Is there a gap between Gen 1:1 and verse 2? Charles Taylor with Ken Ham’s AnswersinGenesis organization says no (see http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v18/i2/replenish.asp).
Let’s consider some common objections to the gap fact.
Objection 1. Romans 5:12 that tells us that it was through Adam that sin entered into the world. God made the world perfect and He called it good. If there was death, destruction and sin underneath all that He made, the foundations, it would not have been good.
Answer 1. We know that "by one man sin entered into the world" refers to the fall of the human race (see verse 19 in the same chapter).
Satan had not only already entered into the world in Genesis, but even entered into the Garden of Eden, and he had fallen prior to that. As far as that goes, Eve—one woman—fell into sin before Adam did. This is another way we know this phrase refers to Adam's fall and his passing-on that sin line when he had children. To get technical, it might not be incorrect to say that sin entered "the world" after Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden and forced to till the land in Gen 3:23.
Satan had obviously already fallen when he showed up as the serpent to Eve, or else he could not have tempted them. So under the "foundations" of the world there was already sin in the universe.
Even now, after the fall of Adam, there are still things God calls "good," and we are far removed from the original creation. As a matter of fact, Deut 32:4 and Ps 104:14-17 are true right now, after the fall. God still calls his work perfect, even after the fall into sin and the curse. So the fact of Satan's fall and a cataclysm in the universe would not prevent God from calling his creative acts in Gen 1 "good."
Objection 2. It is kind of like Calvinism. The people who believe it insert their views into passages of the Bible or read the Bible with that view in mind. So when they read the word replenish, and don't consider that the Hebrew means "to fill", they read into it... "Ah ha! There's another proof that there was a Gap.”
Answer 2. Well, Satan fell someplace. It may have been before Gen 1:1 or before Gen 1:2. So Rom 5:12 and Gen 1:31 do not prevent it in either place. It could have easily happened between Gen 1 verses 1 and 2 in order to provide an explanation for why the earth was without form and void, and dark after God created it.
So rather than reading any "view" back into these verses, I simply count on the consistency of God and compare scripture with scripture. The only other place the earth is "without form and void" is in a context of divine judgment (Jer 4:23,26) whether interpreted as being originally spoken in prophetic foreview or not.
Objection 3. The people who made up the gap theory were people who desperately wanted the Bible to match up to science and that is their way of making it happen.
Answer 3. Seeing the gap between verse 1 and 2 was normative dispensationalism for decades.
I do not believe anyone can substantiate the statement that those people (Scofield, Haldeman, Grant, Chafer, Pember, Unger, and others) were in any way "desperate to make the Bible match up with science." That is simply slander. I don't believe anyone has shown a citation from any writing or any of their preaching where they said that. And to read that motive onto someone who takes the gap interpretation is simply wrong. I don't know any of them that believed in a local flood either (although there may have been, as there are today even among "creationists”), and I would say I am pretty familiar with their writings.
Objection 4. An examination of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) shows that the word was used to mean ‘fill’ from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries. In no case quoted in these five centuries does it unambiguously mean ‘re-fill’.
Answer 4. This is an example of "bad form," as the British would say, but it is a quote from Chuck Taylor at the answersingenesis web site. I have the OED (compact edition in 2 vol, printed four pages to a page; it comes with a magnifying glass you have to use to read it).
Of the ten usages cited, the ninth is indeed "to fill up again." The source cited from 1612 does not mean this is the first time the word is used that way (they trace it from the French), but simply the first example they give.
Its example alone gives the lie to the statement that "in no case quoted in these five centuries does it unambiguously mean ‘re-fill’" (there is even another unambiguous example given from Pepys Diary of 1666!).
I understand the semantics, but it is hard to see how something could be "released" if it had not been loosed at one time previously and now bound. Same with relax (to make lax again).
The statement is made by Ken Ham's people, that the "French word remplir ...doesn’t mean ‘refill’, but ‘fill’." Hmmm? Wordreference.com French-English dictionary says that one of the meanings of remplir is to stock (in the sense of re-fill), just like with the English word. The compound form remplir de nouveau means replenish (fill again).
But maybe we should just go to a more accessible reference. Yourdictionary.com:
re·plen·ish (ri plen′is̸h)
transitive verb
1. to make full or complete again, as by furnishing a new supply to replenish a stock of goods
2. to supply again with fuel or the like
Etymology: ME replenissen <>
I simply use this as the example because it was first to come up in a Google search. Seems to me like answersingenesis people are the ones who read ideas into things because they have an axe to grind. At least, I do not feel they have offered enough examples to show that King James translators would have had any different view of the word than we do (and their comments about the French seem to me to be very suspect).
