The Story

The latter part of Genesis tells of how Jacob - later named Israel by God, and the patriach of the Israelites - had twelve sons who would become the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel. When they still all lived in the land of Canaan, one of his sons, Joseph - the one given the technicoloured coat by Jacob - was kidnapped and sold into slavery by his brothers, as they were jealous that Jacob had shown preference to him and they were worried that he would become their master.

Joseph ended up being sold to Potiphar, the Captain of the Egyptian Pharaoh's guard, where he interpreted a vision Pharoah had, thus predicting seven years of plentiful harvest in Egypt followed by seven years of famine. To cut a long story short, as Joseph had previously demonstrated great stewardship, he was given the position of Vizier (the second most powerful position after Pharoah) and put in charge of preparing Egypt for the famine, which he did so successfully that, when the famine came, not only did the Egyptian economy survive, but they had enough surplus to be able to sell grain to neighbouring nations.

Canaan also suffered during the famine, such that Joseph's brothers came to Egypt to buy food. Joseph saw divine providence in his being sold into slavery by his brothers and so he forgave them. As Pharaoh was so grateful to Joseph for all he had done to save Egypt during the famine, he gave the area of Goshen - one of the best areas in Egypt to grow crops and raise livestock - for Jacob, his twelve sons and their families to inhabit.

There the book of Genesis ends. The next book in the bible, Exodus, picks up 430 years later, where we find the twelve tribes of Israel had done very well in Goshen: they had multiplied and become very successful and strong. The new Pharoah, forgetting what Egypt owed to the Israelites and seeing their strength, became worried that should war come, the Israelites could join Egypt's enemies and overpower them. In an effort to weaken the Israelites, the Pharoah subjugated them through forced labour. Seeing the Israelites continued to multiply and spread, the Egyptians became so fearful of them that the Pharaoh ordered that every newborn male of the Israelites be killed at birth.

This forced Moses' family to hide him in a basket in the reeds by the Nile. Unfortunately for them - but possibly fortunate for Moses and later the Jewish people - the Pharaoh's daughter, who desired a son, was bathing nearby, and on hearing the baby Moses crying, she found, rescued and adopted him. The name "Moses" means "drawn from the water".

Many years later, Moses, who still felt a strong affinity to his Jewish kin, became furious when he witnessed an Egyptian master brutally beating a Hebrew slave, and he impulsively killed the Egyptian. Fearing punishment from the Pharaoh, he fled into the desert of Midian and became a shepherd for his father-in-law.

During his time on the lam(b), whilst looking after the flock on Mount Horeb, Moses witnessed the burning bush that wasn't consumed by fire, from within which he heard the voice of God, saying:

I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.

Despite Moses' reluctance at the daunting task, he returned to Egypt, and with his brother, Aaron, he informed the Pharaoh that the God of the Hebrews demanded that Pharaoh free God's people. Pharaoh refused - no one is likely to give up an enormous workforce on the say-so of someone claiming to speak for God - and so Egypt was hit by the ten plagues: the Nile turning into blood, swarms of frogs, then gnats, then flies, disease to their cattle, boils, hail that killed every person and animal that wasn't sheltered, a giant swarm of locusts that decimated what was left of their crops after the hail, darkness, and finally, the death of every first-born male animal and Egyptian person, including Pharaoh's own son. Despite Moses predicting each plague before it hit, each plague abating when Pharoah relented to let the Israelites go and Moses prayed to God for the plague to end, and the plagues not affecting the Israelites in the region of Goshen, Pharaoh utlimately refused to release the Israelites every step of the way, until the tenth plague.

Before every plague, Moses warned Pharaoh of what was about to happen and to release the Israelites, but it wasn't until the tenth plague that Pharaoh ordered Moses to take the Jewish people away, rather than have the Egyptians suffer any further. Having been finally released, Moses led all 600,000 of the Israelites, plus children, and their livestock, hastily away from their captivity, 430 years after Jacob (Israel), his twelve sons and their families first came to Egypt. The multitude were led by a column of smoke during the day, and a column of fire at night, which took them towards the desert and then the sea. Very soon after the Israelites had left, Pharaoh, having lost an enormous slave workforce, and thinking they were blocked by the desert and the sea, changed his mind and assembled his army to recapture the Israelites.

On seeing the huge Egyptian army, the Israelites - understandably - panicked, but Moses, commanded by God, stretched out his hand over the sea. The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and turned the sea into dry land; and the waters were divided. The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left.

