole "pluperfect" argument does not help his case anyway - since the English second person pluperfect form of the verb "to be" (assuming that the Hebrew in this case is supposed to be the equivalent of the English pluperfect) is not "had become" but is "had been" (see later for more details).

Interpretation of the Disjunctive Waw

My opponent agrees with me that the grammatical construction at the start of Genesis 1:2 is the "Disjunctive Waw", rather than the "Consecutive Waw".

However, he takes issue with my description of this construction as being best represented in English by parentheses. He says, of my citing of Brown, Driver, and Briggs:


Where in the above does the conjunction waw pertain to "punctuation rather than a word"? Although some of the earliest Masoretic texts may have had punctuation marks in Genesis 1:2, it is important to recognize that the earliest extant Masoretic texts date to about 900 A.D. Gap theology predates the Masoretic texts.

However, he is missing the point here. I am not saying that the Hebrew has punctuation marks in it, or that the waw should be considered to be a punctuation mark in the Hebrew. Whether or not the Masoretic texts have punctuation marks in them is irrelevant to my point.

I am saying that based on Brown, Driver and Briggs's description of the Disjunctive waw, the best way to translate the verse(s) into English would be with punctuation.

And my opponent agrees with me - although he does not seem to realise it.


Yes, it can express a parallel idea, but it can also demonstrate opposed ideas as in Genesis 1:2. The lexicon that Pervy cited does not come down either way, and actually seems to lean toward the disjunctive.

This is exactly the meaning that I am claiming the waw in Genesis 1:2 has. It is either copulative or disjunctive and is indicating that the following phrase is an aside to the previous one rather than a follow on from the previous one. There are a variety of ways this could be put into English, including:

In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth, and the Earth was unformed and void.

In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth. Now the Earth was unformed and void.4

In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth - and the Earth was unformed and void.

In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth (and the Earth was unformed and void).

In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth (but the Earth was unformed and void).

Indeed, this last translation is actively supported by my opponent thus:


A closer examination reveals that the use of waw in verse 2 is DISJUNCTIVE, meaning that it would be better translated as "but" instead of "and". This is also based upon observation of translations made in antiquity as will be referenced below.

Whether the correct English translation uses punctuation (such as hyphens or parentheses) or not - and I think that the translation as described by Brown, Driver and Briggs is clearer with them - the point remains.

The waw is specifically joining an adjunct onto a sentence that either parallels or opposes the theme of the main sentence. This is grammatically distinct from the consecutive waws in the rest of the Genesis 1 account which are indicating a consecutive or "and then..." construction.

This goes against my opponent's favoured translation, which demands that the verses be translated as:

In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth, and then (or but then) the Earth had become unformed and void.

My opponent is claiming that the description of the Earth being unformed is describing something that happened after the creation, rather than the Earth being unformed describing its state at the point of creation.

He may claim that the English word "then" is not needed, but that is just due to the vagaries of English. For the Hebrew to support his consecutive clauses, he needs a consecutive waw - and he admits to having a disjunctive waw which supports a simultaneous explanatory adjunctive clause rather than a consecutive one.

My opponent then merely attempts to poison the well, by pointing out that a Google search reveals that Mormons discuss the consecutive waw in their literature - the unspoken inference being, of course, that it is somehow a Mormon-specific (and therefore, in the eyes of many Chistians, automatically suspect) interpretation:


I have never heard of the conjunction waw in Hebrew acting as a "parenthetical adjunct". A quick search on Google reveals that the Mormons use such an argument in some of their literature.

This is, of course, completely irrelevant. The "consecutive waw" construction is a standard part of Hebrew grammar. That Mormon scholars know this is to their credit, but is irrelevant when deciding whether or not the construction is being used in a particular verse.

To support his argument, my opponent then quotes a lengthy quote from Arthur Custance (yet again quoting specifically from gap-theorists rather than neutral scholars) but even this does not help his case, as Custance is here only arguing that the "and" should be a "but" - not arguing that it should be a consecutive. Indeed, the examples that Custance gives from the Targum of Onkelos and Jerome's Latin Vulgate both support my translation over my opponent's when it comes to the "was" versus "had become" issue (and it is suspicious that Custance cuts off his Alexandrian quote before we can see whether it supports his translation or not - why would he do that if it did support him?)

My opponent finally sums up the issue with:


Therefore, it can be safely said that waw in verse 2 is DISJUNCTIVE... A better understanding of the verse, therefore, is the following... "But the earth had become without form and void..."

Where he once again agrees with me that the waw is disjunctive, but then treats the rest of the clause as if the waw were consecutive.

He claims that this is irrelevant:

Translation of Hayetah

My opponent quite rightly claims that although hayetah is normally translated as "was", it can also sometimes be translated as "became" or "is become" depending on the context. He gives some examples of this.

This is true. Grammatically, the word is definitely qual, feminine third person singular, perfect tense - in other words "was" (or "she was" - the Earth having a feminine gender in Hebrew), but depending on the context, the meaning of the phrase or verse might be better shown in English by paraphrasing rather than translating with a strict word-for-word accuracy. In these cases, "became" or even "had become" might give a better overall translation than sticking to "was" - although I notice with amusement that my opponent even admits that his favourite English translation, the KJV, never once translates any form of hayah in any tense or context into "had become".

The problem for my opponent, of course, is that the disjunctive waw that he agrees the passage have makes the case for a paraphrasing being better than a strict translation impossible in this case. As we have seen above, the context of the passage in Genesis 1 is a series of "and then..." statements using consecutive waws, whereas in the case of verse two, the author goes out of his way to use a disjunctive waw instead, with the clear implication that unlike the rest of the waws, this one is not indicating consecutive events or actions but is indicating a clarification to the event mentioned in the previous verse.

However, this does not bother my opponent, as he asserts that no such paraphrasing is needed anyway. Even if Hayetah is translated correctly as "was", it can still fit gap theory.


Yes, it is true that most English translations use the word "was" instead of "became" or "had become", but this does not mean that the English translations exclude the pluperfect tense. A simplistic reading of Genesis 1:2, even with "was" can still give the sense of the pluperfect when reading the passage in context.

