1:20 God said, “Let the waters abound with living creatures, and let the “oph” (עוֹף) fly above the earth in the open expanse of the sky.”

A Multidisciplinary Contextualized Analysis of Select Passages From Genesis V2.0

[This is an excerpt from an exhaustive personal study of most of the first 9 chapters of the book of Genesis. This is a vastly expanded effort from the original version that can currently be found here downloadable for free. The purpose of this exercise is to compare a non-symbolic literal reading of the text to our current understanding of language, paleontology, and the physical sciences. Constructive discussion on the merits of this study is encouraged!]

Approximate Year: 350 Ma

Historical Period: Carboniferous

Event: Earliest “winged flying creatures”

Most evolutionary theories and evidence supports the idea that animal life began in water. Although the existence of early ocean life predates the earliest trees, the aquatic creatures extant during the Devonian period (420-360 Ma) were largely in the deep and open oceans and would be hidden from view to one standing on the shoreline. Again, if Genesis 1 is the record of a time-compressed or periodic vision of creation, the plants on land would be more apparent than the fish in the seas.

The Carboniferous period presented a much different environment. Receding sea levels resulted in various shallow water features. Swamps and other freshwater bodies became home to various amphibians and fish including notable specimens into the tens of feet in length. Although many of these early animals were semi-aquatic and might be found on land, this period is believed to have very dense forests and lush greenery. These giant crawling insects and amphibians would not be obvious at first glance, and that would be by necessity for their survival.

The subtlety of these other early animals would have been due to the large flying insects that likely dominated the skies during the Carboniferous. For example, the Meganeura Monyi which had a wingspan of over two feet, is among the largest known insects to ever live and was also an apex predator of the time. This airborne terror would have been motivation for most other animals to maintain a low profile.

One may be wondering why I’m mentioning bugs when most translations of Genesis 1:20-21 mention birds. However, the Hebrew term “oph” (עוֹף) which is loosely considered to mean “bird” can refer to any flying creature. Leviticus 11 includes multiple usage examples of multiple “oph” definitions including verses 20-23 where insects are being referenced explicitly.

Furthermore, in Genesis 1:21, the term “kanaf” (כָּנָף) which means “winged” is paired with “oph” (עוֹף) to suggest a “winged flying creature”. This pairing only appears two other times in the Bible including the warning found in Deuteronomy 4:15-18. That section is intended to be taxonomically ambiguous where “winged flying creature” includes birds, bats, and insects collectively.

If the thought of insects representing winged flying creatures is still not gratifying, current research on dinosaurs shows that many are very closely related to birds. There is now strong evidence to support that popular specimens like the velociraptor and tyrannosaurus were warm blooded, feathered, and the direct ancestors to modern birds, including chickens in the case of T-Rex. In a very literal way, the surface of Earth and skies above it were dominated by the predecessors of birds for millions of years.

But why are giant creatures like the dinosaurs not explicitly mentioned? First, Genesis 1 is very parsimonious providing only a few sentences to summarize entire categories of creation. And, considering that many Cretacious period dinosaurs, including the aforementioned velociraptor and T-rex, likely had behaviors and bright coloring comparable to modern birds, one’s first impression of them might be of an avian origin.

We can only surmise the perspective of the account of Genesis, but from some distance away a sense of scale would not be as consequential as their general appearance and behavior. Still, other flighted animals like pterosaurs are believed to have predated birds by 80 million years. And gliding reptiles which would have the appearance of birds flying from tree to tree were present in the Permian period over 250 million years ago. Species formally considered birds appeared at roughly 150 mA.

For the purpose of establishing a timeline in this analysis, I have focused on the earliest applicable example of “winged flying creatures” being the Carboniferous period insects about 350 Ma. What land creatures were present at this time had a low physical profile, were largely semi-aquatic, and obfuscated by the dense foliage of this era.