After the Israelites had crossed the sea on dry ground, and the pursuing Egyptian army was still in the middle of the sea, Moses again stretched out his hand over the sea, again commanded by God, and the sea returned to its usual position, drowning all of Pharaoh's pursuing army. When the Israelites saw the power God had used against the Egyptians, they feared the Lord and believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses.

Modern Evidence

It may seem that the parting of the Red Sea - "walls of water to the left and to the right" - could only be a fantasy, a metaphorical story used to describe the birth of the Jewish nation. It wasn't until 2010 that computer simulations by US scientists at the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Colorado showed the crossing to be possible as described in the book of Exodus.

The study looked at possible sites for the crossing, near where the Israelites were recorded to have camped in the book of Exodus. Over time, the Nile has changed shape, due to its sand-based bed. However, the scientists were able to reconstruct a model of the river, given rock-based (stable) geographical formations and contemporary descriptions.

Their study found a likely location for the crossing, circa 1250 BC, at a bend where an ancient river merged with a coastal lagoon. At this location, an easterly wind of 63 mph blowing for 12 hours, which then relaxed to 0 mph, was simulated. 63 mph is what you would expect from a medium-strength tropical storm: memorable, but would not prevent travel on foot. These simulation parameters match closely with the account in Exodus.

Under these conditions, the water is pushed westward, exposing a land bridge between point B and Kedua of 3-4 km in length and 5 km wide, which remains open for 4 hours. A stronger wind of 74 mph would leave the bridge open for 7.4 hours, but these stronger winds may make walking too difficult for a mixed group of people.

After the wind stopped, the land bridge would have closed very quickly as the backed-up water resumed its eastward flow due to gravity. The returning water would have appeared as a churning wall of advancing water - not good news for the pursuing Egyptians.

Now we have a scientific study that shows the parting of the sea from an easterly wind to be possible, we may think it was nothing more than good fortune for Moses and the Israelites. However, this land bridge was not a regular occurrence that could be depended on, and immediately before the crossing, Moses and the Jewish people had just been released from Egypt following the ten plagues. Again, the plagues may well be rooted in events explicable through nature, but Moses predicted them so convincingly that Pharaoh released his massive slave workforce. For me, the coincidence of the plagues, the released Israelites following the column of smoke and fire in the sky to the precise point at the river, and the easterly wind happening at the right time to allow the Israelites through, but swamp their pursuers who were close behind, is more than mere coincidence.

One might assume that the Genesis account was nothing more than a nice story, a metaphor, or a stop-gap explanation until science caught up, and that it certainly shouldn't be taken literally. Indeed, we've already heard that St. Augustine of Hippo, a bishop in North Africa during the early 5th century, argued: the first two chapters of Genesis are written to suit the understanding of the people at that time. In order to communicate in a way that all people could understand, the creation story was told in a simpler, allegorical fashion.

That was whereabouts my opinion laid. My interest was reignited, however, when I visited the Natural History Museum in New York and read a timeline of the Earth showing civilization started about 6000 years ago - about the time Adam and Eve were said to have been created and placed in the garden of Eden. Civilization starting 6000 years ago and the Genesis account stating there have been approximately 6000 years since the first humans, Adam and Eve, were created seemed like an interesting coincidence, so I investigated further.

The Story

The story of the garden goes: God planted a garden in Eden, out of the ground of which every tree that is pleasant to see and good to eat grew, including the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The description of the rivers of the garden suggest its location is just north of the north-west tip of the Persian Gulf:

I think most people know how the story goes, but just in case: God placed Adam in the garden for him to tend it, and Adam was given permission to eat from every tree, except the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Before long, Adam and Eve, encouraged by the snake, succumbed to the temptation to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree. Then God said See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever, so God banished Adam and Eve from the garden to labour the land outside, while the garden was protected by cherubim and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.

The 5.9-Kiloyear Event

Given the described location of Eden puts it somewhere near Basrah, Iraq, we might be inclined to write-off the possibility of a garden there with ease, especially a garden as lush as the one described in the Old Testament.

However, geological records show that the Sahara and Arabian deserts, and other deserts at 30° latitude, have always undergone periodic bouts of humidity and aridity, due to the changing of the Earth's orbital axis - the Earth's axis completes a full cycle between 22.1° and 24.5° and back to 22.1° every 41,000 years.

