Myths about the creation of the world among different peoples. How God created the world

Divine revelation

At the beginning of each day, at a service called "Matins", Orthodox Church proclaims: “God is the Lord and appear to us, blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord!” God has revealed himself to us - these words contain the fundamental principle of Christian teaching.

Everything that God revealed about Himself to people, so that they could truly know and worthily honor Him, is called divine Revelation. God gave such a Revelation for all people as necessary and saving for everyone, but since not all people are able to directly accept the Revelation from God, He chose special heralds of His Revelation who would convey it to all people who wish to accept it. The heralds of the Revelation of God were Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and other prophets. They accepted and preached the principles of the Revelation of God; the Incarnate Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, brought the Revelation of God to earth in completeness and perfection and spread it throughout the Universe through His disciples and apostles.

God revealed to us about Himself that He is an incorporeal and invisible Spirit. We do not see God, but we see His actions and manifestations, His wisdom and power everywhere in the world and feel them in ourselves.

We call God Creator or Creator because He created everything - visible and invisible. We call God Almighty, Ruler and King, because He, by His omnipotent will, holds in His power and authority everything created by Him, rules and reigns over everyone.

God Eternal- Everything we see in the world has its beginning and end. God alone has always been and always will be.

God Almighty- can do whatever he wants. Nothing is impossible for God alone. He wanted to create the world and created it according to His Word alone.

God Omnipresent- found everywhere. God is always, everywhere, at all times. No one, ever, anywhere can hide from Him.

God Omniscient- all-knowing. Only God alone knows everything: what was, is and will be.

God Almighty- doing good for everyone. People are not always kind to their friends and loved ones. Only God loves us all supremely. God is always ready to give us every good and blessing and cares about us more than the kindest father about his children. We often call God our Heavenly Father.

God the All-Righteous- extremely fair. God always preserves the truth and treats people fairly.

God is patient“He patiently waits for us to be ashamed of our misdeeds and correct our lives through repentance and good deeds.

God is love- Life in love is great joy, the highest bliss. And God wanted other creatures to receive this joy. This is why He created us and the world for us.

All the properties of God emanate, like the rays of the sun, from the Triune God: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. These Divine Persons are one Holy Trinity.

This Divine revelation now spreads among people and is preserved in the true, holy Orthodox Church in two ways: through Holy Tradition and Holy Scripture. From the beginning of the world until Moses there were no sacred books, and the teaching about the faith of God was transmitted orally, by tradition, that is, by word and example, from one to another and from ancestors to descendants. Jesus Christ Himself conveyed His divine teaching and institutions to the disciples by His word (sermon) and the example of His life, and not by book (scripture). In the same way, at first the apostles spread the faith and established the Church of Christ. And this is quite understandable, because not all people can use books, but tradition is accessible to everyone without exception.

Subsequently, in order for Divine revelation to be preserved quite accurately, at the inspiration of the Lord, some holy people wrote down the most important things in books. God the Holy Spirit Himself invisibly helped them so that everything that was written in these books was correct and true. All these books, written by the Spirit of God, through people sanctified by God (prophets, apostles and others) are called Holy Scripture, or the Bible. The Bible for Christians is higher than everything that was ever written, it is the Book of Books. The Bible is the Word of God. From its pages God Himself addresses us. All books of Holy Scripture are written different people and in different time, but all under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

The Bible is divided into two parts: the books of the Old Testament and the books of the New Testament. The books of the Old Testament were written before the birth of Christ, and the books of the New Testament were written after the birth of Christ. The word “testament” means testament, since these books contain the Divine teaching bequeathed by God to people. In addition, the word “covenant” also means a union or agreement between God and people.

Why did God create the world?

We live in a huge beautiful world. Peace is God’s concern for the structure of everything created, the action of the wise and all-good will of God.

The creation of the world makes sense because God is intelligent and wise. Man is also endowed with reason, but the ability to understand why the Lord intended this or that remains a mystery for us, partially revealed to us, since human feelings and reason are limited. They develop as spiritual growth person.

God gave us this land with all its riches. He made man the master over all plants and animals, and gave us part of His power. What happens in the human soul is the source that feeds the world. For what a person brings into the world - love or hatred - he must bear responsibility, and at the same time remember that we are all people, animals, plants - connected to each other and cannot live without each other, we cannot live without the entire universe. God created our world this way. God created the world in such a way that nothing in it interferes with each other. We only need to preserve and multiply this beauty of the world created by God and thank God for life.

The world of God is rich and diverse, but at the same time, in this huge diversity, a harmonious order established by God reigns. Everything has a definite and reasonable purpose. God gave everything its time, place and purpose.

There are things that we can see, hear, touch. However, there are many things in the world that cannot be touched, but without which we also cannot live. This is love, intelligence, conscience, joy, goodness. We also cannot see God, but we can feel His presence.

God has endowed us with reason, an immortal soul. He gave each person a special, great purpose: to know God, to become like Him, that is, to become better and kinder and to inherit the Kingdom of God. But, placed above the entire living world, a person does not always do good deeds: evil, envy, cruelty lead to wars and the death of people. The world has become an arena of struggle between good and evil.

Has God's world always been like this? No. The world was created by God as the Kingdom of Divine Love, Freedom and Beauty, and man himself was created in the image and likeness of God.

How did God create the world?

The Lord created the world in six days; the seventh day became a day of rest. However, we cannot say exactly the length of each day. We know that “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”

First of all, He created the invisible spiritual world of angels.

Angels- spirits are incorporeal (therefore invisible) and immortal, like our souls; but God endowed them with higher powers and abilities than humans. Their mind is more perfect than ours. They always fulfill the will of God, they are sinless, and now, by the grace of God, they are so established in doing good that they cannot sin. Many times angels appeared visibly, taking on bodily form, when God sent them to people to say or proclaim His will. And the word “angel” means “messenger.”

At baptism, God gives every Christian a guardian angel who invisibly protects a person throughout his entire earthly life from troubles and misfortunes, warns against sins, protects him in the terrible hour of death, and does not leave him even after death. Angels are depicted on icons as beautiful young men, as a sign of their spiritual beauty. Their wings mean that they quickly do the will of God.

The angelic spiritual world was not all in kindness and Divine love. In those ancient times, among the good angels, there was an insidious angel named Dennitsa, who became proud of his power and began to entice others with him. He began to slander God and oppose the Divine will. He became a dark, evil spirit - the devil (slanderer), or in another way Satan (enemy). He managed to seduce some other angels, who also began to be proud of themselves, not to obey the will of God. They also became evil spirits- demons.

