Are the days of creation real or are they periods?

Faith & Science Conversation
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Forget about eisegetically making “days” into “epochs” to appease literalists and maintain a concordant interpretation of Scripture. What is the next step? Can you match up the order of creation in Genesis 1 with the findings of modern science? In my experience, if we get over the first hurdle of making yom mean whatever we want it to, the road ends there.

The heavens and the earth were not created in the beginning. 9 billion years separates them. Water was not created in the beginning. It took a long time for nucleosynthesis in stellar cores to build up to higher elements beyond primordial hydrogen and helium. The account is a myth. The real question is, do we learn something different from it about God compared to all the other creation myths? What does it tell us? See post 4 above…

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42

You are doing interpretation first and then checking if your interpretation fits science. That doesn’t mean the science is in the Bible it is just in your interpretation.

Again, no you are not the first. Others have added science, which is what you are doing, to Genesis and in their mind decided that they were correct.

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43

Hugh Ross and Gerald Shroeder come to mind…

44

When you say science, it’s like science that creates natural things. Science only comes to study them. Your eyes and my eyes see the Sun, but science just tells us what is in the Sun and the phenomena that happen inside, but it does not intervene. So, what science discovers in nature, we can find out from observations. If from the biblical scheme of creation, I can also demonstrate the evidence of observations, then why say that I cheat in science when I and the scientists are based on the same images that neither they nor I have created? I have told you that I do not come with interpretations. I come with proofs that are taken from the Bible and not from science, but that science has discovered.

45

We cannot forget a truth to please those who take the biblical pattern of creation for granted. Even if I am the only one to discover that it is a true pattern, I will always prove it no matter how many scientists and theologians reject it. As for the years of the creation of the Universe, I had already mentioned it in my text. This is to say that I am not ignorant of this. I even agree with this, while specifying that the days were periods and these years are included in the six biblical days. So far, I have not even gotten into the background of the biblical scheme of creation.

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They came to bring proof, but I never read them. I have come to demonstrate how the biblical scheme of creation describes the origin and evolution of the Universe up to the formation of Man in a way that is coherent with all the joints in place. The others come for the etymologies of the words. I am not one of them.

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Flavien, you are completely honest and sincere (of Côte d’Ivoire heritage? Congo?). Everybody comes with interpretations. What you are up against here is a mixture, a spectrum of Westerners, mainly Americans and some British based and others. A spectrum of where people draw the line between belief and fact. I am at the extreme corner of the spectrum (it has depth as well as breadth!). To interpret the six days of creation as metaphoric for geological ages is as old as modern geology. Not even three hundred years. But that old. Intelligent believers such as yourself have trying to make the Bible fit science for that long. I did for decades. The problem is it always does harm to science. And to the ancient texts. Both narratives must be respected, but science can never be compromised by religious (and political and other epistemic) belief, and religious belief must submit to the rigour of science and reason beyond it.

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You said: “science can never be compromised by religious (and political and other epistemic) belief, and religious belief must submit to the rigor of science and the reason that overcomes it”. You are right. I have not denied anything of science; be it evolution or the Big Bang, or the years of the Universe. Besides, Saint Thomas Aquinas said: “If a biblical verse seems to be in contradiction with science, the problem is not the science, nor the verse, but the understanding that one has of these verses”. And I only demonstrate that the verses of the biblical scheme of creation are not in contradiction with science. I have not even gone into the substance of these verses yet. Let me go into them and they will start to contradict me.

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Flavien, night gives way to misty day, the sky lightens over the winter floods, they drain away, the mud and rock are colonized by plants, animals come and eat the plants and each other, fish, amphibians and invertebrates in the shallows, insects which attract birds, four footed grazers, predators. It’s a very simple, commonplace observation of a spring season of ecological succession that is echoed over 3.5 ga of evolution. It is remarkable for being minimal, not involving bizarre nightmare blood and sex myths.

50

The topic seems simple to me, with respect to how Genesis relates to science. Most biblical scholars, I’ll say are “aware” of the whole ancient nearest perspective on Genesis. Things like the raqia being a solid dome, or the leviathan not being a plesiosaur but rather being a multi-headed fire breathing mythical chaos hydra, or noticing little things like Adam being made on day 6 but then in Genesis 2 Adam is created before animals, vegetation and birds etc.

