“The Big Bang, that today is considered to be the origin of the world, does not contradict the creative intervention of God; on the contrary, it requires it. Evolution in nature is not in contrast with the notion of [divine] creation because evolution requires the creation of the beings that evolve…when we read in Genesis the account of creation [we are] in danger of imagining that God was a magician, complete with a magic wand that can do all things. But he is not.”
-Pope Francis
[This is the third part of a series. Links to the first two parts can be found below]
Random Thoughts: Part 1 - The Preface
Random Thoughts: Part 2 - The Introduction
Science tells us the Universe started with a Big Bang about 13.8 billion years ago. Our solar system and Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago. Life began on Earth about 3.8 billion years ago, but more complex forms of life have been around for only about 500 million years. Mammals first appeared about 200 million years ago. The first creatures resembling humans first started standing upright around 6 million years ago. The Homo group dates back 2 million years. A little over a million years ago they were using fire and simple tools and walking upright. Homo sapiens like us have been around for about 200,000 years.
Some of you may disagree with every word of that last paragraph, but Francis has made it clear that he does not see a conflict between God and science. Nor, for that matter did his more conservative predecessor Benedict, who said the debate between creationism and evolution was “an absurdity”, because although there is much scientific proof of evolution it did not exclude a role by God.
Somewhere around 50,000 years ago mankind became modern humans and roughly 10,000 years ago the Neolithic Revolution saw the development of civilizations as we know them. There were at least six separate “cradles of civilization” that include Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India, Mexico, and Ecuador. The city of Jericho is about 10,000 years old. The Chinese were cultivating rice 7500 years ago. The South Americans were growing maize at the same time, and the Indians were also farming and herding.
Ultimately, each of our stories begins there. Six to eight thousand years ago all of our stories began in various parts of the globe. But we must recognize that this “beginning” was nothing of the sort; the story stretches back much, much farther, but the details are for the most part lost to us now. We have just covered 13.79 billion years in 3 paragraphs so forgive me if I pause and reflect upon the immensity of time. One hundred years is an entire lifetime for the luckiest among us, but it is 1% of the history of Jericho, and a tiny fraction of the time we have been using fire.
These ancient cultures and societies in China and Egypt and South America and across the world developed for the most part independently, with some contact from time to time depending on conditions. They developed different traditions and preferences and also genetic markers that we are just now beginning to be able to unravel which can indicate from what region of the world your DNA originated.
The eight millennia between the dawn of these civilizations around the world to the birth of Jesus are filled with the development of languages and religions and nation-states and ethnicities and philosophies and family dynasties. People formed groups and identified with those groups, whether by appearance or family or religion or language or geography they came to see themselves as part of one or more of these groups.
Space does not permit us to do justice to the history of those 8000 years but we are obliged to hit a few highlights that will relate to the rest of our journey.
Athens was originally founded somewhere around 4000 BC. Narmer ruled as Pharaoh around 3000 BC and 500 years later the’ Maxims of Ptahhotep’ were written to teach men how to act properly. This was around the same time as the founding of Troy, and a couple of hundred years before the (perhaps mythical) Yu the Great ruled in China. This was also about the same time that the Mayan civilization began. In India, the Harrapan civilization was entering its mature era.
And so we arrive at Abraham. Abraham is a patriarch of several great religions known as the Abrahamic religions, among them Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The biblical account of Abraham is difficult to verify archeologically and therefore the exact timing of when he lived is unclear. The stories of Abraham and his offspring, like those of Noah and Moses, and not easily dated scientifically. Scholars have tried to find specific evidence of the Great Flood and the Exodus from Egypt in order to verify the dates historically but there is no way to assign specific dates for when these stories occurred.
The impact of the Abrahamic religions on the history of man, however, is very clear. Over half of the world’s population considers Abraham to be one of the patriarchs of their own religion. I am well aware of the controversial nature of this discussion. The bitter hostility between the various Abrahamic religions has been the basis for a tremendous amount of the violence that has occurred on Earth in the 3000-4000years since the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
The entire purpose of this journey of ours is to better understand where we are today and how we got to be where we are, and in order to reach that understanding we must fully understand the origins of our faith and our conflicts. And Abraham stands as a central figure in that narrative for over half of the world’s population.
We will more fully examine these religious themes later but for now let’s review just one story, that of Abraham, Sarah his wife, and her Egyptian handmaiden Hagar. God had promised Abraham land and descendants as “numerous as the stars”, but Abraham and Sarah were unable to have children. Sarah offered Hagar to Abraham who bore him a son, who was named Ishmael. Years later Sarah bore him a son, Isaac, when he was an old man.
Isaac inherited Abraham’s legacy, and Ishmael and his mother are said to have travelled east and founded the Ishmaelites, and whose son Kedar is said to be the father of the Qedarites, who were ancient Arabs. These stories are impossible to authenticate scientifically but they play a large role in shaping the rest of human history.
Sometime around 500 BC Buddha lived in India and founded Buddhism. Around the same time Confucius lived in China and founded Confucianism. Cyrus the Great expanded the great Persian civilization and also was revered for his statesmanship and ideas about human rights by people like Thomas Jefferson. Another century later we see the rise of Greek philosophy in Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
Aristotle taught Alexander, who then went on to conquer the Assyrians and Egyptians and Persians and even went as far east as India. This conquest also had huge historical implications, and was responsibility for spreading a large number of ideas and customs throughout the ancient world.
Rome had been founded around 750 BC but the Roman Republican existed between about 500 BC until just before the birth of Christ, when it became the Roman Empire. Julius Caesar lived in the last century before Christ and his death resulted in the end of the Republic and the beginning of the next stage in Rome. His romance with Cleopatra in Egypt is the stuff of movies and well known to most in the West.
We have covered a great deal of history, but we have barely scratched the surface on any of it. Nevertheless we have covered the history of man from the beginning of time until the birth of Jesus, and we have set the stage for the rest of the story.
The next 2000 years is a small blip in time compared to the vast history of the universe, or the Earth, or Life, or even humanity. And the final 200 years, where our story truly begins, is just a tiny speck. I warned you this journey would take some time. We still have a great deal to discuss before we get to that little story of the 200 years at the end.
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