Weaverville – How long has the earth been around? Four billion years? That’s what scientists are currently saying. How did it get here, with or without a creator? These and many more are questions Donna Howell and the late Dr. Tom Horn look to answer in their 2023 book, Before Genesis – The Unauthorized History of Tohu, Bohu, And the Chaos Dragon in the Land Before Time.
More specifically, Howell and Horn seek to reconcile the gulf between young earth creationists and old earth creationists. Howell and Horn don’t give atheists or agnostics a seat at the table since most scientists agree the universe had a beginning, and what has a beginning has to have a cause. For Howell and Horn, that cause is God.
The rift between the young and old earthers is about a vast amount of time, with old earthers going with the scientists and the young earthers going with James Ussher and what they believe the Bible states about the beginnings of the world in the book of Genesis. Ussher was an Archbishop of the Church of Ireland in the 15th century who wrote “The Annals of the World,” which, explains Howell and Horn, is where most young earthers get their chronology of the world that the earth is only about 6,000 to 10,000 years old.
The 340-page Before Genesis (BG) spends a good deal of pages laying out the debate between the two camps in the book’s first part – the two views, explaining how young earthers and Ussher came up with his chronology and what the Bible states. Young earthers will not be surprised that Howell and Horn use the “gap theory” between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. The gap theory simply states there is a vast amount of time between verse one and verse two that the Book of Genesis doesn’t address. At the same time, there are other places in the Bible where this period of time is discussed.
According to BG, God did not create the earth without “form and void” or, in Hebrew, tohu, bohu but became tohu, bohu. She backs up the claim with Isaiah 45:18, which also uses the tohu, bohu wording when it states: “For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain.” The “in vain” is the tohu same Hebrew word in Genesis 1:2.
In the book’s second part, Howell and Horn present their supporting evidence that either all scientists are wrong or God is being “tricky.” By that, Howell and Horn mean God is playing tricks on humans by being deceptive about the age of the earth through scientific discovery. Then, in more than 75 pages of the book, BG delivers many mysteries from around the world that defy explanation, with the two camps modifying their theories. To name just a few of the mysteries cited by Howell and Horn: the Stone Forest of Markawasi, Tiahuanaco and the Gate of the Sun, Gobeki Tepe, and Russian Megaliths of Mount Shoria (Do an internet search to find more about these remarkable sites).
Finally, as if to bury the main point of the book, in the last part of their book entitled “The Serpent King,” Howell and Horn give their hypothesis about the time in the gap when Lucifer’s rebellion wreaked havoc over the earth and planets. He tried to overthrow God and his being cast down to earth caused the tobu and bohu that you find in Genesis 1:2. Genesis 1:3 starts a re-creation to restore the earth and give it a new ruler – mankind to replace Lucifer.
Howell and Horn make some interesting observations dealing with Lucifer’s connection to the throne of God and his position as “the cherub that covereth.” They makes an hypothesis that since the other cherubim have the faces of a man, of a lion, of an ox, and of an eagle, which seems to cover humans, domestic animals, birds, and wildlife kingdoms, maybe Lucifer was the representative of the reptilian kingdom and ruled over this “gap” in time with the dinosaurs since the Bible calls him a “serpent” and a “dragon.”
For lovers of theories of the beginning of our planet, BG is a good read, but parts of the science and physics aspects can become tiresome to the layperson as you read the book. All in all, it’s a good read for those interested in such topics.