In modern English Bibles, the
first chapter, Genesis, describes the six-day creation of the universe by God,
and at the end of each day’s description there appears a phrase somewhat like
“evening was followed by morning.” But
the Jewish scholar Nachmanides said that the Hebrew words that were translated
as “evening” and “morning” should have been translated as “chaos” and “order.” And the original Hebrew meaning more likely
was: “chaos became order.” How
did this mistranslation happen? Gerald
Schroeder points out in his book: “The Hidden Face Of God” (page 49), that many
of our English Bibles were derived “from the King James Bible, first published
in 1611. But the King James Bible is a translation preceded by the Latin
Vulgate attributed to St. Jerome in the 4th century and that Latin version is
taken from the Greek Septuagint that dates back some 2200 years. The Septuagint
is taken from the Hebrew.”
Schroder adds (http://www.geraldschroeder.com/age.html):
“But Nachmanides points out a problem with that. The [English] text says ‘there
was evening and morning Day One... evening and morning a second day... evening
and morning a third day.’ Then on the fourth day, the sun is mentioned.
Nachmanides says that any intelligent reader can see an obvious problem. How do
we have a concept of evening and morning for the first three days if the sun is
only mentioned on Day Four?”
The Bible, Schroeder concludes,
“wants you to be amazed by this flow of order, starting from a chaotic plasma
[the Big Bang] and ending up with a symphony of life. Day-by-day the world
progresses to higher and higher levels. Order out of disorder. It's pure
thermodynamics. And it's stated in terminology of 3000 years ago.”