In other words, if you read the passage "in context" (this context being that you have an existing belief - for theological reasons - that there should be a gap), it is possible that the verse can be compatible with the gap theory and is merely badly worded by the Hebrew author.

My opponent must now demonstrate that such a context is plausible and fits an inerrantist view of the text.

Other Textual Issues

In my previous round, I spent most of my round discussing the wording of Hebrews 1:1-2 itself. I only had room to briefly mention Exodus 31:14-17 at the end as a verse supporting a six day creation rather than a six day restoration after an indeterminate creation.

There are, of course, other places in the text that show that the Genesis account is referring to a 6-day creation rather than a six day restoration. Some of these rely on the refutation of particular theological issues - such as dispensationalism - that my opponent may or may not subscribe to, but others are more general, such as:


Gen 1:31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
Gen 2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
Gen 2:2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
Gen 2:3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

This specifically says that at the end of the seventh day God rested from his work - and what work was this? Verse 2:3 tells us. It was the work of Creation (Hebrew: bara, the same word used in Genesis 1:1). Not his work of reparing (Hebrew: kawzak) or his work of refilling / repleninshing (Hebrew: mala), but his work of creating.

This clearly indicates that the six day creation period was indeed a Creation period rather than a six day period of repairing what was earlier created in an indefinite period.


Rom 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
Rom 5:13 (For until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law.
Rom 5:14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.

According to gap theory, the Earth had become desolate after it was made, but before Adam was created. Why did it become desolate? Because it was corrupted from its original perfect state when Lucifer sinned and was cast from Heaven with 1/3 of all the angels.

This is actually the central tenet of gap theory. My opponent is correct when he says that gap theory was not invented to reconcile the Genesis story with how science says the Earth is so old. It can do that - and that explains its modern rise in popularity - but that is incidental.

The theory was originally devised as an attempt to answer the question "When did Lucifer's fall take place?"

If we assume that the snake in the Garden of Eden was either Lucifer himself or possessed or influenced by Lucifer - a view that is not necessitated by a literal reading of the text, but is compatible with it - then Lucifer was already fallen before Adam's fall. Since Adam's fall took place shortly after the six days of creation this doesn't leave much time for Lucifer's rebellion to have taken place.

The answer to this problem was to theorise that Lucifer's rebellion happened before the creation of Adam - but that meant that it must have happened during the previous 5 days of creation, so Lucifer fell within 5 days of his own creation (if we are to assume that nothing except God existed before the creation of the Heavens and the Earth).

Thus the gap theory was born. What if the Heavens and the Earth already existed before the six days listed in Genesis 1? That provides a nebulous period of time for Lucifer to fall. Of course, the question that this throws up is what was God doing in those six days if the Earth was already created? The gap theory answer to this is that the six days can be described as a period of repair of the Earth after God cleansed it of the corruption of Lucifer's fall and made it good again. 5

Of course, the problem for gap theory is that the Bible does not mention any gap, or mention that the six days are a repair rather than a creation. This is why we get the semantic quibbles about how the Genesis 1:1-2 verses could possibly be interpreted to imply that there might have been a gap. It is by no means the straightforward reading of these verses, but it is the reading necessary to be able to shoehorn them into gap theory without (at least in theory) losing an inerrantist view of the text.

This brings us back to the Romans verses I just quoted above. These verses explicitly say that both sin and death came into the world through Adam's fall. They leave no room for an earlier corruption of the Earth by Lucifer's fall.

Summary

My opponent spent his entire Round 1 arguing two points:

1) That the waw in Genesis 1:2 is a Disjunctive waw, rather than a Copulative waw or Consecutive waw.

This is a somewhat confused argument, because I have already argued this myself. His agreement that it is a disjunctive waw works against his case rather than for it, and for my case, since his case needs a consecutive waw to provide the context he needs for his second argument.

2) That the hayetah in Genesis 1:2 can be translated as "had become" rather than "was".

Here, he seems to concede that the proper literal translation should be "was", but argues that context may mean that it is better to use a paraphrase rather than a literal translation and therefore hayetah can be translated as "had become" in the right context.

However, he admits that nowhere in his favourite English translation is this particular paraphrase used, and has provided no specific reason that Genesis 1:2 has a context where that particular paraphrase is used.

What my opponent has not done, is:

1) Provide any theological backing or argument for the gap theory that would give us a reason to think that Genesis 1:1-2 should be talking about a gap.

2) Provide any independent reference that supports his case. All the references he has provided supporting his translation6 are explicitly pro- gap theory websites and books, which have an obvious conflict of interest.

3) He still needs to address the other passage (now other passages, as I have quoted two more) within the Bible that makes it clear that the six day period was the period of creation rather than a period of repair of a previously created but now corrupted world.




1 Indeed, early mentions of theological theories similar to gap theory - such as those by Thomas Aquinas - are made within the context that a literal reading of the text is not adequate and it must be understood in a metaphorical manner. Such a context is outside of the inerrancy viewpoint that is under discussion in this debate.

2 There is also a third (Imperative) tense, but that is not relevant to this discussion.

3 See, for example, Gesenius's classic Hebrew Grammar - now out of copyright and available online in an English translation here (http://www.adath-shalom.ca/gk_cont.htm).

4 This is the exact translation used by the Jewish Publication Society 1917 Hebrew Bible.

5 Nineteenth and twentieth century Dispensationalist theologies such as those of John Nelson Darby, Clarence Larkin and Arthur Custance have expanded upon this basic theology greatly. You may recognise these names, since the second two are the main authors referenced by my opponent.

6 My opponent did provide a neutral reference - that of Brown, Driver and Briggs's A Hebrew And English Lexicon Of The Old Testament, originally brought up by myself - but this reference actually supports my case rather than his own.

[DavidfromTexas]

Introduction

In this next round, I will begin by addressing the issue of Tohu and Bohu which was not addressed in my OP due to space limitations. Then I will address some of Pervy’s statements from his last post. Because of space limitations, the issue of Exodus 20:11 will be discussed only briefly, a more in-depth discussion will have to wait for the next round.


