Scala Naturae of the Bible, Charles Darwin and Ancient Greek Philosophy

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Genesis speaks of "sunlight" before herbs. But this was NOT an "Egyptian myth". Light is described as being created twice _before_ vegetation and _after_ vegetation.
The Hellenistic Jews and societies around them WORSHIPED agriculture so they wouldn't be so ignorant as to underestimate the value of light, would they? They were more knowledgeable about agriculture than any 10 young earth creation organizations combined and tripled, with their flawed attempts to interpret Genesis.
The whole ancient near east, worshiped cultivation and success of crops (yes, even the Hebrews with upholding the "Olive" as sacred).
Egyptians didn't separate science and religion -- everything, in their daily life was of the divine, and explained by the "gods" and to be revered. The Greeks on the other hand were the first who attempted to make distinctions between material reality (naturalism) and the supernatural.
The Hellenistic Jewish author of Genesis was far more pragmatic than the Egyptians and would not have been so "stupid"... so agriculturally illiterate, and fail to recognize the importance of light's effect on crops.

TWO SOURCES OF LIGHT in the Greek.
Two sources of light, in Genesis.

The ancient people believed "light" was sent by Apollo. Light was a separate entity from the sun itself. Though, yes, the sun gives light, but also, a fire gives light, even mushrooms can emit light... volcanoes emit light, fireflies give light. Therefore, light is a separate entity from the sun.

Helios, was the minor god who drove the fiery chariot across the sky (the sun), which all should be familiar with, the term, "Heliocentrism" [the astronomical model in which the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun at the center of the Solar System. The word comes from the Greek (ἥλιος helios "sun" and κέντρον kentron "center")].

Source: Ancient Greece and Rome: Myths and Beliefs
By Tony Allan, Sara Maitland
The Rosen Publishing Group

The reason theologians (and scholarly types) always... ALWAYS want to cling to the blanket argument, "Genesis was an Egyptian myth" hypothesis analysis, is simple:

1) Moses, it was written, was described as coming from Egypt,
2) therefore, Moses "wrote" Egyptian myths.

Right?
Wrong.

The stories of Moses were passed down through oral tradition... and come after,
The Genesis account which wasn't written down or compiled into the "Book of Genesis" (using a GREEK... and Latinized title. Moses did not write Latin or Greek) therefore, not written until around the time of the Hellenistic Jews (300-600 BC)... no archaeological evidence exists of biblical Hebrew beyond tiny fragments such as a burnt bit from... Leviticus, (but not Genesis... where are the Genesis accounts older than 600 BC from archaeology?).

This article mentions the other Hebrew books "Of Moses" being attributed to "Moses," all of them, EXCEPT the book of Genesis (which are divided differently in the Hebrew vs. the English bibles).
Jewish editors under influence of Hellenism, compiled the book called "Genesis".

The Greeks were quite obsessive and intentional in their aims to spread Greek culture far and wide, and "convert" the Jews to Hellenism, and its not that this isn't known. The book of Genesis contains "Naturalistic" (Thales/Anaximander's concepts of origins such as "Let the waters bring forth the moving creature") notably, "God" doesn't hand-design life, he merely commands for the waters and earth to "bring forth" life, in successive stages, "...the Bible-based concept of the so-called "ladder of life" or Scala Naturae..." (From the scala naturae to the symbiogenetic and dynamic tree of life.)

Ancient Greek early pre-scientific philosophies are strewn among other, more common understandings of the natural world, which were often explained in terms of the supernatural, i.e., "Light" in itself is separate from the sun, a separate entity altogether. Technically, if you light a match at midnight, you will see evidence for "Apollo's Light".

THE OLDEST BIBLICAL TEXT (And its not Genesis)
"...Biblical text older than the Dead Sea Scrolls has been discovered only in two silver scroll-shaped amulets containing portions of the Priestly Blessing from the Book of Numbers, excavated in Jerusalem at Ketef Hinnom and dated c. 600 BCE. A burnt piece of Leviticus dating from the 6th century CE analyzed in 2015 was found to be the fourth-oldest piece of the Torah known to exist."
The Dead Sea Scrolls, Wikipedia

THE SCALA NATURAE OF THE BIBLE, AND CHARLES DARWIN... AND ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHY.

"...The great chain of being (Latin: scala naturae, literally "ladder/stair-way of nature") is a concept derived from Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and Proclus. Further developed during the Middle Ages, it reached full expression in early modern Neoplatonism..."
The Great Chain of Being, Wikipedia

It's not as if scientists and presumed theologians didn't know this already, but some theologian, --a clown with a degree, thinks "Moses was Egyptian. Therefore, the Bible is Egyptian myths".
What an absolute stroke of *genius* that rationale required. (yes, sarcasm strongly denoted).

From the scala naturae to the symbiogenetic and dynamic tree of life.
"...All living beings on Earth, from bacteria to humans, are connected through descent from common ancestors and represent the summation of their corresponding, ca. 3500 million year long evolutionary history. However, the evolution of phenotypic features is not predictable, and biologists no longer use terms such as "primitive" or "perfect organisms". Despite these insights, the Bible-based concept of the so-called "ladder of life" or Scala Naturae, i.e., the idea that all living beings can be viewed as representing various degrees of "perfection", with humans at the very top of this biological hierarchy, was popular among naturalists until ca. 1850 (Charles Bonnet, Jean Lamarck and others). Charles Darwin is usually credited with the establishment of a branched evolutionary "Tree of Life". This insight of 1859 was based on his now firmly corroborated proposals of common ancestry and natural selection. In this article I argue that Darwin was still influenced by "ladder thinking", a theological view that prevailed throughout the 19th century and is also part of Ernst Haeckel's famous Oak tree (of Life) of 1866, which is, like Darwin's scheme, static."

Scala naturae, The Biblical Creation account vs. the contemporary "Creationist" understanding due to misinterpretation of Creation (which is still quite different from the ancient author of Genesis' vision)... and Charles Darwin.

The Evolution of Psychological Theory
Richard Lowry, Transaction Publishers, 1982

Don't the pseudo-Darwinists (Atheists) make the claim it was "Christianity" who was the enemy to scientific progress? According to this document, it was the Greek prevailing philosophy of "Essentialism".

Plato (427 – 347 B.C.E.)
Plato believed that the world is a mirage, that the only things that really exist are immutable Forms or Ideas, and that objects in the real world are just evanescent shadows of these Forms.
In Book 7 of The Republic Plato explains this concept using the allegory of a cave with prisoners watching shadows on a wall producing by firelight shining over the real objects.

Essentialism, based on Plato’s concept of Forms, dominated Western thought for over 2000 years and impeded progress in biology. There was an ideal form of each animal and plant; individuals varied a little from the ideal form because they were imperfect copies, but the ideal form was “divine, deathless, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, always the same as itself.” (Plato’s Phaedo)
This concept was antithetical to the concept of evolution.

Aristotle and the Scala Naturae
Aristotle (384 – 322 B.C.E.) did believe in reality, and developed a “natural philosophy” that included many of today’s sciences, particularly physics and biology.
He visualized nature as a ladder (the scala naturae) with earth at the bottom, then plants, then animals, then humans. Plato and Aristotle in Raphael’s The School of Athens

Scala Naturae
The Great Chain of Being
Christianity added angels and God to the ladder, the “great chain of being,” with earth and minerals at the bottom, then plants, animals, humans, angels, and God in progressively higher levels.
Some levels were subdivided into higher and lower animals, higher and lower humans (peasants, aristocrats, kings), and so forth."

