The Lᴏʀᴅ created land animals.

Genesis 1.24-25.

When I’ve taught on Genesis 1 before, it created major problems with my listeners—who were raised to be young-earth creationists. There’s a lot of baggage which comes with that worldview. I grew up in it, so I know where they’re coming from.

Young-earthers are taught the earth is only 60 centuries old, give or take a few years. This, despite the evidence of our eyes and ears which tell us the earth and our universe is way older than that. Our telescopes detect light from galaxies 280 million light-years away, which means God created ’em at least 280 million years ago. That, or he deceptively made it appear the universe is more than 280 million years old when it’s not—and why would he do so? God is not a deceiver. Suggesting he is, is blasphemy.

But young-earthers are told the earth has to only be 60 centuries old; it’s the most accurate, most literal interpretation of Genesis. So you must believe it—or you don’t legitimately believe the bible. And that’s a slippery slope: It’d mean you don’t believe what the bible records about Jesus. And therefore don’t believe in Jesus. And therefore are probably going to hell.

Threatening skeptics with hell is mighty cult-like behavior. Yet it’s mighty common—and a big reason young-earth creationism persists in Evangelical Christianity as much as it does. We got a lot of Christians who think young-earth creationism is a make-or-break doctrine. And when I dare to say not only is it not, but then show you how Genesis 1 really can’t be treated as literal, and wasn’t really meant to be… well, some young-earthers get mighty freaked out by this. I’m triggering a faith crisis in ’em.

If that’s you, please believe I don’t mean for you to be miserable. I’m actually hoping you’ll be thrilled to know it’s not just okay to believe in both Jesus and science; you should believe in both Jesus and science. Too many Evangelicals think it’s simply impossible. So much so, some of ’em think they have to choose one or the other, and either choose to fight science, or choose to quit Jesus so they can study science. It’s a false dilemma, and you can reject it! Please do.

Okay, enough housekeeping. Back to Genesis 1.

I’ll say it again: Genesis wasn’t written to teach science. It supports neither evolution nor young-earth creationism. That’s a debate which started in the mid-1700s. (It actually predates Charles Darwin and On the Origin of Species. Darwin simply gave an explanation for why evolution might work, i.e. natural selection.) So if you see verses which appear to support evolution from a common ancestor, like the passage about fish and birds, or today’s passage about land animals: No it doesn’t. The writer of Genesis wasn’t trying to explain what specifically happened; only that ancient middle eastern pagans got it wrong. Their myths claim their gods conquered the universe, and that’s why they rule it. Genesis states the LORD created it, and everything in it, and that’s why he rules it.

He created the fish and birds on day five; he created the land animals, including humans, on day six. I’ll get to the humans next time. Today, the animals.

Genesis 1.24-25 KWL

24God said, “Land: Bring forth living soul by its species.

Beast and creeper and life in the land, by their¹ species.”

It was so.

25God created the life in the land by its species,

the beast by its species,

and every creeper in the ground by its species.

God saw how good it was.

Strong numbers. Or Strong’s numbers. Whichever.

From time to time I refer to Strong numbers or Strong’s numbers. I suppose I need to explain what they are lest people get the idea I’m introducing them to numerology.

A concordance is a list of every single word in a book. In the past, people made concordances for the bible, and you could use them as kind of a bible index. In those pre-internet days, if you remembered there’s a verse about “the meek shall inherit the earth,” but couldn’t remember it’s in the beatitudes, couldn’t remember where it is, and obviously couldn’t ask Siri or Google where it was, you’d go to your bookshelf and pull out that big, massive, 20-pound concordance, flip to “meek,” and find out where it’s hiding.

Seems it appears 17 times in the King James Version:

Nu 12.3	the man Moses was very m., above all the men	H 6035
Ps 22.26	The m. shall eat and be satisfied	H 6035
Ps 25.9	The m. shall he guide in judgment	H 6035
Ps 25.9	and the m. shall he teach his way.	H 6035
Ps 37.11	But the m. shall inherit the earth	H 6035
Ps 76.9	to save all the m. of the earth.	H 6035
Ps 147.6	The LORD lifteth up the m.	H 6035
Ps 149.4	he will beautify the m. with salvation	H 6035
Is 11.4	reprove with equity for the m. of the earth	H 6035
Is 29.19	The m. also shall increase their joy	H 6035
Is 61.1	to preach good tidings unto the m.	H 6035
Am 2.7	and turn aside the way of the m.	H 6035
Zp 2.3	Seek ye the LORD, all ye m. of the earth	H 6035
Mt 5.5	Blessed are the m.: for they shall inherit	G 4239
Mt 11.29	for I am m. and lowly in heart	G 4235
Mt 21.5	Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, m.	G 4239
1Pe 3.4	even the ornament of a m. and quiet spirit	G 4239