The Issue of Tohu and Bohu

The Hebrew words Tohu and Bohu are found in the first sentence of Genesis 1:2. These words describe an interesting condition of the earth prior to God’s moving upon the waters in order to make the earth into the paradise that would later host Adam and Eve…

KJV Genesis 1:2 And the earth was without form (tohu), and void (bohu); and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.


Pervy wrote in his OP…

Finally, there are the words tohu and bohu. These are interpreted by gap theorists to have a perjorative meaning indicating that the world was corrupted (by Satan’s fall) or cursed (by God in reaction to Satan’s fall).

Although Satan’s fall is often speculated as having something to do with the condition that the earth had become, there is good reason for tohu and bohu to be considered pejorative regardless of the issues concerning Satan. Consider the words of Custance…

We come therefore to a consideration of the words, "without form and void"--tohu wa-bobu.. From the outset we can say unequivocally that both words, whether occurring together or singly, are used throughout Scripture in connection with something under God's judgment. Tohu is used of something which has been laid waste (Isa. 24:10; 34:11; Jer. 4:23) or has become desert (Deut. 32:10) or of anything which is the object of false "worship" and therefore displeasing to God, as in Isaiah 41:29, etc.
http://www.custance.org/Library/Volume6/Part_III/Chapter2.html


These descriptions of the earth in Genesis 1:2 are certainly not flattering. These words stand in contrast to God’s declaration of light in verse 4 as being good…

KJV Genesis 1:4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

In Genesis 1:2, God did not refer to the earth as being good. This should not be surprising considering that the words Tohu and Bohu have a pejorative connotation. Consider the commentary of Matthew Henry…

Observe the description of this chaos. (1.) There was nothing in it desirable to be seen, for it was without form and void. Tohu and Bohu, confusion and emptiness; so these words are rendered, Isa. xxxiv. 11. It was shapeless, it was useless, it was without inhabitants, without ornaments, the shadow or rough draught of things to come, and not the image of the things, Heb. x. 1. The earth is almost reduced to the same condition again by the sin of man, under which the creation groans. See Jer. iv. 23, I beheld the earth, and lo it was without form, and void. To those who have their hearts in heaven this lower world, in comparison with that upper, still appears to be nothing but confusion and emptiness. There is no true beauty to be seen, no satisfying fulness to be enjoyed, in this earth, but in God only. (2.) If there had been any thing desirable to be seen, yet there was no light to see it by; for darkness, thick darkness, was upon the face of the deep.


Pervy also wrote…

Whilst there are two occasions where these words are used in such a perjorative manner (e.g. in Isaiah 34:11), the vast majority of their usage merely indicates desert like conditions with no perjorative meaning attached.

The above is incorrect. The pairing of the words tohu מהד and bohu תהד occurs only 3 times in scripture, and in the majority of cases (actually every case in my opinion) the pairing of the words is “pejorative”. Consider the words of Custance…

It [tohu] is sometimes coupled with the word, bohu, as in Jeremiah 4:23; Isaiah 34:11; and of course as here in Genesis 1:2. In fact these are the only three occurrences of this word in Scripture. In Jeremiah 4:23 the desolation which the two words together are used to portray is the result of a direct judgment of God upon the land and upon its inhabitants. When Jeremiah saw this vision, judgment had already been executed, and the land was in a state of desolation. In Isaiah 34:11 the same may be said, for the scene is one of God's "day of vengeance" (v. 8). In this case it is Idumea which is under consideration. The confusion is to be complete, the judgment final. Such is the evident meaning of the only other passages in which the expression found in Genesis 1:2 occurs elsewhere in Scripture.

Since the bohu occurs in only three verses of the Old Testament, then perhaps Pervy may be referring only to the word tohu instead of the pairing of tohu and bohu. Even if that were the case, then his statement is still incorrect. The word tohu is used at least 19 times in the Old Testament. With the possible exception of Job 26:7 (and this is also debatable) ALL of the verses that contain the word tohu reveal that it has a “pejorative” meaning attached to it. For the sake of saving space, all of the verses will not be reproduced in their entirety here. However, the following is a list of the verses with the corresponding words that are translated for tohu in the KJV (Genesis 1:2 is not included). I encourage the reader to look up the verses and verify that a pejorative meaning is associated with the “vast majority” of the usages of the word tohu. All verses are KJV...

Deuteronomy 32:10, waste; 1 Samuel 12:21, vain; Psalm 107:40, wilderness; Job 6:18, nothing; Job 12:24, wilderness; Job 26:7, empty place; Isaiah 24:10, confusion; Isaiah 29:21, thing of nought; Isaiah 34:11, confusion; Isaiah 40:17, less than nothing; Isaiah 40:23, vanity; Isaiah 41:29, confusion; Isaiah 44:9, vanity; Isaiah 45:18-19, in vain; Isaiah 49:4, for nought; Isaiah 59:4, in vanity; Jeremiah 4:23, without form;

One could argue that ALL of the verses have a pejorative meaning attached to tohu. A fascinating discussion on the origin of these two words is given by Custance, but this is beyond the scope of this debate. Custance discusses the relationship of these words to pagan mythologies and how the words for the “deep”, rendered in the Hebrew manuscripts and in the Greek Septuagint (and New Testament), also have a pejorative meaning. The discussion by Custance, and similar writings by other theologians who support the gap, leave no doubt in my mind that Genesis 1:2 reveals a condition of the earth that cannot be considered good by any stretch of the imagination.




Addressing several points from Pervy’s second post…

Quote:
One of the surprises for me in doing this search was learning that the gap has been in the minds of many for a very long time... A common misconception is that it is the theory developed mainly for the purposes of reconciling the Bible with science. Gap theology predates the scientific revolution by at least 1400 years (probably much longer).

This passage from my opponent does not support his case in the slightest.

Disagree. One of the most common to arguments opposed to the gap is that the gap is simply a reaction to science and to the theory of evolution, rather than being an ancient and historic doctrine that is supported biblically. Although Pervy has not made a specific charge stating that the gap is relatively “new”, some of his statements in the OP seem to imply otherwise. For example, consider the following...