Source: Biologists before Darwin - Iowa State University

More on "Design" in Nature. In spite of the fact pseudo-Darwinists fail to realize, Greek thought which gave rise to the precious science of evolution, was also akin to myths of ancient Greece and appear in the Genesis account of creation... likewise, they would like to ignore "historical documents"... so that the world is turned to the worship of the precious "Atheism". Teach Atheism in math, replace Science with Atheism, substitute Atheism for Social Studies, and Atheism is to thank for everything under the sun, including ... the science of "Biological Evolution"?

Really?

No.

Just because some young earth creation come-lately groups misinterpreted the Genesis account (which is written in an agricultural setting in the ancient near east) -- and the young earth creationist can't possibly interpret, or much less, speak the truth -- does not mean Genesis is the "enemy of Science," nor does it mean, Genesis should be placed in the trash can and discarded as "mere Egyptian mythology."

SCIENTIFIC DEFENDERS OF THE FAITH (via Robert Schwartz):
Finding Design in Nature (CHRISTOPH SCHÖNBORN, 7/07/05, NY Times)
EVER since 1996, when Pope John Paul II said that evolution (a term he did not define) was "more than just a hypothesis," defenders of neo-Darwinian dogma have often invoked the supposed acceptance - or at least acquiescence - of the Roman Catholic Church when they defend their theory as somehow compatible with Christian faith.
But this is not true.

Somebody out there must enjoy prolonging the supposed "battle between Science and Religion."
Somebody out there wants to claim a monopoly on Science to promote Atheism.

"The Catholic Church, while leaving to science many details about the history of life on earth, proclaims that by the light of reason the human intellect can readily and clearly discern purpose and design in the natural world, including the world of living things.
Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not. Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science. [...]
In the homily at his installation just a few weeks ago, Benedict proclaimed: "We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary."
Throughout history the church has defended the truths of faith given by Jesus Christ. But in the modern era, the Catholic Church is in the odd position of standing in firm defense of reason as well. In the 19th century, the First Vatican Council taught a world newly enthralled by the "death of God" that by the use of reason alone mankind could come to know the reality of the Uncaused Cause, the First Mover, the God of the philosophers.
Now at the beginning of the 21st century, faced with scientific claims like neo-Darwinism and the multiverse hypothesis in cosmology invented to avoid the overwhelming evidence for purpose and design found in modern science, the Catholic Church will again defend human reason by proclaiming that the immanent design evident in nature is real. Scientific theories that try to explain away the appearance of design as the result of "chance and necessity" are not scientific at all, but, as John Paul put it, an abdication of human intelligence."

"...Please note that the now common phrase “the Great Chain of Being” (made even more popular and ubiquitous in no small part thanks to Arthur Lovejoy’s seminal work on the history of the idea) was “largely an invention of eighteenth century writers” (Bucholz 393).

A WORTHWHILE CRITICISM from Harvard University
Shakespeare Grounded: Ecocritical Approaches to Shakespearean Drama:

Speciesism and Hierarchy
In recent years, a number of literary scholars have argued that Shakespeare’s depictions of animal behavior reveal humanism’s rediscovery of classical skepticism towards human exceptionalism (e.g., Montaigne’s writings) – a skepticism that would be severely undermined in short order by Descartes’ work.(8)
Though animals may present the most obvious objects of inquiry when considering Shakespeare’s debt to classical and humanist skepticism, similar but broader observations have been made concerning the philosophical outlooks depicted in Shakespearean drama. For instance, in discussing Hamlet’s metaphysical preoccupations, one critic writes that Shakespeare dramatizes the “philosophical disquietudes taken up by Descartes, but ultimately he will remain closer to the secular skepticism of Michel de Montaigne than to the essentialist individualism of Descartes” (Drew 51).

(*8) See Erica Fudge’s Brutal Reasoning: Animals, Rationality, and Humanity in Early Modern England, Bruce Boehrer’s Shakespeare among the Animals: Nature and Society in the Drama of Early Modern England, Andreas Höfele’s Stage, Stake, and Scaffold: Humans and Animals in Shakespeare’s Theatre, Keith Thomas’s Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England, and Laurie Shannon’s The Accommodated Animal: Cosmopolity in Shakespearean Locales.

It is no overstatement to say that many of the findings described in the previous section represent the polar opposite of Descartes’ belief that animals are “so devoid of feelings that one could vivisect them without compunction, taking their cries as purely ‘reflex’ reactions of a quasi-mechanical kind” (Sacks).
But though most individuals living in the twenty-first century would likely cringe at some of the experiments Descartes conducted in the seventeenth century, the conclusions he reached were far-reaching, with echoes from this line of thinking reverberating well into the modern era.
Descartes’ emphasis on stimulus-response reflexes and bodies as machines can be seen, for example, in the radical behaviorism of the twentieth century – a framework that denied “reality to what was not objectively demonstrable” and denied in particular the “inner processes between stimulus and response, deeming these as irrelevant...or beyond the reach of scientific study” (Sacks). But if scientific advances throughout history have taught us nothing else, it is that we are consistently wrong in our assumptions and that we should not be arrogant in assuming we have mastered (or have mastery over) the complexity of life forms.
When Jeremy Bentham claimed that the relevant question about animals was simply whether or not they can suffer, he touched upon a fundamental truth concerning the shared nature of primitive and advanced animals. As Romanes observed in the late nineteenth century, “wherever [nerve tissue] does occur its fundamental structure is very much the same, so that whether we meet with nerve tissue in a jellyfish, an oyster, an insect, a bird, or a man, we have no difficulty in recognizing its structural units as everywhere more or less similar” (Romanes 24).
Granted, Bentham and Romanes are exclusively discussing the animal kingdom and I confess there is no easy way to transition to plants. As I have indicated, we can plausibly say that plants may indeed suffer, but that observation alone is more likely to create rather than resolve any ethical dilemmas. Does that then mean it is no longer moral to own furniture made of wood? Or does this simply mean that we as a species need to be more vigilant about resource management, and recognize that if we do destroy plant life (e.g., clearing forests), we have an obligation to replant and ensure that vegetation continues to thrive? There are no easy answers given that our mere existence accompanies the death of both plants and animals. Yet this does not mean we should resign ourselves to destruction and refuse to contemplate such questions, or search for ways to minimize our impacts on all living beings."

a) The Great Chain of Being
What I do believe provides a useful transition in terms of making the leap from animal to plant is the very concept of “lower life forms.” When it comes to the food chain or any taxonomic scheme, certain organisms are invariably grouped together. Simply put, we are not going to regard a dolphin the same way we view a centipede scurrying on the ground. In Western philosophy, the notion of a universal scala naturae (chain or ladder of being) that ranked existences from the divine to the mundane held tremendous sway. (9)
Rocks were at the bottom, then plants, then animals (and so on), but divisions and hierarchies existed within each category (Bucholz 23). For instance, although insects were at the bottom of the animals, useful and attractive insects such as bees and ladybugs were at the top of the insect heap (Medieval Natural World 23). As for plants – firmly positioned underneath the animals – the hierarchy went from tallest (trees) to shortest (Bucholz 24).
Even stones had to be ordered with precious jewels like diamonds at one end and drab sediment like granite at the other (Bucholz 24).

