This document provides an analysis of the Genesis creation account from both a biblical and scientific perspective. It first compares the sequence of life described in Genesis 1 to the scientific understanding. It then examines when the sun, moon, and stars were formed according to Genesis and how this aligns with scientific evidence. The document also discusses the beginnings of life on Earth as described in Genesis, noting that photosynthetic organisms first appeared at this time in the geological record. Finally, it analyzes the creation of animal life in the oceans and sky on the fifth day.

1. Analysis of the sequence of
life described in Genesis 1
By
Martin Poenie

2. Plants,
Fruit Trees
Sun,
Moon
and Stars
Life in
oceans Birds
Sea
Monsters
Domestic
and Wild
Mammals
Humans
Sun,
Moon
Prokaryote
Bacteria
Archaea
Life in
oceans
Birds
Mammals HumansAmphibians Reptiles
Flowering
Plants,
Fruit trees
Insects
Bible
Science
Photo
Synthetic
bacteria
1. A comparison of the Biblical and Scientific sequence of living things

3. 2. When were the sun moon and stars
formed?
• Genesis 1:1 (NASB)
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
• Day 4. Genesis 1:14-18 (NASB)
14 Then God said, "Let there be lights (maor) in the expanse of the heavens
to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for
seasons and for days and years; 15 and let them be for lights (maor) in the
expanse of the heavens to give light (or) on the earth"; and it was so.
16 God made the two great lights (maor), the greater light (maor) to govern
the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also.
17 God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light (or) on the
earth, 18 and to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light (or)
from the darkness; and God saw that it was good.

4. Sun Moon and Stars: Digression the Hebrew use of repetition
• To get a better understanding, we need to first discuss the Hebrew use of
repetition
We start with Gen 2:19
• Genesis 2:19 (NASB)
19 Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and
every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would
call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its
name.
• Is the text saying that God forms the animals here – at this time? Are they
formed after man? In chapter 5 “birds” are made on day 5. Isn’t this a
contradiction?

5. Keil and Delitzsch and Keil’s New Commentary on
Genesis 2:19
• In other words, the text is simply restating that God formed the
animals (back in Genesis 1)
Keil’s New Commentary on Genesis

6. Here is an example of restatement
• Isaiah 37:1-6 (NASB)
1 And when King Hezekiah heard it, he tore his clothes, covered himself with sackcloth
and entered the house of the LORD.
2 Then he sent Eliakim who was over the household with Shebna the scribe and the
elders of the priests, covered with sackcloth, to Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amoz.
3 They said to him, "Thus says Hezekiah, 'This day is a day of distress, rebuke and
rejection; for children have come to birth, and there is no strength to deliver.
4 'Perhaps the LORD your God will hear the words of Rabshakeh, whom his master the
king of Assyria has sent to reproach the living God, and will rebuke the words which the
LORD your God has heard. Therefore, offer a prayer for the remnant that is left.'"
• 5 So the servants of King Hezekiah came to Isaiah. Why does it say that they came to
Isaiah whent they said that in verse 2?
•
6 Isaiah said to them, "Thus you shall say to your master, 'Thus says the LORD, "Do not be
afraid because of the words that you have heard, with which the servants of the king of
Assyria have blasphemed Me.

7. Other examples
• Jonah 2:3-4 (NASB)
3 "For You had cast me into the deep, Into the heart of the seas, And the current engulfed me. All
Your breakers and billows passed over me. 4 "So I said, 'I have been expelled from Your sight.
Nevertheless I will look again toward Your holy temple.'
• Zechariah 7:1 (NASB)
1 In the fourth year of King Darius, the word of the LORD came to Zechariah on the fourth day of
the ninth month, which is Chislev.
• Zechariah 7:4 (NASB)
4 Then the word of the LORD of hosts came to me, saying,

8. A clear example in Genesis: Did God put
Adam in the garden twice?
• Genesis 2:8 (NASB)
8 The LORD God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there
He placed the man whom He had formed.
• Genesis 2:15 (NASB)
15 Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of
Eden to cultivate it and keep it.
• If not, why does the text say it twice?

9. Back to the Sun Moon and stars
• Genesis 1:16-18 (NASB) RESTATEMENT connecting us with Gen 1:1
16 God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day,
and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also.
• ADVANCEMENT OF THE ISSUE
• 17 God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the
earth, 18 and to govern the day and the night, and to separate the
light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good.

