This earth age was made (Heb.
asah) in six days, but the earth was created (Heb.
bara) at a time before the overthrow (
katabole') of the world.
Concerning the "Gap theory"...
"Whether it be a "theory", let Scripture decide, and the Savior Himself teach.
In the synagogue at Nazareth "He found the place where it was written:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor;
He hath sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To preach deliverance to the captives,
And recovering of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty them that are bruised,
To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
And HE CLOSED THE BOOK, and He gave it again to the minister, and sat down" (
Luke 4:18-20). Why this mysterious action? Why not continue the reading? Because He could not; for the words which immediately follow refer to the end of the present Dispensation of Grace, and speak of the coming Dispensation of Judgment. Had he continued to read
Isaiah 61:1, 2, the next line would have been
"And the day of vengeance of our God".
But this part of the prophecy was not then to be fulfilled.
As far as He had read, He could truly say, "This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears." But He could not have said "This day is this Scripture fulfilled", had He not "closed the book", but gone on to read the next line.
And yet, in the Authorized Version and all other versions, there is only a comma between the two lines, while there is a period of nearly 2,000 years between the two statements. (In the Manuscripts there is no mark of punctuation at all.)
This will show the importance of "searching" and "looking into" the "manner of time" of which the prophets wrote.
Other examples may be found in
Genesis 1, between verses 1 and 2.
Psalm 22, between verses 21 and 22.
Psalm 118, in the middle of verse 22.
Isaiah. 9:6, after the first clause.
Isaiah 53, in the middle of verse 10.
Isaiah 61, in the middle of verse 2 (see above).
Lamentations 4, between verses 21 and 22.
Daniel 9, between verses 26 and 27.
Daniel 11, between verses 20 and 21.
Hosea 2, between verses 13 and 14.
Hosea 3, between verses 4 and 5.
Amos 9, between verses 10 and 11.
Micah 5, between verses 2 and 3.
Habukkuk 2, between verses 13 and 14.
Zephaniah 3, between verses 7 and 8.
Zephaniah 9, between verses 9 and 10.
Matthew 10, in the middle of verse 23.
Matthew 12, in the middle of verse 20.
Luke 1, between verses 31 and 32.
Luke 21, in the middle of verse 24.
John 1, between verses 5 and 6.
1 Peter 1, in the middle of verse 11.
Revelation 12, between verses 5 and 6."
The Paranthesis of the Present Dispensation
"Some scholars also argue against translating hayah "became" instead of "was" in
Genesis 1:2 because they assume this interpretation came about only recently, after geology revealed the strata of the earth to be very old. Thus they consider this explanation a desperate attempt to reconcile the Genesis account with modern geology.
The explanation that there existed an indefinite period between the initial beautiful creation described in Genesis 1:1 and the earth becoming waste and void in verse 2 has been called, sometimes disparagingly, "the gap theory." The idea was attributed to Thomas Chalmers in the 19th century and to Cyrus Scofield in the 20th.
Yet the interpretation that the earth "became" waste and void has been discussed for close to 2,000 years. The earliest known recorded controversy on this point can be attributed to
Jewish sages at the beginning of the second century. The Hebrew scholars who wrote the Targum of Onkelos, the earliest of the Aramaic versions of the Old Testament, translated Genesis 1:2 as "and the earth was laid waste." The original language led them to understand that something had occurred that had "laid waste" the earth, and they interpreted this as a destruction.
The early Catholic theologian Origen (
186-254), in his commentary De Principiis, explains regarding Genesis 1:2 that the original earth had been "cast downwards" (Ante-Nicene Fathers, 1917,
p. 342).
In the Middle Ages the Flemish scholar Hugo St. Victor (
1097-1141) wrote about Genesis 1:2: "Perhaps enough has already been debated about these matters thus far, if we add only this, 'how long did the world remain in this disorder before the regular re-ordering . . . of it was taken in hand?'" (De Sacramentis Christianae Fidei, Book 1, Part I, Chapter VI). Other medieval scholars, such as Dionysius Peavius and Pererius, also considered that there was an interval between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2.
According to The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, the Dutch scholar Simon Epíscopius (
1583-1643) taught that the earth had originally been created before the six days of creation described in Genesis (1952, Vol. 3, p. 302). This was roughly 200 years before geology discovered evidence for the ancient origin of earth.
These numerous examples show us that the idea of an interval between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 has a long history.
Any claim that it is of only recent origin-that it was invented simply as a desperate attempt to reconcile the Genesis account with geology-is groundless.
Perhaps the best treatment on both sides of this question is given by the late Arthur Custance in his book Without Form and Void: A Study of the Meaning of Genesis 1:2. Dr. Custance states, "To me, this issue is important, and after studying the problem for some thirty years and after reading everything I could lay my hands on pro and con and after accumulating in my own library some 300 commentaries on Genesis, the earliest being dated 1670, I am persuaded that there is, on the basis of the evidence, far more reason to translate Gen. 1:2 as 'But the earth had become a ruin and a desolation, etc.' than there is for any of the conventional translations in our modern versions" (1970, p. 7)."
