No Need to Mind the Gap

The “Gap Theory” of Gn. 1:1-2 holds that there was an indeterminately long gap of time between Gn. 1:1 and Gn. 1:2.  During this period of time Satan fell, a pre-adamic race populated the earth, sin entered into the world, and God brought judgment in the form of a flood on His original creation.  Gn. 1:2 therefore is not an account of original creation but rather an account of the re-creation of the earth.

This view was held Thomas Chalmers, Franz Delitzsh, Arthur Pink.  Some early dispensationalists such as Arno Gaebelein, C.I. Scofield and Lewis Sperry Chafer.  Sweetnam and Magnum in their work “The Scofield Bible: Its History and Impact on the Evangelical Church” believed that the gap theory was adopted by Scofield as a way to reconcile the emerging evidence of an old earth, with the biblical account of creation.  Three arguments, syntactical, contextual, and historical are usually advanced to support a gap between Gn. 1:1 and Gn. 1:2.

First, syntactically some contended that the Hebrew construction of Gn. 1:1-2 is best understood as a temporal clause and not as the beginning of time itself.  In other words, instead of translating Gn. 1:1 as “In the beginning God created…” is should be translated “In the beginning when God created…”.  Then, v2 introduces something that happened after Gn. 1:1. But Hebrew syntax does not support this assertion at all.  Gordon Wenham’s Word Biblical Commentary goes into this in detail.

Also, some who hold to a gap theory note that in Gn. 1:1 the Hebrew word bara is used to describe God's creative activity.  In Gn. 1:25 however the word asah is used.  They content therefore that bara is used to describe original creation out of nothing, and asah is used to describe creation out of existing material.  But the distinction between these words does not really support the gap theory. For example the term bara is used to describe God's creation of man in Gn. 1:27. Furthermore bara is used for the creation of some of the animals, and asah for the creation of other animals (Gn. 1:21, 25 respectively).  The distinction between these words is not that bara is used of creation out of nothing and asah is used for creation out of something.  Rather bara is used only with God as the subject while asah is used with either God or men as the subject.

Second, contextually, those who hold to a gap cite Gn. 2:4 and 5:1 as parallel usages with Gn. 1:1. Yet, in both verses there is an explicit Hebrew phrase “in the day” which is absent in 1:1 so these verses cannot be cited as syntactic parallels.  

Third historically, it is asserted that other ancient cosmologies such as the Atrahasis and Enuma Elish begin with a temporal clause, Enuma in fact means “when”.  They therefore assert that on this basis the opening in Gn. 1:1 should also be understood as a temporal clause.  Against this assertion however most scholars compare the opening terms of the Babylonian creation account and Gn. 1:1 and conclude that “there is no evidence to connect the two different terms, the one in Hebrew and the other in Babylonian.”  Furthermore, a close examination of these pagan cosmologies shows that in contrast to Gn. 1:1 which asserts that in the beginning there was only God these pagan accounts attribute the source of god to preexisting matter.  In the Biblical account God Himself is separate from matter and outside of time and space, and that therefore He is the source of “…the heavens and the earth…”.

So there is not any syntactical, contextual, or historical basis to support the assertion that there is a gap between Gn. 1:1 and Gn. 1:2.

But what about 2 Pt. 3:6? Does this verse indicate a pre-Noahic flood?  A flood after Gn. 1:1 and before Gn. 1:2?  No it does not for three reasons.  First, note that the text says that “the world at that time was destroyed”.  “World” might mean the earth but it is more likely, and certainly the more straight forward understanding (keep Occam’s razor in mind), that it is used in the same sense as in Jn. 3:16 where “world” refers to the people of the world.  In that case Peter is referring to the Noahic flood in which all the inhabitants of the world, except Noah and his family, were killed.  Second, Peter mentions the flood two other times, 1 Pt. 3:20 and 2 Pt. 2:5 in both cases it is the Noahic flood in view.  So it is unlikely he would now reason from a pre-Noahic flood.  Third, the antecedent of “through which” at the start of v. 6 is likely “the word of God” in v. 5.  Peter is therefore saying that by the word of God the heavens were created (Gn. 1:1ff) and then destroyed (Gn. 7), and in v. 7, that by this same word the earth is kept for a day of coming judgment, the coming day of the Lord.

So none of the arguments advanced to support the gap theory really hold up.  In fact, I think the syntactical, contextual, and historical evidence proves that in order to find a gap between Gn. 1:1 and Gn. 1:2 you need to come to the text with the presupposition that there is a gap.