God and Nature 2026 #1
|
|
By Fred S. Cannon
The Bible and science say the same thing about human origins, although preconceived notions may keep us from recognizing this. Based on one of these preconceived notions, some claim that the Bible must be interpreted as saying that all humans come from a sole man and woman. But the Bible need not say that. Rather, the Bible says: “God made of one [blood] all ethnicities” (Acts 17:26) (1-3). Moreover, some claim that science says that randomness means no purpose. But purpose is displayed by numerous life forms, and God gives us purpose (4).
Another common preconceived notion is that in Genesis 1, the Hebrew word yom must mean a 24-hour day. But God defines yom as meaning light in Genesis 1:5. This is one of the few words that God defines. Light is a state of condition rather than a measure of time. Light offers heat, visibility, and nurture for life—all resources needed for God’s creation.
The Bible and science say the same thing about human origins, although preconceived notions may keep us from recognizing this. Based on one of these preconceived notions, some claim that the Bible must be interpreted as saying that all humans come from a sole man and woman. But the Bible need not say that. Rather, the Bible says: “God made of one [blood] all ethnicities” (Acts 17:26) (1-3). Moreover, some claim that science says that randomness means no purpose. But purpose is displayed by numerous life forms, and God gives us purpose (4).
Another common preconceived notion is that in Genesis 1, the Hebrew word yom must mean a 24-hour day. But God defines yom as meaning light in Genesis 1:5. This is one of the few words that God defines. Light is a state of condition rather than a measure of time. Light offers heat, visibility, and nurture for life—all resources needed for God’s creation.
...I contend that the initial reading of Acts 17:26 could well be: “for God made of one blood all ethnicities.” |
Another helpful approach to getting past preconceptions is to think of the Hebrew word adam like the English word deer, which can refer to one deer or the deer species. Likewise, we can speak of one adam-human, or adam-humanity. Three Hebrew lexicons (5-7) indicate that Genesis 1:27 means “God created adam-humanity.”
In addition, Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 need not describe the same events. Genesis 1 chronicles universal and global events, which can be thought of as the process science describes happening over 13.4 billion years. Then Genesis 2 is a regional and local story, focused on two individuals named Adam and Eve. These two lived a long, long time after much of the creation described in Genesis 1 takes place. By scientific metrics, Adam and Eve and their children in Genesis 2-4 are quite advanced and wise: This ancient family talked, strategized, visualized the future, visualized God, possessed a soul, understood disobedience, gathered fruit, named animals, grew crops, and shepherded animals. Science aims to learn when and how Homo sapiens became these smart, behaviorally modern humans, while the Bible talks about adam-humanity being in the image of God. The metrics for measuring wisdom and Godly image overlap, although sometimes with different words.
Acts 17:26 reads either “God made of one blood all ethnicities,” or “God made of one all ethnicities.” When we seek to learn what the initial reading of a Bible passage was, we weigh which readings appear in the array of handwritten manuscripts. At Acts 17:26, nearly all handwritten manuscripts (more than 500) and patristic quotations read: “For God made of one blood all ethnicities,” whereas 21 Greek manuscripts read “For God made of one all ethnicities” (8). No manuscripts of the first millennium read “For God made of one man all ethnicities.” Indeed, that extra word man did not emerge until 1960s English translations.
So how did man get wedged into very recent English translations? I wrote three peer-reviewed journal papers on this question (1-3). When I asked Bible translators about this, they said that one man is the sense that is conveyed in Genesis 1-2. But such a one man viewpoint is a preconceived notion.
Several scholars have claimed that man is an ellipsis word in the Greek. An ellipsis is an unwritten word that is understood by the writer and reader to be implicitly “supplied in thought.” To use an English example, when we say “He went to the store, and then to the park,” without repeating “he went,” this unstated phrase {he went} is an ellipsis. Apparently, the Koine Greek mind accepted and supplied in thought a yet broader range of ellipses.
Effective use of ellipsis requires recognizing how humans process language in short-term working memory (9). Short-term memory dictates that an ellipsis word must be discerned from within the context of the prior 1-3 sentences, rather than recalled from long-term memory or from other books.