During the last humid phase, which lasted thousands of years, monsoon rains fell on the Arabian desert - and other deserts at that latitude - which brought forth lush vegetation, lakes, rivers, grasslands and forests, which were inhabited by animals like elephants, rhinos, hippos and crocodiles, and people.

As the Earth's axis changed from 24° to 23.5°, the then lush "deserts" were exposed to more direct sunlight, and consequently the monsoon rains retreated, leading to aridification. The last change from humid to arid happened more abruptly than could be explained by orbital precession alone. Although the abruptness of the change cannot be explained, there are theories such as ice from the Arctic led to a cooling of the Atlantic, which compounded the climate change, causing the loss of the monsoons; humans' cattle overgrazing the grasses, which led to a reduction in the amount of moisture in the atmosphere (plants give off moisture, which produces clouds) and further accelerated the loss of the monsoon.

Whatever the cause, we know that around 6000 years ago, the lush landscape changed to desert quite abruptly (over 300 years). Maybe you could say the desertification would fit the description of an ever-turning sword of fire...maybe

Also around 6000 years ago, the Abnormal Spindle-like Microcephaly-associated protein (ASPM) gene developed an allele (a variation of a gene). The ASPM gene is linked to the size of the brain, and when this gene malfunctions, a human's brain can be 70% smaller than average.

The allele does not affect intelligence - tests have shown that those without the later allele have no difference in IQ than those with the original - but its appearance is correlated with the appearance of civilization: the development of written language, spread of agriculture and development of cities. There are only two variations of the ASPM gene: the original and the one that appeared around 6000 years ago (or around the time Adam and Eve were eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and civilization began according to the bible).

So, 6000 years ago, we have the disappearance of the lush gardens at Eden coinciding with a development within the brain that correlates to the development of civilization, both forcing human migration to the Nile and facilitating the ability to create a complex, highly organized, state-level society (civilization), all around the time and place that we now know the first civilization began.

Whatever the truth behind the story of the Garden of Eden and the subsequent beginning of civilization, it is very interesting - or at least I think it is - that we can see that it's not a complete fantasy. The biblical record of migration to the Nile, and subsequent creation of the first civilization, is rooted in real history and at the right time in history.

We read in Genesis that the the creation of the universe out of nothing to the appearance of Adam on Earth took six days. We've already spoken about Creationists who believe the Earth to only be 6000 years old and the Genesis account to be literal, but thankfully they are in the minority (a very small minority) and most of us agree there were quite a few more years between the creation of the Earth and the beginning of civilization.

Interestingly, however, for the entire post-Adam period there is no disagreement between the dates given for events by the bible - by virtue of the description of family trees - and the dates for the same events scientifically established through methods such as archaeology.

For example, one of the earliest events recorded in the bible that could be verified through archaeology is the invention of bronze tools, which archaeology has shown to be about 3200 B.C. Genesis credits Tubal-Cain as an instructor in the art of making bronze and the Roman-Jewish scholar, Josephus Flavius, expands on this by crediting Tubal-Cain with the invention of forging bronze. Based on average recorded lifespans, Tubal-Cain is believed to have been born around 3270 B.C. Given the approximations in determining the start of an era and that Tubal-Cain's date of birth has been calculated by comparison to average lifespans of the time, Genesis shows an impressive accuracy for identifying the start of the Bronze Age, particularly given that this approximate date was not proven until 1816.

There are numerous other examples where archaeology and the dates from biblical stories agree. For example, until relatively recently, some historians claimed that because the Hittite people existed only in biblical history and no other evidence could be found for them, the Hittites were a fantasy. It was not until the turn of the 19th century that archaeological digs discovered the capital city of the Hittites and proved their existence. And, it wasn't until August 2017 that the story in the book of Jeremiah describing the burning and capture of Jerusalem by the Babylonians was proven to be accurate.

Also impressive is the accuracy of the order of creation described by Genesis. Genesis lists the following order of creation, within the six days to Adam:

1. the Earth being a formless void
2. separation of water into two parts to create the atmosphere
3. separation of sea and land
4. appearance of vegetation
5. visibility of the sun, moon and stars
6. sea creatures
7. land creatures
8. humans

Given the state of geology, biology, archaeology, planetology and related fields available to the author of Genesis, the Genesis account provides an astonishingly accurate description of the order of creation. In light of the fact that it is not until modern times that this order could be evidentially determined, the accuracy of the Genesis account is truly remarkable, particularly given how unlikely it would be for someone to guess the correct order of creation - even if you asked someone with today's general education, I doubt they would be able to guess it.

