The observer of Genesis
Alberto Canen
The observer of Genesis
Large print
The science behind the Creation story
Acknowledgements
To my wife, who supports me in everything.
To my children and their questions.
To Luis Heriberto Rivas for always being available to my queries and for giving me access to interesting materials.
To Mercedes Bueto for her corrections and advice.
To my friend Fabian Rodriguez for having an open mind and for his great knowledge.
To my brother in law Pedro Diez for helping me collate scientific and astronomical matters.
And to my family and friends who volunteered as readers of the "manuscript" to help me improve it.
Canen, Alberto
The observer of Genesis - Large print - The science behind the Creation - paginadigital 2017
ISBN: 9789872913809
Cataloging Date: 2012
Alberto Canen/ Pablo Rodolfo Castro
It is made the deposit required by Law No. 11,723
Translated by María José Lago Eizaguirre
Cover and interior illustrations done by the author.
Index
Index
Introduction
1 THE BIBLE, THE GENESIS, CREATION
1a Seven days?
2 BILLIONS
3 AND IN THIS CORNER… LIVE!
4 Behold...GENESIS
5 LOCATION AND ENVIRONMENT
5.1 Babylonians
5.2 Egyptians
5.3 Hebrews
6. THE SACRED WRITER
7 THE OBSERVER Contemplating the creation
8 MESSAGE AND TEACHING
9 TRANSCENDENTAL CONTENT
10 EDEN
10 a Human nature in a controlled environment.
11 THE SPIRITUAL PATH
11 a Religions
APENDIX I
a The Bible
APENDIX II
a Valley of the Whales
b Enuma Elish
c Garden of Eden
d Bit-Adini
d The Vulgate
e LXX
f Cain and Abel
Valley of the Whales
APÉNDIX II
APENDIX III
a The location of Eden
The author
Introduction
Introduction
The account of creation in Genesis, is it just an introduction to biblical scripture? What are its verses hiding? Myth, invention or scientific truth? This book attempts to address an issue about which both scientists and religious people feel uncomfortable.
Science flatly dismisses the story, first with a smirk and then with anger, and the Catholic Church has relegated it to a mere introduction to the Scriptures. "The tale of Creation is a religious text with religious teachings," they say. "There is no science in it", "we should not seek scientific explanations", of course.
But...
I must admit that I have always been a harsh critic of the Genesis. I was always among those we tried to conceal a smile and changed the subject in order to avoid discussing it. Talking about Genesis and Creation in particular seemed unthinkable to me…, until a few months ago.
It is about a year since my youngest son asked me about God with great interest, more than he used to have.
At the time we chatted, I explained everything I could within my knowledge and we agreed to read the holy books of the major religions to expand concepts. So we began to read, first the Bible [1], as the main book of Catholicism-Judaism-Islam, to then continue with the Bhagavad Gita [2] of Hinduism-Buddhism [3].
1 - See appendix I
2 - Bhagavad-Gita, the most important Hindu scripture. It is considered one of the most important religious texts in the world. The term Bhagavad-Gita means Bhagawan´s song (Bhagawan, God, who has [all]opulence). Often the Bhagawad-Gita is simply called Gita (Gi-tá-). Although the Sanskrit noun is feminine Gita ("Song"), in Spanish it is often translated as masculine can be viewed many times as male ("el canto" instead of "la canción"), and the stress can also change (from gi:´t?a to ´gi:t?a:). It is part of the epic text Mahabharata (possibly from the third century BC.) and consists of 700 verses. It contains a conversation between Krishna-whom the Hindus consider an incarnation of Vishnu (while krisnaístas consider it the origin of Vishnu), or as the main personality of God- and his cousin and friend Arjuna on the battlefield in the moments before the start of the Kurukshetra war. In response to the confusion and moral dilemma of Arjuna, Krishna explains to him all the mysteries of spirituality. During his speech, Krishna reveals his identity as the "God himself" (suaiam Bhagawan), blessing Arjuna with an impressive view of his divine universal form among other teachings.
3 - Although much of Buddhism denies that their doctrine has its essence in the Bhagavad Gita, and therefore in Hinduism, it is undeniable that Buddha's teachings are based on or are the same as those of Hinduism: dharma (right action) and the end of samsara (cycle of birth) to attain nirvana (enlightenment).
When I read him the Bible, when we were moving forward with the book of Joseph, I had what we might call a revelation. I understood then the reason for the Bible, the reason for the creation of the Chosen People, the reason for the coming of the Messiah, The Creation, Eden, the policies of the Catholic Church, the momentous task of the Jewish people, polytheism, monotheism, and much more. This revelation caused me such a shock that I decided to write it down and I poured it in my book One God (Un Único Dios).
