Jewish and Christian Tradition Get It Right

The biblical explanation of the origin of man and the world around him should satisfy Jewish people as well as Bible-believing Christians. Yet some in both groups reject the Genesis creation account. This they do against their traditions.

Both the Jewish and Christian Bibles verify that God created the world, not that it evolved.

Jewish people have the Holy Scriptures, what Gentile Christians call the Old Testament. That portion alone of God’s Word contains enough documentation of how the universe came to be. Christians, whether Jewish or Gentile, also have the further revelation of the New Testament.

The common ground, then, is the Old Testament. For Christians, our belief in the inerrancy of Scripture is enhanced by New Testament references to the Hebrew Scriptures.

For instance, Jesus himself dispels the liberal position that the early chapters of Isaiah were not written by the same man who wrote the latter chapters. He quoted from both Isaiah 6 and 53 and said, “These things Isaiah said when he saw His [God’s] glory and spoke of Him” (Jn. 12:41). Thus Jesus affirmed there was only one Isaiah.

He also affirmed biblical creation. In answering a question of the Pharisees concerning divorce, Jesus said, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female’…?” (Mt. 19:4).

Moses, the author of Genesis in the Torah (first five books of Moses), presented God as the Creator of all things, and nothing in the New Testament contradicts that truth. In fact, the opposite is true. Every New Testament author refers in some way to the first 11 chapters of Genesis. More than half of the New Testament books mention something from those same 11 chapters. Creation is first taught in Bereshith (literally, “in the beginning”), the Hebrew name for the book of Genesis. It is affirmed by many other Old Testament writers and then confirmed repeatedly in the New Testament. Following are a few examples:

God Created the Heavens and Earth
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Gen. 1:1).

For in six days the Lᴏʀᴅ made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day (Ex. 20:11).

You alone are the Lᴏʀᴅ; You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and everything on it, the seas and all that is in them (Neh. 9:6).

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained (Ps. 8:3).

Remember now your Creator. He has made everything beautiful in its time (Eccl. 12:1; 3:11).

Thus says God the Lᴏʀᴅ, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread forth the earth and that which comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it (Isa. 42:5).

All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made (Jn. 1:3).

God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth (Acts 17:24).

God who created all things through Jesus Christ (Eph. 3:9).

For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible (Col. 1:16).

God Created Adam, Eve, and the Entire Human Race
So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them (Gen. 1:27).

This is the book of the genealogy of Adam. In the day that God created man, He made him in the likeness of God (Gen. 5:1).

Now Jesus Himself began His ministry at about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph,…the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God (Lk. 3:23, 38).

The Evolution Theory Is Wrong
Know that the Lᴏʀᴅ, He is God; it is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; we are His people and the sheep of His pasture (Ps. 100:3).

All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another of fish, and another of birds (1 Cor. 15:39).

Today DNA testing confirms that humans do not have the same DNA as animals.

One of the beauties of Scripture is that, though it was written by many authors all separated by time and space, it is completely harmonious throughout. Creation is the unanimous teaching of the entire Word of God.