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E. WALTER MAUNDER, F.K.A.S., ON 



" In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth " — an 

 assertion of the universal Creatorship of the Almighty Elohim. The 

 verse is disconnected from the next by the fact that the two Hebrew- 

 verbs in the two verses are in the same tense. 



I. (a) " And the earth was without form and void.'' The word 

 "was" is the Hebrew substantive verb and is so treated in the 

 LXX, where it is translated by the verb e//</, " to be," and not by 

 ^ji'uo/bifti, "to become." 



The Hebrew word for " without form " is tohv, translated by the 

 LXX aofxi-o^, "invisible." It is here an ad jective qualifying "earth." 

 In Isaiah xlv, 18 and 19, it is an adverb and is therefore translated 

 " in vain " — The phrase fittingly describes the Gaseous or Nebulous 

 Period. 



{h) "And darkness was upon the face of the deep." The Hebrew 

 word for " deep " is tehOm. Lord Kelvin, in Vol. xxxi of the 

 IVansadions, tells us " that the material of our present solid earth 

 all round its surface was at one time a white hot liquid." Above 

 such a mass of molten minerals there would be many other minerals 

 still in a vaporous condition. This was the Igneous Period of our 

 world's history. 



(c) " And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." 

 The Hebrew word for " waters " is mayim, indicating a different 

 condition from that described by tehom. This would describe the 

 Aqueous Period. 



(d) " And God said, Let there be light." A different form of the 

 Hebrew word from that used in verse 14 for "lights." 



II. " And God said, Let there be a firmament " (or expanse). A 

 condensation of aqueous vapours creating a separation between 

 clouds and seas. This would be a continuation of the Aqueous 

 Period. 



III. (a) "And God said. Let the dry land appear." The first 

 formation of continental lands — the Huronian and Laurentian 

 Continents. 



(b) "And God said . . . Let the earth bring forth grass." In the 

 Hebrew a general term for sprouting things. Two kinds are then 

 named herbs and trees. 



The Palaeozoic Period, the age of gigantic plants : i. Cryptogams 

 and ii. Phanerogams. The period during which most of our coal 

 was formed. 



