Genesis Enigma, The

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‘Why is the Bible’s creation story written as it is?’ The first page of Genesis features no humans at all. The substance of heaven and earth – and Earth’s earliest creatures – arise spontaneously at God’s command. Light is mentioned twice, once in ‘let there be light’ and secondly in ‘let there be lights . . . to divide the day from night’. Whales appear before birds. Vegetation appears after ‘let there be light’, but before day is separated from night. Any study of the Bible will show that the rest of the Bible is written with exacting care, through prolonged, meticulous narratives of human adventure. Yet the description of the creation as it appears in the Bible makes no sense. Could it be that the creation story in Genesis was written as it was, complete with its seemingly odd order, because that is in fact the correct order of events at the beginning of the world? Modern science has more than ever before revealed, in stunning detail, how the world and all of the life on it came into being. Does modern science – while agreeing with Darwinian evolution, the big bang theory and the complexity and deep age of the universe – prove the order of events as described in the Bible to be true? In engrossing detail, respected scientist Andrew Parker brings the latest discoveries of science to bear on this controversial and contentious question.

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Andrew Parker is a Honorary Research Fellow of Green Templeton College at Oxford University. He is a Research Leader at the Natural History Museum, and a Professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He has written two previous books, In The Blink of an Eye and Seven Deadly Colours.