I didn't ignore the NT evidence you gave. I addressed it exactly. To restate, I do not permit you do use the NT to contradict the O, nor do I permit you to use the NT to "discover" meanings in the OT that the originals audience were not capable of seeing. A gap between Gen 1:1 and 2 would be just such an example. If the NT teaches it, it contradicts the OT and would mean that Moses himself was wrong about what his own writings meant. The problem is not me addressing your incorrectly interpreted NT passages. The problem is your misinterpretation of Genesis 1. What I and others is that
Genesis 1 rules out the gap theory. To use a silly example, Genesis 1 rules out the Sumerian belief that Marduk created the world by cutting Tiamat in half. It wouldn't matter if someone misinterpreted some NT passage and said it taught that earth is Tiamat's body. The fact is that Genesis 1 contradicts that belief. And just so with the gap theory.
Again, you are wrong on the actual facts of the matter. You cannot rely on the "and," and your assertion that you can proves to me that
you have never read the scholarship on this at all. Do you not realize how irresponsible it is to adopt and defend a position before you explore its weaknesses? Take my own hobby horse: divine simplicity. Before I adopted it, I spent a full year reading what actual scholars who reject the doctrine say about it. But you obviously haven't done that. If you did, you would know that the "and" argument is linguistically absurd. That's
exactly the point old gap theorists missed and what we now understand. Gen 1:2 does not begin wit "and."
Let me say that again: GENESIS 1:2 DOES NOT BEGIN WITH "AND."
You want to talk about old scholarship? Let me go far older than your early twentieth century scholars. Let me go back to people who spoke Hebrew fluently and gave us our first translation of the OT: the translators of the Septuagint (for those who don't know, that's the OT that was popular in Jesus' day, since most of the Jews at that time, and certainly those outside of Palestine, had forgotten most of their Hebrew). I know you don't read Greek, but bear with me. I'm going to help you understand something here if you want to. Here are the first ten sentences of Gen 1 as translated by the LXX (that is, the Septuagint):
- 1 ἐν ἀρχῇ ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν
2 ἡ δὲ γῆ ἦν ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος καὶ σκότος ἐπάνω τῆς ἀβύσσου καὶ πνεῦμα θεοῦ ἐπεφέρετο ἐπάνω τοῦ ὕδατος
3 καὶ εἶπεν ὁ θεός γενηθήτω φῶς καὶ ἐγένετο φῶς
4 καὶ εἶδεν ὁ θεὸς τὸ φῶς ὅτι καλόν καὶ διεχώρισεν ὁ θεὸς ἀνὰ μέσον τοῦ φωτὸς καὶ ἀνὰ μέσον τοῦ σκότους
5 καὶ ἐκάλεσεν ὁ θεὸς τὸ φῶς ἡμέραν καὶ τὸ σκότος ἐκάλεσεν νύκτα καὶ ἐγένετο ἑσπέρα καὶ ἐγένετο πρωί ἡμέρα μία
6 καὶ εἶπεν ὁ θεός γενηθήτω στερέωμα ἐν μέσῳ τοῦ ὕδατος καὶ ἔστω διαχωρίζον ἀνὰ μέσον ὕδατος καὶ ὕδατος καὶ ἐγένετο οὕτως
7 καὶ ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸ στερέωμα καὶ διεχώρισεν ὁ θεὸς ἀνὰ μέσον τοῦ ὕδατος ὃ ἦν ὑποκάτω τοῦ στερεώματος καὶ ἀνὰ μέσον τοῦ ὕδατος τοῦ ἐπάνω τοῦ στερεώματος
8 καὶ ἐκάλεσεν ὁ θεὸς τὸ στερέωμα οὐρανόν καὶ εἶδεν ὁ θεὸς ὅτι καλόν καὶ ἐγένετο ἑσπέρα καὶ ἐγένετο πρωί ἡμέρα δευτέρα
9 καὶ εἶπεν ὁ θεός συναχθήτω τὸ ὕδωρ τὸ ὑποκάτω τοῦ οὐρανοῦ εἰς συναγωγὴν μίαν καὶ ὀφθήτω ἡ ξηρά καὶ ἐγένετο οὕτως καὶ συνήχθη τὸ ὕδωρ τὸ ὑποκάτω τοῦ οὐρανοῦ εἰς τὰς συναγωγὰς αὐτῶν καὶ ὤφθη ἡ ξηρά
10 καὶ ἐκάλεσεν ὁ θεὸς τὴν ξηρὰν γῆν καὶ τὰ συστήματα τῶν ὑδάτων ἐκάλεσεν θαλάσσας καὶ εἶδεν ὁ θεὸς ὅτι καλόν
You should be able to see that verses 3-10 all begin with a different word than verse 2. In verses 3-10, the word is καὶ, which even if you don't read Greek you should be able to sound out, because the letters are the same in English as in Greek: kai (pronounced like the word "eye" with the "k" sound in front of it; or the first syllable of the name "Kyle"). That word roughly means "and." Now notice the word that starts verse 2. Actually, there are two words: ἡ δὲ (pronounced "hay de"). For reasons I won't bore you with, the second word, de, always come second in a sentence when it is connecting two ideas. The first word (ἡ, "hay") means "the." For now, focus on the de. It roughly means "now" or "yet" (we'll clarify that more below). Notice what word it is NOT: kai!