So check it out: The meek inheriting the earth actually comes up twice. In Psalm 37.11, and in Christ Jesus’s “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Mt 5.5

Some bibles have a mini-concordance in the back, to be used as just this sort of index. They don’t include every word. Really, not even an exhaustive concordance does: There are 64,040 instances of “the” in the KJV. (More instances of “the” than there are verses.) But when people are trying to track down a verse, seldom are they looking for the word “the.” Or “but,” or “and,” or “he,” or other all-too-common words.

Anyway. Dr. James Strong wasn’t the first guy to produce an exhaustive concordance of the KJV, but his was powerfully useful for one reason: His numbers. When you looked up any word in his 1890 concordance, you’d find he provided a number. In the back of the book are his Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary of the Old Testament, and Greek Dictionary of the New Testament. Don’t even have to know the Hebrew or Greek alphabets: You look up the word by its number, and there you go: It’s the proper original-language word behind the KJV’s translation.

Wanna know the original word for “ass” in 2 Peter 2.16? Strong’s concordance will point you to number 5268, and once you look up that number in the Greek dictionary, you find this:

5268. ὑποζύγιον hupozugion, hoop-od-zoog'-ee-on; neuter of a compound of 5259 and 2218; an animal under the yoke (draught-beast), i.e. (specially), a donkey: ass.

Nice, huh? Wanna know the original word for “buttocks” in Isaiah 20.4?

8357. שֵׁתָה shethah, shay-thaw'; from 7896; the seat (of the person):—buttock.

Yes, I’m twelve.

Juvenile words aside, the number idea was just plain brilliant. Yeah, Strong could’ve only given people the original-language word, then turned ’em loose to fumble around for it. But I know way too many people who are totally wierded out by foreign languages. Even Spanish scares ’em. Throw a foreign alphabet in there and they’re wholly lost—how are they to know Hebrew alphabetical order? (Yeah, Psalm 119. But still.) Anyway, anybody can look up a number. So instead of trying to figure out how on earth you’re gonna find ὑποζύγιον or שֵׁתָה in the bible, you look up the numbers 5268 and 8357. Simple.

Nope, Strong’s system isn’t perfect. Some of the numbers are redundant: Different forms of the same word sometimes got different numbers. Syriac words (which Strong called “Chaldee”) got mixed up with the Hebrew words, and people can mix up the Hebrew definition with the Syriac definitions and get some strange interpretations. Pronunciation is way off ’cause it’s not taken from native speakers, who’d pronounce ὑποζύγιον as i.poʊ'dzi.gi.oʊn not hup.ɑd'zug.i.ɑn. And if you wanna use Strong’s Greek dictionary to look up words from the Septuagint, he didn’t write it for the Septuagint, so good luck. (For that you’ll need a Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon… and maybe a semester of ancient Greek.

But the popularity and utility of Strong’s concordance means you’ll find Strong numbers in a whole lot of reference materials.

St. Patrick’s Confession.

Pádraig of Ireland, whom we know as St. Patrick or St. Paddy, died 17 March 493. Old Christian custom is to celebrate saints’ days not on their birthday (which sometimes even they didn’t know), but on the day they died and went to paradise. So, happy St. Patrick’s Day.

In the United States, Irish Americans (and pretty much everyone else, ’cause the more the merrier) treat the day as a celebration of Irish culture. Thing is, Americans know bupkis about actual Irish culture. We barely know the difference between an Irish, Scots, or Yorkshire accent. What we do know is Guinness and Jameson—though we’ll settle for anything alcoholic, including beer filled with green food coloring. Me, I used to love McDonald’s “shamrock shakes,” though the last time I had one I found it way too sweet to enjoy. (It’s because they take an already-sugary vanilla shake, then add sugary green mint stuff.) Oreos help, but I still much prefer adding mint and vanilla to a Starbucks Frappuccino.

Most American customs consist of drinking, eating stereotypical Irish food like corned beef and potatoes, parades in which the religious participants express varying degrees of outrage at all the irreligious participants, and all sorts of Irish distortions—some of ’em unknowingly offensive or racist. British Americans used to treat Irish Americans like crap, bringing over their prejudices from the old country, and some of that hatred is still around. I have a few Irish ancestors myself (although way more of ’em are German, Dutch, and Scots), so I’ve not experienced that prejudice firsthand. But I have witnessed it.