The explanation of the Creation story of Genesis was to be part of that book, but after analyzing it with my editor and literary adviser we decided it was better to leave it for a separate book as it warranted special treatment.
When I finished the book One God, in August 2011 - I returned to the account of creation in Genesis and devoted myself to solve it.
It was clear to me that the Genesis story was real; they were facts that could have happened but were somehow masked.
What was the key? What was the Rosetta stone that would allow me to interpret the narrative?
The key, I discovered, was that the story-the text- was a narrative of someone who was telling what he was seeing. That was the key -the board, so to speak- on which I had to assemble the pieces of this puzzle.
In the text of Creation there was an observer, a narrator. They were not just verses, no, it was clear that it was a narration: the narration of an observer.
By introducing this variable, the-narrator-observer, all made sense. From then on the rest was just a case of looking for the right questions: Was it a vision or a revelation? Or both? How long did the vision take? Who was he? Where did he live? What was his location?
The location, the location was crucial.
The observer and its location were the cornerstones for understanding the story of Creation.
This book describes the journey I had to make from the Bible to science in a permanent back and forth until I managed to unravel the mystery.
I encourage you to join me in my discovery.
Let´s have a cup of coffee, find a comfortable chair, and leave the preconceptions aside for a moment.
Let us open our minds and look at what mysteries have been hidden in the verses of Genesis for over three thousand years.
The version I have used for this comparison is The Jerusalem Bible.
The Jerusalem Bible (Bible de Jerusalem) is a version of the Bible published in installments between 1948 and 1953 that the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem published later as the result of the translation to French of the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts. It was later translated into other local languages, and to the Spanish language. The approach they took was to compare the translation with the original texts in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.
THE BIBLE, THE GENESIS, CREATION
THE BIBLE, THE GENESIS, CREATION
Seven days?
Who has not wondered: seven days? Yes, who would not? –as we look at each other askance, with a mean grin.
It is a fact that fewer and fewer people believe that God created the heavens and the earth in seven days.
What about the dinosaurs? Well, by the time this question arises (a purely rhetorical one, of course) we are already engaged in a discussion that might embarrass even the toughest hooligans.
Usually, speaking of Genesis leads us, inevitably, to an irreconcilable division between science and religion. Apparently, one overrides the other. If Genesis says seven days, and science has proved there were six billion years, it all indicates that something is wrong, obviously... in The Bible.
It is difficult for us to say that the analysis of science is wrong, apart maybe from a hundred million years up or down. So, following this logic, we will base this analysis on what science claims that were the early days of the solar system and of our planet, the Earth, based on the current findings.
Well, if the solar system and the Earth have been in existence for more than six thousand million years since they were just a cloud of dust and gas floating adrift in our beautiful galaxy... how did we get to those seven days? Sure, I know, don´t tell me: pure superstition, myths, and ancient tales of various mythologies. Well, I don´t blame you, I was of the same opinion until, reading the Bible to my youngest son, I discovered that something was wrong with the texts of Genesis, or wasn´t?
Something in the sacred texts caught my attention and I stopped for a moment to look at them and I thought: what if the Genesis made sense? What if the narrative were consistent with the scientific explanation? What if the text of Genesis was the vision of someone who has seen the creation of the solar system like in a movie? And I remembered how many discoveries have started with this simple phrase: What if...?
And yes, let´s try to approach the issue from that perspective, after all… what could we lose?
Of course, I should clarify at this point that I believe in God. I believe that God created everything. I am, as they say, a believer.
Philosophically I lean more towards the Hindu-Buddhist side, than towards the Jewish-Catholic-Muslim, but as God is the same in both cases, I see no conflict in reading the holy books of both religions, and analyze what God has told men, in Mesopotamia as well as in the Indus Valley.
Well, let´s see then what God has told us.
BILLIONS
BILLIONS
First, let´s reflect on the "never well weighted" seven days.
Of course, the seven biblical days should have some sort of explanation, I thought, and I devoted myself to find it.
The first thing that occurred to me was that if God was infinite, a God´s day might last a billion years, so seven days of God may well be six billion years. You may say, why six billion years? Well, because it is currently estimated that from the original nebula to the present six billion years have passed, and four billion six hundred million years since the consolidation of the Earth.
Although Occident has not handled major figures-and when I say major figures I mean figures as large as billions of years- in their mythologies, it may be interesting to note that in India, at the time of writing the Genesis-they were already used to thinking of numbers of that magnitude.
For example: according to the Vedic scriptures [4], the four yugas (ages) form a cycle of 4,320,000 years (Majá-yuga, or 'great age'), which is repeated again and again. The first is the Satya-yuga or 'age of truth' of 1,728,000 years in which the average life span of a person was 100,000 years. It is the Golden Age, according to another classification.
Then comes the Duapara-yuga or 'second age' which covers 1,296,000 years with an average life span of 10,000 years; it is also called the Silver Age.
