Lion of God said:
The beauty of this viewpoint is that the geological and fossil record supports it rather than conflicts with it.
The geological record does not conflict with it to our current knowledge. However this is in large part due to the fact that, however much early support can be claimed for similar ideas, the theory in it's recent form has been promoted to explain and align with geology. The geological and fossil record is also consistent with sedimentary rock and fossils being laid down by the Flood of Noah, and many books have been published on this subject.
Thankyou for these quoted early supporters. I will attempt to go through them one by one and comment on what they actually said, because in the quote you included in your post none of their actual beliefs or statements were quoted. I will not know about all of them, but will do what I can. Sorry if this turns into a long post.
We are in no position at present to determine precisely how the Jewish commentators made the discovery, but their early literature (the, Midrash for example) reveals that they had some intimation of an early pre-Adamic catastrophe affecting the whole earth. Similarly, clear evidence appears in the oldest extant Version of the Hebrew Scriptures (the Targum of Onkelos) and some intimation may be seen in the "punctuation marks" of the Massoretic text of Genesis Chapter One.
Specific literature is not mentioned here except the Midrash, which I have little information on, so I will not include any quotes. However W. Fields has looked in detail at many ancient Jewish writings, and I will mention three here:
Philo, although writing about differing views held by others, himself believed that Genesis 1:2 was referring to original creation.
The Jewish Legends are too fanciful to be used to support or oppose anything really. They do say "Nor is this world inhabited by man the first of things earthly created by God. He made several worlds before ours, but He destroyed them all, because He was pleased with none until He created ours". The context of this is a very fanciful story about God asking the advice of the Torah on what He should do, the Torah advising Him that as He was worthy of the name "King" He should create an army, courtiers and attendants, so that someone could express homage to Him. On this, when read in it's context, Fields writes "...the legend never makes any allusion to the creation account of Genesis, it goes completely beyond Scripture in talking about worlds (plural), and it does not connect sin with the destruction of the worlds. It appears, in fact, that this legend views God as some imperfect bungler who has to try and try, and finally He is able to produce a world that He likes. Finally, this legend does not posit any necessary connection between our own earth and the previously created and destroyed worlds."
The Targum Onkelos literally says in Genesis 1:2 "and the earth was waste". Custance interpreted the word "waste" in a certain tense that would mean, according to him, "to cut" or "to lay waste", so Custance interpreted the Targum Onkelos as saying "and the earth was laid waste". However the precise stem of the verb that is used in the Aramaic is defined by M. Jastrow (1950) in his works on ancient Hebrew scripture as meaning "to be confounded, to be desolate", NOT "to be made...". In interpreting this passage in this way Custance differs with the normal translation of Aramaic. The Targum Onkelos, when translated according to commonly accepted rules, does not offer any support for the Gap theory, and if anything speaks against it.
Early Jewish writers subsequently built up some abstruse arguments about God's dealings with Israel on the basis of this belief and it would seem that Paul in his Epistle to the Corinthians is at one point making indirect reference to this traditional background.
I am not sure what reference this is. However, "...it would seem that Paul ... is at one point making indirect reference..." is not a particularly strong argument for anything, so this passage is probably of little relevance as compared with other references.
A few of the early Church Fathers accepted this interpretation and based some of their doctrines upon it. It is true that both they and their Jewish antecedents used arguments which to us seem at times to have no force whatever, but this is not the issue. The truth is, as we shall see, that the idea of a once ordered world having been brought to ruin as a consequence of divine judgment just prior to the creation of Adam, was apparently quite widespread. It was not debated: it was merely held by some and not by others. Those who held it referred to it and built up arguments upon it without apparently feeling the need to apologize for believing as they did, nor for explaining the grounds for their faith.
Church fathers that did not hold this view are widespread, and writings that support the natural reading of Genesis are common. Some spoke very strongly about the meaning of "without form and void", for example Tertullian (AD 160 - 220). I will not bother to quote any of these, but they appear to outnumber those holding dissenting views. Other examples of these writers are Irenaeus, Theophilus of Antioch, Lactantius, Augustine, Martin of Braga, Justin Martyr, Tatian and Hermas, Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose, and Jerome. All these writers date from before 600 AD, most from much earlier.
The main early church father quoted by Custance as supporting the Gap theory is Origen (AD 185 - 254). Origen wrote in one place on Genesis 1:1 "It is certain that the present firmament is not spoken of in this verse, nor the present dry land, but rather the heaven and earth from which this present heaven and earth that we now see afterwards borrowed their names". When taken out of context this quote appears to offer some shaky support for some sort of a gap-type view. However it is more likely that Origen was simply meaning that the present firmament and dry land are now considerably different to the firmament and dry land spoken of in Genesis 1:1, due to the other acts of creation over the following 5 days. This is because elsewhere Origens writing indicates that he did not believe in a gap.
Origen also wrote "Very many, indeed, are of the opinion that the matter of which things are made is itself signified in the language used by Moses in the beginning of Genesis: "In the beginning God made heaven and earth; and the earth was invisible, and not arranged", for by the words "invisible and not arranged" Moses would seem to mean nothing else than shapeless matter." Here Origen appears to be directly stating that Genesis 1:2 is a description of the state of the world created in Genesis 1:1, certainly not the result of a ruin / reconstruction event.
Origen said "This world had it's beginning at a certain time, and ... agreeably to our belief in Scripture, we can calculate the years of it's past duration". If Origen believed in a gap, he would have believed that adding up the geneologies etc in Scripture would NOT allow someone to calculate the age of the earth.
One final very interesting thing Origen said on the matter of Creation was this: "Even the heretics, although widely opposed on many other things, yet on this appear to be at one, yielding to the authority of Scripture." Origen is stating that Christians at that time were all agreed on Creation, so he did not appear to know of anyone who held a ruin / reconstruction view at that point!