Needless to say, the Ruin-Reconstruction theory says that this plain reading is a misinterpretation - based on inaccurate translation of the Hebrew and that when translated and interpreted properly…

Notice the word “when” in the above statement. The so-called “misinterpretation” that led to the “Ruin-Reconstruction” theory had to occur sometime in history. The next statement seems to allude to this…

Firstly, let’s look at the start of verse 2 where the alleged gap is. When doing so, we should remember that the splitting of the text into verses is a relatively modern phenomenon - and that the original texts have no such divisions.

As pointed out in my OP, the gap predates the “relatively modern phenomenon” of chapter-verse divisions in the Bible, and such divisions have no bearing on the so-called “misinterpretation” of the text leading to gap theology. To the contrary, an argument can be made that the verse division system has HINDERED modern readers from seeing the gap. Therefore, dealing with the history of the gap is important in understanding the gap itself.


Firstly, the implication of stating that gap theory predates the scientific revolution is that this defends it from charges that it was only invented in order to reconcile the Genesis account with the scientific age of the Earth. Since such charges are not being made - and indeed are explicitly out of the scope of this debate, such defence is irrelevant.

I agree that Pervy has not made such a charge. However, some of his other comments reflect misconceptions regarding the history of the gap, and it is necessary to address them. The following is a good example…

Secondly, whether gap theory was invented in 500 BC or whether it was invented yesterday bears no relation to whether or not it is compatible with an inerrantist reading of the Bible, which is what this debate is about1. It appears that my opponent is committing an Argumentum Ad Antiquitam.

I am making no such claim that gap theology is correct simply because it is old. Rather, I am arguing that historical perspective is important in trying to understand the gap, and that historical perspective is helpful in weighing the arguments as to whether or not the gap is compatible with an inerrantist hermeneutic. I am also arguing that gap theology is not an invention which says that the “plain reading” is a “misinterpretation” of the text, and is not related to the “relatively modern phenomenon” of verse divisions in the Bible. There are many ancient theologies and ideas which are false. Therefore I reject the assertion that I am committing Agumentum Ad Antiquitam. Moreover, my position regarding the history of the gap is similar in principle to one of the Articles of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy…

Article XVI

We affirm that the doctrine of inerrancy has been integral to the Church's faith throughout its history.

We deny that inerrancy is a doctrine invented by Scholastic Protestantism, or is a reactionary position postulated in response to negative higher criticism.

http://www.reformed.org/documents/index.html?mainframe=http://www.reformed.org/documents/icbi.html




The issue of the pluperfect tense…

My opponent also appears to be somewhat confused about Hebrew verb tenses. He appears to be claiming that the Hebrew is specifically indicating the Pluperfect tense, when actually Hebrew verbs only (generally2) take two tenses - the Perfect, indicating a completed or done action; and the Imperfect, indicating an ongoing action3. There is no Hebrew Pluperfect tense.

S.R. Driver (the same person of Brown, Driver, Briggs) published A Treatise on the Hebrew Tenses in 1892, and is quoted by Custance to have written the following…

"It is a moot and delicate question how far the imperfect with waw-conversive denotes a pluperfect. There is, of course, no doubt that it may express a continuation of a pluperfect: for example, Gen. 31.34 'had taken and had placed them....'. But can the imperfect with waw-consecutive introduce it? Can it instead of conducting us as usual to a succeeding act, lead us back to one which is chronologically anterior? The imperfect with waw-consecutive is.... certainly not the usual idiom chosen by Hebrew writers for the purpose of expressing a pluperfect: their usual habit, when they wish to do so, is to interpose the subject between the conjunction and the verb, which then lapses into the perfect, a form which we know allows scope for a pluperfect signifcation."

http://www.custance.org/Library/WFANDV/chap3.html

If there were “no Hebrew Pluperfect tense” as Pervy has argued, then an explanation is required to explain why many of the English translations render the verb hayah (to be) in the pluperfect tense. English translations that render the pluperfect tense include the NIV (New International Version), NIB (New International Version (UK)), NKJ (New King James Version), CJB (Complete Jewish Bible), TNK (JPS Tanakh), NAU (New American Standard Bible with codes), NAB (New American Bible), NET (New English Translation), CSB (Holman Christian Standard Bible), GWN (God’s Word to the Nations Version), and the NLT (New Living Translation). The following verses are examples of where the verb hayah is translated as pluperfect…

NAS Genesis 36:7 For their property had become too great for them to live together, and the bland where they csojourned could not sustain them because of their livestock. [also translated had become in NAU, CJB, NAB]

NIV Exodus 9:24 hail fell and lightning flashed back and forth. It was the worst storm in all the land of Egypt since it had become a nation. [also translated same in NET, CSB, GWN, NIB, TNK]

NAS Joshua 9:5 and worn-out and patched sandals on their feet, and woNIV Jeremiah 52:6 By the ninth day of the fourth month the famine in the city had become so severe that there was no food for the people to eat. [same in NLT, NKJ, NIB, TNK]

NIV Jeremiah 52:6 By the ninth day of the fourth month the famine in the city had become so severe that there was no food for the people to eat. [same in NLT, NKJ, NIB, TNK]

NIV 2 Kings 25:3 By the ninth day of the fourth {3 See Jer. 52:6.} month the famine in the city had become so severe that there was no food for the people to eat. [same in NLT, NKJ, NIB, TNK]



Agreement versus disagreement on the Disjunctive Waw…

Interpretation of the Disjunctive Waw

My opponent agrees with me that the grammatical construction at the start of Genesis 1:2 is the "Disjunctive Waw", rather than the "Consecutive Waw".

Disagree with the above. Pervy did not establish that the start of Genesis 1:2 is the “Disjunctive Waw”. Rather he has stated that it could be either the disjunctive OR the copulative (quoted further below). He did not write specifically that the waw is disjunctive as opposed to the consecutive and/or the copulative as I have argued.


However, he takes issue with my description of this construction as being best represented in English by parentheses. He says, of my citing of Brown, Driver, and Briggs:

Quote:
Where in the above does the conjunction waw pertain to "punctuation rather than a word"? Although some of the earliest Masoretic texts may have had punctuation marks in Genesis 1:2, it is important to recognize that the earliest extant Masoretic texts date to about 900 A.D. Gap theology predates the Masoretic texts.