Then one of God’s angels, Archangel Michael, spoke out against the evil force and said: “Who is equal to God? No one like God! And there was war in heaven. The evil force could not resist the angels of God, and Satan fell along with the demons down into the underworld - the underworld (or hell) - to a place far from God, where they suffer in their malice, seeing their powerlessness before God. Demons try to seduce every person by cunning or cunning, instilling in him evil desires in order to destroy him. This is how evil arose in God's creation. Evil is everything that is done against God, man and the world around us, everything that violates the will of God.

And all the angels who remained faithful to God have since lived with God in unceasing love and joy. They never violate the will of God and can never do evil, which is why they are called holy angels.

After the creation of the spiritual world, God created the visible world with His One Word: the earth, which was unsettled, was formless and empty, covered with darkness, and the Spirit of God hovered over it. And God said: “Let there be light!” And God called the light day and the darkness night. This was it first day creations.

In second day God created the firmament and separated the water that was under the firmament from the water that was above the firmament. And God called the firmament heaven.

And God said: Let the waters under the sky be gathered into one place, and dry land appeared. And God called the dry land earth, and the collection of waters seas. He commanded the earth to produce greenery, grass, fruitful trees- and the earth was covered with all kinds of plants. And it was day three.

IN fourth day according to the Word of God, the heavenly lights shone over the earth: the sun, the moon, the stars.

IN fifth day God populated the seas with fish and the earth with reptiles and birds.

IN sixth day beasts of the earth and livestock appeared on the earth. And God said: Let us make man in our image and likeness, and let him rule over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the beasts of the earth...

How did God create man?

The Lord took the man’s body from the earth and breathed into it the breath of life. And He called the first man Adam, which means “like” or “taken from the earth.” Consequently, man was created from what already existed, but was soulless, had no soul. The Lord created man in His Image and Likeness. By the Image of God we must understand the powers of the soul given by God to man: mind, will, feeling; and by the Likeness of God we must understand man’s ability to direct the powers of his soul to become like God - to improve in the pursuit of truth and goodness, that is, the Divine principle was invested in man. Man could create the world around himself and preserve it.

God loved Adam very much and commanded him to take care of the garden and take care of the plants and animals. Adam lived in beautiful garden, which was called Paradise. Was in Paradise eternal peace. Man was king over all, animals and birds obeyed him, because only man was endowed by God with reason.

Adam gave names to all living creatures. He improved the world and brought into it Divine grace, which he received from communication with God. What is grace? This is the Divine power with which the Lord warms us all, which each of us can feel and which fills us with joy, love, and goodness.

Every animal had a friend, only Adam was completely alone. The merciful God felt sorry for Adam, and He decided: “It is not good for man to be alone.” God brought it upon Adam deep sleep, took his rib out of his chest and created a woman. Adam was very happy with her and named her Eve, which means “life.” Adam loved his wife very much, and she loved him and helped him in everything.

How did sin come into the world?

In the middle of Paradise, God planted two trees: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The life of people in Paradise was full of joy: their conscience was calm, their minds were bright, and their hearts were pure. God took care of them loving father. God created people as angels so that they could love God and each other. For this, God began to teach people love. He gave them complete freedom and a small commandment-covenant (command) - not to eat fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. By fulfilling this commandment, people could show their love and attention to the desire of the One Whom they loved. Adam and Eve joyfully accepted this covenant. And love and harmony reigned in Paradise...

The devil envied the heavenly bliss of people and planned to deprive them of God's grace. To do this, he entered the serpent and hid in the branches of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Seeing Eve, the serpent began to tempt her, offering to eat the fruit from this tree. The serpent said: “On the day that you eat the fruit, your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.” Eve at first refused, remembering God’s covenant, but the seductive speech of the serpent and the attractive appearance of the fruit influenced her. She picked the fruit from the tree, began to eat it and gave it to Adam.

People succumbed to temptation, violated the will of God - they sinned. They separated themselves from God. Evil, which had no place in the world before, came into the world, into all of God’s creation. This first sin is called original sin, since it gave rise to all subsequent sins in people.

Having sinned, people received neither joy nor perfection, they lost peace of mind, their conscience began to torment them.

God, in His mercy, began to call them to repentance - awareness of their guilt. He expected people to repent and ask for forgiveness. However, sin alienated people from God. Adam and Eve did not repent; they shifted the blame for what they had done onto each other and onto the serpent.

People could no longer remain in Paradise, a sinless place, and they were expelled. The Lord predicted to Adam and Eve all the hardships of life. Which people on earth will have to experience before they regain the Kingdom of Heaven.

Why did the Lord allow evil? Why did man turn out to be so imperfect and could not resist evil?

People have pondered these questions at all times. Man by nature has always been free. In his communication with God there was no coercion, only agreement and love. But a person’s life is always filled with the desire to experience everything, achieve everything, know everything. It can be quite difficult for a person to avoid the temptation of sin - external attractiveness and apparent ease of doing or receiving something that is not allowed to a person and is even harmful. Every moment life path- this is the moment of choosing a path. A person does not always follow the path of goodness and justice, but everyone determines this path for themselves independently. The more goodness and truth a person has in his soul, the closer he is to God, the more strength he has to resist evil temptations.

“The Law of God,” Archpriest Seraphim Slobodskoy.
“Long Christian Catechism of the Orthodox Catholic Eastern Church,” Metropolitan of Moscow Philaret (Drozdov).

In contact with

The thought that Maximus the Confessor expresses when discussing mutual joy can also be associated with the concept of mutual love. “God is love” (1 John 4:8), the Evangelist John tells us. And this Divine love is not self-centered, but mutual, it is distributed among everyone who is involved in it. God is not just some Being, independent, separate and loving only Himself. God is Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. All Three Persons love each other and are connected to each other in a continuous movement of mutual communication. God is not personal, but interpersonal, representing not just unification, but fusion. One of the characteristic terms that the Cappadocian Fathers use to describe the Holy Trinity is communion.

Therefore, if God as the Holy Trinity represents the sacrament of shared love, this means that the decision to create the world is in perfect harmony with the nature of God, since Creation allows others besides Him to share in this movement of Trinitarian love. By saying that this choice is in accordance with the nature of God, I do not mean that God was in any way “obliged” to create the world. On the contrary, no internal or external factors God was not forced to make such a gesture. He acted absolutely freely. God is necessary for the world, but the world is not necessary for God. As the Russian theologian Georgy Frolovsky said: “The world exists. But he began to exist. And this means: there might not have been peace. There is no need for the world to exist. The cause and foundation of the world is outside the world. The existence of the world is possible only through the extra-mundane will of the All-Good and Almighty God” (“Creation and Creatureness”).