Oh, and wearing green. American custom is to wear green, lest someone pinch you. But the color actually comes from the political struggle between Protestant monarchists and Catholic socialists. Much like Americans use red and blue to signify party affiliation, the Irish use green and orange. And whenever we Americans wear green, we unwittingly declare we’re in favor of socialism and Catholicism. Now, as Americans you would think this is because we’re anti-monarchy (even though some Americans are perfectly happy to anoint their favorite candidate as king), but really it’s because we don’t know any better and the socialists were very successful in publicizing green. If I gotta pick a color though, it’d be orange; I’m Protestant. No I’m not monarchist; no I have nothing against my Roman Catholic sisters and brothers! Like I said it’s if I gotta pick a color. I risk getting pinched over it, but I still prefer an informed choice over unthinkingly following the crowd.

If you’re Catholic, six years out of seven, St. Patrick’s Day custom is to beg your local bishop for a day off from Lenten fasting. Since you don’t fast on Sunday, back in 2024 you automatically had a day off from Lent. But other years, saint’s days aren’t automatically feast days, so you just gotta hope your bishop hasn’t had it up to here with all the Catholics-in-name-only who are gonna take the day off regardless, and misbehave.

In any event, for Americans our holidays aren’t really about serious remembrance, but having a good time. Which really annoys our veterans every Veterans Day. Now imagine how Patrick feels, with people celebrating his day by puking into moonroofs.

The very, very little which popular culture knows about Patrick, is…

• He drove snakes out of Ireland. (He actually didn’t.)
• He liked to use shamrocks to explain trinity. (Badly.)
• He once turned his walking stick into a tree. (Actually, people don’t know that story so well.)
• He’s “a Catholic saint.” (Patrick predates Roman Catholicism by about 250 years, which is why Patrick’s also a saint in the Orthodox Church, same as St. Nicholas.)

And that’s about it. Some stories about Patrick are also borrowed from the life of Bishop Palladius—whom the bishop of Rome, Celestine 1, sent to evangelize Ireland a few decades before Patrick came to Ireland. So those aren’t legit Patrick stories. People tell ’em anyway.

When in doubt, go to the historical sources. So below, I’ve provided the Confession of St. Patrick, his testimony. Comes from James O’Leary’s translation. Scripture references and minor edits were added by me.

Could’ve called down the angels.

Matthew 26.52-54.

When Jesus was arrested in Gethsemane on the morning of 3 April 33, the knee-jerk response of his students, same as every human, is fight or flight. Some fled; some fought.

And it was really stupid of them to fight. You realize Jesus’s Twelve (minus Judas Iscariot of course) consisted of 11 teenagers with no self-defense training, opposing the temple police accompanied by a mob. Definitely outnumbered. But you know there’s always gonna be a faction of true believers who think, “Numbers don’t matter! Gideon routed the Midianite and Amalekite armies with only 300 men. Jg 7 Samson personally slaughtered a thousand people with a jawbone. Jg 15.16 God can likewise supernaturally empower me to fight any number of people.”

Okay yes, God can do and empower anything he wants. But does he want to empower us to singlehandedly fight a mob? Did he state anything in advance about this sort of thing, like he’d said to Gideon and Samson? Or have we arrogantly presumed our cause is righteous, and right makes might?—because unless God intervenes, it really doesn’t, and if God hasn’t foresaid he’s gonna intervene, likely he won’t.

Had God foresaid he’d intervene in Jesus’s arrest? Or had Jesus said just the opposite, multiple times, Mk 8.31, 10.32-34 and the students were in denial? That second one. Jesus didn’t say, “We’ll go to Jerusalem and we’ll be just fine.” God hadn’t told anyone, “A mob will appear, but fight them and you’ll win.” Jesus warned them: He’s getting arrested. There’ll be no supernatural defeat of any mob. Neither Jesus’s kids will hold them back, nor 10,000 angels pouring from the black sky to smite every sinner on the ground. Jesus won’t fight back. He’s gonna surrender. On purpose.

And in so doing win, and win big.

But Christians still don’t understand this strategy. We still keep adopting the tactic to fight back hard.

Although the whole angels-pouring-from-the-sky idea? It actually was an option. And now I’ll quote that passage. It happens right after a violent follower lops off the ear of the head priest‘s slave. Matthew never identifies the guy (John does), nor points out Jesus immediately cured him (Luke does), but only records Jesus’s rebuke.

