"after their kind"
The phrase "after its kind", or a variant, occurs ten times in Genesis 1:1 to 2:3. It is understood differently according to various readings of the chapter:
- as indicating the Fixity of Species — For example in the AACE paper The Bible's Teaching on Creation.
- as indicating inheritance and Common Descent as witnessed in DNA
- as indicating inheritance constrained to "kinds", perhaps corresponding to genera (cf. "Baraminology")
- (a rabbinical understanding) — that God continued to create other species from existing ones (see Netziv)
Bro Alan Fowler writes:
. . . before we leave Genesis 1 we need to consider one other aspect of the language. Let the earth bring forth In describing the origin of plants, God said, "Let the earth bring forth . . . " Of aquatic animals God said, "Let the waters bring forth . . . " and of land animals God again said, "Let the earth bring forth. . . " These creative fiats provide no details regarding the mechanism or the rate of the creative process. We are however given a clue regarding the original units of creation. We are told that these were created 'after their kind'. What are kinds? The answer may be found in Leviticus 11 where categories of 'unclean' birds and insects are divided into 'kinds' which are groups of related species. So we may infer that God created the major categories of plants and animals, i.e. genera, and that this was followed by the evolution of many different species.
What is a "kind"?
The implications of the word "kinds" are broad. Consider wolves, dingos and domestic dogs — classified by scientists as Canis lupus, Canis lupus dingo, and Canis lupus familiaris — all of them "kinds" of dog! The existence of one of these different kinds does not preclude the existence of the others, or of ancestral dogs.
No. 6 in the Scientific American "creationist nonsense" target list is related to kinds: "If humans descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" (Note that "descended from monkeys" is a very inaccurate parody: nobody believes that humans are descended from monkeys.)
