What you are talking about is known as the Gap Theory. It was popularized a couple of decades ago. I don't know of any scholars who defend it today, though, and to be honest I don't think it's very easy to defend on grammatical grounds. When looking at the relationship between Gen. 1:1 and 1:2, 1:2 is widely recognized to be a circumstantial clause. In other words, 1:2 tells us the conditions under which 1:1 occurred. The idea would be, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, [and the conditions of this creation were such that] the earth was formless and void . . ." If that is the correct classification (as it almost certainly is), then you cannot translate
hayetah (the verb in question) as "became." We have to affirm the traditional "was." You don't need to be a Hebrew grammarian to see this. I take you you would agree that OT scholars know their Hebrew pretty well, so if "became" was really as good a translation as gap theorists suggest, you would expect SOME scholars to translate it that way. And yet . . .
And the earth was waste and void (ASV)
the earth was without shape or form (CEB)
The earth was unformed and void (CJB)
The earth was barren, with no form of life (CEV)
And the earth was waste and empty (Darby)
And the earth was void and empty (DR)
The earth was without form and void (ESV)
And the earth was without form and void (Geneva)
the earth was formless and desolate (GNT)
Now the earth was formless and empty (HCSB)
And the earth was without form (KJV)
The earth was formless and empty (NLT)
Now the earth was formless and empty (NIV)
the earth was a formless void (NRSV)
And the earth was tohu vavohu (without form, and void); (OJB)
The earth was without form and void (RSV)
So yeah, I think you get the point. There are no translations that say "became." In fact, I didn't even see any footnotes offering it as a possible rendering. I would actually suggest that this is so well understood among Hebrew scholars (that the word is "was" and not "became") that the real argument is over whether or not 1:1 should be translated "In the beginning God created . . . and the earth was formless and void" or "Now when God began creating . . . the earth was formless and void"!
I certainly admit that there have been some good expositors over the years who have tried to defend the Gap Theory. J. Vernon McGee comes to mind. I empathize with them. I seriously considered it (about a decade ago). But in the end I just don't think it is terribly defensible. If you want to allow for an old earth, in my opinion you'd do much better considering one of these two possibilities;
1. That the creation account was intended to be an allegorical/highly symbolic account of creation meant to emphasize God's sovereignty and the general idea of the beauty of order as opposed to chaos; the best possibility here is the Framework Interpretation (though some have thought that Walton's Temple Dedication motif works better); or
2. Old Earth Creationism, specifically Day Age Creationism, which teaches that the word
yom ought to be literally understood to refer to long undefined periods of time rather than actual days; of course, the same critique applies here as to the Gap Theory. For all the arguments that
yom can be appropriately understood as referring to long, undefined periods of time, it is telling that NO serious translation has made that suggestion.
Both alternatives, of course, are extremely problematic (in my view). I say it's best to just say what the text says. God created the world in six, twenty-four hour days. Either that is true or it is not. If it is not, then there's no need to ask how long ago creation happened, because for all we know it didn't. Perhaps the universe has been around forever. Perhaps it was 14.6 billion years ago. Either way, it doesn't matter, because the Bible doesn't speak to it. But if it did happen, then the next question is how long ago He did that. The Bible doesn't give us an exact time. If we take the genealogies in Genesis and other such passages to be complete, then you get back to about 6,000 years ago. I, for one, don't think they are complete, and I think Moses expected us to know that. But I don't think they were so incomplete as to incorporate hundreds of thousands, much less millions or billions, of years, either. So maybe it was 10,000 years ago. Maybe 30,000. Who knows? Not me. But I am pretty confident that it wasn't in the time frame that we are normally told.
Anyway, you asked for some thoughts. Those are some of mine. Please note that this board is connected to a site that strongly promotes OEC. You would probably really enjoy reading some of Rich Deem's articles. We also have some people here who fall into the TE camp (theistic evolution) and a few YECs (like myself). I don't think we have any Framework advocates, and I don't think we have any any gap theorists (other than perhaps yourself). That's all to say that there is a pretty wide range of views on the matter here. The good news is that while there
are a range of views, and some of us take our views very seriously, none of us (that I know of) make this a test of fellowship, much less a test of salvation. So welcome aboard!