10. We have to remember that the expanse
(firmament) came after the initial creation of the
sun moon and stars.
• The Hebrew word for light is “or” the word for lights here is “maor”
which refers to a luminous body rather than light itself. In our case then,
it is saying let the visible source of the light shine in the firmament.
• This now becomes scientifically quite plausible. Evidence from Zircon
crystals shows that there was liquid water on earth as far back as 4.1
billion years ago. Carl Sagan suggested there was a paradox, that the sun
was < 75% as bright back then as now. How then could there be liquid
water on earth? There must have been some kind of greenhouse effect
due to high CO2, water vapor, methane or something. These could have
obscured the images of the sun and moon.

11. 3. The beginnings of life
• As a general principle a couple of points should be made.
• 1 Bara (to create). Bara does not in itself mean to create out of nothing.
• Psalm 102:18 (NASB)
18 This will be written for the generation to come, That a people yet to be created (bara)
may praise the LORD.
• Here we have reference to a new generation yet to be created (Bara). Will they be
created out of nothing? They will be new and different because they will praise the Lord.
• Thus Bara is used when something new and different appears in the creation. It does
not mean they were created out of nothing. Thus we might consider when a
representative first appears.

12. General points (cont)
• The Bible does not describe every type of life. Instead, it appears to
describe what is most significant in the life of the people at the time.
• The goal of plant life is zera (plants making seeds) and etz peri (fruit
trees)
• Little is said of what was in the seas despite being full of life
• Flying things ultimately points to birds
• Mammals are mainly divided into two main kinds wild animals and
domesticated beasts

13. The plants and the Hiphil verbs
• Genesis 1:11-12 (KJV)
11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass (Lit dashe deshe or sprout sprouts), 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.
• Dasha Deshe (sprout sprouts). The identy of the sprouts is a matter of interpretation. It is
inferred to mean grass but it is not the food God gives to the animals (Eseb) nor is it
common word “grass” that animals normally eat in the Bible (eseb or chatsir). It is usually
associated with new green stuff.
• The verb to sprout is in the Hiphil or causative form. In this form God is the cause of the
action but He does not carry out the action. He causes the earth to carry out the action.
• This is followed by two participles seed bearing plants and trees making fruit which are
the ultimate goal.

14. Did plants form here? It sounds like it – or does it?
• 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.
• Brought forth is the Hiphil of Yasa (or Yatsa) meaning to go forth. It
describes the beginning of an event not the end of it.
• “Remember this day in which you went out (yasa) from Egypt” (Ex 13:3)
• So here what God saw was that the earth was caused to go forth or get
started toward the aim of making plants with seeds and fruit trees. It does
not mean that everything was completed here.

15. Is there a scientific correlate of this?
• Flowering plants and fruit trees are the last type of plants to appear
in the fossil record. Certainly to think they form here is completely at
odds with science.
• However, this is exactly when photosynthetic organisms appear.
Cyanobacteria become the chloroplasts of all plant life.

16. 13 C-Depleted Carbon Microparticles in >3700-Ma Sea-Floor Sedimentary Rocks from West Greenland Minik T. Rosing 1999 SCIENCE
283:674
Carbon deposits in
Rock
The Earliest Evidence For Life
Determine 13C to 12C
ratios

17. Living Organisms Preferentially Accumulate 12C
12CO2
13CO2
14CO2
12C / 13C
Carbon from living
Organisms exhibit
13C depletion
14CO2
Decays
Rapidly
How do we know when life originated? Evidence
comes from 12C/13C ratios in carbon deposits.
Plants use an
enzyme called
Rubisco to fix
carbon. Plants
preferentially use
carbon 12. This
feature allows us to
determine if carbon
deposits came from
oil.