However, he is missing the point here. I am not saying that the Hebrew has punctuation marks in it, or that the waw should be considered to be a punctuation mark in the Hebrew. This Hebrew grammatical structure (where a waw precedes a non-verb word) is rather specific in meaning. The best English equivalent is punctuation rather than a word, and is the opening of parentheses.

Whether or not the Masoretic texts have punctuation marks in them is irrelevant to my point.

I am saying that based on Brown, Driver and Briggs's description of the Disjunctive waw, the best way to translate the verse(s) into English would be with punctuation.

Pervy has YET to demonstrate that Brown, Driver and Brigg’s description of the Disjunctive waw has anything to do with “punctuation”… or as Pervy put it, a “parenthetical adjunct”. I quoted the reference to Genesis 1:2 in BDB (Brown, Driver and Brigg’s), and there was nothing there that supports such an assertion. I request that Pervy quote where BDB states that the best English equivalent to the waw is punctuation rather than a word, or is the opening of a parenthesis.


Quote:
Yes, it can express a parallel idea, but it can also demonstrate opposed ideas as in Genesis 1:2. The lexicon that Pervy cited does not come down either way, and actually seems to lean toward the disjunctive.

This is exactly the meaning that I am claiming the waw in Genesis 1:2 has.

If the above is exactly the meaning that Pervy was trying to convey, then his argumentation has been confusing and contradictory. He did not say that the waw leaned toward the disjunctive. Instead, he wrote that it could be either disjunctive or copulative. Moreover, most of his argumentation suggests that he favors the waw as being COPULATIVE in Genesis 1:2 (rather than disjunctive). The following is what he wrote, my emphasis is underlined and bolded…

Verse 2, starts with the Hebrew waw, which is a general purpose conjunction that can be translated into English as "and", "but", "then" and so on. The particular waw in Genesis 2:1 is what is called the "Disjunctive Waw" or "Copulative Waw". This Hebrew grammatical structure (where a waw precedes a non-verb word) is rather specific in meaning. The best English equivalent is punctuation rather than a word, and is the opening of parentheses. Another acceptable translation would be the English phrase "to wit".5

The definition of “to wit” is “that is to say…” Therefore, the phrase “to wit” is closer to the copulative or the consecutive, not the disjunctive.


The definition of copulative is the following…

1. Grammar
a. Serving to connect coordinate words or clauses: a copulative conjunction.
b. Serving as a copula: a copulative verb.
2. Of or relating to copulation.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/copulative


The definition of disjunctive is the following…

1. Serving to separate or divide.
2. Grammar Serving to establish a relationship of contrast or opposition. The conjunction but in the phrase poor but comfortable is disjunctive.
3. Logic
a. Of a proposition that presents two or more alternative terms.
b. Of a syllogism that contains a disjunction as one premise.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/disjunctive


The reader can decide if Pervy was clear enough in establishing that the waw in Genesis 1:2 leans toward the DISJUNCTIVE rather than toward the consecutive or copulative. Consider also the following…

It is either copulative or disjunctive and is indicating that the following phrase is an aside to the previous one rather than a follow on from the previous one. There are a variety of ways this could be put into English, including:

In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth, and the Earth was unformed and void.

In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth. Now the Earth was unformed and void.4

In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth - and the Earth was unformed and void.

In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth (and the Earth was unformed and void).

In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth (but the Earth was unformed and void).

Indeed, this last translation is actively supported by my opponent thus:

I do not actively support the last translation in the list above. To the contrary, the translation that I favor is the second from the top of the list, which Pervy’s footnote indicates is the exact one given by the 1917 Hebrew Bible of the Jewish Publication Society. Although the waw is not translated “but” in that version, the word “Now”, placed at the beginning of the sentence, essentially serves the same purpose. The word “Now” serves a DISJUNCTIVE function because it CONTRASTS the time given in verse 1… (In the beginning). Although the word hayah is not translated “had become”, the disjunctive “Now” at the beginning of the sentence leaves open the possibility that hayah could mean “had become”.

This is precisely why the pluperfect tense in English best reflects the underlying Hebrew in these situations. As far as I am concerned, the 1917 Hebrew Bible translation reflects the pluperfect tense as it is written, even though usage of the phrase “had become” was not necessarily needed to do so.

One of the reasons that I do not support the last translation of the list is because the parenthesis is neither warranted nor necessary. The parenthesis, placed on the last word of the pair “Heavens and Earth”, creates an awkward reading which disrupts the flow with the subsequent phrase (and darkness was on the face of the deep). The parenthetical offers nothing of value in understanding Genesis 1:2. Rather, it serves to deliberately alter the meaning of the underlying Hebrew.

The only redeeming value of the last translation is that the word “but” is included, suggesting that there must be DISJUNCTIVE somewhere in the verse (although the parenthetical could also raise the question in the reader’s mind as to whether it is actually part of the original text). Paradoxically, the parenthetical as written above serves a COPULATIVE function because it seems to qualify the condition of the earth spoken of in verse 1, rather than separating or dividing its condition in verse 2 from the condition in verse 1. With the exception of the Hebrew Bible translation listed above, all of the other translations given by Pervy are also COPULATIVE (use of the word “and”)…




Exodus 20:11 and other passages related to the gap


Detractors of the gap often argue that Exodus 20:11 and other passages contradict gap theology. Many of the arguments over these passages deal with the controversy of whether the Hebrew verbs translated as “created” and “made” are synonyms or are separate words that have specific meaning. Gap theologians argue the latter.

Using Exodus 20:11 as an example…

JPS Exodus 20:11 for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day; wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

The Hebrew word translated “made” (‘asah) in Exodus 20:11 is not the same word translated “created” (bara) in Genesis 1:1. The words bara and ‘asah are not synonyms. Therefore, Exodus 20:11 does not say that the Lord “created” the heaven and the earth in six days. Instead, Exodus 20:11 says that the heaven and the earth were “made” in six days. The text does not say that the heaven and earth were created ex-nihilo in six days.


My opponent is claiming that the description of the Earth being unformed is describing something that happened after the creation, rather than the Earth being unformed describing its state at the point of creation.

