Tool Alpha
Genesis, the Beginning
What the first eleven chapters say, what they do not say, and where the real arguments are.
Young-earth creationism at its strongest
Six consecutive 24-hour days, a recent creation, a global flood, and no death before the fall. Stated by its own advocates.
Genesis 1:1-2:3, in every translation this tool compares.
The young-earth view in one line: read Genesis the way it sounds, as a week, and let science answer to the text rather than the other way round. If someone tells you he built a deck in six days, you assume he means six days. That is the instinct this position defends.
The position stated by those who hold it, not by its critics.
As set out in the MacArthur Study Bible: creation was recent, out of nothing, and in six consecutive 24-hour days marked by evening and morning. Day with a number in Hebrew always refers to a 24-hour period, and Exodus 20:8-11 confirms the week. Scripture does not support a creation date earlier than about 10,000 years ago. The pre-flood ages are literal years. The flood was global, covering the highest mountains. Satan, a fallen archangel, possessed the serpent.
Two young-earth authors, Paul Nelson and John Mark Reynolds, quoted by Lennox, say they defend a very natural biblical account at the cost of a very plausible scientific picture, and that over the long term this is not a tenable position. Walton grants this position its reading of yom and faults its reading of bara and asah. Lennox grants that Genesis can be read this way and argues it does not have to be. Both point to the need for alternative science, light created in transit, appearance of age, flood geology, to hold the position together.
Not anti-intellectual by definition. Lennox praises the honesty of young-earth writers who concede the scientific difficulty openly.
- The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), ed. John MacArthur (Crossway, 2010), notes on Genesis 1:1, 1:5, 3:1, 5:5, 7:19-20
- Lennox, Seven Days that Divide the World (2021), ch. 3 and n. 77, quoting Paul Nelson and John Mark Reynolds, "Young Earth Creationism," in Three Views on Creation and Evolution, ed. J. P. Moreland and John Mark Reynolds (Zondervan, 1999), 73
- Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One (2009), proposition 12