(*9) Please note that the now common phrase “the Great Chain of Being” (made even more popular and ubiquitous in no small part thanks to Arthur Lovejoy’s seminal work on the history of the idea) was “largely an invention of eighteenth century writers” (Bucholz 393).)

I shall discuss the propensity for creating subdivisions in greater detail in chapters two and four, but I want to lay some of the groundwork here for the discussions that follow. While the idea of weighing the relative merits between a beetle and a grasshopper for the sake of ordering them might seem comical, this is how human culture has long operated. The elements that contributed to a sweeping conception of ranking organisms can be traced to ancient Greek philosophy and to Aristotle in particular who “conceived that zoological forms could be arranged on a hierarchical scale, reflecting degrees of perfection” (Bynum 4). (10)

Aristotle regarded plants as “defective animals” and, indeed,since antiquity “plants have mostly been considered in terms of lack or privation: they lack eyes, reason, speech, history, desires, etc.” (Pettman).
But even when plants are used in positive sense, the results are frequently metaphors that a) pertain to human behavior and b) get the nature of plants all wrong. Consider what Plato – Aristotle’s teacher – says in his Timaeus: “We are a plant not of an earthly but of a heavenly growth...for the divine power suspend[s] the head and root of us from that place where the generation of the soul first began” (Jowett 777).
In other words, Plato is encouraging his readers to visualize humans as creatures with “aerial roots extending into the sky” (Pettman). Marder persuasively argues that Western metaphysics commences “with the inversion of the earthly perspective of the plant, a deracination of human beings from their material foundations” (Vegetal 471). For Plato, Aristotle, and many who followed, it mattered not that dirt is a nourishing substance; the idea that the further our distance from the ground, the better, became firmly entrenched.
Although we typically associate the Great Chain of Being with Christian theology and European medieval and Renaissance society, its influence on later scientific endeavors is a

(*10) The scala naturae derives in large part from Aristotle’s History of Animals where he is concerned with studying creatures, classification, and hierarchical orderings.)

testament to the scheme’s staying power in the collective consciousness. In Elements of Geology (1851), Charles Lyell uses the scala naturae as a “metaphor to describe elements absent from the layers of a geological column, and in the process unwittingly initiates the mythic evolutionary quest for the ‘missing link’” (Lightman 2).
From a broader perspective (i.e., the concern with ordering life), biologists are still working on classifying animals, with some arguing for x kingdom and others claiming x should not be treated as such (and some preferring to abandon the “kingdom” label altogether). Granted, scientists today are not couching these sorts of discussions in terms of simplistic “better than or worse than” rhetoric; taxonomy, of course, concerns shared characteristics and evolutionary relationships.

b) Speciesism’s link to the scala naturae
But while the idea of rankings organisms no longer seems like an overt or salient feature of modern society, the consequences of a hierarchical worldview persist in subtle ways, namely the promotion and propagation of speciesism – i.e., the assumption of mankind’s superiority coupled with discrimination against other organisms based purely on the fact that they do not belong to one’s own species. Building upon Bentham’s arguments in favor of the equal consideration of interests, Peter Singer did much to popularize the concept of speciesism in Animal Liberation (1975). (11)
Revisiting the subject in his next book, Practical Ethics (and again in subsequent editions of Animal Liberation), he writes: “Racists violate the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of their own race when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race. Sexists violate the principle of equality by favouring the interests of their own sex. Similarly, speciesists allow the interests of

(*11) The term was coined a few years earlier by Richard Ryder, a member of the Oxford Group, which consisted of intellectuals interested in the emerging concept of animal rights. In Animal Liberation, see in particular chapters five and six: “Man’s Dominion: A Short History of Speciesism” and “Speciesism Today.”)

their own species to override the greater interests of members of other species. The pattern is identical in each case” (Practical Ethics 58; Animal Liberation 9). More recently, Marc Bekoff has done an admirable job highlighting the link between speciesism and the scala naturae:

“Speciesism results in animals being classified hierarchically as ‘lower’ and ‘higher’, with humans on the top rung of the ladder. This anthropocentric view...leads humans to ignore the welfare of animals” (Bekoff 26).

Terry Tempest Williams put the matter perhaps most eloquently:

“To regard any animal as something lesser than we are, not equal to our own vitality and adaptation as a species, is to begin a deadly descent into the dark abyss of arrogance where cruelty is nurtured in the corners of certitude. Daily acts of destruction and brutality are committed because we fail to see the dignity of [the] Other”

(Williams 127). Singer (philosopher), Bekoff (evolutionary biologist), and Williams (writer/conservationist) are not merely dealing with abstract ideas, but rather are trying to explain the largely hidden (but fundamental) motivation behind the harms that humanity inflicts upon other creatures. For instance, in detailing a fraction of the horrors that animals in factory farms and laboratories endure, Matthew Scully astutely observes that

“it is as if every animal, in our day, is falling a level in the order of creation – wildlife to the level of farm animals to be raised for slaughter, farm animals to the level of plants to be ‘grown’, and laboratory animals to the level of microbes or cell cultures one need not even treat as living, feeling beings at all” (Scully 381).

The problem with hierarchies is that they foster the assumption that these structures are correct and unchanging – as if they were part of some natural law handed down from above. The reality is that we can (knowingly or unknowingly) shift the pieces around and that we devalue the beings we have placed on (or relegated to, rather) certain rungs."
Shakespeare Grounded: Ecocritical Approaches to Shakespearean Drama, harvard.edu

"Scala Naturae" influencing Scientific Thinking... just as it influenced the opening of Genesis, in the Creation account... and that, in regard to the so-called battle between Science and Religion, is truly the epitome of dark irony.

"...Over the decades, this procedure produced the worldwide “geological column,” an imaginary pile of strata that covers the span from the oldest discovered sedimentary rocks to those formed most recently.

The height of this column—that is, the thickness of all known strata added together—is estimated to be about 60 miles (over 100 kilometers). This does not mean that one can start digging at any place on the Earth and go through 60 miles of strata. This impressive height is based on adding up all the different strata in the various places where they occur. How long did it take for all these strata to form? No one in the early nineteenth century knew, but geologists realized that it must have been a very long time, because silt washes into inland seas very slowly.

Continued studies established that each major group of strata contains its own unique kinds of organisms. The famous French naturalist Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) interpreted these data as evidence that at various times in the past drastic catastrophes had destroyed all life, and subsequently there had been new creations of quite different species. While Cuvier’s theory, called catastrophism, held on to the idea of a divine creator for every single species, it significantly modified the creation process outlined in Genesis. Instead of taking just one week, creation in Cuvier’s theory stretched throughout the entire history of life. And instead of recognizing just one great catastrophic flood, Cuvier suggested that life-destroying catastrophes had occurred over and over again.

An alternative explanation to catastrophism was evolution—the gradual change of species into other species over time. Darwin was not the first person to think of evolution; the concept had been around for centuries. Even the classical Greeks had speculated along these lines but then abandoned the idea when no data could be offered in support. The new observations and speculations of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, slowly laid the path toward a workable evolutionary theory.