How can the Earth be “unformed” at the point of its creation? Is a lump of clay called a vessel before the clay is formed into a vessel? Is a lump of dough called a birthday cake before it is molded, formed, and cooked into a birthday cake? Isaiah 45:18 settles the question… (emphasis mine)

NAS Isaiah 45:18 For thus says the LORD, who created the heavens (He is the God who formed the earth and made it, He established it and did not create it a waste place, But formed it to be inhabited), "I am the LORD, and there is none else.

Therefore, the condition described in Genesis 1:2 is much different than the condition described in Isaiah 45:18. Incidentally, the Hebrew verb for “create” and “created” (bara) תרא in Isaiah 45:18 is the same word used for “created” in Genesis 1:1, thereby showing that the earth described in Genesis 1:1 was very different than the earth described in Genesis 1:2.


There are, of course, other places in the text that show that the Genesis account is referring to a 6-day creation rather than a six day restoration. Some of these rely on the refutation of particular theological issues - such as dispensationalism - that my opponent may or may not subscribe to, but others are more general, such as:

Quote:
Originally Posted by KJV
Gen 1:31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
Gen 2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
Gen 2:2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
Gen 2:3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

This specifically says that at the end of the seventh day God rested from his work - and what work was this? Verse 2:3 tells us. It was the work of Creation (Hebrew: bara, the same word used in Genesis 1:1). Not his work of reparing (Hebrew: kawzak) or his work of refilling / repleninshing (Hebrew: mala), but his work of creating.

This clearly indicates that the six day creation period was indeed a Creation period rather than a six day period of repairing what was earlier created in an indefinite period.


Disagree. Genesis 1:31 indicates that the end of the six day period was a Making (‘asah) period, not a Creation (bara) period. Although Genesis 2:3 says that God rested from all of His work on the Seventh day, which included His rest from Creation (bara) activities, it does NOT say that Creation (bara) activities were restricted to only the previous six days.

Instead, the text states that God ended His work on the Seventh day of that which He had MADE (‘asah)… The text does NOT say that God ended His work on the Seventh day of that which He had CREATED (bara).

In a sense, the work of God’s creating activity continues. His elect are referred to as a NEW CREATION.

ESV 2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.



Addressing Pervy’s “Summary” points…

Summary

My opponent spent his entire Round 1 arguing two points:

1) That the waw in Genesis 1:2 is a Disjunctive waw, rather than a Copulative waw or Consecutive waw.

This is a somewhat confused argument, because I have already argued this myself.

Actually, Pervy’s argumentation is what appears to be confused. Pervy has NOT argued that “the waw in Genesis 1:2 is a Disjunctive waw, rather than a Copulative waw…” He has YET to do this, even though he now claims that he has.


His agreement that it is a disjunctive waw works against his case rather than for it, and for my case, since his case needs a consecutive waw to provide the context he needs for his second argument.

The above makes no sense. Perhaps a better explanation would be helpful.


2) That the hayetah in Genesis 1:2 can be translated as "had become" rather than "was".

Here, he seems to concede that the proper literal translation should be "was", but argues that context may mean that it is better to use a paraphrase rather than a literal translation and therefore hayetah can be translated as "had become" in the right context.

However, he admits that nowhere in his favourite English translation is this particular paraphrase used, and has provided no specific reason that Genesis 1:2 has a context where that particular paraphrase is used.

A “favourite” English translation does not establish that I consider the translation itself to be without weaknesses. Although I have a fondness and a deep respect for the KJV, I do not consider it to be the best translation available. As a matter of fact, I prefer the ESV and the NIV translations over the KJV in many circumstances. The reason that I use the KJV so often is a really a matter of convenience (it is the only hard copy Study Bible that I have), and the KJV remains one of the most recognized of translations.


What my opponent has not done, is:

1) Provide any theological backing or argument for the gap theory that would give us a reason to think that Genesis 1:1-2 should be talking about a gap.

I am not exactly sure what Pervy is looking for here… Gap theology is itself a theological argument.


2) Provide any independent reference that supports his case. All the references he has provided supporting his translation6 are explicitly pro- gap theory websites and books, which have an obvious conflict of interest.

“Independent reference” is in the eye of the beholder. There is no such thing as an “independent reference” in my opinion.


3) He still needs to address the other passage (now other passages, as I have quoted two more) within the Bible that makes it clear that the six day period was the period of creation rather than a period of repair of a previously created but now corrupted world.

As already demonstrated earlier in this post, the passages quoted by Pervy do not speak of a “period of creation”.

[Dean Anderson]

Introduction

This is the last proper round in which I will be making arguments of any substance, since after this there will only be a short conclusion. Since much of this round is rehashing what has been argued in previous rounds, I will simply go straight into things without further ado.

Tohu and Bohu

The Hebrew words "Tohu" (meaning "desert", "waste" or "wilderness" in a geographical sense - sometimes used figuratively to mean "formless", "chaos" or "in vain") and "Bohu" (meaning "empty" or "void") are both found in Genesis 1:2, as has been already mentioned.

Genesis 1:2 And the earth was without form (tohu), and void (bohu); and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
A simple reading of the surrounding context of the Genesis account would seem to indicate that - since the physical world has been created but the waters have not yet been gathered together to form continents of dry land and the sea (this happens in verse 9) and there is as yet no vegetation of any kind (this is created in verse 11) - just after the Earth is created, it is covered in empty lifeless muddy water. Similarly, light has not yet been created (this is created in verse 3) so all is in darkness.

Given this situation, what would be the way to describe it? Well, the way that the author describes it in verse 2 above seems to fit exactly.

This verse accurately describes the state of the newly created Earth as "formless" (or "waste" - Tohu could equally have a literal or figurative meaning here) and "void" (or "empty" - Bohu having it's normal literal meaning. And it is described as having darkness (Choshek) over the waters.

On a plain reading, this description is not saying that there is anything wrong with the unfinished Earth. It is merely making an accurate physical description of the Earth as it is at this stage of its creation - as would be expected given that this is a subordinate explanatory clause to the first verse where the act of creation of the physical Earth is stated.

However, for gap theorists like my opponent, much more must be read into this. Gap theorists require that this description cannot merely be of an unfinished Earth, but must be a description of a corrupted and destroyed Earth - with all the negative connotations implicit with that - one that was originally perfect but was damaged by Satan's fall and is in need of repair.

