I’ve been becoming more open-minded to the idea that Genesis isn’t literal history. However, how do you guys handle the sabbath commandment? Additionally, there are other questions. Does the Genesis myth teach 24 hour days? Evening to Morning suggests so, but there is another sabbath commadment “Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard and gather in the produce thereof. But in the seventh year shall be a Sabbath of rest for the land ," so this seems to suggest that the days may’ve been longer! Also, Hebrews 4 talks about the 7th day. There is no evening and morning for the 7th day, so is the 7th day longer?
I think the numbers themselves are what’s important here, rather than the length of days. Even when the “Sabbath rest” for the land is an entire year, it’s still adhering to the pattern of six periods of work and a seventh period of rest. Numbers were very significant to the Hebrews in ways that would probably be lost on many in modern culture because we tend to see numbers as simply data.
Since I see the “days of creation” as having more to do with functional creation rather than material creation, I don’t get too concerned about how long the days actually were, but I don’t see why they couldn’t be regular, 24-hour days.
Some people think the seventh day represents a “Sabbath rest” for God that is still ongoing. I don’t know much about what that point of view entails though.
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