However, despite the fact that God creates the world with absolute and perfect freedom, and the world, accordingly, is an expression of His free will, God in the act of creation also reveals His true nature - love. Let us remember here the words of Saint Dionysius the Areopagite that Divine love is ecstatic, which means that it is located outside of Him. God created the world because his love “spills out.” Without this pouring love, the world would never exist. And instead of talking about creation ex nihilo (out of nothing), it would be more correct to talk about creation ex amore (out of love).

If we view Creation in this way—as an expression of mutual joy and mutual love—then no theistic view that the universe is a work and a holy Creator is an architect or craftsman can satisfy us. We cannot accept the image of the universe as a kind of clock that the watchmaker only makes, winds and then leaves to run.

Undoubtedly, such points of view are erroneous. According to the remark of Saints Maximus the Confessor and Dionysius the Areopagite, Creation is not an act in which God acts only externally, but an act through which God is expressed internally. God is not only outside of creation, but also within it. The first images with which we describe the connection of God with the world should not depict the One who gives the world shape, changes it and organizes it. We must imagine God as an entity living within everything, present everywhere and forever. When we say that God is the Creator of the universe, we mean that God is “everywhere present and fulfilling all things,” using the words that the Orthodox Church addresses both Christ and the Holy Spirit.

Closely related to this issue is another topic that I would like to touch upon. The creation of the world should be interpreted not as an event that occurred once in the past, but as one that continues to be associated with the present. The world exists because God loves it, and not because he once loved it in the distant past, at the very beginning, but because he loves it here and now, at this very moment and in every next one. We should speak of Creation not at some vague point in time, but in the present. We should not say that once upon a time, many years ago, God created the world. It's about God creating peace with me and you inside it now and always. If the holy Creator did not use his creative will every fraction of a second, then the universe would be lost in the darkness of non-existence. As Saint Philaret of Moscow said, “the creative word is like an adamantine bridge on which creatures are placed and stand, under the abyss of God’s infinity, above the abyss of their own insignificance” (“Word on the day of the discovery of the relics of our Father Alexy, Metropolitan of Moscow and All Russia, Wonderworker, like the Saints and on the occasion of the return to the Moscow flock”). This creative word of God, the “adamant bridge” of St. Philaret, is a word spoken not once, but unceasingly, a word spoken yesterday, today and repeated “all the days until the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

As God's creation, the world is inherently beautiful: “And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31). But at the same time, this is the world of the Fall, broken, crushed, destroyed and distorted by sin - the original sin of our ancestors and the personal sins of each of us. As the Apostle Paul says, all creation has “subjected itself to futility” and is “groaning” as it waits for the hour when it will be free again (Rom. 8:20-22). However, this decline is not complete. In created nature, even in its fallen state, echoes of the sacred presence of God continue to be heard. And the world continues to remain beautiful, even if its beauty is imperfect. And we can truly say the words pronounced at every Vespers: “Wonderful are Thy works, Lord.”

The unknown author of the 19th century Russian prose work “Frank Tales of a Wanderer to His Spiritual Father” vividly emphasizes this innate beauty and splendor of the world. Walking through an endless forest with the Jesus Prayer on his lips, the wanderer felt his heart filling with love for all people, and not only for them, but for everything that exists: “When I began to pray with my heart, everything around me seemed to me amazing form: trees, grass, birds, earth, air, light, everything seemed to speak to me that they exist for man, testify to the love of God for man, and everything prays, everything sings the glory of God. And I understood from this what is called in Dobrolyubiya “knowledge of the words of the creature” (Tale two). The experience of this particular moment is not a false sensation, but a genuine knowledge of the true nature of the created world.

Metropolitan Callistus Ware, “The Beginning of the Day.”

The creation of the world is the original question in any religion. How and when everything that surrounds man was born - plants, birds, animals, man himself.

Science promotes its theory - a big explosion occurred in the universe, which gave rise to the galaxy and the planets around it. If the general scientific theory of the creation of the world is united, then the legends about it different nations their.

Myths about the creation of the world

What is a myth? This is a legend about the origin of life, the role of God and man in it. There are a huge number of such legends.

According to Jewish history, Heaven and Earth were original. The material for their creation was the clothes of God and snow. According to another version, the whole world is an intertwining of threads of fire, water and snow.

According to Egyptian mythology, initially darkness and chaos reigned everywhere. Only the young God Ra, who shed light and gave life, was able to defeat him. In one version, he hatched from an egg, and in another version, he was born from a lotus flower. It is noteworthy that there are many variations in the Egyptian theory, and many contain images of animals, birds, and insects.

In the stories of the Sumerians, the world came into existence when flat earth and the dome of Heaven united and gave birth to a son - the God of Air. Then the deities of water and plants appear. Here for the first time we speak of the emergence of a person from the organ of another.

The Greek myth about the origin of the world is based on the concept of chaos, which swallowed up everything around, the sun and moon were inseparable, cold was combined with heat. A certain God came and separated all opposites from each other. He also created man and woman from a single matter.

The parable of the ancient Slavs is based on the same chaos that reigned everywhere and around. There are deities of time, earth, darkness, wisdom. According to this legend, all living things appeared from dust - humans, plants, animals. The stars came from here. Therefore, it is said that the stars, like man, are not eternal.

Creation of the world according to the Bible

The Holy Scripture is the main book of Orthodox believers. Here you can find answers to all questions. This also applies to the origin of the world, humans and animals, plants.

The Bible has five books that tell the whole story. These books were written by Moses during his wanderings with the Jewish people. All the revelations of God were initially recorded in one volume, but then it was divided.

The beginning of the Holy Scriptures is the Book of Genesis. Its name from Greek means “beginning,” which speaks of the content. It is here that the story is told about how the birth of life, the first man, the first society took place.

As the Scripture says, man, by his existence, carries the highest goal - love, beneficence, improvement. It contains within itself the breath of God himself - the soul.

According to biblical history, the world was not created for eternity. How many days did it take for God to create a world filled with life? Even children know about this today.

How God created the earth in 7 days

The appearance of the world in such a short time is briefly described in the Holy Scriptures. Not in the book detailed description, everything is symbolic. Understanding transcends age and time - it is something that lasts for centuries. History says that only God can create the world out of nothing.