My opponent, rather than taking the traditional gap theory line and saying that the verse must be interpreted in this way in order to fit theological theories about when Satan's fall occurred, has chosen instead to argue that this pejorative interpretation is naturally the best fit to the context of the passage.

Although Satan's fall is often speculated as having something to do with the condition that the earth had become, there is good reason for tohu and bohu to be considered pejorative regardless of the issues concerning Satan.
In particular, he quotes the Gap Theorist Arthur Custance:

We come therefore to a consideration of the words, "without form and void"--tohu wa-bobu.. From the outset we can say unequivocally that both words, whether occurring together or singly, are used throughout Scripture in connection with something under God's judgment. Tohu is used of something which has been laid waste (Isa. 24:10; 34:11; Jer. 4:23) or has become desert (Deut. 32:10) or of anything which is the object of false "worship" and therefore displeasing to God, as in Isaiah 41:29, etc.
Custance is here being rather disingenuous. Tohu is used a total of 20 times throughout the Bible. Sometimes it refers to a physical wasteland or desert, sometimes it refers metaphorically to an idea or person or city that has become worthless (like the desert land). In particular, the vast majority of the uses of the word in a metaphorical sense are by the prophet Isaiah. He seems to particularly like the metaphor and uses it 11 times. Outside of Isaiah's writings, the word is used 9 times. Of these nine, 7 of them are physical descriptions of deserts or wildernesses1. There is no mention in these of the places being corrupted or "under God's judgement" - only that such places are deserted wilderness.

So Custance's "unequivocal" statement that the usage of the words "throughout Scripture" is in connection with something "under God's judgement" should be taken with a large pinch of salt to mean that the usage of the word by one particular author in one particular book shows that connection, and elsewhere in the Bible it is mainly used as a purely physical descriptor.

My opponent makes much of my use of the word "pejorative" to describe the usage of Tohu and Bohu. He says that all three uses of the word Bohu are pejorative (and further claims that all three uses of the words together are - which amounts to the same claim repeated twice since the three uses of the words together are the same instances as the three total uses of the word Bohu). However, these three uses are all using it in a purely physical sense referring to an empty place.

Indeed, he continues by saying:

One could argue that ALL of the verses have a pejorative meaning attached to tohu. A fascinating discussion on the origin of these two words is given by Custance, but this is beyond the scope of this debate. Custance discusses the relationship of these words to pagan mythologies and how the words for the "deep", rendered in the Hebrew manuscripts and in the Greek Septuagint (and New Testament), also have a pejorative meaning. The discussion by Custance, and similar writings by other theologians who support the gap, leave no doubt in my mind that Genesis 1:2 reveals a condition of the earth that cannot be considered good by any stretch of the imagination.
My opponent is right in a sense - in that calling somewhere desert or wasteland is pejorative in comparison to calling it verdant or lush - but appears to be misinterpreting what I am saying. The majority of references to deserts are not in a "corrupted" or "destroyed" sense, but are merely in a physical sense. Whilst some of the verses referring to these wildernesses are talking about people being punished by God by being cast out into the wilderness, or about cities being destroyed the land returned to desert, the desert itself is never used to indicate cursed or corrupted land.

Indeed - when land is corrupted by Adam's fall and God's judgement on it, do we see it becoming desert?

Gen 3:17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
Gen 3:18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;
On the contrary, we see that when God curses the ground because of Adam's fall, it brings forth extra plant life - it does not become desert and empty.

History of the Gap Theory

Although I have made it clear that the age of the Gap Theory is irrelevant to its validity, my opponent seems to be reading into my statements something that is not there.

I have not claimed that the gap theory is a modern reaction to science, or a modern reaction to higher criticism, or an artefact of the splitting of the text into verses.

My pointing out that the verse divisions are a relatively modern invention was not an attempt to say that gap theory is modern - merely a reminder to readers who may not have realised that the separation between the clauses that are placed in verses 1 and 2 was not there in the original document.

I am somewhat mystified as to why my opponent is spending so much effort on this point, since I have made it clear that how old the gap theory is is not germane to the issue at hand - which is whether it is compatible with an inerrantist reading of the Bible.

The Pluperfect Tense

My opponent takes issue with my pointing out (referencing a recognised Hebrew scholar) that there is no Pluperfect tense in the Hebrew language.

Curiously; to support his case he offers a quote pointing out that because there is no Pluperfect tense in Hebrew, when the the authors of the Bible wished to express what we would put in a Pluperfect tense, they would sometimes use a simple Imperfect tense with a consecutive-waw and sometimes use a simple Perfect tense.

"It is a moot and delicate question how far the imperfect with waw-conversive denotes a pluperfect. There is, of course, no doubt that it may express a continuation of a pluperfect: for example, Gen. 31.34 'had taken and had placed them....'. But can the imperfect with waw-consecutive introduce it? Can it instead of conducting us as usual to a succeeding act, lead us back to one which is chronologically anterior? The imperfect with waw-consecutive is.... certainly not the usual idiom chosen by Hebrew writers for the purpose of expressing a pluperfect: their usual habit, when they wish to do so, is to interpose the subject between the conjunction and the verb, which then lapses into the perfect, a form which we know allows scope for a pluperfect signifcation."
Once again, my opponent seems to be quoting sources that disagree with his argument - although in this case it seems to a second hand quote that his primary Gap-Theorist source uses.

Disjunctive Waw

First of all, we seem to be talking at cross purposes with respect to the different types of waw-constructions.

To go back to basics, there are two main types of Hebrew grammatical construction involving the conjunction waw:

1) The consecutive-waw, where we have a waw-verb-noun sequence. In this case, the waw indicates that the antecedent clause follows the preceding clause chronologically. It can be translated as a simple "thing 1 and thing 2", but the implied meaning is "thing 1 and then thing 2" or even simply "thing 1, then thing 2".

