The following scheme, furnished by Dr. Winchell, presents at one view the order of the Mosaic record, and at the same time sets forth the harmony between the Mosaic and Geologic records:[200]
2. Creation was cumulative—that is, it was a succession of beginnings or creative epochs, in which new entities or new forces were inserted into the already existing sphere of nature, carrying it forward toward a nobler end.
This, we think, is the natural impression which the reading of Gen. i. makes on the unbiased mind. Each creative word appears as the dynamical basis of a real principium—a beginning of something intrinsically new, and which can not be conceived as the physical result of any pre-existing condition of things.[201] A new entity or a new force was, as it were, inserted in the order of nature; a new impulse was given to matter, or a new direction to existing forces, and from that initial point a new series of developments, which go on in accordance with law—a new succession of births and growths—flows on as a part of the grand totality of effects we call "nature." This is, obviously, the Biblical conception. Here creation does not present itself as a necessary evolution from a first matter or a first force in unbroken continuity, and without any supernatural interposition. Here are clearly defined creative epochs, new beginnings, which have their origin in the creative will and word of God. What these beginnings were is a question of the deepest interest.
A careful study of Gen. i. and ii. has led us to the conclusion that there is something fundamental and radical in the distinction between the creative words with bara (בָרָא) and those with yetsar (יָצַר) and aysah (עָשָׂה). It is, in reality, the distinction between Origination de novo and Formation out of pre-existing materials. There are three instances in which bara occurs in Gen. i. We are fully convinced that in each case it denotes the origination of a new entity—a real addition to the sum of existence.
First Origination (Gen. i. 1): "In the beginning God created [אה = the substance or essence of] the heavens and the earth." This is the reading of Parkhurst's Hebrew Grammar (1813), which has since that time been approved by able lexicographers and commentators. Some of these authorities have been already presented to the reader.[202] But even aside from philological considerations, the context forbids us to regard bara here as denoting "formation," for the product of that creative act was "formless and matter-less;"[203] that is, it was homogeneous, non-differentiated, structureless, and destitute of all sensible quality—an abyss of darkness and death, exhibiting that sole condition of matter, "perhaps its only true indication, namely, inertia."[204] The first created element was the single omnipresent fluid Ether, out of which all gross matter was built by the action of force. As we advance in this discussion we shall find that this is an opinion which is entertained by the first physicists of the age, as, for example, Thomson, Tait, Maxwell, Challis, in England, and Norton and Hinrich in America.
Second Origination (Gen. i. 21): "And God created the great monsters, and every living soul [נֶפֶשׁ הַיָּה = soul of life] that moveth."
The first created animals are here most carefully denoted as "living souls," evidently to distinguish the life now first manifested in nature from the molecular, "bioplasmic" life which organizes the vegetable cell, and builds up the tissues of the animal body. The life here indicated has an individuality which separates it from the universal life of nature. There is now an immaterial entity—a soul, which is an individualized and indivisible centre of force, a soul which has sensation, feeling, perception, and memory, none of which are properties of matter or products of organization. The animal soul is not material, neither is it a function or phenomenon of organized matter; it is a creation, and therefore bara is here significantly employed to denote the origination of something new; a new power or principle is here inserted into the sphere of existing nature.
The second created entity is animal life—Soul—somatic life as distinct and distinguishable from vegetable, molecular, bioplasmic life.