Here's another example of bias from them. "Quite clearly the idea of refilling is completely absent from the Hebrew." Well, only in the same way that it is "absent" from the English word, fill. If I say that I filled my glass, that does not preclude that that it had not been filled before. "Absent" from the Hebrew cannot mean that the idea is excluded by the Hebrew, but Ham's web site apparently does not want to admit this possibility.
Bottom line is that usage determines meaning in the Bible, because it is the self-contained mind of God for man. So you can say what you want about Gen 1:28. Gen 9:1 (same word) is clearly a re-filling. So whatever the case, at the very least it does not argue against there being a gap, and more appropriately (usage determining meaning, and with the close context of 9:1 to 1:28) would argue the other way. I'm not sure the translators would have to "convey" anything about its meaning in 1:28, since its usage in 9:1 helps define it more clearly.
Obejction 5. In any case, such erroneous theories, invented in response to the ‘millions of years’ idea, must hold to the unbiblical notion that there was death and suffering before Adam’s sin.
Answer 5. Whether there was "death and suffering" before Adam's sin is a moot point. Ken Ham has an ongoing tiff with Hugh Ross about this, because Ross places apelike hominids as existing before Adam was created in Eden—but I don't see how that really has anything directly to do with the gap issue. There was certainly sin before Adam's sin (or else there would not be a serpent). Sin brings forth death, although there was not human death before Adam's sin because of the state of innocence he was created in. Did animals die prior to the fall? I don't know, but the plants certainly did when Adam ate them!
So for someone to say nothing happened between verses 1 and 2 that is not mentioned in Genesis, is fine. They still have to put Isa 14 and Ezek 28 someplace before Gen 3:1. But to slander someone who puts it between Gen 1:1 and verse 2 instead of between Gen 1:31 and 2:1 (for example) or between 2:25 and 3:1 (or somewhere else in between), is simply wrong to do. There is at least scriptural warrant from the cross references to put it between Gen 1:1 and 1:2. Otherwise, I suppose any man can do "that which is right in his own eyes" and put it wherever he wants.
Let’s consider some common objections to the gap fact.
Objection 1. Romans 5:12 that tells us that it was through Adam that sin entered into the world. God made the world perfect and He called it good. If there was death, destruction and sin underneath all that He made, the foundations, it would not have been good.
Answer 1. We know that "by one man sin entered into the world" refers to the fall of the human race (see verse 19 in the same chapter).
Satan had not only already entered into the world in Genesis, but even entered into the Garden of Eden, and he had fallen prior to that. As far as that goes, Eve—one woman—fell into sin before Adam did. This is another way we know this phrase refers to Adam's fall and his passing-on that sin line when he had children. To get technical, it might not be incorrect to say that sin entered "the world" after Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden and forced to till the land in Gen 3:23.
Satan had obviously already fallen when he showed up as the serpent to Eve, or else he could not have tempted them. So under the "foundations" of the world there was already sin in the universe.
Even now, after the fall of Adam, there are still things God calls "good," and we are far removed from the original creation. As a matter of fact, Deut 32:4 and Ps 104:14-17 are true right now, after the fall. God still calls his work perfect, even after the fall into sin and the curse. So the fact of Satan's fall and a cataclysm in the universe would not prevent God from calling his creative acts in Gen 1 "good."
Objection 2. It is kind of like Calvinism. The people who believe it insert their views into passages of the Bible or read the Bible with that view in mind. So when they read the word replenish, and don't consider that the Hebrew means "to fill", they read into it... "Ah ha! There's another proof that there was a Gap.”
Answer 2. Well, Satan fell someplace. It may have been before Gen 1:1 or before Gen 1:2. So Rom 5:12 and Gen 1:31 do not prevent it in either place. It could have easily happened between Gen 1 verses 1 and 2 in order to provide an explanation for why the earth was without form and void, and dark after God created it.
So rather than reading any "view" back into these verses, I simply count on the consistency of God and compare scripture with scripture. The only other place the earth is "without form and void" is in a context of divine judgment (Jer 4:23,26) whether interpreted as being originally spoken in prophetic foreview or not.
Objection 3. The people who made up the gap theory were people who desperately wanted the Bible to match up to science and that is their way of making it happen.