First day of creation of the world

God created “heaven” and “earth”. This should not be taken literally. This does not mean matter, but certain forces, entities, angels.

On this same day, God separated darkness from light, thus creating day and night.

Second day

At this time, a certain “firmament” is created. The personification of the separation of water on earth and air. Thus, we are talking about creating air space, a certain atmosphere for life.

The third day

The Almighty orders the water to gather in one place and make room for the formation of land. This is how the earth itself appeared, and the water around became seas and oceans.

Fourth day

It is notable for the formation of celestial bodies - night and day. The stars appear.

Now the possibility of counting time arises. The successive sun and moon count days, seasons, years.

Fifth day

Life appears on earth. Birds, fish, animals. This is where the great phrase “be fruitful and multiply” comes into play. God gives the beginning, the first individuals who themselves will raise their offspring in this paradise.

Sixth day

God creates man “in His image and likeness” and breathes life into him. Man is molded from clay, and the breath of God revives dead material and gives him a soul.

Adam is the first person, man. He lives in the Garden of Eden and understands the languages ​​of the world around him. Despite the diversity of life around him, he is lonely. God creates a helper for him, the woman Eve, from his rib while Adam sleeps.

Seventh day

Called Saturday. It is reserved for rest and serving God.

This is how the world was born. What is it exact date creation of the world according to the Bible? This is still the main and most difficult issue. There are claims that time is being described long before the advent of modern chronology.

Another opinion says the opposite, that the events in the Holy Book are our time. The figure varies from 3483 to 6984 years. But the generally accepted point of reference is considered to be 5508 BC.

Creation of the world according to the Bible for children

Initiating children into the doctrine of God teaches correct principles of behavior and points to undeniable values. However, the Bible in its present form is difficult for an adult to understand, let alone a child’s perception.

In order for a child to be able to study the main book of Christians himself, a children's Bible was invented. A colorful, illustrated publication, written in a child-friendly language.

The story of the creation of the world from the Old Testament tells that initially there was nothing. But God has always been. All seven days of creation are narrated very briefly. It also tells the story of the emergence of the first people and how they betrayed God.

The story of Adam and Abel is described. These stories are instructive for children and teach correct attitude to others, elders, nature. Animated and feature films come to the rescue, which clearly show the events described in the Holy Scriptures.

There is no age or time for religion. She is beyond everything essential. Understanding the origin of the environment and the role of man in the world, finding harmony and one’s path is possible only by understanding the values ​​that faith carries.

The science of creation: how old is the Earth according to biblical texts? What evidence is there for the correctness of the Christian belief in the creation of the world? All about this in our material!

Creation Science

It says here that initially a single world ocean that covered the entire earth broke up into separate basins separated by land. The appearance of continents and seas on the face of the Earth was of utmost importance in the history of the development of our planet, but it happened in such a distant past that no traces of this event remained in the geological record.

IN modern science the question of the origin of the hydrosphere, as well as the atmosphere, is the subject of mutually exclusive hypotheses, which are based not on direct geological data, but on certain cosmogonic constructions and general views on the origin of the Earth. For the geologically foreseeable time, there is no data that allows us to assume a noticeable increase in the volume of the hydrosphere, which was pointed out by V.I. Vernadsky. If this position is correct, then it should be assumed that land appeared only as a result of a long process of geological development of our planet, expressed in the differentiation of its solid shells into oceanic depressions that contained the main mass surface waters. Thus, modern scientific data do not contradict the picture painted by the book of Genesis, but one has to be surprised, if one denies its divine inspiration, that a writer of a people who hardly sees the sea great importance in the development of the Earth gave it a watery shell.

Bible and geology

We do not consider questions about the reasons for the origin of oceans and continents, mountains and plains in this essay, since none of them contradicts the Bible. Something else is important for us now - comparative analysis sequence of creations according to the Bible and sequence of appearance various types material world in the light of modern scientific and natural knowledge.

These verses say that inanimate nature, at the command of God, produced living nature in the form of plants, which thus came into existence before animals. So, already at relatively early stages of the Earth’s development vegetable world reached significant diversity and developed not only in water, but also covered land.

There are no traces left of the very first stages of life in the geological record, so we have to limit ourselves to only general considerations and guesses. It is generally accepted that life arose in the oceans, but G. S. Osborne and L. S. Berg (1946) believe that the first stages of life took place on land, in swampy and damp places. According to modern ideas, first expressed by V.I. Vernadsky and now included in textbooks, our modern topoatmosphere (without which no animal life, which requires the presence of free oxygen, is possible) is biogenic. Without plants, animals would not only suffocate, but they would have nothing to eat, for only plants have the ability to convert inorganic forms of matter into organic ones.

In the deposits of the Archean era (see Geochronological table on p. 36) there are no reliable organic remains. The oldest undoubtedly known plant remains were found in the Precambrian limestones of Montana; Bacteria and various algae were found and well studied in Proterozoic sediments; in Precambrian deposits of the Czech Republic - wood described under the name Archaexylan, with signs of the structure of gymnosperms (that is, conifers); In the Precambrian of the Urals, indefinable remains of terrestrial plants and spores of higher plants were found; spores of higher land plants - bryophytes and pteridophytes - are described from Cambrian deposits of the Baltic region; from the Upper Silurian of the Australian province of Victoria - a flora of primitive, now extinct psilophyte plants. In the Devonian, the known terrestrial flora is already characterized by a large diversity of species and groups.

Geochronological table

Vegetable world

Thus, based on modern scientific ideas and data, we have to believe, in full accordance with the Bible, that plants were the first organized forms of organic life on Earth, and the plant world already in ancient times reached a significant diversity of forms.

The following verses talk about the creation of the Sun, Moon and stars. We have already talked a lot about cosmogony in the previous essay, so now we will only formulate brief conclusions of two scientific hypotheses for the origin of stars: 1) both hypotheses assume the presence of prestellar matter in the Universe. This matter only under certain conditions forms stars; 2) when implementing the mechanism of the second concept (assuming the presence of a special superdense state of matter), the existence of invisible stars is fundamentally possible, which can flare up in subsequent times. Further, the formation of clots of matter is possible in such limited areas beyond which no radiation can penetrate. This formation of matter can be characterized in figurative biblical language as God separated the light from the darkness.

Age of the Universe

Let us consider the problem of the age of the Earth and the bodies of the Universe, as it appears to theology and modern natural science consciousness.

