The Fragile Earth (soil erosion)
Posted on September 15, 2024 by Patrick Shabi with an estimated reading time of 7 minutes
Last updated on September 15, 2024
Soil Erosion in history and the Bible
“But as a mountain erodes and crumbles and as a rock is moved from its place, as water wears away stones and torrents wash away the soil, so you destroy a person’s hope.”
(Job 14:18-19)
A portrait of James Hutton (1726–1797) by Sir Henry Raeborn.
Portrait by Sir Henry Raeburn, courtesy of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.
James Hutton was a Scottish farmer and naturalist who lived in the 18th century. He was an acute observer of the world around him, and was known for making sound and reasoned arguments about geology by his peers. In the end, it was primarily Hutton’s background in farming which drove him to try to understand how the land he worked with every day was able to withstand the destructive forces of wind and weather. To better understand why, Hutton devoted the majority of his life, scientific knowledge, and his keen sense of observation to better understand the processes taking place. Through time and his continued dedication, Hutton came to believe the Earth was constantly being formed over and over through processes such as erosion and sedimentation, which challenged the prevailing belief at the time. Hutton’s groundbreaking views and discoveries led him to being known as the founder of modern geology.
Hutton’s work was only the beginning with his work sparking renewed interest in geology, especially in erosion’s effect on soil. This renewed interest lasted through the rest of the 18th century, and eventually resulted in the first published essay on the subject by William Morris Davis in 1899. Interestingly, Thomas Jefferson also demonstrated awareness of soil erosion and its effects, making mention of these phenomena in a letter dated 1813. However, Davis was given primary credit due to his extensive knowledge on these subjects and since his essay was in a published format. Davis’ erosion theory dominated for nearly 50 years until it was challenged by others in 1950.
Due to his extensive work in observing erosion and its effects, Hutton is considered the founder of geology, and even Davis is given credit to discovering erosion due to his expertise in the matter and publishing the first essay on the matter. In fact, the ideas of Hutton and Davis were so revolutionary and made such an impact on the thinkers of the time, that their work is credited as inspiring Charles Darwin and Sir Charles Lyell with their contributions to the field later. However, like so many other discoveries made in modern times, we see that God originally revealed this knowledge to humanity and humanity is only now “re-discovering” this information thousands of years later. The Bible records Job speaking these words regarding erosion in plain language:
“But as a mountain erodes and crumbles and as a rock is moved from its place, as water wears away stones and torrents wash away the soil, so you destroy a person’s hope.” (Job 14:18-19)
Modern scholars date the book of Job to at least the 5th century B.C. with Jewish views holding that the book of Job was written by Moses along with the Pentateuch (in the 13th century B.C). Even if the conservative view of scholars is taken and we consider Job was written in the 5th century B.C., this still means that God revealed this knowledge of erosion to Job, and inspired him to write these words about 2,300 years before the modern “discovery” by Hutton. Hutton’s observations eventually led him to believe that the Earth was older than 6,000 years old, in opposition to the view at the time that the Earth was only 6,000 years old (presumably due to the commonly held Biblical belief). However, this belief is a misunderstanding of Scripture as the Bible doesn’t state the Earth as only being 6,000 years old. The original Hebrew in the Genesis account actually indicates the Earth as being much older. There are other articles and information going into this subject more in-depth, nevertheless, this further shows that even though Hutton’s original idea was counter to the “Biblical” narrative of the time, his work in reality provided further reliability to God’s inspiration of the Bible.