The writings attributed to Moses, the first five books of the Bible (the Pentateuch), have faced a challenging and contentious history over the past few centuries. 

Historical Context:

• Ancient Acceptance: Traditionally, these texts were accepted as foundational religious documents by Jewish and Christian communities.

• Critical Scholarship: In the 19th and 20th centuries, biblical scholarship introduced critical methods that questioned the Mosaic authorship, suggesting multiple sources and later redactions.

• Modern Perspectives: Today, there's a blend of views. Some scholars and religious adherents maintain traditional beliefs, while others accept the critical scholarship findings.

The two primary causes of the questioning of the divine inspiration of Moses were an erroneous Mosaic chronology that did not align with archaeological dates, and an erroneous understanding of natural history in the 19th and early 20th centuries, which did not align with Moses' order and events of the six days. Thus, many scholars rejected the historical accuracy of Moses' writings. On the other hand, many of the faithful rejected the validity of scientific natural history. One of the key lessons from the history of science is that data ultimately prevails. Regardless of how compelling opposing arguments may be, the truth is eventually uncovered through evidence. The four PDFs in this section demonstrate that science and archaeology have validated the historical and scientific accuracy of Moses' writings. 

The first two PDFs present the viewpoints of 19th-century scientist Arnold Guyot and theologians Charles Hodge and Augustus Hopkins Strong. They illustrate how 21st-century natural history has confirmed their interpretations of Moses' descriptions of the origin of the universe to a habitable climate and the sequence of animals and humans in the fossil record. The third PDF demonstrates how Moses' account of the period from Adam and Eve to Noah's Flood, as dated by the chronology of the Church Fathers, aligns with modern archaeological and geological findings in Mesopotamia. The fourth PDF illustrates how the early history of the Canaanites, Arabs, and Israelites, as dated by the chronology of the Church Fathers, corresponds with data from archaeology, geology, and geography in the Middle East. 

The four PDFs are available under the Creative Commons license, CC BY-SA 4.0. Simply click on the title pages below to view the PDFs. The Table of Contents is located on the second page of each document. You can navigate by clicking on the chapter headings in the Table of Contents or by using the page guide at the bottom of each PDF. 

In the 19th century, scientists and theologians saw a correlation between Moses’ six days of creation and the newly developed sciences of geology, paleontology, and astronomy. Thus, they concluded that Moses’ days of creation represented ages of time.  

Two of the leading proponents of the day-age interpretation for much of the 19th century were Arnold Guyot (1807 – 1884) of Princeton and James Dana of Yale (1813-1895). They were effective and respected professors. The Arnold Guyot Prize is still awarded by National Geographic Magazine each year. Guyot Hall at Princeton named after him. James Dana of Yale wrote the Manual of Minerology, which is still updated and in print. 

Charles Hodge (1797-1878) was the Principle of Princeton Theological Seminary (1851-1878). He included the day-age interpretation in his Systematic Theology and made the following statement. 

“Professor Dana of Yale and Professor Guyot of Princeton, belong to the first rank of scientific naturalists; and the friends of the Bible owe them a debt of gratitude for their able vindication of the sacred record.” [1]  

Guyot acknowledged that he was working with an immature version of natural history and that correlation between science and the six days was not perfect. In his article in the New York Times, he stated, We may only suspend judgement, till all possible light is attained and then arrive at a perfect understanding of both. Many things may be explained. Some little point may still possess some little obscurity, but in the future every new ray of light displaces some cloud, which remained to obscure our vision. In 1884, the year that he died, Guyot published his day age interpretation. [2]  

There were many opponents to the day-age interpretation.  Henry Morton, president of the Stevens Institute of Technology wrote two articles in Bibliotheca Sacra that summarized the arguments of theologians and scientists opposed to Guyot's day-age interpretation, as outlined in his book.  He did not think God inspired Moses and thus there would be no correlation between Moses and natural history.  [3]

The strange thing is that Morton defined future advances in cosmology and paleontology by outlining the discrepancies between Moses’ descriptions and Guyot’s interpretations based on 19th century natural history.  This would happen if Moses’ writings were accurate and natural history has, since then, aligned itself with Moses. For example, the sequences in the following 19th and 21st century models (Figure C-1) are the same, but Morton pointed out that  Guyot had the wrong materials (inactivated matter and not earth and waters), and he had the wrong location of the light (central light of the Milky Way rather than the Sun). The modern protoplanetary disk model agrees with Moses' specifications for the first three days. Morton did not critique the sequence of cloud, collapse, formation of light, and formation of an expanse, which is a common event in the universe at many scales: galaxies, solar systems, and planets (Saturn).

[1] Hodge, Charles, Systematic Theology, (New York: Scribner Armstrong and Company, 1873), 570–571 

[2] Guyot, Arnold. Creation: Or, the biblical cosmogony in the light of modern science. C. Scribner's Sons, 1884.

[3] Morton, Henry. "The Cosmogony of Genesis and its reconcilers." Part A. Bibliotheca Sacra. 54 (1897) 27.  

The following video shows Guyot’s 19th century interpretation of Moses' six days were validated by 21st century natural history.

In the following list, Moses' statement is in italics, Guyot's 19th century interpretation is shown in black, and my updated version is shown in red.

Prologue. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God was moving over the waters.

žGod created the universe with dark clouds of inactivated matter

A dark molecular cloud formed in the Milky Way and contained earth and water ice.

Day 1. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 God called the light “day,” 

žThe dark cloud of the universe collapsed and formed the central light of the Milky Way

The dark molecular cloud collapsed and formed the Sun, which is the light of day.

Day 2. Then God said, Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.