18. Rosing’s Comment in the Science article
“In analogy to modern oceanic pelagic shales, the precursor organic detritus of the
graphite globules could have been derived more or less continuously from planktonic
organisms that sedimented from the surface waters. Thus, these organisms could have
been photoautotrophic”
In other words, they were photosynthetic
13 C-Depleted Carbon Microparticles in >3700-Ma Sea-Floor Sedimentary Rocks from West Greenland Minik T. Rosing 1999 SCIENCE 283:674

19. Earliest Fossils Look Like Mats of Cyanobacteria 3.5
Billion Years Old
Photograph
Drawing

20. Light and Raman Images show these microfossils are made
of carbon
Schopf et al., 2002 Laser--Raman imagery of Earth's earliest fossils Nature 416:73

21. Stromatolites are structures made from mats of
filamentous bacteria (usually cyanobacteris)

22. 4. On the fifth day
• Genesis 1:20-21 (NASB)
20 Then God said, "Let the waters teem with swarms of living
creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the
heavens." 21 God created the great sea monsters and every living
creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind,
and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good.
• Animal life in the waters
• Flying things
• Sea Monsters?

23. Day 5 poses some interpretive problems/ issues
• Was it intended that all day 5 animals came from the waters?
• Obviously the first group did
• The term “Sea Monsters” suggest that that they began in the waters
• The word translated “Birds” does not specifically mean birds so what
are they? Their placement seems to come between two types of
water borne creatures. Furthermore, day six is all about land
creatures. Does that mean that the “birds” come from the waters?

24. Part of the interpretation depends on what you do
with the Gedolim Tanninim (“Sea Monsters”)
• First of all the creature translated “Sea Monster” or “whale” is in fact
gedolim tanninym. There is nothing in the text here referring to sea or
water.
• So what are the gedolim tanninym?
• Tanninym is the pluran of tannin whose root refers to being elongate.
Gedolim, also plural, means great. A derivative of Gedolim – migdal,
refers to a tower (often the highest point in the city).

25. A tannin can be a snake (nachash)
• Exodus 7:8-9 (NASB)
8 Now the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying,
9 "When Pharaoh speaks to you, saying, 'Work a miracle,' then you shall say to
Aaron, 'Take your staff and throw it down before Pharaoh, that it may become a
serpent (tannin).'"
• Exodus 7:15 (NASB)
15 "Go to Pharaoh in the morning as he is going out to the water, and station
yourself to meet him on the bank of the Nile; and you shall take in your hand the
staff that was turned into a serpent (nachash).
• Numbers 21:9 (NASB)
9 And Moses made a bronze serpent (nachash) and set it on the standard; and it
came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent,
he lived.

26. A tannin can also be a crocodile
• Ezekiel 29:3 (NASB)
3 "Speak and say, 'Thus says the Lord GOD, "Behold, I am against you,
Pharaoh king of Egypt, The great monster (gadol tannin) that lies in
the midst of his rivers, That has said, 'My Nile is mine, and I myself
have made it.'
• The “monster” was doubtless a crocodile. The “hooks” in the jaws to
render the “monster” helpless described the standard method for
capture and destruction of a crocodile (v. 4).
New American Commentary - New American Commentary – Volume
17: Ezekiel.

27. Both examples of tannin are reptiles
• The question then is whether great reptiles is a fair translation?
• This is partly dependent on whether all the day 5 animals are
understood as being water borne.
• To partly deal with this question we want to next look at the “birds”.
•

28. The puzzle of the flying things
Genesis 1:20 (NASB)
20 Then God said, "Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let
birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens.“
The translator here translates the Hebrew word owph as birds. There is a specific
Hebrew word for bird, it is tsippor.
Leviticus 14:6 (NASB)
6 "As for the live bird (tsippor), he shall take it together with the cedar wood and
the scarlet string and the hyssop, and shall dip them and the live bird in the blood
of the bird that was slain over the running water.
Owph simply refers to flying things and can refer to insects, birds or bats (see Lev
11). In Gen 1:20 the text literally says let flying things fly (Owph, Uph)

29. Biblical classification
With the Owph, we can see that Biblical classification is based on a feature
that crosses many lines. With the owph, the common feature is having
wings. It is not a classification based on genetic relatedness like those used
today.
Thus in Leviticus 11 we see owph used to refer to insects, birds and bats.
Given that owph refers to all flying things but the order of appearance is at
the time flying things first appear the first flying things should be insects.
However, birds would be the most significant flying thing to people.