I tabulated and analyzed 3255 New Testament Ellipses (1,10). I found 15 distinct patterns for valid ellipses. For example, Greek authors can skip the words of, is, and, this, even, and other similar small words.
Potentially dropping the word man in Acts 17:26 did not match any of these 15 valid ellipsis patterns (1). Indeed, if the proposed “from one {man}” reading of Acts 17:26 were to be perceived as a Greek ellipsis, it would be an outlier in many regards:
i. It would be the only New Testament passage where the vast majority of handwritten manuscripts in multiple languages host one reading (of one blood), whereas the proposed ellipsis reading (from one {man}) cannot be found in any first millennium manuscripts.
ii. It would be the only New Testament passage where there are no references within the immediately preceding context as to who this ellipsis {man} is.
iii. It would be the only passage in the New Testament where specific reference to the Old Testament would be required to supply the ellipsis word-in-thought, and even then, the word would be filled in based on unwarranted preconceived notions.
iv. Indeed, neither Paul nor Luke could have expected that the word {man} would have been “supplied-in-thought” by any of Paul’s Athenian Greek audience, who had no Old Testament background. Thus, the whole linguistic rationale for considering an ellipsis word here would be absent.
v. Such a “from one {man}” statement would be the only Acts passage where a proposed “ellipsis” could be discerned as false by modern genetics.
In overview, the from one {man} reading would be an unusual example of an ellipsis on too many counts. It is an unwarranted emendation: the word man should not be there in Acts 17:26.
Did handwritten manuscripts offer more support for the reading “God made of one blood all ethnicities” or “God made of one all ethnicities” (2,3)? Far fewer manuscripts read “of one” than read “of one blood.” However, those few that read “of one” include Vaticanus (AD 300s) and several other early manuscripts closely like it. During the 19th and 20th centuries, Bible scholars had favored Vaticanus and similar manuscripts as more likely to include the initial readings.
By far, the most manuscripts (about 500) read “of one blood.” These include the Byzantine manuscripts, and numerous ancient language manuscripts. Also, important patristic writers quoted “of one blood,” including Irenaeus (AD 185), Augustine (AD 300s), and Chrysostom (AD 400). I tabulated numerous passages in Acts where Vaticanus and closely related manuscripts read one way, whereas the Byzantine manuscripts and others like them read another way. My research garnered 1,400 pages of Excel tables (10). I found through all of Acts that among such dual-reading passages, the reading “of one blood” had more support from early manuscripts, patristics and scholarly analysis than did any other Byzantine-like reading (2,3).
If “of one blood” was so overwhelmingly favored, how could Vaticanus and closely related manuscripts have lost that word blood? This brings up the notion of a scribal slip, where a scribe, while copying one word, could bypass a second word that has a similar beginning or ending, and then skip to copying yet a third subsequent word. Sometimes when a skip happened, only one scribe made the mistake, and it is called a singular omission. I found 160 singular omissions in Vaticanus and closely related manuscripts.
Notably, in Acts 17:26, two Greek words have a similar ending: of one is ενος, while blood is αιματος”. Thus, blood—αιματος— is a candidate as a scribal slip. By such a slip, the Vaticanus scribe could have deleted the word blood here; and then other closely related manuscripts could have followed suit.
On many counts, then, I contend that the initial reading of Acts 17:26 could well be: “for God made of one blood all ethnicities.”
So let us consider this word blood in a scientific context. Darwin (11) attributed “similar blood” to the horse, donkey, and zebra. He knew these three could be cross-bred to yield a mule, a horse-zebra or donkey-zebra with striped legs (12). A century before scientists discovered DNA, Darwin described this breeding affinity as “similar blood” (but not of the same blood).
In 2001, a Francis Collins-led team mapped the human genome (13). In the decades since that quantum leap, geneticists have been able to show that indeed all modern humans have come from one narrow Homo sapiens bloodline (with a tad bit of Neanderthal and Denisovan genetics blended in) (14-16). For Paul, 2000 years ago, to have said, “God made of one blood all ethnicities of humans” is really quite profound.