žThe Milky Way (expanse) stretched out as a disk around the central light

The circumsolar disk (expanse) formed around the sun in the waters of the cloud.

Day 3a. Then God said, “Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear. 

žThe Earth and solar system formed from materials in the expanse of the Milky Way. The Earth initially formed as a small sun and then cooled off and became a planet. 

The Earth formed as a dry planet in the waters and dust of the circumsolar disk. 

Day 3b. Then God said,“Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth, bearing seed after their kind with seed in them.” 

Microbial photosynthetic organisms formed on Earth in the Precambrian.

Land plants appeared in the Proterozoic Eon (Precambrian).

Day 4. Then God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and they shall serve as signs and for seasons, and for days and years.” 

žDay 4. The Sun, Moon, and stars appeared before the Cambrian, because the skies cleared, thus forming our climate.

God changed earth’s axial tilt in 580 Ma and thus put the sun and moon in their present path (the expanse).

Day 5. Then God said, “Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens.” And God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind; and God saw that it was good.

žGod created invertebrates and fish in the seas, and animals became insects, marine invertebrates, and fish in the Paleozoic, and then dinosaurs and birds in the Mesozoic

Invertebrates evolved in the late Proterozoic seas (possibly with God's help in some way). Insects evolved from the invertebrates. God created the vertebrates in the early Cambrian and fish, crocodiles (great sea creatures), and birds evolved within the vertebrates. Paleontologists divide the archosaurs (known as dinosaurs) into animals similar to birds, and animals similar to crocodiles.

Day 6a.  Then God said, “Let the earth produce living creatures according to their kind: livestock and crawling things and animals of the earth according to their kind”; and it was so. God made the animals of the earth according to their kind, and the livestock according to their kind, and everything that crawls on the ground according to its kind; and God saw that it was good.

žMammals appeared on the Earth in the Cenozoic (Tertiary). Mankind appeared last in the order of mammals. All people are created in God’s image.

Mammal ancestors evolved in the late Mesozoic. God wiped out the dinosaurs in the End Cretaceous extinction (65 Ma), and then modern mammals and small reptiles evolved in the Cenozoic.

Day 6b. Then God said, “Let Us make mankind in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the livestock and over all the earth, and over every crawling thing that crawls on the earth.” So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them

Mankind appeared last in the order of mammals. All people are created in God’s image.

Mankind appeared last in the order of mammals. All people are created in God’s image.

Figure C-2 outlines the differences between Guyot's interpretation and the updated interpretation, with Morton's objections in the middle.

Video on Moses' chronology

The following video describes Moses' chronology, which places Adam and Eve in 5800 BC in Southern Mesopotamia and Noah's flood in 3500 BC Mesopotamia. Further discussion of this chronology is in chapter 7 of the Invertebrates to Humans book (link above).

The correspondence between Moses' chronology and Late Neolithic archaeology in Mesopotamia 

Seventeen characteristics of the Ubaid people and Late Neolithic Mesopotamia align with Moses's description of the period from Adam and Eve to Noah's Flood (5800 to 3500 BC).

Video on Adam and Eve

Noah's Flood was the Great Ur Flood in Mesopotamia

In Moses' chronology, Noah's flood occured in 3500 BC. The Great Ur Flood of 3500 BC was the greatest flood in Mesopotamian history. Although scholars had assumed that it was only a local flood in Ur, Al Sheikhly conducted a borehole study in Mesopotamia in 2017 and found the Ur flood layer throughout Mesopotamia at all of the locations in red in the following figure. Thus, the Great Ur Flood extended from Baghdad to Basra and from Karbala to Amara. 

Charles Wooley's discovery of the Great Ur Flood

In 1930, renowned archaeologist Sir Charles Leonard Woolley discovered the Great Ur Flood in Mesopotamia and claimed that it was Noah’s flood. The following figure shows that the depth of flood deposits was 3 m. Woolley estimated that the flood was 8 m deep. Woolley never stopped claiming that it was Noah's flood although most scholars rejected it as Noah's flood. 

Possible design of a reed ark

The roof of the ark was probably circular in shape like a mudhif building. 

“…arks were to be roofed like the Apsu, suggesting a black circular shape, consistent with Mesopotamian models of the Cosmic Apsu.” Finkel, page 172.

Moses stated that there were three decks. 

Video on Noah's flood and Noah's ark

The following video focuses on the historical evidence for the flood, flood simulation, ark design and the possible remains of the ark near Baghdad. 

A computer model of Noah's flood

I made a simplistic computer model of a flood in Mesopotamia. Simulations of two estimated elevations of the flood, 16 m at Baghdad (15 cubits over the hills) and 8 m at Ur (Woolley's estimated flood depth) indicate that the maximum flood flow rate was approximately 100 billion cubic meters per day, which is twice the flow rate of Hurricane Harvey, the largest quantitatively recorded storm in American history. 

The second figure shows possible phases of flooding near Baghdad, as described by Moses.

Was the ark on a tell in Mesopotamia or on a high mountain such as Mt Ararat?

The scale of the flood (15 cubits over the hills) indicates that the hills that Noah's flood covered were at the scale of 15 cubits, which corresponds with the heights of tells in Mesopotamia, such as Khafajah, not the mountains of the world. 

Armegeddon = Har Megiddo

The Hebrew word translated as hills or mountains is hare (plural), or har (singular). This word describes the tell Megiddo (Har Megiddo), which is where we get the name Armegeddon. Thus, the "hills of Ararat" could refer to hills at Khafajah, an archaeological site on the outskirts of Baghdad, where there are possible remains of ark.

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The hand of God and the Big Bang. Pixabay license. <https://pixabay.com/photos/genesis-big-bang-explosion-flash-3922213/>