The 'third age', Treta-yuga, lasted about 864,000 years, with an average life span of 1,000 years; it is also known as the Bronze Age (although it is not meant to match the Bronze Age in India).
Finally, Kali Yuga or "age of quarrel" lasted 432,000 years where the average life span of a human being was 100 years (at the beginning of it, 5100 years ago). It was called Iron Age (it is not meant to match the Iron Age in India either).
Interesting, very interesting.
4 - Vedas (literally "knowledge" in Sanskrit) are four ancient texts, the basis of Vedic religion, which was prior to the Hindu religion. The Sanskrit word Veda comes from an Indo-European term (Weid), related to the vision, is the root of the Latin words vedere (see) and Veritas (truth) and the Spanish words "ver" (see) and “verdad” (truth). The Vedic texts were developed into what is called the Vedic culture, based on castes (varna or 'color') and ashrams (religious life stages).
So far I didn´t find any drawbacks to consider the "seven days".
If one believes in God, it would be normal, I think, to believe that He is infinite, thus it has not bothered me at all changing days for millions or billions of years.
Let´s continue.
Let´s consider now the explanation that science gives us about the birth of the solar system and our planet Earth, in order to then be able to compare it with the text of Genesis.
I invite you to place ourselves in place and time.
Let's go to that moment when it all started in our little corner of the universe.
Six billion years ago, a cloud of gas and stardust-what is called a planetary nebula-, floats adrift in space.
This nebula, the cloud of stellar gas and dust is the waste product of a star that after its death as a supernova [5] (star that explodes in its death, its final stage) scatters into space the materials that have been formed inside it from simpler elements.
The objects created in this stellar oven -now more complex- make up this huge cloud of dust, gas and ice that floats peacefully adrift. Our local nebula.
5 - Supernova: Star that explodes and throws around most of its mass to high speeds. After this explosive phenomenon there may be two outcomes: either the star is completely destroyed, or its central core remains, which in turn collapses by itself giving life to a very massive object such as a neutron star or a Black Hole.
The phenomenon of the explosion of a supernova is similar to the explosion of a Nova, but with the essential difference that in the first case the energies involved are a million times stronger. When a catastrophic event like this happens, astronomers observe a star igniting in the sky that can reach apparent magnitudes of -6m or more.
The explosion of a supernova is a relatively rare phenomenon. We have testimonies of such events: in 1054, a star in the constellation Taurus ignited, the remains of which can still be seen in the form of the beautiful Crab Nebula; in 1572, the great astronomer Tycho Brahe observed a supernova shining in the constellation Cassiopeia, in 1640, a similar phenomenon was observed by Kepler. These are all appearances of supernovae that exploded in our Galaxy.
Today it is estimated that each galaxy produces, on average, a supernova every six centuries. A famous supernova of an external galaxy is Andromeda, appeared in 1885.
At one point, this calm, this placid floating, is altered by the arrival of waves, wave-shock waves produced possibly by the explosion of another supernova, another star which ends its days in the vicinity.
These shock waves, these waves that impact and shake our peaceful nebula trigger a contraction on it, and when it contracts it starts spinning and flattening.
This flattened disk that is now our planetary nebula leads most of the material toward the center, where it accumulates.
This huge mass of matter (mostly gas) makes it collapse under its own weight and due to gravity, initiating the combustion of a fledgling central star, the Sun.
The same force of gravity -the same gravitational force- that generates matter accumulation in the heart and leads to the creation of a star, in our case the Sun, also produces swirls and clumps in the dust disk.
These lumps that turn like swirls about themselves and continue their journey around the center are the nodes that will give rise to planets.
These primordial planets, these nodes or swirls of stellar matter, continue their path around the sun, but not in a circular motion, but in a spiral, falling toward it, moving closer with every lap, every orbit. It follows that when their spins started, the original swirls, they were farther away than the "finished" planets are now.
And what was the consequence of that approach to the Sun down that spiral road? Well, what happened was that those baby planets we might say were "cleaning" of debris, dust, and gas the space through which they passed and, thus, they increased their mass with the captured matter.
So, let's recap and look at the big picture.
First comes a chaotic cloud of dust and gas, the result of a prior supernova explosion that scatters its matter into space.
Then, an accretion disk is generated from that matter
Impressum
Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG
Texte: Castro, Pablo Rodolfo The observer : the science behind the creation story / Pablo Rodolfo Castro ; ilustrado por Pablo Rodolfo Castro. - 1a ed. - Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires : Paginadigital, 2014. E-Book. ISBN 978-987-29138-0-9
Bildmaterialien: Pablo Castro
Lektorat: paginadigital
Übersetzung: María José Lago Eizaguirre
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 27.08.2016
ISBN: 978-3-7396-7078-2
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