Paul was telling his Greek audience that this common oneness made us all kin rather than opponents. The main message from the Bible and science is the same: We humans are all one blood. We should be Good Samaritan brothers and sisters to all God’s children.
References and Notes:
1. Cannon, F.S. (2022) “Acts 17:26: God Made of One [Blood] –Not one Man—Every Ethnic Group of Humans.” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith. V. 74 No. 1, pp. 19-38.
https://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2022/PSCF3-22Cannon.pdf
2. Cannon, F.S. (2024) “Acts 17:26: God made of one [blood] every ethnicity of humans: Part A: Appraising Greek Manuscripts.” Biblical Theology Bulletin. V. 48(4) pp. 470-493.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/01461079241296533.
3. Cannon, F.S. (2025) “Acts 17:26: God made of one [blood] every ethnicity of humans: Part B: Appraising Patristic Witnesses and Ancient Language Manuscripts.” Biblical Theology Bulletin. V. 55(1) pp. 24-39 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/01461079251317532.
4. Garte, Sy (2025) Beyond Evolution: How New Discoveries in the Science of Life Point to God. Tyndale Refresh.
5. Koehler, L. and W. Baumgartner (2001) The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, Boston MA: Brill: p. 14.
6. Brown, Francis, Samuel R. Driver, Charles A. Briggs (1906, 2005) (BDB) The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson: p. 9.
7. Gesenius, H.F. Wilhelm and S. P. Tregelles (translator) (1846 and 1979) Gesenius’ Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures. Grand Rapids MI: Baker Book House: p. 13.
8. Editio Critica Maior (ECM) (2017) Novum Testamentum Graecum, The Acts of Apostles. The Institute for New Testament Textual Research. Edited by Strutwolf, Gäbel, Hüffmeier, Mink, and Wachtel. Stuttgart, Germany: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft.
9. Clark, H.H. & E.V. Clark, E.V. (1977) Psychology and Language: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics, NY: Harcourt College Pub. pp 49-50.
10. These tables are available to the reader from Fred S. Cannon, by e-mailing [email protected].
11. Darwin, C. (1859, 2004) The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. NY: Barnes and Noble Classics, pp.137-142.
12. Such donkey-zebra and horse-zebra hybrids with striped legs can be viewed, for example, at this farm in northern Indiana: https://visitshipshewana.org/experience-the-wild-at-dutch-creek-animal-farm-park/
13. International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium, Francis Collins, et al. (2001) “Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome.” Nature V.409:6822, pp.860-921. DOI:10.1038/35057062.
14. Jobling, M. et al. (2014) Human Evolutionary Genetics. Garland Science.
15. Reich, D. (2018) Who we are and how we got here. Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past. Vintage Books.
16. Vallini, L. et al. (2024) “The Persian plateau served as hub for Homo sapiens after the main out of Africa dispersal.” Nature Communications 15:1882.
Dr. Fred S. Cannon is an Emeritus Professor, Environmental Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. He served as Faculty Principal Investigator for facilitating Sloan Scholarships to 200 African American, Latino/a American, and Native American PhDs at Penn State. More than 50 of these have become faculty.
In addition, Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 need not describe the same events. Genesis 1 chronicles universal and global events, which can be thought of as the process science describes happening over 13.4 billion years. Then Genesis 2 is a regional and local story, focused on two individuals named Adam and Eve. These two lived a long, long time after much of the creation described in Genesis 1 takes place. By scientific metrics, Adam and Eve and their children in Genesis 2-4 are quite advanced and wise: This ancient family talked, strategized, visualized the future, visualized God, possessed a soul, understood disobedience, gathered fruit, named animals, grew crops, and shepherded animals. Science aims to learn when and how Homo sapiens became these smart, behaviorally modern humans, while the Bible talks about adam-humanity being in the image of God. The metrics for measuring wisdom and Godly image overlap, although sometimes with different words.
Acts 17:26 reads either “God made of one blood all ethnicities,” or “God made of one all ethnicities.” When we seek to learn what the initial reading of a Bible passage was, we weigh which readings appear in the array of handwritten manuscripts. At Acts 17:26, nearly all handwritten manuscripts (more than 500) and patristic quotations read: “For God made of one blood all ethnicities,” whereas 21 Greek manuscripts read “For God made of one all ethnicities” (8). No manuscripts of the first millennium read “For God made of one man all ethnicities.” Indeed, that extra word man did not emerge until 1960s English translations.