During succeeding centuries not a few scholars kept the view alive, and medieval scholars wrote about it at some length - often using phraseology which gives their work a remarkably modern ring.
The Book of Jasher, Alcuin's version, seems clearly to assume it - even though the document itself has a questionable pedigree. It certainly antedates modern Geology in any case.
I know nothing about the book of Jasher, so unfortunately can offer no comments on that. However if the document has a questionable pedigree it should not be relied on ahead of other medieval writings. Many other pre-geological scholars wrote strongly supporting the common reading of Genesis one, including such names as Martin Luther and John Calvin.
And for the past two hundred years many translators and commentators have maintained the view and elaborated upon it at length.
These writers have all been after the advent of modern geology, so cannot help but have been influenced by it's teachings.
In short, it is not a recent interpretation of the text of Gen. 1. 1 and 1. 2, but an ancient one long antedating modern geological views. Indeed - it could be as old as the writing of Gen. 1. 2 itself! Some of the ancient Sumerian and Babylonian fragments that, when pieced together, give us a general view of their cosmogony, seem to lend support to it as a very ancient belief.
Again I know little about this. However we should believe Scripture and Christian or Jewish writers on this subject, rather than writings that will have been influenced by alternative religious views, if we wish to obtain an accurate understanding of what God wishes to convey in Genesis.
More from the site:
"But in making these remarks I have been conceding too much. The views which I have exhibited are not of yesterday. It is important and interesting to observe how the early fathers of the Christian church should seem to have entertained precisely similar views: for St. Gregory Nazianzen, after St. Justin Martyr, supposes an indefinite period between the creation and the first ordering of all things. St. Basil, St. Caesarius , and Origen, are much more explicit. To these might be added Augustine, Theodoert, Episcopius and others . Whose remarks imply the existence of a considerable interval 'between the creation related in the first verse of Genesis, and that of which an account is given in the third and following verses'.
I have already spoken about Origen at length. I previously mentioned St. Justin Martyr and Augustine as not supporting the Gap view, and I fail to see how they supported it. The other writers mentioned here I do not know much about, so cannot offer any further comments. However as those that I do know about (eg Origen) can be shown to actually not support this view, I do wonder about the validity of the claims about other writers.
More on Augustine: Augustine has in the past been claimed to have believed the days of creation were 1000 years long, although he clearly taught otherwise in his writings (eg. "Sermons on the Liturgical Seasons". I have never heard of him being associated with the gap theory before, but wonder if there are any grounds for this claim either.
In modern times, but long before geology became a science, the independent character of the opening sentence of Genesis was affirmed by such judicious and learned men as Calvin , Bishop Patrick . and Dr. David Jennings.
Calvin wrote "For Moses simply intends to assert that the world was not perfected at it's very commencement, in the manner in which it is now seen, but that it was created an empty chaos of heaven and earth. His language therefore may be thus explained. When God in the beginning created the heaven and the earth, the earth was empty and waste... ... There is no douby that Moses gives the name of heaven and earth to that confused mass which he shortly afterwards (verse 2) denominates waters." Here Calvin is very clearly writing that Genesis 1:1 was very closely associated with Genesis 1:2, actually writing the two as one sentence. Calvin's own writings clearly refute the claim that he believed "the independent character of the open sentence of genesis", and most certainly did not support a Gap view.
I know little about Bishop Patrick and Dr. David Jennings.
And 'in some old editions of the English Bible, where there is no division into verses, and in Luther's Bible (Wittenburg, 1557), you have in addition the figure 1 placed against the third verse, as being the beginning of the account of the creation of the first day'.
The Tyndale version of the Bible (1530), writes " In the begynnynge God created heaven and erth. The erth was voyde and emptie ad darcknesse was vpon the depe and the spirite of god moved vpon the water. Than God sayd: let there be lyghte and there was lyghte." This translation has no suggestion of a gap, verse two simply describing the state of the earth. Other early translations are very similar (the Great Bible (1540), the Geneva Bible (1560-62), the Bishop's Bible (1568-1602), the Douay Version (1609)). I have not read Luther's bible, but the claim made about it in the quote is very shaky. Most old translations appear to support the natural reading of the passage, and this is in fact confirmed by the above quote, saying "some old versions" - ie the majority of versions did not suggest this view, otherwise the quote would read "most old versions".
Now these views were formed independently of all geological considerations. In the entire absence of evidence from this quarter - probably even in opposition to it , as some would think - these conclusions were arrived at on biblical grounds alone.
Geology only illustrates and confirms them. The works of God prove to be one with this preconceived meaning of his word. And there is no ground to expect that this early interpretation will gradually come to be universally accepted as the only correct one.
The pre-geological authors that were mentioned in these quotes that I had material on certainly did not actually appear to support the gap view. I personally know of no evidence to suggest that the gap theory, as a ruin / reconstruction theory, was not formulated until the rise of modern geology. I see no evidence that it has been derived from scriptural analysis initially, but rather think that scripture has been interpreted to fit a long-age geological viewpoint.
I see much scientific evidence to support the interpretation of the bible along the grounds of the natural reading of Genesis 1. Flood geology can be explained just as easily by a global flood of Noah as by "Lucifer's flood" between Genesis 1 and 2. In fact, if Noah's flood was global, it would obliterate the evidence of fossils and flood geology from a pre-existing world and former flood, and create it's own geology which we see today.
There is much evidence the earth is relatively young, much less than claimed by long-age geologists. Also, the idea of long ages was initially based on uniformitarian geology. If we have one global flood (Noah's), or even more so if we have two (Lucifer's as well), this means geology has been created through catastrophe, not uniformitarianism. And this eliminates the need for long ages in the first place.