One concept that helped pave the way was the scala naturae, or scale of nature—the suggestion that all animals could be arranged in a linear series based on increasing complexity, with no appreciable gaps in the series—from amoeba to humans. Where gaps seemed to exist, there were presumably intermediate forms yet to be discovered. Thus the great apes seemed to link human beings with other mammals, seals and whales linked fishes with land-living vertebrates, and bats were considered intermediate between birds and mammals. The roots of this concept could be traced back through medieval times to the Greeks, and it was still widely accepted in Darwin’s day.

A further observation that prepared the way for evolution was that species of animals and plants are not randomly different from one another but seem to fall into naturally hierarchical groups. Similar individuals can be classified as the same species, similar species can be included in the same genus, similar genera in the same family, similar families in the same order, similar orders in the same class, similar classes in the same phylum, and similar phyla in the same kingdom.

The first systematic attempt to classify living nature in this manner was made by the Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus in the eighteenth century. In time, both the scale of nature and hierarchical classification were understood in terms of evolution—similar groups, such as species within a genus, are alike because they descended from a common ancestor. At the next level in the hierarchy, all the species of a genus of birds and indeed all species of birds, are descended from a very ancient common ancestor.

The person who first tried to bring ideas about evolution together into a coherent theory was the Frenchman Jean Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829), who in his Philosophie zoologique (1809) maintained that one species evolves into another species in order to better adapt to its environment. Observing fossils in France, Lamarck noted that one geological stratum might have an abundance of one species of mollusk with little variation. The next higher stratum might contain species that were similar, but none would be exactly like those in the lower stratum. As he studied progressively higher strata, Lamarck observed that species became steadily different over time, stratum by stratum. Since fossils in a lower stratum were known to be geologically older than those in a higher stratum, it stood to reason that though a fossil in a higher stratum could not be the ancestor of one in a lower stratum—descendants cannot live before ancestors—a species in the lower stratum just might be the ancestor of a species higher up in the column. Lamarck concluded that what he was seeing in the fossils of progressively higher strata was change in a lineage over time. This hypothesis was markedly different from Cuvier’s view that as the species in one stratum became extinct, closely similar ones were created anew and preserved in the next higher stratum.

Lamarck postulated a changing environment as the mechanism for the evolutionary change he observed. Species evolved in order to adapt, he believed. His classic example was the giraffe’s remarkably long neck. The ancestors of today’s giraffes, he said, had short necks and grazed on grasses and low shrubs, as do most other herbivorous mammals. Lamarck suggested that some ancestors of modern giraffes attempted to exploit a new and abundant food source—the higher leaves of trees. To reach the leaves they had to stretch their necks, which gradually lengthened with so much stretching. Lamarck thought that traits that came about through repeated use could be passed along to offspring. Thus giraffes would inherit the long necks of their parents and then stretch their own necks even further; over many generations, giraffe necks would become longer and longer until they reached the length of giraffe necks we see today. Conversely, characteristics that were not used would eventually wither away, as happened to eyesight in moles and bats.

This hypothesis of evolutionary change through “the inheritance of acquired characters” (meaning “characteristics”) was not widely accepted in the early nineteenth century, since it was contrary to the ([my note: common interpretations OR SHOULD I SAY _MISINTERPRETATIONS_ of the]) Bible and was based on too much speculation and too few data. Other people besides Lamarck, including Charles Darwin’s own grandfather Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802) had suggested that evolution might occur, but no one had yet argued the case well enough to convince the scientific community. Thus, in the first half of the nineteenth century the dominant scientific position was that species are “fixed,” that is, they do not evolve. Although questions about the accuracy of the Genesis account of creation were being asked by scientists as well as biblical scholars, and alternative scientific as well as theological interpretations were being offered, in Charles Darwin’s day none of these theories was taken seriously enough to undermine the traditional Judeo-Christian teaching. Evolution was out of favor; divine creation was still in vogue."

"From Genesis to Genetics
The Case of Evolution and Creationism"
John A. Moore

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Greek Hellenistic Influence on Judean Culture

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Hey.. the Greeks "...had no influence over the Greek 'Genesis'" account? (yes, the word "Genesis" is Greek : The Book of Genesis (from the Latin Vulgate, in turn borrowed or transliterated from Greek γένεσις, meaning "origin")... *keeping in mind, the oldest known Hebrew manuscript dates somewhere in the range of 300 B.C.

Oh my!

The author of Genesis 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6... was under heavy influence of Greek culture... and ha! a Secular magazine article!!

"...Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.). In 332 B.C. the Greeks conquered Judea..."

Look at that timeline.

"...Under the Greeks things were different. Never suffering from a lack of hubris, the Greeks weren’t satisfied with a mere military conquest. Believing in a kind of “manifest destiny” to spread their culture, institutions, ideas, and way of life to “barbarians” (anyone not Greek), they worked very hard, and quite successfully, to do just that. Now, having conquered more “barbarians,” this time in Judea, the Greeks were determined to continue their process of Hellenization..."

Goodness!

Hellenized Jews
"...It was working, too. Though scholars debate how far Hellenization went, it took a certain hold. Within a century after the conquest of Alexander, Greek cities (each known as a polis), which became centers for promulgating Greek ideas and culture, were founded in various parts of Judea..."

Dear me, could it be?!!

"...The problem was exacerbated by corruption in the priesthood, which served as the de facto political leadership in Jerusalem at that time. Two corrupt priests, Jason and then Menelaus, both passionate Hellenizers, helped make Jerusalem look more and more like a Greek polis than the capital of God’s covenant people and the chosen site of the sacred Temple. During their rule the first gymnasium—a Greek center for both intellectual and physical education—was built in Jerusalem."

Goodness!!!!!!!

Now we know who it was who slipped in that "After their kind" (how ancient farmers had seen domesticated pigs escape into the wild and evolve)... "before their kind" and "after their kind".
(Domestic pigs quickly revert to wild roots).

And, ancient farmers skilled in ancient agriculture knew that a wild plant could be cultivated into garden vegetables through "Artificial Selection".

Those Greeks were ahead of their time... Creationists have A LOT of catching up to do. LOL

P.S., as I said, SECULAR: The author starts out by saying, "...Having been raised in an exceedingly secular Jewish home, I have few memories of Jewish holidays, for the simple reason that we didn’t observe them."

Geographic and Cultural Factors
Putting aside its apocalyptic prophecy, the Old Testament narrative begins with the creation of the world and ends with the return of the Jews to their native homeland after the Babylonian captivity, circa sixth century B.C. This return from exile occurred under the Persians, who—by the fifth century B.C.—were facing the onslaught of the Greeks, whose hegemony climaxed under Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.). In 332 B.C. the Greeks conquered Judea, and while being conquered was nothing new to the Jews (having faced this before by Assyria, Babylon, and Media-Persia), this conquest presented a unique challenge.
“In previous conquests,” writes Lee Levine, an historian at Hebrew University, “Israel had invariably remained at the periphery of world empires, far from the seats of power and authority. Its marginal geographic location assured the Jews a measure of stability and insulation.” However, with the breakup of the Greek Empire after the death of Alexander, the small Hebrew nation found itself sandwiched between the battling forces of the Seleucids (based in Syria) and the Ptolemies (based in Egypt). For the next century the two kingdoms warred with each other on Judean soil. Finally, in 198 B.C. the Seleucids beat their rival there, and Judea was incorporated into the Seleucid kingdom.
This victory presented the small nation with a challenge that it had not faced under its previous conquers, the Persians. Under Persian control the Jews were actually encouraged to rebuild their religious and indigenous institutions and traditions. All the Persians wanted was political loyalty, and taxes. Whatever humiliations and problems the occupation presented, religious freedom generally remained secure.
Under the Greeks things were different. Never suffering from a lack of hubris, the Greeks weren’t satisfied with a mere military conquest. Believing in a kind of “manifest destiny” to spread their culture, institutions, ideas, and way of life to “barbarians” (anyone not Greek), they worked very hard, and quite successfully, to do just that. Now, having conquered more “barbarians,” this time in Judea, the Greeks were determined to continue their process of Hellenization, even in the land that God promised the descendants of Abraham many centuries earlier (Genesis 12:7).

