Overlapping creation days in Genesis 1?

XXX wrote:

>> It is clear that "^oph" includes insects (flying ones only), pterosaurs,
>> birds (flying ones only), bats, all of which, except insects, first appeared
>> after first terrestrial animals in day 6.
>
> Ok....but even if we grant that the 'it was so' is not there (and this seems
> fair), we still have to be forced to contend that more than just flying
> insects began on that day as implied in the text, don't you think? Allowing
> for further development is fine, but it seems at least the beginning of this
> variety started on day 5. Thus our problem remains doesn't it?

For paleontological reasons, I believe that flying insects were the only flyers
(day 5) predating the first terrestrial animals (day 6), but there certainly
were a huge number of different kinds of them (today there are probably millions
of species of flying insects).

Why do you think it would be a problem with the Gen.1 text that the first
appearance of "winged flyers" included just insects (or possibly other flying
arthropods, extinct today)? Why should the text imply "that more than just
flying insects began on that day"?

The essence of day 5 is not the origin of (exhaustively) specified groups of
"great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters
swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird", but the origin of
"living souls", animals having a novel, sentient dimension, so that God could
bless them and speak to them. The mention of "tannin" (serpent, dragon, sea
monster), "remes" (creeper), "^oph" (flyer) helps to understand what types of
beings the term "living souls" should be intended to include. The description
emphasizes there were large and dangerous animals, but also swarming and swift
ones in water and air. But there is no need to consider this short list as
exhaustive or democratically representative in any sense.

What is important is that evolution would continue to produce new forms of
"living souls" throughout the rest of earth history [evolution can reasonably be
inferred from the term of God "making" (Heb. ^asah) living creatures, after
having "created" (Heb. bara') their first representatives by creating a new
dimension in earlier "lower" animals].

Peter

-- 
Dr. Peter Ruest, CH-3148 Lanzenhaeusern, Switzerland
<pruest@dplanet.ch> - Biochemistry - Creation and evolution
"..the work which God created to evolve it" (Genesis 2:3)