For theology, the only criterion for the age of the world is the biblical texts. In the given texts of the book of Genesis, the creation of the world is described in certain stages called “days”. It is impossible to understand by them our usual astronomical days associated with the rotation of the Earth around its axis, since before the fourth “day” the Sun did not exist and, therefore, there was no change of day and night. Since the six days of the Bible - a conventional division of time - have nothing to do with the astronomical day, with their day and night, the night is therefore not mentioned in the book of Genesis in connection with the day of creation: “and there was evening, and there was morning” - for every hour had its own work, and it was not interrupted at night. This is emphasized by the order of words “there was evening, and there was morning” instead of the seemingly natural: “there was morning and there was evening - the fourth day.”

It is necessary to dwell on the chronology from the creation of the world, which was previously accepted by the entire Christian world and covers about 7000 years.

There is no data in the biblical texts to determine the age of the world. Consequently, the question of calculating the age of the world does not fall within the purview of theology. Some interpreters of the Bible tried to approach chronology indirectly, using the information available in the Bible about individual clans and generations and the history of the Jewish people, and received completely different figures. The method they used, by its very nature, could not be part of the task of determining the age of the world from the first day of creation. Science has long been trying to estimate in different ways and methods the age of various parts of the world from their very formation. First of all, let us dwell on determining the age of the Earth.

Rough, simplified calculations represent science's first infant attempts to determine the age of the Earth. Only the discovery of radioactive decay by Becquerel and the Curies allowed geology to obtain a “standard of time” that does not depend on any geological processes. At any temperature, at any pressure, radioactive elements transform into non-radioactive lead and helium at the same speed. The ratio between radioactive elements, in particular uranium, and the lead or helium formed from it, adjusted for the rate of decay, is a measure of time. The same measure of time can be the ratio between radiogenic and non-radiogenic isotopes of the same element. Without being able to delve into the details of the time determination technique, we will report only the final results of the work done by a number of researchers.

1) The most ancient minerals found on earth are 2.0–2.5 billion years old. The most ancient rocks on the earth's surface were found in Antarctica and are 3.9–4.0 billion years old.

2) The age of meteorites reaches 4.0–4.5 billion years.

3) Based on the study of solar radiation, V. G. Fesenkov believes that the age of the Sun should closely correspond to the age of the Earth and, probably, other planets, and suggests that the planets, in particular the Earth, could exist in the absence of a fully formed Sun.

4) The theory of the expanding Universe predicts its age at 15–20 billion years.

Thus, in all of the above cases, determining the age of objects (an expanding metagalaxy, earth's crust, Sun) produced by different researchers, different methods and ways, they gave numbers of the same order. Based on the requirements of scientific caution, it is impossible to talk about more. Are these coincidences random? It is difficult for us, brought up on the scientific thinking of the 20th century, to imagine that the entire majestic Universe with its billions of stars would have an age close to the age of the oldest rocks on the surface of our planet and the first origin of life on it.

One can, of course, doubt that the “red shift” indicates the expansion of galaxies, one can doubt Einstein’s theory, from which, regardless of the “red shift,” the expansion of the Universe theoretically follows, one can doubt the principles of determining the age of minerals and meteorites by radiological methods and any other, one can doubt the reliability of astrophysical data, but then one has to completely deny the suitability of our observations for interpreting the Universe. Atheists stand on this path. They say that it is impossible to transfer the laws of motion of a finite, limited region of the Universe to the entire infinite Universe. In other words, they recognize two worlds: one world, where there are laws leading to “clergy,” where they, unfortunately, have to live, and another world, a world that has not yet been discovered and is unknown to us, the “otherworldly” world (!), where there are no laws leading to “clergy”. The best thing that atheists should do, so as not to get into trouble themselves, is to admit that science, due to its limitations in each specific period of time, cannot provide a complete picture of the Universe that accurately reflects it, and, therefore, is unsuitable as a method of anti-religious propaganda.

Wanting to understand the meaning of the biblical description of the fifth day of creation, we must remember that the classification among ancient peoples, as well as among modern peoples of archaic culture, has an external morphological ecological character, and not a comparative anatomical one, like modern natural scientific taxonomy. For the ancients, a lizard seemed more related to some centipede, and not a frog, a sparrow - to a bee, and not to a mole, a bat - to a swallow, and not to an elephant; Finally, wouldn’t our poorly educated contemporary compare a dolphin to a fish rather than to a cow? From a scientific biological point of view, the family relationships of animals in the examples given are just the opposite.

Reptiles and birds

So, what meaning did the ancients put into the concepts of “reptiles and birds”? Reptiles (verse 20, in Hebrew sheres) means the actual worms of water and animals, in some cases multiparous, which is emphasized in this text by the word yish e r e su 'let it produce', derived from sharas, which means 'to swarm, to give birth' or 'to give birth in abundance'. More successfully than in the Russian translation, the 20th verse was translated by Luther: Und Gott sprach: Es errege sich das Wasser mit webenden und lebendigen Tieren, lit. ‘God said: Let the waters be troubled by swarming and living animals.’

Saint Basil the Great also gives such an expanded understanding of the word sheres in his “Six Days”. In his commentary on verse 20, he writes: “A commandment has come out - and rivers produce and lakes give birth to their own and natural species; and the sea is sick with all kinds of swimming animals,” and below, in connection with this, he lists not only fish, but also slugs and polyps, cuttlefish, scallops, crabs, crayfish and “thousands of various oysters.”

In ancient times, birds, as Basil the Great testifies, meant all animals flying over the earth, both birds themselves and insects.

In the 21st verse the word tanninim is used, denoting a large sea animal itself, translated as 'fish' in the Russian translation, and for reptiles the word used is not sheres, as in verse 20, but romeset, denoting crawling, reptiles, so in this case the Russian translation is quite accurate.

So, in verses 20–23, which we are now examining, we talk about the appearance on Earth of various animals, the ancestral home of which, according to the Bible, is water; it is said that the sea was inhabited by a wide variety of creatures - small and large, and that land reptiles arose after aquatic ones and their ancestral home was also water.

Without dwelling on the relationships between individual types of the animal world and the genetic transition of one type to another, about which there is a large number of often mutually exclusive hypotheses, let us consider the factual material that geology and paleontology currently provide.

The earliest stages of the development of the animal world are hidden from us; The first remains of animals belong to the Upper Precambrian - these are the nuclei and imprints of protozoa, the remains of the skeleton of sponges, the tubes of worms, the horny shells of brachypods, mollusks and the tubes of pteropods (crustaceans).

