Before we embark on a journey throughout the ages along the Biblical and Jewish chronology, it may be worth setting the scene by mentioning the controversial “Six Days of Creation”. Why? Because atheists often mock the Bible by pointing out that the universe is about 14 billion years old. So, they may think: why bother writing anything about Biblical chronology?
The two stated durations are, however, correct. So, how can we reconcile both points of view? Simply put, these "six days" are not "human days" in the sense that they are not days that any human had experienced. If we read the Biblical text carefully, we can notice that Adam, the first man created at the image of God, only appeared on the 6th day, before the day of rest, the 7th day or Shabbat day. In other words, the first 6 days are only witnessed by God Himself: there are “godly days” and not “human days”.
Is there a difference between both types of “days”? Yes. Because, since Einstein elaborated his theory of Relativity over 100 years ago, we know that time is not a fixed concept: it depends upon who is the observer of the time. In other words, time depends on the reference point from which it is measured or observed and cannot be dissociated from the space or reference point from which it is measured. Let's take a simple example: anyone sitting on his chair reading these lines can state he is not moving. Yet, from a hypothetical observer located anywhere else outside the Earth, he would see that person travelling in space at the speed of the Earth (because the reader is on it) which is the speed that the Earth travels around the Sun. Furthermore, if that hypothetical observer is located outside our galaxy, the reader will be seen as moving at the speed that our entire Solar System is moving inside our galaxy. Who is right? Is it the person sitting on his chair saying he is not moving, or the observer saying that person is moving at very fast speed in space? Both are right, as it is simply related to the reference point from which one would observe.
So, God and mankind are two distinct time observers. The “human days” as observed since Adam can only be measured after Adam was created. Thus, the six preceding days are “godly days” that, as far as human perception is concerned, could be equivalent to billions of “human days”. These "godly days" only belong to a "time" outside human record. If Science says that the universe is about 13.8 billion years old, then so be it! And, in 2012, scientists have created a "timeline of the universe" clearly showing it had a start, the “Big Bang”, some 13.77 billion years ago; to check it, click on NASA's WMAP map (see below).
These billions of years do not contradict the Bible, because each “godly day” can have a different duration at the human scale because the reference point, or perspective, of God evolves during these six “days”. First, His reference point is the “nothingness” where He created the first “spark”: it is what people used to call “creation ex-nihilo” and what the scientific world now calls the Big Bang. The discovery of the existence of a “Big Bang”, and that the universe continues to expand since then, has been a huge step to reconcile Science and Bible, even if the scientific world never talks about Creation. Yet, it is the same concept as how everything started!
Then the Biblical narrative evolves towards our planetary system, before focusing on earthly elements: plants, animals, until Adam. So, it could well be that the first couple of “godly days” of Creation lasted some 10 billion equivalent “human years” because, the last 4 billion years are related to the formation of the Earth and its evolution. Science says that the Earth started to be populated by ground animals (dinosaurs) some million years ago, and by mankind (prehistorical “men”) only about some 200,000 years ago.
The scientific theories of evolution are not contradictory to the Biblical narrative: both state that the earth was covered with water, until land mass appeared, then came the plans and trees, then animal life in both the waters and on the ground, until mankind. The sequence of such evolution is the same in both Science and the Bible. But there is still a missing link between prehistorical man and modern man; until such a link may be discovered, the two theories are competing: Science is still looking for the missing link whereas the Bible states that the first man, Adam, was created as one single being, with no evolution from existing creatures.
So, before Adam, there were no "Adam days" (our way of measuring days and time today), and God alone experienced them: His "days" are not the same as our days. The Book of Job asks the question of this Relativity-based perspective:
Are Your days as the days of a man (אֱנוֹשׁ), and Your years as the days of a strong man (גָבֶר)? (Job 10:5)
As Job questioned himself, the reality is that we have no way to know or measure what a “godly day” (that he called “the days of a strong man”) meant back then during these six “days" of Creation. It is an understanding that mankind may never be able to grab. The Bible only gives us a hint of what a “godly day" may have been in Gog’s own timeline:
And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was evening (עֶרֶב) and there was morning (בֹּקֶר), Day One (יוֹם אֶחָד). (Genesis 1:5)
This simple verse is quite straightforward. First the Light of the first day had nothing to do with the light coming from our own Sun as of today, because the Sun had not been formed yet on the first day: its creation only comes on the fourth day (Genesis 1:16).