See, the LXX translators knew something that your twentieth century scholars did not and that we have now learned. The word that de is translating is the Hebrew letter "waw." That letter also begins verses 3-10. But the LXX translators translated the "waw" in 1:2 with de and the "waw" in 3-10 with "kai." Why is that? The KJV translators didn't know, so that just translated all of them with "and." They were wrong.
This is the reason: we now know (as the LXX translators did then, since they spoke the language natively) that when the "waw" is connected to a verb, it is called a "waw conjunctive" and has the idea of carrying the story forward; it lets us know "this is the next thing that happened." And so they translated it with "and." But when the "waw" is connected to a NOUN, it is called a "waw disjunctive" and tells us something about the circumstances regarding the previous sentence. They had a great word to do that in the Greek language, but it was NOT "kai" (our "and"). It was de (our "now" or "yet"). You see, the actual function of "de" is to advance the logic or circumstances of the story, but not the action. "De" does not indicate what comes
next, but rather something we should know about the idea it is connecting us to! (For a detailed discussion of this, see
A Discourse Grammar of the Greek New Testament).
Do you see how all this applies? Gen 1:2 does not tell us something that happened AFTER Gen 1:1. When I keep telling you that 1:2 is a circumstantial clause, what I am telling you is that
the grammar forbids it. If I was going to paraphrase Gen 1:1-2 to bring out the idea, which anyone who reads Greek or Hebrew and understands their grammar can very clearly see, I would do it like this:
- In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth; when He did so, He created them in an uninhabited and uninhabitable state--it was total chaos--pitch blackness covered everything, and God's Spirit was hovering protectively over this new creation preparing it for what would come.
Obviously, that's a paraphrase, but that catches the force of the Hebrew (and Greek, if the LXX) grammar. You can see from that rendering that no gap is possible. Gen 1:2 is telling us something about the state of the original creation.
The grammar requires that.
Now, are you really going to sit here and tell me that we should ignore the scholarly findings of the last forty years, findings that match what the LXX translators--people who were fluent in both Greek and Hebrew--were telling us? And on that, let me make one more point about our LXX translators. Look back at that FOURTH word in 1:2--that "ἦν" (pronounced "hane"). It means "it was."
This is very important so don't miss this!
Greek, unlike Hebrew, has different words for "it was" and "it became" and even "it had become." Greek is very good at distinguishing tenses. Hebrew doesn't have that. In fact, Hebrew only has two tenses. I won't bore you with the details, but in practice, that means that the Hebrew word in 1:2 ("hayatah") could possibly be "was" or "had become" or "became." THAT is why you see that in the NIV margin. But that doesn't mean that it really could be any one of those. The circumstantial clause requires we translated it "was" because the others would render it an independent clause, contrary to the grammar. Now, the LXX translators apparently knew this. They had the option of translating that word "became"
and they chose not to. They translated it, "Now it [the original creation] was . . ."
Again, are you really going to suggest that your twentieth century scholars knew Hebrew better than the native speakers and first rate theologians who translated the OT into Greek over 2000 years ago?
So bottom line: Gen 1:1-2 makes a gap between verses 1 and 2 impossible. It isn't just a passing point. It is terribly important you see this. Gen 1:2 tells us something about
the original creation referred to in 1:1. The grammar requires that, and that RULES OUT a gap between 1:1 and 1:2. If, then, some later passage tries to find a gap between the two,
then the passage contradicts 1:1-2 as Moses wrote it.
Lastly, all this is common knowledge these days. It is stuff you learn as a second year Hebrew student. This was cutting edge stuff in the 70s and 80s, but our understanding of Hebrew is LIGHTYEARS from where it was back then. We've learned a LOT. And I hope you find at least some of this a
little helpful. If you can't see from this post why I'm not going to waste my time talking about what you are saying the NT says on this, then I can't help you. Consider this carefully. Pray over it. Again, I'm sorry you have so much invested in this, but you need to do the very, very, very hard work of admitting you were wrong and backing off. I know it is SO hard to reject a position you've come to love. I know. I have had to do it. It is painful. But it is the mark of honesty and humility, a willingness to bow to truth, which in the end is a willingness to bow to God Himself.
You're in my prayers, abel.
It would probably be a bit like Hugh Ross suddenly realizing that the earth and universe are mere thousands of years old 