In the Cambrian, judging by the available remains, animal world already reaches a huge variety of forms. There are representatives of almost all living types. In Cambrian deposits, not only the remains of hard skeletons were found, which are usually the only ones preserved in the fossil state, but also (in North America) excellently preserved prints of organisms with only a soft body: jellyfish, holothurians, various worm-like and arthropods. The words of St. Basil the Great that “the sea was sick with all kinds of floating animals” are applicable to the Cambrian Sea.

With even greater justification, these words can be attributed to the Silurian period: up to 15,000 species of Silurian marine organisms are known. Apparently, the attempt of animals to get out of the water is associated with the Silurian, since in sediments of this age, although extremely rarely, there are remains of land arthropods, centipedes and scorpions, that is, in biblical terminology, reptiles. How this transition was carried out in general, what its stages were, we do not know; it is known that by the end of the Devonian it had already ended, for from the Devonian North America(Pennsylvania) the imprint of a four-toed foot of a terrestrial vertebrate (Thinopus) has long been known, and the first reliable bone remains of an amphibian skull are from the Upper Devonian of Greenland.

In the Carboniferous period following the Devonian, newt-like amphibians were widespread - they were, in the full sense, animals reptiles on the ground. At the same time, insects from the Orthoptera group appear and reach their greatest development. The number of their known species - given the incompleteness of the geological record - reaches 1000. About this period we can say that “birds flew across the firmament of heaven.”

In the Permian period, along with amphibians, reptiles (reptiles in the modern sense of the word) were also widespread. The Mesozoic era is a veritable kingdom of reptiles, which not only gave rise to such gigantic forms as the 28-meter-long Brachiosaurus, but also filled the “waters of the seas,” along with a variety of fish, amphibians and a rich world of invertebrates.

In the Jurassic, flying reptiles were found, the structure of the wings of which in general resembled the structure of bats, and from Jurassic deposits two finds of real, although very primitive birds are known from the lithographic shales of Bavaria. In the Cretaceous, birds become quite numerous.

Thus, according to biblical terminology, the Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian periods and a significant part of the Mesozoic era can be called the day of reptiles and birds.

This is how the Bible talks about the first stage of creation on the sixth day. There is no doubt that by animals and livestock we should understand land mammals, and that their homeland is the mainland, but it is unclear what is meant by reptiles, since reptiles were already mentioned when describing the fifth day. Perhaps the natural scientific data themselves will help us understand the meaning of this term in the Bible.

Currently, the appearance of mammals is associated with the findings of extremely scarce remains in the Middle and Upper Jurassic deposits. Rare remains of marsupials and placental mammals are known from the Upper Cretaceous, and the following Tertiary period can be called, together with the modern Quaternary, the era of mammals; they not only dominate the land (beasts and cattle), but also rose into the air ( the bats etc.) and took possession of the seas (whales, dolphins, seals, walruses, etc.). The shape, richness of color and variation in size of mammals is amazing - from tiny voles to giant elephants and whales. They mastered all the forests and steppes globe, they are not afraid of either the heat of the deserts or the cold of the polar countries - everywhere they are the most mobile, the most active, the most intelligent animals. Man himself belongs to them.

In all likelihood, reptiles in the book of Genesis refer to frogs, toads (that is, tailless amphibians) and snakes. Paleontological data also inclines us to this understanding of this word, since the appearance of amphibians and snakes coincides with the time of the appearance of mammals.

Is the world static?

On previous pages we saw that according to biblical and scientific data, the appearance of the Earth and the cosmos as a whole was changing. Pondering the meaning of the biblical text, theology puts forward a problem of enormous natural scientific significance: did God create the world unchanged and static, or can the world of God change and develop? Is it possible to improve in this world and grow from lower to higher in the field of spiritual work and material, especially biological development, or is everything that exists subject to monotonous, eternally repeating closed cycles, like the movement of machine pistons? To the question: The Creator of which world should have greater wisdom and greater power? - only one answer is possible: of course, a mobile and developing world. Thus, from a Christian theological point of view, which recognizes God as Almighty, it is easier to accept natural scientific theories of a developing Universe than a static one. The great principle of universal development, which permeates to one degree or another the entire creation of God, is concentrated with special force in the inner, spiritual world of man - the crown of Divine creativity. Consequently, if a person, a creation with will and intelligence, does not work on his spiritual development, does not strive for it, then he is consciously or unconsciously an opponent of the great creative idea Deities, that is, a fighter against God, conscious or unconscious, and therefore spiritual desolation and regression begin in him.

The possibility of human mental and spiritual development has been indisputably proven throughout human history and especially by the countless host of Christian ascetics, canonized and uncanonized saints.

It seemed that theology was supposed to anticipate the ideas of the natural evolution of the world. They actually exist in embryo in some Church Fathers, although they start from different starting positions. So, for example, St. John of Damascus wrote: “what began with a change must change.” But why then did the Inquisition and the Jesuits fight against scientific discoveries, why did some churchmen hostile the theory of the evolution of animals and plants? Why in the 19th century did they stubbornly defend the idea of ​​​​the immutability of species, although such an assumption has no basis either in Tradition or in Revelation and is contrary to all analogies in nature? Based on the limited scientific data of the ancient world and the Middle Ages, theologians created a speculative scheme of the universe, which, in their opinion, exhausted the power of God. And so, when the empirical study of nature - the creation of God, expanded known to people the limits of His power and wisdom beyond the boundaries of their old ideas, these theologians forgot that the power of the Creator extends beyond the limits of human understanding, they made a fuss about the imaginary atheism of scientific theories, “for His immeasurable creative power and wisdom” (Lomonosov’s words) were measured by their limited knowledge. However, not all clergy are guilty of this. Some of them were even the founders of evolutionary theories in biology. For example, the English priest W. Herbert (1837) believed that “species were created in a highly plastic state, and that through crossings and deviations they produced all currently existing species.”

Currently, biological evolution can be considered a scientifically established pattern. However, contrary to popular belief, neither zoology nor botany as the science of modern life forms (neobiology) can prove it. They can only prove the plasticity of the organism or its stability, or the nature of the relationship between these two polar properties of the organism. In short, neobiology deals with factors that can be considered factors in evolution, but not with evolution itself.

Only paleontology, together with geology, has factual documents of past eras of life. Therefore, only she can give the factual basis of history organic world, that is, the framework within which questions of the development of life can and should be developed - that empirical basis, outside of which the realm of fantasy begins.