30. What are the flying things of Gen 1:20
It is likely that the owph here ultimately refers to all different types
flying things. Scientifically Flying insects came first, flying reptiles came
next but birds are closely related to the dinosaurs. In fact, some
dinosaurs had feathers and birds are considered dinosaurs.
It is likely that the flying things are understood as coming from the
land.
Genesis 2:19 (NASB)
19 Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird (owph) of the
sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a
living creature, that was its name.
Genesis 1:22 (NASB)
22 God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds
multiply on the earth."

31. Conclusion on the gedolim tanninym.
• If the flying things came from the land, there is no compelling reason
to think that the gedolim tanninym had to refer only to animals from
the water.
• However there were tannin that were in the water as well.
• In my view, gedolim tanninym could refer to dinosaurs.

32. Summary for day 5
• Day 5 begins with life in the water and ends with the birds and
gedolim tanninym
• Scientifically life does begin in the waters in what is termed the
Cambrian Explosion. The term explosion is remarkable give that the
emphasis of the Bible (swarm with swarms) is about the abundance
of life in the oceans. The flying things including insects, flying reptiles
and birds also appear in this period. While other interpretations are
possible, I tentatively take the view that the gedolim tanninym are the
great reptiles (dinosaurs).

33. 5. The KT extinction took out essentially all
large vertebrates
• “Almost all the large vertebrates on Earth, on land, at sea, and in the
air (all dinosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, and pterosaurs) suddenly
became extinct about 65 Ma, at the end of the Cretaceous Period.”
• http://mygeologypage.ucdavis.edu/cowen/~GEL107/KT.html
• On land, reptiles larger than about 44 pounds (20 kilograms) suffered
extinction at higher rates than smaller reptiles

34. 6. Day 6
• Genesis 1:24-25 (NASB)
24 Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures (Nephesh
Chayyah) after their kind: cattle (behema) and creeping things (remes) and
beasts of the earth after their kind"; and it was so. 25 God made the beasts
of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything
that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good.
• Remes (creeping things)
• Behemah (domesticated mammals)
• Nephesh Chayyah (Living creatures)

35. Day 6
• Genesis 1:24 (NASB)
24 Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their
kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their
kind"; and it was so.
• Once again we have the hiphil form of yatsa (God caused the earth to
bring forth). God tells the earth to bring forth animal life. As
previously, God causes but does not do the action.
• We might ask why is made (asa) used instead of create (bara). Are
these creatures not representing something totally new?

36. Day 6 deals with mammals and creeping
things (remeś)
• Although remeś often refers to sea creatures here it seems to refer to small
mammals and perhaps small reptiles as well
• Psalm 104:25 (NASB)
25 There is the sea, great and broad, In which are swarms (remeś) without
number, Animals (chayyah) both small and great.
• The verb rāmaś (verb form of remes) emphasizes the scurrying of smaller four-
footed mammals Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament.
• On the basis of these latter two usages it appears that remeś means not only
small mammals such as rodents but the small reptiles common in the gravel and
rocks of Palestine.
Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament.

37. Why remes?
• If we had birds and dinosaurs on land already, why here the emphasis
on creeping things?
• Speculation
• The transition from the dinosaur age to mammals was marked by a
big extinction event – the KT extinction. There are various
controversies as to what caused it – a giant meteor, volcanic activity,
climate change etc and how fast the transition was. However, the
archaeological record showed that essentially all large animals went
extinct and what proliferated afterwards were small mammals.

38. Day 6 humans
• Genesis 1:27 (NASB)
27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He
created them.
• Who are the male and female? Are they equated with Adam and Eve?
• God told them to subdue the earth. The word subdue is kabash and indicates it will be a struggle
requiring great strength.
• God told them Genesis 1:29 (NASB)
29 Then God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all
the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you;
• God told Adam of every tree of the garden “eating you shall eat” (a Hebrew double verb, you shall
surely eat or you must eat).

39. Summary of the sequence in Genesis 1
• God made light and the sun moon and stars on day 1.
• God made the expanse (the atmosphere) that may have obscured the visible
sources of the light
• God began the project of making plants. In my view this began with making
photosynthetic bacteria which became the basis of all plants.
• God clears the expanse so that the source of the light (maor) becomes visible.
• Animal life begins in the oceans
• Flying things arise
• Dinosaurs
• Small mammals proliferate
• Large mammals appear
• Humans