Summary
To be written. The text, chronology, and physical claims in Genesis examined against manuscripts and external evidence. 15 articles in this section are written; the rest are planned. This page will eventually state where they came out, which arguments survived, and which were retired.
The articles
Linked titles are written. Bold titles are planned.
- Which Bible Text Gives the Right Date for Creation? — Genesis manuscripts give creation dates about 1,400 years apart. The Masoretic numbers have the best case at about 70 percent confidence; the Dead Sea Scrolls preserve none of the disputed ages, and all three chronologies are young-earth.
- Noah's Ark: The Logistics — The Ark can hold juvenile animals if created kinds are broader than genera, but adult animals do not fit. Ventilation, wooden seam strength, labor, disease, and post-Flood population recovery remain unsolved.
- The Genre and Grammar of Genesis 1 — Judged by Hebrew grammar and genre alone, Genesis 1 presents six ordinary consecutive days: yom with a number, with evening and morning, in a waw-consecutive narrative chain, read that way by Exodus 20:11. The text establishes what its author meant, not whether he was right.
- Competing Readings of Genesis — Nine readings of Genesis 1 are tested against the same text. The calendar-day reading passes the most textual tests but has weak spots. Every old-earth reading was proposed after the geology it reconciles, by its authors' own admission, and each fails a test the plain reading passes. Passing the tests shows what the author meant, not that he was right.
- Gerald Schroeder's Six Days — Gerald Schroeder argues the six days of Genesis 1 and the 13.8 billion years of cosmology are one interval seen from two frames, converted by a factor near a trillion. The relativity is real but the conversion is not: it needs a privileged cosmic clock that general relativity does not supply, a fixed ratio that expansion does not give, and a halving series with no derivation. The order of events also fails.
- Ancient Cosmology and Genesis — Genesis 1 uses the sky-language of its neighbours. The raqia question is two-sided: the author probably pictured a solid sky, the text never asserts one, and Job 37:18 settles nothing. The flat-earth charge fails on every verse and on the history of the myth. Genesis 2:19 and the creation order trouble concordism, not the plain reading.
- Genesis and Ancient Near Eastern Parallels — The Babylonian flood and creation tablets share real, specific features with Genesis 1-11, and they are older as written objects. Read against the primary texts, the flood parallel is close, the creation parallel is thin, and literary dependence in either direction has not been shown. The article states what evidence would show it.
- Flood Legends Around the World — Hundreds of cultures tell of a great flood, and the stories cluster in ways chance does not explain. But a recount of 262 legends kills the percentages apologists quote, the world's commonest flood story is not Genesis-shaped, and every legend that matches Genesis in full is either Mesopotamian or was recorded after missionary contact.
- Adam, the Fall, and Death — Both Testaments treat Adam as one man, and Paul's argument in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 does not work without him. Archetypal and mytho-historical readings can be stated fairly; each costs something Paul says. Cain's wife was his sister and the genetic objection fails on arithmetic. The Fall cursed the ground, not physics.
- Death Before the Fall — Genesis 1:29-30, 3, 9:3 and Isaiah 11 most naturally tie animal death to the Fall but never state it, and Romans 5:12 speaks of human death. Augustine and Aquinas taught pre-Fall carnivory; Theophilus, Irenaeus, Basil, Luther, Calvin and Wesley did not. The reading commits a young earth to placing every fossil predator, tumour and venom after Adam.
- The Long Lifespans of Genesis — Genesis reports lifespans near 900 years and a sharp decline after the Flood. The numbers are internally consistent and their post-Flood shape is not generic, but Genesis 5 carries an arithmetic signature no real cohort would have, and every proposed biological mechanism fails by one to three orders of magnitude.
- The Genesis Genealogies and Gaps — Gaps in the names of Genesis 5 and 11 are possible, and William Henry Green proved that much in 1890. But each verse dates the birth of the son it names, so a missing name adds no years. No surviving text-form puts creation before about 5,600 BC. Gaps cannot reconcile Genesis with an older humanity.
- The Flood Narrative — Genesis 6-9 describes a flood that covers every high mountain, kills every land creature outside one boat, and is sealed by a promise never to repeat it. Its author meant a worldwide flood, and its most capable old-earth readers concede this. The local-flood reading was invented in the 1650s. The source division is a real pattern but a weak argument. Whether the flood happened is a geology question this article does not settle.
- The Sons of God and the Nephilim — Genesis 6:1-4 has three readings. The angelic reading is the oldest, held by every witness before AD 200 and by the best lexical evidence, since the exact phrase 'sons of God' names heavenly beings in all five of its other uses. The Sethite reading is a third-century Christian rescue with textual problems. The royal reading is a second-century rabbinic idea revived by Kline. The 120 years of 6:3 is a countdown, not a lifespan. Nothing on this site depends on which reading is right.
- The Age of Earth in Church History — Nearly every Jewish and Christian writer before 1750 put creation under 6,000 years before his own day. The claim that the church fathers taught long creation days fails on their texts. Deep time entered Christian thought from geology after 1780, not from exegesis, and its first Christian adopters said so.
Verdict
To be written.