Matthew 26.52-54 KWL

52Then Jesus tells him, “Put your¹ machete back in its place!

For everyone who chooses arms

will be destroyed by arms.

53Or do you¹ think I can’t call out to my Father,

and he will give me, right now,

more than 12 legions of angels?

54But then how might the scriptures be fulfilled?

So this has to happen.”

I wanna zero in on this Matthew statement because it reminds us how utterly in control Jesus is: At any point of Good Friday he could’ve stopped it. Any point.

Stopping the mob with a word.

John 18.3-9.

In contrast with the mob arresting Jesus in the synoptic gospels, and Simon Peter whipping out a machete to slash at them, and chaos and fighting and a quick supernatural healing, Lk 22.51 the Gospel of John shows Jesus has total control of the situation.

Yeah there’s a mob; yeah they’ve come to grab him, and bring the usual chaos and disorder. But when they approached Jesus, he actually stopped them. With two words.

John 18.3-9 KWL

3So Judas Iscariot, taking the mob,

and officers from the head priests and Pharisees,

comes there with torches, lamps, and weapons.

4Jesus already knew what is coming to him,

so he comes forth and tells the mob,

“For whom are you looking?”

5They answer him, “Jesus the Nazarene.”

Jesus tells them, “Here I am.”

Judas his betrayer was standing with them,

6so when Jesus tells them, “Here I am,”

they move backward and fall to the ground.

7So again Jesus asks them,

“For whom are you looking?”

They say, “Jesus the Nazarene.”

8Jesus answers, “I tell you, here I am.

So if you seek me,

leave these others alone to go away”—

9so he might fulfill this word which he says:

“I’ve not lost anyone whom you’ve given me.” Jn 17.12

The two words Jesus said to the mob are ἐγώ εἰμι/eghó eími, “I am.” It’s short for “Here I am,” which is why I added the word “here” for us English-speakers. And various preachers love to point out “I AM” is the the name of God which he shared with Moses ben Amram in Midian. Literally what God shared with Moses was אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה אֲשֶׁ֣ר אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה/Ehyé ašér ehyé, “I’m being what I’m being.” Or, for short, יהוה/YHWH, which means the same thing—which we either transliterate as “Yahweh,” or translate as “Jehovah.” Anyway these preachers like to imagine—and proclaim all the time—Jesus wasn’t just saying, “Here I am,” like you would if you were surrendering, but boldly declaring the 𝕳𝖔𝖑𝖞 𝖓𝖆𝖒𝖊 𝖔𝖋 𝕲𝖔𝖉, and identifying himself with it. So the Holy Spirit promptly knocked this unholy mob onto their keisters. “Every knee will bow,” Pp 2.10 and all that.

The Lᴏʀᴅ created the fish and birds.

Genesis 1.20-23.

Growing up, I was taught animals don’t have souls; only we humans do. I don’t know who first started teaching this idea, but obviously ’twasn’t an educated person. Anyone who knows Latin will recognize our word “animal” comes from anima, “soul.” And here in Genesis, we see God refers to the first sea creature he created as a swimming, living נֶ֣פֶשׁ/nefeš, “soul.” Says it right there in the bible…

Well, assuming your bible bothers to translate nefeš as “soul.” The KJV doesn’t. Straight-up skips the word. Oddly, when I use my bible software—which shows you the original-language word whenever you move your mouse over the English-language word—“hath” is apparently the word which translates nefeš in “the moving creature that hath life.” Ge 1.20 KJV Now no, that’s not accurate. The translators of the KJV weren’t translating word-for-word.

And neither are many bible translators. I’ve found most bibles translate the Hebrew phrase נֶ֣פֶשׁ חַיָּ֑ה/nefeš khayíh, “living soul,” as “living creatures.” Sometimes you mouse over the word “living” and find it translates nefeš and “creatures” translates khayíh; sometimes it’s flipped.

A soul is a lifeforce. The point the author of Genesis (whom I’ll call “Moe” from here on) was trying to make, is these are living creatures. Not that plants aren’t alive; not that they don’t breathe too. But these creatures move around. They swarm. They fly. They’re obviously alive; they obviously have souls. Now, whether these souls are meant to live forever like us humans—that’s a whole other thing. But it’d be wrong to say animals lack souls.