Answer 3. Seeing the gap between verse 1 and 2 was normative dispensationalism for decades.
I do not believe anyone can substantiate the statement that those people (Scofield, Haldeman, Grant, Chafer, Pember, Unger, and others) were in any way "desperate to make the Bible match up with science." That is simply slander. I don't believe anyone has shown a citation from any writing or any of their preaching where they said that. And to read that motive onto someone who takes the gap interpretation is simply wrong. I don't know any of them that believed in a local flood either (although there may have been, as there are today even among "creationists”), and I would say I am pretty familiar with their writings.
Objection 4. An examination of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) shows that the word was used to mean ‘fill’ from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries. In no case quoted in these five centuries does it unambiguously mean ‘re-fill’.
Answer 4. This is an example of "bad form," as the British would say, but it is a quote from Chuck Taylor at the answersingenesis web site. I have the OED (compact edition in 2 vol, printed four pages to a page; it comes with a magnifying glass you have to use to read it).
Of the ten usages cited, the ninth is indeed "to fill up again." The source cited from 1612 does not mean this is the first time the word is used that way (they trace it from the French), but simply the first example they give.
Its example alone gives the lie to the statement that "in no case quoted in these five centuries does it unambiguously mean ‘re-fill’" (there is even another unambiguous example given from Pepys Diary of 1666!).
I understand the semantics, but it is hard to see how something could be "released" if it had not been loosed at one time previously and now bound. Same with relax (to make lax again).
The statement is made by Ken Ham's people, that the "French word remplir ...doesn’t mean ‘refill’, but ‘fill’." Hmmm? Wordreference.com French-English dictionary says that one of the meanings of remplir is to stock (in the sense of re-fill), just like with the English word. The compound form remplir de nouveau means replenish (fill again).
But maybe we should just go to a more accessible reference. Yourdictionary.com:
re·plen·ish (ri plen′is̸h)
transitive verb
1. to make full or complete again, as by furnishing a new supply to replenish a stock of goods
2. to supply again with fuel or the like
Etymology: ME replenissen <>
I simply use this as the example because it was first to come up in a Google search. Seems to me like answersingenesis people are the ones who read ideas into things because they have an axe to grind. At least, I do not feel they have offered enough examples to show that King James translators would have had any different view of the word than we do (and their comments about the French seem to me to be very suspect).
Here's another example of bias from them. "Quite clearly the idea of refilling is completely absent from the Hebrew." Well, only in the same way that it is "absent" from the English word, fill. If I say that I filled my glass, that does not preclude that that it had not been filled before. "Absent" from the Hebrew cannot mean that the idea is excluded by the Hebrew, but Ham's web site apparently does not want to admit this possibility.
Bottom line is that usage determines meaning in the Bible, because it is the self-contained mind of God for man. So you can say what you want about Gen 1:28. Gen 9:1 (same word) is clearly a re-filling. So whatever the case, at the very least it does not argue against there being a gap, and more appropriately (usage determining meaning, and with the close context of 9:1 to 1:28) would argue the other way. I'm not sure the translators would have to "convey" anything about its meaning in 1:28, since its usage in 9:1 helps define it more clearly.
Obejction 5. In any case, such erroneous theories, invented in response to the ‘millions of years’ idea, must hold to the unbiblical notion that there was death and suffering before Adam’s sin.
Answer 5. Whether there was "death and suffering" before Adam's sin is a moot point. Ken Ham has an ongoing tiff with Hugh Ross about this, because Ross places apelike hominids as existing before Adam was created in Eden—but I don't see how that really has anything directly to do with the gap issue. There was certainly sin before Adam's sin (or else there would not be a serpent). Sin brings forth death, although there was not human death before Adam's sin because of the state of innocence he was created in. Did animals die prior to the fall? I don't know, but the plants certainly did when Adam ate them!
So for someone to say nothing happened between verses 1 and 2 that is not mentioned in Genesis, is fine. They still have to put Isa 14 and Ezek 28 someplace before Gen 3:1. But to slander someone who puts it between Gen 1:1 and verse 2 instead of between Gen 1:31 and 2:1 (for example) or between 2:25 and 3:1 (or somewhere else in between), is simply wrong to do. There is at least scriptural warrant from the cross references to put it between Gen 1:1 and 1:2. Otherwise, I suppose any man can do "that which is right in his own eyes" and put it wherever he wants.