So what Light is mentioned in the first day? It was a light that enabled the world, as it came to be formed in the subsequent "days", to exist. Separation had been necessary to extract that Light from the chaos of the immediate Creation. And the notion of "godly day" is even defined further in this verse: it is the passage from "evening" to "morning". But again, this evening and morning have nothing in common with our human-related evenings and mornings based on the solar system. In these godly days, mornings and evenings meant different events: evening is formed of the Hebrew word עֶרֶב which hints to the Hebrew word for “confusion”. As the Bible tries to speak to us in a human language, this “godly evening” is compared to the confusion or mixture that appears in a human evening when daylight and darkness seem to confuse or mix up during a sunset. And the Hebrew word used for morning is בֹּקֶר which means the discernment, in a sense of one can start to see what is happening (the same Hebrew root is used for the word “visit” which is בִּיקוּר). So, these godly six days are simply the milestones in God’s Creation. In His first day, He brought the matter to existence, then caused the chaos (symbolized by the evening confusion) of this initial “bang” to stop and made the world forward into more order (symbolized by morning discernment). The separation of the primordial Light and Darkness was necessary on the first day otherwise the world would not have been able to continue its existence and proceed in the subsequent days. The analogy of this separation may also be understood with the scientific concept of matter and antimatter: matter must be separated from antimatter otherwise, if both are combined, they annihilate one another into a burst of energy; in other words, they both go back to the primal chaos/void of Creation. It is the separation of matter from antimatter that enables anything to exist.
The Biblical narrative gives us another hint about the reality of these “godly days”, mostly in chapter 1 of Genesis, not being comparable to “human days”. The hint is that chapter 1 contains 31 verses. The number 31 is 1+ 30. The number 1 is the so-called Day One (not "first" day), as unique starting point: the Creation.
And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, Day One. (Genesis 1:5)
The number 31 can thus be written as 1 (letter א) and 30 (letter ל). Together they form the word אל, pronounced El which is a reference to God in all ancient languages.
But we cannot fail to notice that the 31 verses in chapter 1 of Genesis also contain the creation of man (Genesis 1:26-31), so the counting of human time would have started from this point which is in the 6th day of the Biblical narrative. That is a valid point, and it may be so. But then the creation of man is narrated in verse 27, which means that, before man was created, there are 26 first verses: the number 26 corresponds to God's name (the tetragram) which also means godly timing. In Hebrew, each letter has a numerical value; God’s tetragram name is written with four letters י,ה,ו,ה of respective values 10, 5, 6, 5 which sum makes 26 (for more information about Jewish symbolism in the numbers, click here). So, whether we either look at 31 or 26, these are two hints to teach us that the works of Creation, before mankind, were on a "godly" clock, not part of “human” time.
About the Big Bang, or the Creation ex-nihilo, we can notice that the Bible starts with three words in this order in Hebrew: Bereshit (בראשית), Bara (ברא), Elohim (אלהים), which are typically translated as: At the beginning, God created... But, in the correct Hebrew order, it reads: At the beginning, created [by] God... Why does this order matter? Because people generally may ask themselves how did the Big Bang happen? The answer is in these three words, in the right order. Let’s take a look:
at the beginning, in Hebrew בְּרֵאשִׁית (pronounced Bereshit), indicates that some "clock" has started to tick; this clock doesn’t measure a human time but a divine time; but this word also hints that Time was part of the Big Bang or Creation; Science doesn’t disapprove this because Time is Space (proven by Einstein), and Space is what appeared with the Big Bang
created, in Hebrew בָּרָא (pronounced Bara), tells us that, as there was a beginning (or a Big Bang), it can only mean that there was Creation; in other words, nothing cannot produce something on its own; Atheists believe that some random occurrence occurred and that caused the Big Bang; but occurrence from what? From nothing? It doesn’t make any sense
God, in Hebrew אֱלֹהִים (pronounced Elohim), is the name assumed by God during His master plan of Creation: in other words, as there was a start from nothing, thus a creation ex-nihilo, then there is a Creator: the Bible is just telling us this creator call Himself Elohim
Why would God have chosen this order of words to open the most important book for humanity? He could have started more simply with: "God created first, second, etc."? We can only speculate on the answer. For me, it shows that God did not want to put the faith in Him as a preamble. Because, if He had started the Bible by saying "God created first etc." it would have implied that readers must believe that there is an entity called God who was the creator of everything: this requires faith as a prerequisite. Instead, the text invites the reader to question himself about the beginning of everything from nothing, and then to reach the inner knowledge of the existence of a creator by a simple intellectual process. This is a great lesson of humbleness from God as He didn't choose to put His existence, and the faith into Him, as the first very word of His book. Rather He must have considered that the Bible would become universal (and indeed it is, as it is the root text of the three monotheist religions) and would be read by believers, non-believers, and sceptics alike.
