Lit., “according to its kind (genus).” Heb., lemi•noh´; Gr., ge´nos; Lat., ge´nus. The term “kind” here means a created or family kind, its older meaning or definition and not as present-day evolutionists use it.
I would like to start by talking about how grammar relates to symbolism, and in this case the article which comes before the noun. It is the article which determines whether the noun is definite or indefinite. For an example I might ask the question ” Am I sitting on “the chair” or “a chair”?” If I say “a chair” what I mean by the use of the indefinite article is that this is a type of chair; “type” meaning that this chair represents all members of it’s group, or other chairs. If I say “the chair” then I am implying that this chair is identifiable unique in some way, so that it is separate and distinct from anything comparable.
“Type” is something representative or symbolic of something else, and if you look it up in a dictionary “type” can also mean “kind” or “sort”. Thus if I point to someone and say “He is a type of man”, then what I am also saying is that this one human is representative of all others of his kind, or those related to some degree in a family. In this sense I would be very close to a “Genesis kind”, for the kind mentioned in Genesis is similar to the modern scientific usage of the word “Family”. Family is the entire available gene pool which can be combined by sexual reproduction, though there may be some damaged individuals which have a mutation that makes them unable to do so.. You can breed a wolf and a coyote, but not a wolf and a tiger. Some of these combinations are more stable or persistent than others and may do so for many generations, and in modern usage are referred to as “species”, with “genus” being groups of species being most similar and a variant or variety is what results from species which are less stable.
Genotype is like the definite article, for it is the unique blueprint of each organism , the representation or symbol of the “Phenotype” which is both all the physical traits and the guide as to how it interacts with the individual environ. Similar plants which grow today may have reacted much differently to their environment in the past because the environment was much different. There is not enough surviving DNA contained in fossils to positively state that ancient organisms are a different genotype than those which survive at this point in time, if this statement were not true then it would be possible to clone ancient life forms, but so far even the attempt to clone mammoths have failed because even perfectly frozen DNA have been bombarded by cosmic rays through the centuries and have had too much accumulated damage.
So “type” is indefinite or representative of the antitypical kind , the “family” of which it is a part, and a genotype is the definite blueprint for an individual representative of the kind to which it belongs. Of course it does add to the confusion somewhat that if you look up genotype in a dictionary a secondary meaning is the larger group to which it is a member of, but I was using “genotype” in the more limited sense, for I referred to “the genotype inherited from both parents.”
In recent years, the term “species” has been applied in such a manner as to cause confusion when it is compared with the word “kind.” The basic meaning of “species” is “a sort; kind; variety.” In biologic terminology, however, it applies to any group of interfertile animals or plants mutually possessing one or more distinctive characteristics. Thus, there could be many such species or varieties within a single division of the Genesis “kinds.”
bambootiger 