Hellenized Jews
"It was working, too. Though scholars debate how far Hellenization went, it took a certain hold. Within a century after the conquest of Alexander, Greek cities (each known as a polis), which became centers for promulgating Greek ideas and culture, were founded in various parts of Judea.
The problem was exacerbated by corruption in the priesthood, which served as the de facto political leadership in Jerusalem at that time. Two corrupt priests, Jason and then Menelaus, both passionate Hellenizers, helped make Jerusalem look more and more like a Greek polis than the capital of God’s covenant people and the chosen site of the sacred Temple. During their rule the first gymnasium—a Greek center for both intellectual and physical education—was built in Jerusalem. According to 2 Maccabees 4 (the book of Maccabees being a key source for this period), Jason did away with Jewish law and introduced Greek customs into the city: “With great enthusiasm he built a stadium near the Temple hill and led our finest young men to adopt the Greek custom of participating in athletic events.”
Internecine fighting between the followers of Jason (who weren’t seen as Hellenistic enough) and those of Menelaus led to the violent intervention of the Seleucid overlord, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, in 169-168 B.C."

Source: Liberty Magazine

And "Every plant of the field before it was in the Earth," but other translations say, "No plant of the field yet grew,"... but all agree, because "There was no man to *till the ground."

*till (cultivate).

Artificial Selection.

The Burning Question about Evolution: If modern corn evolved from Teosinte...
Then why does Teosinte still exist?

Read More »

Hellenistic Greek Influence on Genesis

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Atheism is not "The" Answer(TM).
I've acquainted overconfident Atheists espousing faith in how Science has all the answers, but when I actually corresponded with Scientists who were responsible for cutting edge research... they weren't so confident in some of the mainstream interpretations of certain data... and often in the business of correcting "mainstream information".

Very sad.

The Ultimate Answer to Everything... Science-Wise: A BIG FAT UNKNOWN.

This ... I am NOT Agnostic about! Both them... and their fanatical "absolute truthism".

Most scientists I've corresponded with -- are pretty grounded AGNOSTICS about their science. The more they know, the less overconfidence they have in any "absolute Truth(TM)". So much for Theism or Atheism.

I do consider myself Christian. That is, there are stories in the Bible written about a man named Jesus who was a wise prophet and philosopher... very inspirational wisdom and it is written, if I believe in his teachings, then I'll inherit "the Kingdom of God". He did not command, "Thou must believe in Satan" nor did he teach, "You must abstain from blood transfusions". He said none of the things which 95% of "Religions"' creeds and dogmas center around.

All of the other things found within the Bible... is up for debate. I don't know what I believe about Jesus in detail because though I've read many debates... my mind is not concluded one way or the other. I guess you can call it FAITH that fills in the unknowns... even in the absence of absolutely certainty. A sort of "Agnosticism" about many things in the Bible.
Meanwhile on Genesis, I've read many arguments for and against it... comparing it with Babylonian and Egyptian mythology...

I believe sincerely the Jews were living under the strong influence of Greek thought around 300 AD and wrote "Genesis" which reveals Greek philosophy in the text... the Greeks who are responsible for developing a precursor to what is now called, "Evolution".

The ancient people had hands-on, eyewitness understanding of "cultivation" or as it is called today, "Artificial Selection". These things are described in the opening chapters of Genesis.

The Influence of Greek Philosophy on the Early Commentaries on Genesis
Frank Egleston Robbins
The American Journal of Theology
Vol. 16, No. 2 (Apr., 1912), pp. 218-240
Published by: University of Chicago Press
(Study Link)

Both the Greeks (in the ancient Evolution school of thought) Modern Science and the Bible assert, "all life began in the water".

The author of Genesis was simply copying what the Greeks had already theorized.

Terms such as, "every creature after its kind," and "every plant before its kind was in the earth" but "no plant of the field, yet grew" ... imply the wild mustard, that is cultivated by man, to become Broccoli, Caulflower, etc.
Genesis even emphasizes this, "There was no plant of the field which grew, because there was no man to till the ground." (translated as cultivation).

Artificial Selection is a man-made form of Evolution. I had a theistic evolutionist argue once, "Impossible! Ancient people would've never seen it happen within their lifetime." Hogwash! If a pig escapes captivity, it quickly reverts back into its original, wild form. So the ancient knew indeed and were experts at man-made "Evolution" or cultivation of crops and livestock.

I read that the ancient Greeks had no word for "Evolution" but are describing ancient cultivation -- agriculture -- "before its kind" and "after its kind" which they made a RELIGION out of. . . they worshiped Agriculture... the heavens, and its influences on crops. Even the Hebrews were guilty of worshiping the Olive Tree, just like cultures surrounding them.

So, that's where the buck stops for me.

No "divine revelation" necessary. Nor is Genesis a piece of Literature deserving being blindly tossed in the trash can. It was written from heavy influence of ancient Greek thought.

After all the studies I have read about ancient cultivation (ARTIFICIAL Selection vs. Natural Selection) I find the opening of Genesis, absolutely amazing... ancient farmers actually understood "Evolution" in terms of Artificial Selection (cultivation of crops/livestock) although, with it being man-made Greek thought behind it... then no, I don't see Genesis as itself "evidence" that ancient writers had an inside scoop from the divine about Science.

The Greeks were, intellectually, well ahead of their time.

From what I have studied about ancient people and agriculture over several years... when I realized that the author of Genesis was elaborating on his worship of Agriculture... now I see, Genesis is pretty awesome curiosity.

But I don't see now, really why or how God would be involved ... when it was getting copied from the Greeks.

History of plant breeding
"...Plant breeding started with sedentary agriculture, particularly the domestication of the first agricultural plants, a practice which is estimated to date back 9,000 to 11,000 years. Initially, early human farmers selected food plants with particular desirable characteristics and used these as a seed source for subsequent generations, resulting in an accumulation of characteristics over time. In time however, experiments began with deliberate hybridization, the science and understanding of which was greatly enhanced by the work of Gregor Mendel. Mendel's work ultimately led to the new science of genetics. Modern plant breeding is applied genetics, but its scientific basis is broader, covering molecular biology, cytology, systematics, physiology, pathology, entomology, chemistry, and statistics (biometrics). It has also developed its own technology. Plant breeding efforts are divided into a number of different historical landmarks."
(Source)

Different translations reveal A LOT about what the ancient Hebrew was attempting to convey:

Genesis 2:5

(Some translations emphasize the absence of man-made cultivated plants i.e., broccoli, cauliflower ------ while other translations emphasize their precursor, the wild ancestor, mustard plant which man used ARTIFICIAL SELECTION to cultivate . . . man created these vegetables, God did not create them. The author of Genesis confirms this:

(1) CULTIVATED PLANTS DO NOT EXIST

English Standard Version
"...no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up .... there was no man to work the ground..."