Although you’ll still get some Christians who say so, and they’ll point out their bibles never describe an animal as having one. Well yeah, if your favorite bible translation prefers to render nefeš as “life” so you can’t tell it’s actually talking about the lifeforces of animals—like when the LORD forbids the Hebrews from eating blood because it’s an animal’s nefeš, Lv 17.14, Dt 12.23 or when you take an animal’s nefeš you have to make restitution for it, nefeš for nefeš Lv 24.18 —then of course you’re never gonna see that idea in the bible; it’s been hidden from you. Wonder why.

Well, I’m hiding nothing, so when I come across nefeš I’m translating it “soul,” and here it is in today’s passage.

Genesis 1.20-23 KWL

20God said, “Swarm the waters,

you swimming, living soul.

Fly, bird, over the land,

upon the face of the ceiling of the skies.”

21God created the great serpents

and every living, crawling soul which swarms the waters,

by species.

And every winged bird,

by species.

God saw how good it was.

22God blessed them, saying, “Bear fruit. Be many.

Fill the waters of the seas.

And bird: Be many on the land.”

23It was dusk, then dawn.

Day five.

How to study your bible.

When I was a kid, I went to a Fundamentalist church. Say what you will about Fundies; they’re really big on studying the bible. Though not all of ’em know how to do it properly. They definitely never taught me how.

I tried to figure it out on my own… which meant I seriously studied the notes of my study bible, which at the time was a Scofield Reference Bible. No, reading your study bible’s notes is not the same thing, but plenty of people think so; I certainly did. The folks of my church didn’t help, ’cause whenever I shared some Scofield’s “insights” with people, they looked impressed: “Wow, do you study your bible!” So of course I thought I was on the right track.

Same with every other bible resource I had. Mom had a little paperback bible dictionary; I read that cover to cover. Mom had a concordance, and I’d use it to look up original-language words. I’d read the bible a lot, so that made me pretty knowledgeable about what was in there.

That’s not a lot, but it’s significantly more than most Christians do. Most people, as soon as we get out of school—whether high school, university, or grad school—figure we never, ever have to study again, and don’t. We quit. We’re done. We might make exceptions for something important, like our contractor’s license, but we’re done. Study the bible? Nah. We’ll leave that for experts; pastors can study the bible. When we wanna get something profound out of the scriptures, we only expect to get ’em one of three ways.

1. Somebody else has to say it. Like a favorite preacher or author, whom we trust to say reliable things. (Trust based on what? Well, that’s another discussion.)
2. It’s gotta be a clear, obvious statement in the bible. Something anyone could find, like a penny on the sidewalk.
3. It’s a God-inspired idea which unexpectedly pops into our heads, like a bolt of lightning from a blue sky, as we’re reading the bible. Illumination, some call it.

But study? Go digging out truths from the text? Never gonna happen.

There’s a common but false assumption God’s kingdom, because it runs on grace, arrives by grace: We don’t have to make any effort. Just take the talent God gave us, bury it in a field, and it’ll grow like an acorn into a tree filled with shiny metal discs. Wisdom will just come to us naturally. After all, there’s no shortage of people posting pithy platitudes on social media.

Here’s the quandary: Which of these platitudes are true, and which of them are merely clever… but wrong?

’Cause I’ve heard loads of platitudes. So have you. I’ve been a Christian for more than five decades, and listened to sermons every Sunday morning, many Sunday and Saturday and Friday and Wednesday evenings, many mini-sermons by bible study leaders and prayer group leaders and college professors, many sermons in chapel at schools I’ve gone to or taught at, and of course sermons on the radio or podcasts. I have no idea how many Christian books I’ve read, both before and after seminary. Or how many posts on Christian blogs.

There’s a lot of advice out there. Most of it looks like good Christian advice. But it only looks good: Much is junk, is misinformed, is misleading, is foolhardy, is ignorant, is dark Christianity, is heresy, or is hypocrisy disguised under thick Christianese.

And some of it is pure Christianism: It’s pop psychology, godless nationalism, Mammon worship and social Darwinism, ulterior motives disguised as devout Christianity. It’s totally wrong—but sounds good. Sounds wise, familiar, benevolent… and totally appeals to our bratty inner child, so we repeat it.

How do we know the difference? Well, unless we have the supernatural gift of discernment (which in my experience, the Holy Spirit uses to point out false teachers, not bad theology), we gotta discern stuff the old-fashioned way: We gotta know our bibles. And not just superficially. We gotta study our bibles. We gotta buckle down and do our homework.

But we don’t wanna.