Paleontology and evolution

However, paleontology did not immediately start talking about evolution. The famous Belgian paleontologist Louis Dollot divides the history of paleontology into three periods: the first - the period of the creation of fables, when instead of studying, they preferred to reason, and large extinct animals were mistaken for the skeletons of giants or mythological creatures; the second is the morphological period; with it essentially begins paleontology as the science of fossils, created by Cuvier in the same way as comparative anatomy; and the third period is the period of evolutionary paleontology, created by the works of V. O. Kovalevsky. “Kovalevsky’s work,” wrote Dollo, “is a true treatise on the method in paleontology.”

What geological and paleontological evidence can be given in favor of the evolution of the organic world?

1) It has been empirically established that there are no modern forms and there are remains of now extinct animals, and different deposits differ from each other in different fauna, and as we move to younger deposits we encounter more and more highly organized forms. This can be explained either by Cuvier's theory of catastrophes (which assumes an innumerable number of repeated creations and destructions of everything previously created, with each time more highly organized organisms appearing than in previous acts of creation), or the result of evolution.

From a theological point of view, the catastrophe theory is absurd and has no basis in Revelation. It reflects not Christian theological views, as they are trying to portray now, but the state of the factual material in Cuvier’s era, when, with a comparatively small number of paleontological finds, intermediate forms between known species and childbirth. This circumstance, by the way, forced Darwin to devote a large section in his “Origin of Species” to the incompleteness of the geological record in order to save his theory from the blows of paleontologists.

2) In the fossil state, before the appearance of remains of new classes and other classification groups, there are remains of organisms that occupy an intermediate position between the new “future” class and the previously existing one, and their assignment to one class or another is very difficult. In this case, it is impossible to restore all stages due to the incompleteness of the geological record, since we do not know whether we are really dealing with transitional phenomena or with traces of the presence of certain classes unknown to us. This leaves a loophole for skeptics.

3) But there are genera in which it is possible to trace all the gradual transitions from one form to another from successive horizons. Moreover, the extreme forms are so different from each other that they, of course, should be classified as different species; It is impossible to draw the boundary between these species in a cross-section, since the intermediate forms give very gradual transitions. We are faced, as it were, with the situation that it is necessary somewhere conditionally to classify a mother as one species, and the daughter she gave birth to as another - a new one, and to classify two half-brothers born at the same time to different systematic units, so that somehow, at least conditionally , draw the line between species. A fact that is impossible in neobiology, but often happens in paleontology.

In this work, we do not dwell on the currently established laws of evolution (adaptive radiation, acceleration of the development of tachygenesis, irreversibility of evolution, non-specialization, etc.), since this is not directly related to our topic. Let us only note that Darwinism and evolutionary views should not be equated; they are not identical, as our high school students think.

Creation of the world and the origin of man

The problem of human origin is one of the most exciting in biology and anthropology. For several centuries it has been a battlefield between people holding different philosophical, scientific, religious and even political views.

Starting with Giordano Bruno, who, in his essay “The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast” (1584), spoke in favor of the independent origin of man in different places globe, the ideas of polyphilia were used in the fight against the Christian religion. Similar goals were pursued by the development of the polygenesis hypothesis human races, which contained the statement that different races are either different types of the same kind, or even different kinds. The works of monophilist scientists, in particular in modern times(analysis anatomical features, having no adaptive significance - Henri Balois), proved that the only possible concept regarding the human race is monophyly.

If the question of the unity (monophyly) of the human race can now be considered scientifically more or less resolved, then questions about the specific ways of formation of the species Homo sapiens and about antiquity modern man are the subject of heated debate.

Between the previous stage and the Neanderthals and modern people, the oldest race of which is known as the Cro-Magnons, there is a certain break in gradualism, which is recognized by all scientists.

Archaeological finds show the impossibility of paleontologically defending the antiquity of Homo sapiens.

The question arises, why are they so stubbornly striving to prove the enormous antiquity of modern man, to prove his antiquity even at the cost of unconscious or conscious distortion of scientific facts?

The fact is that orthodox Darwinism explains the formation of man with his amazing mental abilities, which sharply distinguish Homo sapiens from the entire animal world, by the action natural selection, which determines the entire diversity of animals and plants. According to Darwin's theory in its orthodox form, any species can evolve as a result of the fact that its individual representatives receive a slight superiority over their relatives, and only these more advanced representatives always survive the struggle for existence and only they pass on their progressive characteristics to their descendants. To explain the origin of man as the result of this extremely slow-acting mechanism of evolution, it is necessary to assume an enormous duration of his existence. The human brain is clearly superior to man's need to survive in his struggle for existence with other animals. Therefore, Darwin was forced to attribute its improvement to the long and fierce struggle of man with man and one human tribe with another. He also had to resort to the factor of sexual selection. In other words, according to Darwin, mental capacity man was satisfied with his needs to survive in the fight against his own kind. Consequently, among peoples standing at lower stages of historical development, they must be immeasurably lower than among peoples who have gone in their own way. historical development forward. However, modern research has discarded the idea that the so-called savages were mentally retarded.

In the above biblical verses, the first thing that attracts attention is the grammatical agreement between the singular and plural. In verse 26: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” This hints at the mystery of the Holy Trinity, which in Three Persons is the One Indivisible Deity. God is One, but Three Persons of the Divine Nature. The dogma of the trinity of the Divine is completely unknown to the ancient Jews, but is entirely connected with Christianity, therefore for an atheist this discrepancy turns into a simple slip of the compiler or copyist. For a Christian, this is a pre-revelation of what later became a revelation.

So, man was conceived by the special will of the Divine as the ruler of the earth and everything that is on it. “And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul,” the second chapter of the book of Genesis complements the narrative of the first chapter (Genesis 2:7).

In the Bible we do not find a story about how, or by what means, man was made from the dust of the ground. It only indicates, as St. Gregory the Theologian notes, that man was created from already existing “material.” Both our soul and our body, as the great Christian ascetic taught Venerable Seraphim Sarovsky, created from “the dust of the earth.” Man, created from the dust of the earth, was “an active animal being, like others living on the earth<…>although he was superior to all beasts, cattle and birds.” They, as part of the earth, that is, as coming from the earth, could even serve as material for its creation. Therefore, there is nothing anti-Christian in including humans in the same systematic series with other animals, as Linnaeus did and as is now customary in biology - this is a statement of one of the aspects of human nature. There is nothing anti-religious in the hypotheses of the origin of man from an ape-like creature; for a Christian, confirmation of these hypotheses only reveals how man was created in the biological process of his formation. The main thing for the Bible is not this, but that God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul,” that is, man, who had previously been “the dust of the earth,” an animal, although the most perfect and intelligent of all animals , acquired the Holy Spirit and through this the ability of real communication with the Divine and the possibility of immortality. By coming into contact with the earthly world with his material nature, man became the king of this world and the viceroy of God on earth. And as God’s vicegerent on earth, he must continue the work begun by God - decorating and cultivating the earth for the glory of God.