Consider that within the last hundred years, as scientific tools and methodologies advanced, the Genesis account was written off as purely imagination and superstition, with no possible basis in reality, but as scientific tools advanced even further, our understanding developed to reveal the post-Adam Genesis account to be accurate.

Also consider, that Nahmanides, born in 1194 and still one of the most respected scholars of the Torah, points out that there is discontinuity in the way the days are numbered in Genesis. At the end of the first day, the verse says: There is evening and morning, Day One. But the second day doesn't say "evening and morning, Day Two." Rather, it says evening and morning, a second day. And the Bible continues with this pattern: Evening and morning, a third day… a fourth day… a fifth day… the sixth day. Only on the first day does the text use a different form: not "first day," but "Day One". From this, Nahmanides taught that the universe had a definite beginning.

From his interpretation of the Torah, Nahmanides wrote in the first day God created the energy (כח) "matter" (חומר) of all things, and then he was finished with the main creation. After that God created all other things from that energy. Nahmanides also taught that in the beginning all the matter of the universe was contained within a speck so tiny that there was no substance to it, and as the speck expanded out, it turned into matter as we know it, and as it did, time grabbed hold.

Very recently, science has taught us that there is only one substance-less substance that can turn into matter, namely energy. Energy travels at the speed of light, and at that speed time does not pass.

It took about a thousand years for Nahmanides' teaching to be proven. Until recently, a universe being created and time having a beginning was considered nonsense. In 1959, a survey was taken of leading American scientists. Among the many questions asked was, What is your estimate of the age of the universe? In 1959, astronomy was popular, but cosmology, the deep physics of understanding the universe, was just developing. Several years ago, the response to that survey was republished in Scientific American, the most widely read science journal in the world. Two-thirds of the scientists gave the same answer, which was, in essence, Age? There was no beginning. Aristotle and Plato taught us 2400 years ago that the universe is eternal.

It is only since then, after further advancements in cosmology, that we have accepted the theory of the Big Bang and recognised the universe isn't infinite. We now know the universe had a beginning, and all the matter we have today came from energy, which, at the beginning, before time took hold, was contained in an infinitesimally small speck.

But does that mean I believe, as Creationists do, that I should take the six days of from Genesis literally and thus the Earth is 6000 years old and one day science will agree?

No. Although the order of creation and the timeline recorded from Adam in Genesis might be accurate, I have never seen the discrepancy of the 5 days or 13.8 billion years preceding Adam as a problem. I agree with St. Augustine of Hippo, in that my thinking always allowed the five days not to be literal, for two main reasons: Genesis is not meant to be an accurate journal on how to make a planet; and, how could people with no grasp of geology, biology, archaeology, planetology, etc, be explained concepts such as the evolution of animals and galaxies - it would be like teaching a primary school pupil Calculus: the foundation for understanding the advanced concept is lacking.

I was perfectly content with that explanation, until I read an interesting paper from Dr. Gerald L. Schroeder, a respected scientist with a Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics and Earth and Planetary Sciences from MIT, which neatly reconciles the seemingly irreconcilable.

As I have only been able to find the results of Dr. Schroeder's work, and not his working, I've used his idea as a guide to prove the results from first principles, but via a different way. Given the formidable credentials behind Dr. Schroeder, one might expect an unintelligible formula based on theories only accessible to those with a similar education to his. Luckily - for me at least - the mathematics behind Dr. Schroeder's work is no more complicated than multiplication and division.

First, we must understand something that has only been discovered within the last 100 years or so: that is, that when travelling at the speed of light, no time passes. That is to say, from our reference on Earth we perceive it takes 8 minutes for light from the Sun to reach us; but if we could sit on the photon of light coming from the Sun, we would perceive it to take no time at all for us to reach Earth - we would be created and then, immediately, we would be at Earth

The Start of Time

The theory of the Big Bang tells us that the universe came from nothing, but within the first 0.0001 seconds of its existence, the universe inflated at an incredible rate: doubling in size at least 90 times, from nothing to the size of a golf ball. During this time, there was no matter, only energy (photons), which have no mass and as such travel at the speed of light. Although photons combined with each other to form protons and anti-protons, which have mass, the protons and anti-protons immediately combined and annihilated each other. This is the second thing we must understand: while the energy of the universe was such that stable matter - something with mass - could not exist, only photons existed, which travel at the speed of light, so there was no reference which could perceive the passing of time.