Modern science is in fact very useful because, although it doesn't explain the Big Bang, it does explain what happened next and how. In the text of the Bible, the word Bara (ברא) for "creation" is only used in the first verse of the Bible. This is how the great Jewish thinker Nahmanides also known as Ramban (1194-1270), famous for his commentary of the Bible, and his Disputation of Barcelona, interpreted this word in his classic Commentary: God only used the act of creation on the very first moment of the first day (His "day"). Everything else ever since, as the Bible describes it, has been evolution, modulation, formation, adjustment, etc. but not Bara. Science also says the same: there was only one Big Bang. And since the past 14 billion years, no such event ever occurred again.
To see this, let’s look at what the Bible says, day by day:
Day of Creation | What happened | Which verb is used | Genesis verses |
Day One | Heavens and Earth Light | ברא created ויאמר said | 1-5 |
Second Day | Firmament, Waters | ויעש made | 6-8 |
Third Day | Land, Vegetation | ויאמר said | 9-13 |
Fourth Day | Luminaries of the sky | ויעש made | 14-19 |
Fifth Day | Living creatures in the sea and in the sky Sea-monsters and reptiles | ויאמר said ויברא has created | 20-23 |
Sixth Day | Living creatures on earth Mankind (both genders) | ויעש made נעשה let us make | 24-25 26-31 |
The Biblical text of the Six Days of Creation is corroborated by science in many ways. Let’s see how.
1- The initial Big Bang, some 13.8 billion years ago: the Biblical text calls it "Day One" and says that (primordial) Light was not immediately created at that moment, but was caused to appear by divine order, Let there be Light (Genesis 1:3), and extracted itself to separate from the "unformed and void", the state of “Tohu and Bohu” (Genesis 1:2). Science recently proved that light only appeared some 380,000 years after the Big Bang. On this topic, see Devlin, Hannah, "Let there be light: how the Universe looked after Big Bang", (article published in The Times, Friday 22 March 2013; also in BBC Science & Environment). And, better, it proved that, before that moment, the Universe was a hot dense "soup" where basic particles such as protons and electrons would constantly interact but not join. They were trapped in that soup with such a high gravity that it was impossible for anything to escape it. In other words, this is the Tohu and Bohu mentioned in the Bible, which means the "unformed and void" state of the Universe before Light could escape. Then came the divine order: Let there be Light. The elements started to join, and Light started to escape the "soup": this is what the Biblical text refers as God dividing the light from the darkness (Genesis 1:4).
2- Formation of the firmament, meaning the stars, with their solar systems and their planets, and, surprisingly, water as well. We will come back to the question of the water in the chapter about the Flood.
3- Much later, on Earth, water made room for one single continent which rose above sea level; then vegetation started to grow. With continental drift, this continent started to break up and form the 7 continents as we know today.
4- Then the movement of the planets in the Solar System was stabilized so that altogether (Sun, Moon, Planets, Stars) would serve as luminaries for mankind to mark the passing of time, seasons and cycles that now govern human life (Genesis 1:14).