New American Standard Bible
"...no shrub of the field was yet in the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted .... there was no man to cultivate the ground."

(2) WILD PLANTS DO EXIST

King James Bible
"...And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew ....there was not a man to till the ground."

Jubilee Bible 2000
"...and every plant of the field before it was in the earth and all the grass of the field before it grew... neither was there a man to till the ground."

Of course some translations go off the rails... because some translators, not being knowledgeable about ancient worship of Agriculture, had little knowledge of what they were actually translating -- the cultivation of crops ... Agriculture Worship... it's my guess these translators are most likely indoctrinated Young Earth Creationists... therefore, they see no difference between "plants of the field" and "wild plants".

But the King James translation, is emphatic in its use of the evolutionary term, every plant "before its kind" DOES exist while Young's point to cultivated plants of the field, DO NOT.

Young's Literal Translation
"...and no shrub of the field is yet in the earth, and no herb of the field yet sprouteth ... and a man there is not to serve the ground,"

Awesome. The ancient Greeks had no word for "Evolution" (I had read) . . . so the author is trying to imply it with difficulty, by saying "After their kind" and "Before its kind" because livestock and crops, may transform into new, yet similar.. evolving kinds.

EVOLUTION... Artificial Selection... Science is Awesome!
"Every plant before it" was in the earth... but "no plant of the field" grew... for there was no man to (cultivate) till the ground.

The ancient Greeks were awesome... ahead of their time.

The Author of Genesis...

Hellenistic Judaism
". . . Hellenistic Judaism was a form of Judaism in the ancient world that combined Jewish religious tradition with elements of Greek culture. Until the fall of the Roman Empire and the Muslim conquests of the Eastern Mediterranean, the main centers of Hellenistic Judaism were Alexandria (Egypt) and Antioch (Northern Syria—now Turkey), the two main Greek urban settlements of the Middle East and North Africa area, both founded at the end of the 4th century BCE in the wake of the conquests of Alexander the Great. Hellenistic Judaism also existed in Jerusalem during the Second Temple Period, where there was conflict between Hellenizers and traditionalists (sometimes called Judaizers). The major literary product of the contact of Second Temple Judaism and Hellenistic culture is the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible from Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Aramaic to Koiné Greek, specifically, Jewish Koiné Greek."
(Source)

Hellenistic (Greek) Jewish ideas, are quite intriguing... This Hellenistic Jewish "Law of Nature" and what it is. They were beginning to observe the Natural World, and presumed what the "Natural Order" must be. . . I really am not certain if the author referred to is pro-homosexual or anti-homosexual, but none the less sheds some light on ancient Hellenistic (Greek) Jewish thought.

The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics
By Robert A.J. Gagnon
(Source)

Ancient Greek thought is elaborated in the following excerpt -- the Hellenistic Jews under influence of Greek thought reveal some of the earliest traces of Human "Reason"... observation of the "Natural Order" -- perhaps Paul didn't get his conclusion, correct, but at least it is evidence the ancients were making an attempt at "Reason." Interesting, because there existed a conflict between the Hellenistic Jews and their earlier predecessors.

It is obviously the Greeks who introduced the Hebrew to the concept of "Natural Law"... as in the Hellenistic Jews enlightened by Greek thought... and "Reason".

At least, that is how I interpret these passages.

Past Renewals: Interpretative Authority, Renewed Revelation, and the Quest for Perfection in Jewish Antiquity Front Cover
Hindy Najman
BRILL, 2010 - Religion - 270 pages
(Source)

Now.. if only the YEC could catch up with where the Hellenistic Jews were, scientifically, 2300 years ago because "Evolution" happens.

The ancient Hellenistic Jews who are responsible for the passages in Genesis were copying Greek philosophy when they mixed their religion with bits and pieces of Greek culture, "God said, '...Let the waters bring forth..."

It was the Greeks who first suggested it.

Evolution and Paleontology in the Ancient World

"...Even "primitive" peoples may have extremely detailed knowledge of the living organisms around them, knowledge on which their survival or well-being often depends. When such knowledge is arranged systematically and used to make general statements and predictions about the world, one may speak of a scientific tradition. Such traditions were developed among the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians; the Egyptians, in particular, developed a scientific tradition in medicine, one based on careful observations. It was the Greeks, however, who led the way in developing a general scientific worldview -- one in which natural, non-miraculous explanations for the causes of phenomena were sought. The earliest Greek philosophers lived and worked, not in Greece itself, but in the Greek colonies of Ionia (the Mediterranean coast of Asia Minor -- now Turkey -- and the nearby islands). Because it was favorably located for trade among Greece, Egypt, and the Near East, Ionia was not only wealthy, but well placed for the dispersal of ideas; thus Greek thought drew on the knowledge of the Near East, Egypt, and even India at various times in history. Later, the thinkers of the Roman Republic and Empire carried on the Greek tradition, although relatively less original scientific thought was developed among the Romans.
We can't showcase the entire spectrum and long history of the scientific thought of the ancient world. This exhibit is simply intended to point out some currents within ancient thought that foreshadowed later developments in evolutionary biology.
[...]
For Anaximander, the world had arisen from an undifferentiated, indeterminate substance, the apeiron. The Earth, which had coalesced out of the apeiron, had been covered in water at one stage, with plants and animals arising from mud. Humans were not present at the earliest stages; they arose from fish. This poem was quite influential on later thinkers, including Aristotle.
Had Anaximander looked at fossils? Did he study comparative fish and human anatomy? Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing what evidence Anaximander used to support his ideas. His theory bears some resemblance to evolutionary theory, but also seems to have been derived from various Greek myths, such as the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha, in which peoples or tribes are born from the Earth or from stones. His concept of the apeiron seems similar to the Tao of Chinese philosophy and religion, and to the "formless and void" Earth of the Hebrew creation account and other creation myths. However, even though Anaximander's ideas drew on the religious and mythical ideas of his time, he was still one of the first to attempt an explanation of the origin and evolution of the cosmos based on natural laws.
[...]
In the 6th century B.C.E. Xenophanes of Colophon (died ca. 490 B.C.E.), who was a disciple of Anaximander, developed Anaximander's theories further. He observed fossil fishes and shells, and concluded that the land where they were found had been underwater at some time. Xenophanes taught that the world formed from the condensation of water and "primordial mud;" he was the first person known to have used fossils as evidence for a theory of the history of the Earth.
The Greek historian Herodotus (484-425 B.C.E.) also observed fossil shells in Egypt, and cited them as evidence that Egypt had once been underwater. He also described a valley in Arabia, in the Mokattam mountains, where he saw "the backbones and ribs of such serpents as it is impossible to describe: of the ribs there were a multitude of heaps. . . " He ascribed these bones to winged serpents that had been killed by ibises. We now know that these are the bones of fossil mammals that wash out of the rocks every rainy season. Several other ancient historians briefly mentioned fossils in their writings. Finally, the famous Greek physician Hippocrates of Cos (460-357 B.C.E.) is known to have collected fossils; in fact, modern excavations at Asklepion, the famous medical school of Hippocrates's day, unearthed a fragment of a fossil elephant molar.
(Source)

Hellenistic Philosophy (300BCE-200CE)
(Source)

I know the various "dates" scholars assign to scripture (and, oh how they vary) ... I also know, and you know, that certain forgeries, attempting to misrepresent certain patriarch were pawned --and even believed . . . purposely retroactively, misdated into the past, such as the book of "Enoch". Show me ancient autographa, before time of Thallus and Anaximander, which discuss the act of ARTIFICIAL SELECTION "no plant of the field yet grew" because "there was no man to till(cultivate) the ground" but "every plant before it, grew wild."