2) The copulative-waw or disjunctive-waw, where we have a waw-noun-verb sequence. In this case, the waw indicates that the antecedent clause is a clarification or sub clause to the preceding clause. There are various ways this meaning can be translated into English, such as as "thing 1 and thing 2" or "thing 1 (and thing 2)" or "thing 1 (i.e. thing 2)" or "thing 1 (to wit: thing 2)" where the second clause follows the first and expands on it with a supporting meaning. These cases are known as copulative-waws. In other cases, the second clause has the opposite meaning to the first clause - and English equivalents would be things such as "thing 1 but thing 2" or "thing 1 (but thing 2)" or "thing 1, although thing 2" and this is known as a disjunctive-waw. In both cases the grammar is the same, and in both cases the meaning is the same - that the second clause is an explanatory clause adding to the first clause and clarifying it.

I have argued that to support the Gap Theorist interpretation (which is that verse 2 is chronologically to be taken as consecutive to verse 1, as opposed to verse 2 being a clarification of verse 1) demands that the author uses a consecutive-waw as he does throughout the rest of the creation account to indicate events that chronologically follow each other. Instead, we see that in verse 2 the second grammatical form (copulative-waw or disjunctive-waw, they are grammatically the same) is used, which shows that the author went out of his way to use a different grammatical structure to that which he uses for the rest of the passage - a grammatical structure which indicates that verse 2 is a clarification of verse 1.

I.e. verse 2 is clarifying the state of the Earth as created in verse 1, not describing a later state that the Earth went into after the events in verse 1.

My opponent seems to be trying to make a big issue out of the fact that I am happy for the waw in verse 2 to be either copulative or disjunctive.

This is true. The copulative and disjunctive forms are grammatically the same, and the point is that if Gap Theory were correct then we should see a conjunctive-waw, which we most certainly do not see.

My opponent argued in a previous round that the waw is definitely disjunctive, and I agreed that it was that second form rather than the consecutive-waw. If you look at my text that my opponent has quoted, that is the exact wording I use.

Unfortunately, my opponent has then spent a large amount of effort trying to make me seem inconsistent by pointing out that although I agreed with him that it is disjunctive rather than consecutive, I am also happy for it to be copulative.

He is missing the point here. The important thing is not whether it is disjunctive or copulative - indeed, there is no clear distinction between the two, for example if the following sentences were rendered in Hebrew...

I saw a giant, and he was ten feet tall.

I saw a cow, and the cow was brown.

I saw an ant, but it was not a normal ant.

...would the waw be copulative or disjunctive?

In the first case, it is obviously copulative - the second clause is agreeing with and supporting the first one.

In the third case, it is obviously disjunctive - the second clause is pointing out something at odds with the first one.

What about the middle case, though?

The colour of the cow is not agreeing with the seeing of the cow, and it is not disagreeing with the seeing of the cow. It is merely clarifying something about the cow that has been seen.

Basically, there is not a strict distinction between copulative and disjunctive. The two forms are grammatically the same, and contextually it is not a black/white issue. There are shades of meaning between the two.

The important issue here is that the waw is not consecutive - and Gap Theorists need it to be consecutive to support their theory that the two clauses are describing consecutive things.

Putting the Two Together

My opponent's arguments that Hebrew has a native pluperfect tense aside, his assertion is that because the waw is disjunctive, the hayetah must be representing the English pluperfect.

I do not actively support the last translation in the list above. To the contrary, the translation that I favor is the second from the top of the list, which Pervy's footnote indicates is the exact one given by the 1917 Hebrew Bible of the Jewish Publication Society. Although the waw is not translated "but" in that version, the word "Now", placed at the beginning of the sentence, essentially serves the same purpose. The word "Now" serves a DISJUNCTIVE function because it CONTRASTS the time given in verse 1... (In the beginning). Although the word hayah is not translated "had become", the disjunctive "Now" at the beginning of the sentence leaves open the possibility that hayah could mean "had become".

This is precisely why the pluperfect tense in English best reflects the underlying Hebrew in these situations. As far as I am concerned, the 1917 Hebrew Bible translation reflects the pluperfect tense as it is written, even though usage of the phrase "had become" was not necessarily needed to do so.
However, in doing this, my opponent is equivocating about the meanings of English words rather than looking at the Hebrew.

He favours the translation mentioned because of the use of the word "now", and he claims that this means the second clause is contrasted from the first in a manner of time.

Unfortunately, he can only do this by sleight of hand with the word "now". In the English usage in this particular translation, the "now" is taking the place of an "and". It is basically short for an explanatory "Now, let me tell you that...". However, my opponent wants to treat it as if it is acting as some kind of consecutive-waw, with the meaning that then the Earth was created, but now it is desolate.

As I have shown, and my opponent has agreed, the Hebrew clearly does not have this consecutive meaning.

Indeed, my opponent seems to be confused by the disjunctive-waw, as is seen here...

Paradoxically, the parenthetical as written above serves a COPULATIVE function because it seems to qualify the condition of the earth spoken of in verse 1, rather than separating or dividing its condition in verse 2 from the condition in verse 1.
...where he seems to be claiming that unlike the copulative-waw, the disjunctive-waw acts as a separator for differing conditions at differing times; rather than, as Hebrew Scholars (as opposed to gap theologists) state, the copulative-waw and disjunctive-waw both being specifically explanatory separators which indicate that the secondary clause is explaining or clarifying the first clause, not indicating a separate following condition like my opponent claims.

Indeed, Gesenius groups together the copulative-waw and the disjunctive-waw into the single category of waw explicativum2 for this very reason.


Other Passages Related to the Alleged Gap


In the first round of this debate, I pointed out that Exodus 20:11 and Exodus 31:14-17 point out that God made the Earth in seven days, not that he repaired the previously corrupted Earth in seven days.

My opponent's response to this is to point out that "made" (`asah) is not the same word as "created" (bara) and that Gap Theologians (once again, notice how he never supports his points with what neutral Hebrew Scholars say but only with what gap theologians with an obvious conflict of interest say).

This has two flaws. Firstly, Genesis account uses `asah as well as bara. It does not say that the Earth took seven days to create. It says that the Earth was created (in a raw and unfinished form), and then took seven days to make once the "raw material" had been created.

Secondly, it ignores the fact that (as I have already pointed out in previous rounds) Hebrew has perfectly serviceable words for "repair" and "replenish" and "refill". If these verses were talking about God repairing a previously corrupted world, then one o