In creativity, no matter what it manifests itself in - whether in art, in the creation of new breeds of animals and plants or new celestial bodies - lies one of the aspects of our similarity to God. “You are gods,” said the Lord (John 10:34). We must approach creativity with prayer, with sacred mystical awe, with deep gratitude to God for the joy of our likeness to Him, with fear of what we use this likeness given to us for. Human creativity has two sides: the external one, which was just mentioned, and the internal one, which many people have currently forgotten about. Carried away by their external creativity, directed not to the glory of God, but to the glory of man, people forgot about internal creativity and, amusing themselves with their discoveries, inventions and so-called “miracles” of technology, as if in a game of chance, they are losing the Kingdom of God and their immortality.

God offered life and death to man, good and evil (see Deut. 30:15), so that man could choose and make himself one way or another.

A person can descend to an animal state and rise with the help of God to an angelic state, for the seeds of a diverse life are embedded in him; The constantly, naturally changing world gives a person the opportunity to develop and grow according to his own will.

The world could not be built according to Beautiful Arbitrariness and not have laws, if only because a person could only cognize a world in which laws exist; Only a world developing according to laws could a person possess, only in it could a person demonstrate his creative abilities.

Having examined the biblical account of the creation of the world in the light of modern ideas, we did not see anything in it that contradicts science. It can be stated quite definitely that science in its development is more and more consistent with the narrative of Moses. His story in many details becomes clear only now: the beginning of the world, light before the Sun and stars, emphasizing the anthropological factor in the development of nature, and much more. A comparison of the latest discoveries of science with the Bible clearly shows how much the providence of the Jewish prophet rose above not only the limited ideas of ancient peoples, but also above the views of natural scientists of modern times. For an atheist, this is an inexplicable miracle; for an anti-religionist, this is a fact that must be kept silent; for a Christian and a Jew this is not surprising, for for them the Bible and Nature are two books written by God, and therefore they cannot contradict one another. The imaginary contradictions between them are explained by the fact that a person reads one of these books incorrectly or both together.

Looking back at the path traveled by science over many centuries to understand the Great Book of Nature, we can say in the words of Einstein: “The more we read, the more fully and highly we appreciate the perfect design of the book, although its complete solution seems to be moving away as we moving forward.”

At the very beginning of the essays it was said that Christianity considers God the Creator to be the beginning of everything. In presenting the history of creation, we consciously sought to remain on the basis of precisely established facts and generally accepted opinions in our atheistic age, contrasting them with the biblical story and not rising to theological contemplation and thought. Now, finishing this essay, it is perhaps worth touching them lightly, at least with hints.

From the biblical account of the creation of the world it is clear that in the creation of the world after its creation natural forces acted and developed. natural processes: “and the earth brought forth greenery,” “let the water bring forth reptiles,” etc. But these elements did not act spontaneously, but upon receiving special abilities given to them by God: “And God said: let the earth bring forth greenery,” and it produced, “let the water bring forth the reptiles,” and it produced, that is, matter did not simply develop as a result of its initially existing properties, but the will of the Divine, moving from one stage to another, bestowed new abilities on the elements, expressing Itself in the form of natural, that is, laws that have retained their meaning to this day. In other words, God, having created matter, did not leave it to remain in chaos, but as a wise Ruler directed the development of the Universe separate from Him, being in this sense the Creator of everything visible and invisible.

The manifestation of God's will is visible throughout the history of mankind, but in most cases it is expressed in the form of natural laws - unnoticeable to the outside world, which does not even listen to miracles, but significant for a Christian. A Christian scientist must be able to see with his mind and feel with his heart the manifestation of the Divine Will in Nature and in human history and tell about It.

“It is fitting to keep a sovereign’s secret, but it is commendable to announce the works of God” (Tob 12:11).

Cm. Archpriest Gleb Kaleda. The Bible and the science of creation // Alpha and Omega. 1996. No. 2/3 (9/10). - Ss. 26–27. - Red.

In sacred books, the word “day” is used quite often without connection with the astronomical day. Jesus Christ calls the entire time of His ministry “day.” “Abraham your father,” He says, addressing the Jews, “rejoiced to see My day” (John 8:56). The Apostle Paul says: “The night is past, and the day is at hand: let us therefore put away the works of darkness” (Rom. 13:12); “Behold, now is the acceptable time, behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor 6:2). In the latter case, day is the time after the Nativity of Christ. “In your sight,” David figuratively exclaimed in a psalm, turning to God, “a thousand years are like yesterday” (Ps. 89:5), and the Apostle Peter wrote: “With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Pet 3:8).

We find the same understanding of the biblical day in St. Basil the Great. In the second conversation on the Sixth Day, this “universal teacher,” as the Church calls him, says: “Whether you call it a day or an age, you express the same concept; whether you say that it is a day, or that it is a state, it is always one, and not many; Whether you call it a century, it will be one and not multiple.”

A critical analysis of this chronology was given in 1757–1759. the founder of the Russian natural-scientific apologetics of Christianity M.V. Lomonosov, who in his work “On the Layers of the Earth” wrote about the presence of “...implicit and dubious numbers in the Jewish Old Testament, which, like many other places in it, could not be clearly understood to this day the most skillful teachers of this language; and this is not the last reason that all Christian peoples begin calculating years from the Nativity of Christ, leaving the ancient, as not quite definite and doubtful; Moreover, there is no agreement on this between our Christian chronologists; for example, Theophilus Bishop of Antioch believes from Adam to Christ 5515 years, Augustine, 5351, Jerome 3941.”

Polyphyly- a theory according to which life (or its individual forms) could independently arise in different places. Monophyly- theory of the single origin of life. Accordingly, the terms polygenesis And monogenesis(along with monophyly) reflect views on the origin of humanity. - Ed.

The so-called theory of primitive (prelogical) thinking, put forward in the last century by L. Lévy-Bruhl and supported by a number of ethnographers and psychologists, is based, firstly, on bias and, secondly, on insufficient knowledge of the material. The same can be said about the absolutely untenable statement according to which there are no words of abstract meaning in the languages ​​of the peoples of archaic culture. - Red.