So how did man get wedged into very recent English translations? I wrote three peer-reviewed journal papers on this question (1-3). When I asked Bible translators about this, they said that one man is the sense that is conveyed in Genesis 1-2. But such a one man viewpoint is a preconceived notion.
Several scholars have claimed that man is an ellipsis word in the Greek. An ellipsis is an unwritten word that is understood by the writer and reader to be implicitly “supplied in thought.” To use an English example, when we say “He went to the store, and then to the park,” without repeating “he went,” this unstated phrase {he went} is an ellipsis. Apparently, the Koine Greek mind accepted and supplied in thought a yet broader range of ellipses.
Effective use of ellipsis requires recognizing how humans process language in short-term working memory (9). Short-term memory dictates that an ellipsis word must be discerned from within the context of the prior 1-3 sentences, rather than recalled from long-term memory or from other books.
I tabulated and analyzed 3255 New Testament Ellipses (1,10). I found 15 distinct patterns for valid ellipses. For example, Greek authors can skip the words of, is, and, this, even, and other similar small words.
Potentially dropping the word man in Acts 17:26 did not match any of these 15 valid ellipsis patterns (1). Indeed, if the proposed “from one {man}” reading of Acts 17:26 were to be perceived as a Greek ellipsis, it would be an outlier in many regards:
i. It would be the only New Testament passage where the vast majority of handwritten manuscripts in multiple languages host one reading (of one blood), whereas the proposed ellipsis reading (from one {man}) cannot be found in any first millennium manuscripts.
ii. It would be the only New Testament passage where there are no references within the immediately preceding context as to who this ellipsis {man} is.
iii. It would be the only passage in the New Testament where specific reference to the Old Testament would be required to supply the ellipsis word-in-thought, and even then, the word would be filled in based on unwarranted preconceived notions.
iv. Indeed, neither Paul nor Luke could have expected that the word {man} would have been “supplied-in-thought” by any of Paul’s Athenian Greek audience, who had no Old Testament background. Thus, the whole linguistic rationale for considering an ellipsis word here would be absent.
v. Such a “from one {man}” statement would be the only Acts passage where a proposed “ellipsis” could be discerned as false by modern genetics.
In overview, the from one {man} reading would be an unusual example of an ellipsis on too many counts. It is an unwarranted emendation: the word man should not be there in Acts 17:26.
Did handwritten manuscripts offer more support for the reading “God made of one blood all ethnicities” or “God made of one all ethnicities” (2,3)? Far fewer manuscripts read “of one” than read “of one blood.” However, those few that read “of one” include Vaticanus (AD 300s) and several other early manuscripts closely like it. During the 19th and 20th centuries, Bible scholars had favored Vaticanus and similar manuscripts as more likely to include the initial readings.
By far, the most manuscripts (about 500) read “of one blood.” These include the Byzantine manuscripts, and numerous ancient language manuscripts. Also, important patristic writers quoted “of one blood,” including Irenaeus (AD 185), Augustine (AD 300s), and Chrysostom (AD 400). I tabulated numerous passages in Acts where Vaticanus and closely related manuscripts read one way, whereas the Byzantine manuscripts and others like them read another way. My research garnered 1,400 pages of Excel tables (10). I found through all of Acts that among such dual-reading passages, the reading “of one blood” had more support from early manuscripts, patristics and scholarly analysis than did any other Byzantine-like reading (2,3).
If “of one blood” was so overwhelmingly favored, how could Vaticanus and closely related manuscripts have lost that word blood? This brings up the notion of a scribal slip, where a scribe, while copying one word, could bypass a second word that has a similar beginning or ending, and then skip to copying yet a third subsequent word. Sometimes when a skip happened, only one scribe made the mistake, and it is called a singular omission. I found 160 singular omissions in Vaticanus and closely related manuscripts.
