The Observer of Genesis. The Science behind the Creation Story

Alberto Canen

The Observer of Genesis

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

Smashwords Edition

The Observer of Genesis - The Science Behind the Creation Story

paginadigital 2013

ISBN: 9789872913809

Cataloging Date: 2013-03-02

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

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

b Enuma Elish

c Garden of Eden

d Bit-Adini

d The Vulgate

e LXX

f Cain and Abel

APENDIX II

a Valley of the Whales

APENDIX III

a The location of Eden

The author

Chapter 1

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.

Chapter 2

1

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