I heard Norman Geisler make the argument once, "No Original Autographa Remain".

The Oldest Medical Books in the World
"...Long ago, when writing was a secret science, the Egyptian scribe was not a simple copyist. He had the combined training of a calligrapher, a philosopher, a scholar and a scientist. Many physicians prided themselves on bearing the title of scribe among their others, and like Hesyreh, had themselves portrayed with the palette and reeds, the sesh, symbol of that learned class. The actual copying was probably performed in the pir-ankh or Houses of Life that were attached to the temples and where the scholars, physicians, philosophers and scientists of the time used to meet. We know of nine principal medical papyri. They are called after their original owners (Edwin Smith, Chester Beatty, Carlsberg), the site of their discovery (Kahoun, Ramesseum), the towns were they are kept (Leyden, London, Berlin) or their editor (Ebers).
The Kahoun Papyrus is the most ancient scroll and was discovered at Fayoum and was called by mistake the Kahoun Papyrus. It dates from 1950 B.C. And has on its back an account from the time of Amenemhat III (1840-1792 B.C.). Not only is this the oldest known papyrus, but the original from which it was copied seems also more antique than the originals of the other papyri."
"...The Ramesseum IV and V papyri were probably written about 1900 B.C., i.e. At about the same epoch as the Kahoun Papyrus."
"...The Ebers Papyrus is the longest of all the known papyri and the most important, considering the physiological and medical knowledge it reveals. It is complete in 108 pages and bears the date of the 9th year of the reign of Amenophis I (1550 B.C.)."
(Source)

A certain Atheist, wrote: "....is nothing more than a ludicrous, bald-faced attempt to rewrite the Bible!"

WHO WOULD DO SUCH A THING?

"...All the pieces are in their proper, chronological order, and they form one, seamless, complete account. The attempt to fracture this account by abruptly jumping 250 years into the future, by dragging in Alexander the Great out of the blue, all of this being based on the odd usage of "they" in verse 12, is nothing more than a ludicrous, bald-faced attempt to rewrite the Bible! The clear intent of such nonsense is to nullify, at all costs, the obvious failure of the prophecy, a prophecy that plainly features Nebuchadrezzar throughout. If that's what it takes to make the Bible "inerrant," then that battle is already lost."
Apologists tell us, on the basis of their analysis of the ancient Hebrew, that we must break the obvious unity of this account, jump hundreds of years into the future, and drag in a person of their choosing!"
- Ezekiel's Prophecy of Tyre: a failed prophecy

Another Atheist writes:
"...Finally, when discussing the autographs of the OT, I like to ask, what is the autograph of the Psalms which were written over a 1000 years? How about Jeremiah? The original was burned by the king. Then Jeremiah wrote or rather dictated an expanded copy, but that was over twenty years before the last events of the book were recorded. Even then the Hebrew tradition grew after Jeremiah died as evidenced when it is compared to the LXX. So, what was the autograph of Jeremiah? The argument for the inerrancy of the autograph has a number of problems. Making the concept a statement of faith as some seem to argue is a corruption of orthodox Christianity."

Biblical text, the oldest find since the Dead Sea Scrolls, revealed in digital image of a charred scroll
"...JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli archaeologists said on Monday they had discerned biblical writing on a charred 1,500-year-old parchment with the help of digital imaging and described the text as the oldest found since the Dead Sea Scrolls.
U.S. and Israeli researchers made the discovery using advanced medical and digital technology to examine the object, first unearthed 45 years ago when then-standard forensics could not decipher any script on the scroll."
(Source).

CT scan of charred scroll yields oldest Biblical remnant after Dead Sea Scrolls
High-tech deciphering of parchment found in ancient Ein Gedi synagogue, excavated 45 years ago, yields text from Book of Leviticus
"The document, found during the excavation of the synagogue in Ein Gedi 45 years ago, was burned 1,500 years ago while stored inside the ark in the ancient house of worship. Since then, however, the text has been unreadable."
(Source)

Dead Sea Scrolls
"...Biblical text older than the Dead Sea Scrolls has been discovered only in two silver scroll-shaped amulets containing portions of the Priestly Blessing from the Book of Numbers, excavated in Jerusalem at Ketef Hinnom and dated c. 600 BCE. A burnt piece of Leviticus dating from the 6th century CE analyzed in 2015 was found to be the fourth-oldest piece of the Torah known to exist.[5]
Most of the texts are written in Hebrew, with some in Aramaic (in different regional dialects, including Nabataean), and a few in Greek.[6] If discoveries from the Judean desert are included, Latin (from Masada) and Arabic (from Khirbet al-Mird) can be added.[7] Most texts are written on parchment, some on papyrus and one on copper.[8]"
(Source)

"...The Isaiah Scroll, found relatively intact, is 1000 years older than any previously known copy of Isaiah. In fact, the scrolls are the oldest group of Old Testament manuscripts ever found."
(Source)

Dead Sea scrolls: world's oldest copy of the Ten Commandments to go on display in Israel
2,000-year-old scroll will remain at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem for two weeks
(Source)

The Dead Sea Scrolls in Context: Integrating the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Study of Ancient Texts, Languages, and Cultures
Armin Lange, Emanuel Tov, Matthias Weigold
BRILL, 2011 - Dead Sea scrolls - 980 pages
(Source)

"...The oldest Egyptian leather manuscript has been found in the shelves of the Egyptian museum in Cairo, where it was stored and forgotten for more than 70 years.
Dating from the late Old Kingdom to the early Middle Kingdom (2300-2000 B.C.), the roll measures about 2.5 meters(8.2 feet) and is filled with texts and colorful drawings of the finest quality.
“Taking into account that it was written on both sides, we have more than 5 meters (16.4 feet) of texts and drawings, making this the longest leather roll from ancient Egypt,” Wael Sherbiny, the Belgium-based independent scholar who made the finding, told Discovery News."
(Source)

If Medical Scrolls and Literature from Egypt still survive, couldn't the Almighty God have preserved his written word as good or better than the Egyptians?

The scrolls pretty much begin disappearing from history, the further one moves back into time toward 300-600 BC. Which tells me the approximate time such books were written... by Jews in Hellenistic Greece.

The Almighty God of the Universe... and the best they can do is produce an inconclusive string of text on a shard of pottery dating 1000 BC that may or may not, be Hebrew.
If these people actually did what some claim:

"...the ancient Israelites would be recording their history in real time instead of several hundred years later..."

There would be much older manuscripts, all over the place with radiocarbon dating, verifying the authenticity. The evidence points to their "history" being written several 100 years later.