Notably, in Acts 17:26, two Greek words have a similar ending: of one is ενος, while blood is αιματος”. Thus, blood—αιματος— is a candidate as a scribal slip. By such a slip, the Vaticanus scribe could have deleted the word blood here; and then other closely related manuscripts could have followed suit.
On many counts, then, I contend that the initial reading of Acts 17:26 could well be: “for God made of one blood all ethnicities.”
So let us consider this word blood in a scientific context. Darwin (11) attributed “similar blood” to the horse, donkey, and zebra. He knew these three could be cross-bred to yield a mule, a horse-zebra or donkey-zebra with striped legs (12). A century before scientists discovered DNA, Darwin described this breeding affinity as “similar blood” (but not of the same blood).
In 2001, a Francis Collins-led team mapped the human genome (13). In the decades since that quantum leap, geneticists have been able to show that indeed all modern humans have come from one narrow Homo sapiens bloodline (with a tad bit of Neanderthal and Denisovan genetics blended in) (14-16). For Paul, 2000 years ago, to have said, “God made of one blood all ethnicities of humans” is really quite profound.
Paul was telling his Greek audience that this common oneness made us all kin rather than opponents. The main message from the Bible and science is the same: We humans are all one blood. We should be Good Samaritan brothers and sisters to all God’s children.
References and Notes:
1. Cannon, F.S. (2022) “Acts 17:26: God Made of One [Blood] –Not one Man—Every Ethnic Group of Humans.” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith. V. 74 No. 1, pp. 19-38.
https://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2022/PSCF3-22Cannon.pdf
2. Cannon, F.S. (2024) “Acts 17:26: God made of one [blood] every ethnicity of humans: Part A: Appraising Greek Manuscripts.” Biblical Theology Bulletin. V. 48(4) pp. 470-493.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/01461079241296533.
3. Cannon, F.S. (2025) “Acts 17:26: God made of one [blood] every ethnicity of humans: Part B: Appraising Patristic Witnesses and Ancient Language Manuscripts.” Biblical Theology Bulletin. V. 55(1) pp. 24-39 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/01461079251317532.
4. Garte, Sy (2025) Beyond Evolution: How New Discoveries in the Science of Life Point to God. Tyndale Refresh.
5. Koehler, L. and W. Baumgartner (2001) The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, Boston MA: Brill: p. 14.
6. Brown, Francis, Samuel R. Driver, Charles A. Briggs (1906, 2005) (BDB) The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson: p. 9.
7. Gesenius, H.F. Wilhelm and S. P. Tregelles (translator) (1846 and 1979) Gesenius’ Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures. Grand Rapids MI: Baker Book House: p. 13.
8. Editio Critica Maior (ECM) (2017) Novum Testamentum Graecum, The Acts of Apostles. The Institute for New Testament Textual Research. Edited by Strutwolf, Gäbel, Hüffmeier, Mink, and Wachtel. Stuttgart, Germany: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft.
9. Clark, H.H. & E.V. Clark, E.V. (1977) Psychology and Language: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics, NY: Harcourt College Pub. pp 49-50.
10. These tables are available to the reader from Fred S. Cannon, by e-mailing [email protected].
11. Darwin, C. (1859, 2004) The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. NY: Barnes and Noble Classics, pp.137-142.
12. Such donkey-zebra and horse-zebra hybrids with striped legs can be viewed, for example, at this farm in northern Indiana: https://visitshipshewana.org/experience-the-wild-at-dutch-creek-animal-farm-park/
13. International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium, Francis Collins, et al. (2001) “Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome.” Nature V.409:6822, pp.860-921. DOI:10.1038/35057062.
14. Jobling, M. et al. (2014) Human Evolutionary Genetics. Garland Science.
15. Reich, D. (2018) Who we are and how we got here. Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past. Vintage Books.
16. Vallini, L. et al. (2024) “The Persian plateau served as hub for Homo sapiens after the main out of Africa dispersal.” Nature Communications 15:1882.
Dr. Fred S. Cannon is an Emeritus Professor, Environmental Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. He served as Faculty Principal Investigator for facilitating Sloan Scholarships to 200 African American, Latino/a American, and Native American PhDs at Penn State. More than 50 of these have become faculty.