4) BACK TO GENESIS

In the book of GENESIS we are concerned with the description of THE BEGINNING. That is the time before 2,100BC when GOD and ABRAHAM had their famous discourse.

And so: In the beginning GOD created THE HEAVENS and THE EARTH. Now THE EARTH was formless and empty. WHOA! EMERGENCY STOP. Say that again! THE EARTH was formless and empty. That's right. But how did you know that? How did you know about the Earth being formless and empty? Well somebody told us. Yes, who? Erm..God? So, what did he say exactly? Well, basically it went something like this:
And GOD said Let there be LIGHT
And GOD said Let there be an expanse of WATERS
And GOD said Let dry GROUND appear
And GOD said Let the LAND produce VEGETATION
And GOD said Let the WATERS teem with LIVING CREATURES
And GOD said Let BIRDS fly
And GOD said Let THE LAND produce LIVING CREATURES and WILD ANIMALS
And GOD said Let us make MAN in OUR OWN IMAGE
Wow! That's pretty good. The basic sequence in the right order. But hang on. This text is more than 4,000 years old. Oh, it's much older. People knew it before it was written down. Before they could even write, so to speak.
So who was this GOD who went around imparting this information? And where did he come from?

3) IN THE BEGINNING (CONTINUED 2)

Staying in SOUTHERN ENGLAND we come quickly to the ancient OBSERVATORY at STONEHENGE. Carbon dating suggests that STONEHENGE, itself about 5,000 years old, was preceeded by an even larger WOODEN CIRCLE. The remains of thick posts discovered below the visitors car park date from 6,000 BC, in other words from 8,000 years ago, and that is 4,000 years before ABRAHAM met GOD.

1) IN THE BEGINNING

ANCIENT instructions are hinted at in the BOOK OF GENESIS. And it is believed that one of the functions of the NEBRA DISC, the world's oldest astrological device discovered to date, may be to enable us to understand the following:
And GOD said: Let there be LIGHTS in the expanse of the SKY to separate the DAY from the NIGHT, and let them serve as SIGNS to mark SEASONS, DAYS and YEARS (GENESIS 1,14)

Reading ANCIENT TEXTS such as the BOOK OF GENESIS we must take care, sitting here in the 21st century with our supposed advanced knowledge, not to be cynical or pedantic. We must look at such texts not through modern eyes or the eyes of the ones who transcribed them but we must go back further in time and imagine that we can hear the MESSAGE spoken in the days before it was promulgated around the world and came to be written down.

The scientific part of the PENTATEUCH, in other words that part of GENESIS relating to the CREATION and our place in the UNIVERSE (GENESIS 1,1 to 2,3), may not have its origins in the Middle East. For the source we will need to go much further back in time, to a time long before 2100 BC when GOD revealed himself to ABRAHAM at UR. And we will need to move elsewhere.