3,000-Year-Old Inscription May Be ‘Oldest Form Of Written Hebrew’ "...“The letters of the inscription match those of contemporary inscriptions, many of which form words that clearly are part of the Hebrew language. Hebrew speakers were controlling Jerusalem in the 10th century, which biblical chronology points to as the time of David and Solomon," ancient Near Eastern history and biblical studies expert Douglas Petrovich told Fox News.
If Petrovich’s claim is accurate, the inscription could prove the veracity of the Old Testament. That is, if the Hebrew language dates back to the 10th century B.C., the ancient Israelites would be recording their history in real time instead of several hundred years later.
But other archaeologists do not support Petrovich’s theory. Earlier this month, Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Eilat Mazar, who found the relic, said that the text was written in the Canaanite language, which translates to M, Q, P, H, N, possibly L, and N. The combination of letters doesn’t correspond to any words in west-Semitic languages, but it may describe the contents of the jug or its owner, NBC News reports.
“Because the inscription is not in Hebrew, it is likely to have been written by one of the non-Israeli residents of Jerusalem, perhaps Jebusites, who were part of the city population in the time of Kings David and Solomon,” Mazar describes in a paper for the Israel Exploration Journal."
(Source)

Ceramic shard may bear oldest Hebrew inscription
Bernat Armangue / AP
"...A 6-by-6-inch pottery shard unearthed at the archaeological dig site of Hirbet Qeiyafa (the Elah Fortress) in Israel, shown here, contains five lines of faded characters that may bear the oldest Hebrew inscription ever found. The 3,000-year-old text dates to the time of the Hebrew Bible's King David and is thought to be written in proto-Canaanite, a precursor to the Hebrew alphabet. While other people used proto-Canaanite characters as well, the inscription contains a three-letter verb meaning "to do" that existed only in Hebrew, according to Yossi Garfinkel, a Hebrew University archaeologist in charge of the dig. "That leads us to believe that this is Hebrew, and that this is the oldest Hebrew inscription that has been found," he told the Associated Press. Other scholars, however, have urged caution until more is known about the inscription and its context."
(Source)

"Before its kind" . . . "After its kind". Such a strange way to word something when speaking of cultivated "plants of the field" vs. "every plant before it," but that is because :

History of Evolution
" ... The Greeks had, it is true, no term exactly equivalent to "evolution"; but when Thales asserts that all things originated from water; when Anaximenes calls air the principle of all things, regarding the subsequent process as a thinning or thickening, they must have considered individual beings and the phenomenal world as, a result of evolution, even if they did not carry the process out in detail. Anaximander is often regarded as a precursor of the modem theory of development."
(Source)

The Greeks: Triumph of Rational Thought and Mathematics
"... The long era of Greek Philosophy (literally, “love of wisdom”) began in the early seventh century B.C. (Table 3.1). The concept of “science” as an organized view of the world (expressed by the Greek concept, “Cosmos”) arose alongside mythology as an alternate way of viewing and interpreting nature. The two parallel ideals developed and prospered together for several centuries, neither entirely supplanting the other.
[...]
"...On the other hand, science – as we define it today -- was born and given shape and form during the age of the Greek philosophers. Modern students should be cautioned not underestimate their profound contributions to scientific understanding.
Two “schools of thought” arose during the Grecian philosophical era. These competing groups were: the Ionians -- a group of great thinkers, most of whom lived on islands or coastal city states scattered along the east coast of the Aegean Sea, an area of Asia Minor now administered by Turkey (Fig. X) – and the Mainland Greeks who lived in large city states like Athens. The Ionians produced the first great Greek philosopher, Thales (pron: Th-all-es) of Miletus.
Miletus stood in the middle of a swampy deltaic flood plain at the mouth of the Meander river (from which the term meander is derived). In Thales’ time it was a center of maritime trade, sporting no fewer than four separate harbors. It was here around 640 B.C. that the mutiny against superstition and fuzzy thinking took root with the birth of Thales, commonly accorded the honor of being the world’s first scientist. Thales claimed that human reason could be applied to questions regarding the nature and origins of natural phenomena; the gods of Olympus were of no help in that endeavor. In his time his Greek contemporaries deemed him one of the Seven Sages, the seven wisest men on earth.
Thales also spent considerable time in Egypt. He stunned the Egyptians with his ability to measure the height of the pyramids by applying the law of similar triangles, and was celebrated for his ability to measure the shoreline distance of a ship in the Mediterranean Sea. His mathematical prowess was such that he laid much of the groundwork for the great mathematician Euclid, who lived centuries later.
He is credited with the first system of logical reasoning, and he coined the word geometry, Greek for “earth measurement”, the terminology he learned from the Egyptians.
Perhaps Thales’ greatest contributions to modern science – and astronomy – are the notions that all natural phenomena can be understood via reason and observation, and the idea that nature follows regular laws. He firmly rejected the intercession of the gods in creating natural materials or events. These concepts are the underpinnings of what is now popularly termed the “scientific method”.
In an amazing leap of intuition, he also explored the ultimate nature of matter and space. He speculated that despite apparent differences, all matter must be composed of a single, fundamental material (anticipating the concept of atoms). Thales is commonly derided for assuming that this fundamental material essence was, in fact, water, but living in a watery world no doubt lead him to that “logical” conclusion. His notion that the earth is a flat disc floating on water, however, does illustrate the limitations of some of his cosmological constructs.

Anaximander, Student of Thales
Like Thales, Anaximander was a resident of Miletus, although very little is known about his life. Most of what we know about him was handed down from Aristotle and his student Theophrastus. He was probably a student, or at least an important contemporary of Thales, founded a colony on the Black Sea (Apollonia), and introduced the gnomon-style sundial to Greece. He was a seasoned traveler and besides astronomy, also contributed to the study of geography and biology. For instance, Anaximander is credited with producing the first major world map (550 B.C.), and speculated that life evolved from lower forms of life, in a very primitive precursor to evolutionary theory. Humans, for example, evolved from fish, which constituted the first animals. Remember, like Thales, Anaximander lived in a world dominated by water.
Perhaps his most profound contribution to astronomy is the “Boundless” principle, known as apeiron in Greek. The apeiron was a highly abstract concept but contained the idea of “that which has no boundaries”, a system without limits. It was philosophically at variance with Pythagorean virtues of a harmonious, symmetrical, and finite world, reassuringly accessible and knowable through mathematics. In fact the Pythagoreans listed the apeiron concept as a “negative thing”, and Aristotle is known to have been troubled by its lack of limits. The “Boundless” seems to embrace the infinite, and somewhat parallels our current overall concepts of the nature of the universe.
Anaximander was not content to simply propose an abstract concept like apeiron without presenting logical arguments in its defense. In that respect he seems to be the first Greek to make use of true philosophical argument, an important step toward the systematic, rational analysis of nature embodied in modern science.
Anaximander was not an observational astronomer like the Babylonians and Egyptians, but a speculative astronomer. He relied on pure reason and logical arguments to prove his points, a situation in keeping with the teachings of Thales. For example, Anaximander speculated that (1) celestial bodies make full circles and may pass beneath the earth, (2) the earth is a free-floating body in space, and (3) celestial bodies may lie behind one another (not “painted” on a two-dimensional surface).
As for the “Boundless” concept, he offered logical arguments for each speculation, and for each he should be awarded a gold star for accuracy. Interestingly, his argument for a suspected earth includes the notion of the centrality of the earth compared to the rest of the universe. Since all things should seek that central point, that which occupies that space must hang suspended. Interesting philosophical argument, even though the science lacks some rigor. Gravity and the non-centrality of the earth were still distant ideas in his day."
(Source)

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