As the universe reached the age of approximately a thousandth of a second, space had stretched enough that the average temperature of the universe had dropped to below 10 trillion degrees Kelvin. At this temperature, the average photon energy is 10^-10 Joules. This is the energy equivalent of a proton or anti-proton and therefore, at this energy, pair production of protons and anti-protons from combining photons is no longer possible, but the annihilation of protons and anti-protons continues. Luckily for us, for every billion anti-protons, there were a billion + 1 protons. Importantly for our theory, it is at this temperature - average energy of the universe - that stable matter first formed and, consequently, something stable is moving at less than the speed of light and so time can pass.

If we are to reconcile the 13.8 billions years with the five days that preceded Adam, it is from the moment that time started ticking that we must do our reconciling.

From "The Beginning" to Now

The basis of our reconciliation depends on how much the universe has expanded since time was measurable to today. The average energy of photons when stable matter first formed was 1x10^-10 Joules. The formula below tells us that at this energy, the average wavelength of the photons is 1.5092x10¹⁴GHz.

The average energy of the universe today is 1.0617x10^-22 Joules. Using the formula above, we know that the average wavelength of the photons in space today is 160.23 GHz

Now, we might wonder why it matters that the average wavelength of photons has lengthened since the beginning of the universe. Quite simply, as the universe expanded, the photons that were not otherwise constrained by forces such as gravity, were stretched as space stretched. The average wavelength of photons when time began was 941896024465 times shorter than it is today. In other words, space has stretched by about 0.9 trillion since the procession of time was possible.

It is this stretching factor - something that we have only been able to determine within the last few years - that allows us to reconcile there being both 13.8 billion years and 5 days preceding the birth of Adam. Imagine, approximately 13.8 billion years ago, as time took hold, an intelligent being had a laser (obviously this would be impossible, but this is a thought experiment) and every second the intelligent being pulsed the laser.

Light travels at 300 million meters per second. At the beginning, when the light pulses are first released, the two light pulses are separated by a second of light travel time or 300 million meters. If we were to receive these pulses today, in the 13.8 billion years it took to reach us, the space between the pulses would have stretched as space stretched - 0.9 trillion times the original distance. So, when we receive the pulses, we would no longer see them as a second apart, we would see them as 0.9 trillion seconds apart, or about 179000 years apart.

If we assume Adam was born at 9 AM on the sixth day (Jesus was crucified at 9 AM and related times of day and numbers often recur in biblical history) then, according to Genesis, there were 5 days and 9 hours, or 5.375 days from "the beginning" to Adam.

Until Adam was born on Earth - or until a human ("Adam", which in Hewbrew means "mankind" and is derived from "adamah", meaning "earth", as the bible explains that mankind was formed from the earth) received a soul from God, thus joining Earth with God, we did not have our reference point from which to record the passing of time. Therefore, if we take a reference point from anywhere in the universe at the start of time, in the same way that a second at the start of the universe measured today from Earth would be measured as 179000 years, 5.375 days from anywhere in the universe at the start of time would be measured as 5.375 multiplied by the stretching factor of 941896024000, which would equate to about 5 trillion days, or 13.8 billion years.

941896024000 × 5.375 ÷ 365.25 = 13,860,892,892

Admittedly, if Adam had been created at the very beginning of the sixth day, rather than at 9 AM, the stretching factor would result in an age of 12.9 billion years, or if it were at the end of the sixth day, the age would be 15.4 billion years. The 2.5 billion year range for Adam receiving his soul on the sixth day may seem massive to the point of dismissing the theory, but if the creation story had not stated 6 days, but 6 minutes, 6 months, 6 weeks or 6 years, or for that matter, 5 days, or 12 months, the age of the universe, as we perceive it, and the five days as would be perceived by an intelligent being present at the beginning of time would be completely incompatible.

We have been through a relatively recent phase in history where scientific advancement led us to better understand the rules of the universe and so to question the plausibility of some of the events written about in the bible, such as Moses and the parting of the Red Sea, or the universe coming from nothing.

However, it seems that as we advance our scientific understanding even further, we find not only that these stories were possible, but that they were described in the bible just as the scientific models suggest they should behave.

For this reason - the seemingly fanciful now being shown to be possible, thanks to modern technology - I am now reluctant to dismiss out of hand other seemingly implausible claims made in the bible, such as Abraham living to 175 and Moses to 120. As our scientific understanding develops, we may yet prove other unlikely claims to be valid.