Frequently asked questions listed by topic

Genesis Questions and Answers

Church Fathers and Reformers

Did Jesus, the early Church leaders and reformers believe the literal creation account given in Genesis?

• Quotations in the New Testament: Do they mean that the quoted book is totally authoritative?
• Calvin says: Genesis means what it says
• The early Church defended creation science (ICR Impact 160)
• Genesis means what it says according to great Church Father, Basil of Caesarea (AD 329–379)
• British scriptural geologists in the first half of the nineteenth century: part 1
  (See the section on biblical interpretation which details various views on the days of creation.)
• Orthodoxy and Genesis: What the fathers really taught
  (A review by Dr Terry Mortenson of Genesis, Creation and Early Man by Fr Seraphim Rose)
• Jesus on creation
• The long story of long ages
• Did Origen and Augustine believe in long ages?
• Luther on Evolution
• What was Martin Luther’s stand on Creation/Evolution? (Christian Answers Network).
• Which is the recent aberration? Old-Earth or Young-Earth Belief
• See also The 19^th Century Scriptural Geologists

How does Genesis explain the origin of death and suffering?

• See Q&A: Death and Suffering

Days of Creation

How long were the days mentioned in the Biblical creation account?

• Did God really take six days? (from the The Creation Answers Book)
• אחד as an Ordinal Number and the Meaning of Genesis 1:5 (published in The Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society)
• The numbering pattern of Genesis (Technical, based on above paper)
• A Defense of Literal Days in the Creation Week (published in the Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal)
• Christians in the public square: How far should Evangelicals go in the Creation-Evolution debate? (Defence of straightforward Genesis, critique of compromise views, rebukes appeasement of uniformitarian ‘science’, Evangelical Theological Society)
• Creation days and Orthodox Jewish tradition
• Genesis according to evolution
• Days of Creation: A semantic approach (Technical)
• How long were the days of Genesis 1?
  (What did God intend for us to understand from the words He used? Based on above paper)
• The Biblical Hebrew Creation Account: New Numbers Tell The Story (technical, ICR Impact 377)
• Days of Revelation or Creation? (Semi-Technical)
• Morning has broken … but when? (Was Creation’s first day the beginning?)
• A Summary of Evidence for Literal 24-hr Creation Days in Genesis 1 (Andrew Kulikovsky, PDF;
  also refutes some Scripture-twisting by the ‘Progressive Creationist’, Don Stoner).
• The Necessity for Believing in Six Literal Days
• Q&A: 2 Peter 3:8 — ‘one day is like a thousand years’
• Serpentine subtlety
• Six days? Honestly!
• Six days or billions of years?
• Naming the animals: all in a day’s work for Adam
  Could Adam have named all the animals in one day?
• How could Adam have named all the animals in a single day?
• Professors: A day means a day!

If God didn’t create the sun until Day 4 in the creation week, then how could each of the previous 3 days have had a morning and an evening?

• How could the days of Genesis 1 be literal if the sun wasn’t created until Day 4? (available in Spanish)
• Light, life and the glory of God
• Evenings and mornings

Do Genesis 1 and 2 contradict each other?

Is there an irreconcilable difference in the order of creation (e.g. mankind, animals, plants) between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2?

• Genesis 1 and 2: complementary not contradictory
• What is the order of events in the biblical Creation? (Christian Answers Network)
• Genesis 1 and 2: refutation of alleged contradictions (Semi-Technical) Tekton Apologetics Ministries
• What’s in a name? The terms for God in Genesis 1 and 2: no contradiction!

Should Genesis be taken literally?

• Eisegesis: a Genesis virus
• The Fall into Sin
• Should Genesis be taken literally? (principles of biblical interpretation, hermeneutics)
• Problems in methods of interpretation—Genesis 1–11 (Noel Weeks)
• Part 1
• Part 2
• Genesis: Bible authors believed it to be history (available in Finnish and Russian)

Are the Genesis genealogies meant to be taken as strict chronologies?

• Biblical chronogenealogies (Technical)
• The Genesis 5 and 11 fluidity question (Semi-technical)

Can ‘millions of years’ be added to the Genesis account?

• See Q&A: Creation Compromises (provides answers to ideas such as the framework hypothesis, gap theory, progressive creation, theistic evolution, etc.)

Who really wrote Genesis?

Documentary (JEDP, Wellhausen–Graf) Hypothesis

• Did Moses really write Genesis?
• Does Genesis hold up under critic’s scrutiny?
• Debunking the Documentary Hypothesis
• The Mosaic Authorship of the Pentateuch by Prof. G.F. Wright, D.D.,LL.D.,
  (Semi-Technical — The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth (1910–1915).
• The Tablet Theory of Genesis Authorship
  (True Origins site — overview and update of Wiseman’s colophon thesis)

Was Genesis copied from pagan mythology?

• Confronting the Copycat Thesis (Tekton Apologetics Ministries)
• Genesis and ancient Near Eastern stories of Creation and the Flood: an introduction (Christian Answers Network)
• Genesis and the lost tablets
• Noah’s Flood and the Gilgamesh Epic
• A comparative study of the flood accounts in the Gilgamesh Epic and Genesis, by Nozomi Osanai, MA Thesis, Wesley Biblical Seminary, USA, 2004
• The Gilgamesh Epic and the Bible
• The Flood of Noah and the Flood of Gilgamesh (ICR Impact 285)
• The Gilgamesh Epic and the Bible

Survey

What about the Garden of Eden?

• Did Eve eat an apple?
• Did Eve lie before the Fall?
• The Garden of Eden Found?
• The Tree of Life
• Worldwide traditions of a primordial paradise (ICR Impact)

What was Adam like?

• Did Adam Have a Belly-Button?
• Made in the image of God
• Man: the image of God
• Regenerating ribs: Adam and that ‘missing’ rib
• Was Adam a UFO (unidentified figurative object)?
• What was Adam Like?

Was there a literal snake in the garden of Eden? Why did God curse all snakes for Satan’s sin in the Garden of Eden? Does it mean there was a time when they didn’t crawl on their bellies?

• Snakes do eat dust
• Who was the Serpent?
• What About the Snake in the Garden of Eden? (Semi-Technical)

What about the ‘firmament’ created on Day 2?

• Is the raqiya‘ (‘firmament’) a solid dome?

Who was Cain’s wife?

• Where did Cain find his wife?