10.46243/jst.2023.v8.i11.pp56-62 registered

This article offers an explanation as to how those who wrote the Old Testament and the ancient Israelites, who escaped from Egypt and passed through the Sinai Peninsula on their way to the Land of Israel, were able to describe the fundamental process of the creation of Earth in the biblical account at the start of the book of Genesis. The article utilizes basic assumptions regarding human knowledge and powers of observation in past times, alongside personal geological survey work conducted in Ethiopia in 1960/61, to analyze how a group of people among the tribes of Israel took an interest in the geological subject matter along their course from Egypt through Sinai, the Israeli Negev, trans-Jordan, and into Canaan through Jericho. The text finds that these individuals observed magmatic and sedimentary layers, collected and discussed fossils, and by comparing these strata determined the waste and void alongside the creation of the sea and land, deducing an order of creation largely similar to the scientific description and geological explanations known today, considering these ancient Israelites as humankind's first geologists. The article concludes that the ancient Israelites were able to set down a feasible and largely accurate order of Creation—such as plants, sea life, fowl, and man—through field observation, intuition, and reasoning based on fossil evidence, while noting a mistake regarding the fourth day that remained widely held until several hundred years ago.