5- Then Life finally appeared, but in the sea and in the air first; this is not contradictory with Science which says that all life on Earth started from marine organisms before evolving in the air and on earth; note that one verse (Genesis 1:21) also mentions a "creation" (word ויברא): this is when God created the "sea-monsters" and the "creatures that creep"; these giant animals "had been created" by God Himself, to populate the sea and the earth. What were they? Maybe the legendary leviathans in the sea and the dinosaurs that were identified in the 19th century as the original terrestrial creatures.
6- Finally, more creatures appeared on earth, "made" out of the existing created materials; this was directed evolution, neither a random process nor creation.
Everyone knows the old saying that “the world was not created in one day”. But it may be wrong after all because the only “creation” consisted of the first instant in Day One, as worded in the first verse of Genesis. Everything else since (except for the large animals that populated the sea and earth in the early times) has been evolution, with God's intervention from time to time to direct it.
The concept of “directed evolution” rather than “random” evolution is obviously a point of contention with Atheists who believe that evolution, although with low chance, has happened randomly given the long timescale involved. A famous British scientist had even claimed that, giving enough time to a monkey in front of a typewriter, the animal would be able to write a sonnet from Shakespeare books (read more about this typing monkeys’ assumption by clicking in this article). However, mathematicians calculated the probability of random evolution and could only conclude that the time it would take for one single evolutionary change to really happen far exceeds the age of the Earth (4.5 billion years), and even of the Universe (14 billion years). In other words, a random evolution is "mathematically impossible". All what we see and measure in the natural world could not have happened by random occurrence because, even if one single mathematically impossible event would have occurred by chance (because "mathematically impossible" does not necessarily mean "impossible"), the complexity of Nature around us would have required an infinite number of mathematically impossible events to have successively occurred. The Bible rather tells us that there was a "master plan" that started with the Creation, and which goes on according to specifically designed evolution.
One component of this master plan is the role of the number six which, as there are Six Days of Creation, is associated with Nature according to the Jewish Sages (whereas the number seven is associated with Shabbat, thus a concept outside and above Nature). The number is indeed found in many natural forms or phenomenon. For example, six is the shape of a hexagon which is a widespread shape in Nature: it is found in plants, in the number of legs for most insects, in mud or basalt when it dries and contracts, etc. And, more importantly, out of all the atoms that are necessary for Life, the atom of Carbon is paramount: it forms all the organic elements and compounds that make Nature and Life. The atom of Carbon is uniquely made of six protons, six neutrons and six electrons: this perfect combination 6-6-6 makes this atom well suited to become the most stable atom upon which all natural and living elements are made of. But there is an issue… The formation of the atoms of Carbon in stars systems requires a specific process from atoms of Helium that form Beryllium-8 isotope which then produces one atom of Carbon.
The issue that puzzles physicists is that it has been impossible so far to reproduce this process in experiments (more in-depth explanation can be found in this article). And we are here talking about one of the most fundamental atomic reactions because it is the one that produces Carbon in the Universe. Why is it impossible to create this reaction? Because the Beryllium-8 isotope is extremely unstable with a life duration of barely 1/1016 of a second: this means that, theoretically, this reaction to produce Carbon is highly improbable and therefore should not be possible. And yet, it exists and is the basis of our Universe.
One last comment before we start studying the Biblical chronology: the Hebrew calendar counts the years from the existence of Adam, not from the Creation. The current Hebrew year is 5785 (corresponding to secular years 2024-2025), far below the 4.5 billion years of the Earth’s age. But, as previously explained, mankind could not possibly use “human” years to fix a calendar from the day of Creation as we don’t have the same reference point to measure time before Adam appeared. Let’s also note that Adam was not a prehistorical man: the closest prehistorical men were the Homo Sapiens who appeared some 150,000 years ago. Adam was the man formed by God (Genesis 2:7) and to whom was given the “soul of life” (called נשמה in Hebrew, Neshama). It is from Adam’s divine formation that the Hebrew calendar counts the years.
To finish this chapter, you can look at what some leading scientists had said about Creation. This would temperate the general thought that scientists are not believers in the existence of God... To read their statements, click here.
To return to the list of Seder Olam Revisited articles, per "generation", click here.
Albert Benhamou
Private Tour Guide in Israel
Adar 5785 - March 2025