When you start combining these concepts and the dozens of other little things throughout the OT that suggests a similar understanding, we reach a point where we understand that Genesis simply isn’t a scientific text.

When the windows or flood gates of the raqia open to release the waters above (Gen 7:11), and then at the end of the flood, these windows or floodgates of the raqia/dome close and restrain the waters above (Gen 8:2), thereby marking the end of the flood. Such concepts just don’t add up in a scientific perspective. But if we consider ancient mesopotamian or Egyptian cosmology, it becomes blatantly clear why scripture says theses kinds of things and what people believed about creation back then. Along with the more obvious things like Job describing the raqia as like molten metal, or Psalms, Ezekiel, Exodus etc. describing the raqia like a tent/canopy, like crystal, like pavement etc. God placing the stars in the raqia, as if they were pinned into it and held up by it’s firmness ie firm-ament. The translation “expanse” having relation to being “beat out” like molten metal is beat out and expanded in activities such as blacksmithing. Spread like a canopy, like molten metal. It seems obvious to me what’s being described in all of this.

The OP mentions the spirit hovering over the face of the deep. The Bible doesn’t clarify on what this even means, or what the deep is, but other ancient texts of the surrounding region do. The deep was a primordial ocean of some sort in which earth was created.

Psalm 74:14 tells us that the leviathan had multiple heads. This confuses people that think of the beasts of the book of Job as dinosaurs, so they don’t talk about it. But if we put it into the context of an ancient near East creation story, neighboring cultures of that time also described a seven-headed sea monster that was slain by God, or would be slain in the end times, as described in Isaiah 27:1. The behemoth, a name derived from a Hebrew word relating to cattle, it was a primordial untamed bull of some sort. Not a dinosaur. And all are welcome to Google material on the leviathan and behemoth described in Ugaritic texts and their relation to the book of Job. And why Jesus would return and slay a dinosaur in the end times is beyond me. It’s just kind of silly trying to make the OT out to be some kind of book on paleontology. But I guess whatever sells books equates to sound theology these days. It seems that some enjoy cleverly overlooking what the Bible actually says, such as in the Psalm reference above. Example:

Not that anyone has ever heard of a fire breathing dinosaur anyway: Reference to Job 41:21

“She is initially concerned that new enemies of him have arisen, and notes that she put an end to Yam, “the beloved of El”, and to other enemies of Baal[6] including a seven-headed serpent; Arsh the darling of the gods; Atik (“Quarrelsome”), the calf of El;”
Anat - Wikipedia (I know people don’t like wiki, but you’re welcome to look it up on your own time).

So, The point is that when we go back to the beginning of Genesis 1 and we start asking what the meaning is of the word “Yom”. The concept of 24 hour days really would have just been an alien concept to the ancient Hebrews. We can ponder what a day would even look like without a sun until day 3, we can ponder why day 7 never really ended. Etc.

These are all theological topics, and they’re interesting, but they are so far removed from concepts of modern science that, there’s really no rational reason to take a concordist position, old earth or young earth, both concordist positions really just don’t make sense in light of these ancient near-east considerations.

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51

You have made a tour of several stories to discredit the foundation of the Bible. I want to answer you by limiting myself only on my publication which is the meaning of the biblical days. First of all, the Bible is one of the sacred books where we find several subjects inside. Among these subjects, we speak in this publication about the biblical scheme of creation and not about the book of Job or Revelation. We’ll get there one day. I thank you for mentioning that “during the first three days of creation, there were no stars to speak of time and that the seventh day never ended”. This is to say that the biblical days are not 24-hour days. What surprises me is that when you read the biblical scheme of creation, you scrutinize it as if it was written by a person who lived in our time and have the same scientific knowledge as we do. certainly, the one who wrote this story in the Bible was wiser, even more intelligent than we are, but he also wrote according to the people of his time when we could not even talk about millions or billions of years. what he motivated in Genesis 1, was to demonstrate that it is God who is the Creator Moreover, it was also to demonstrate that the universe went through several stages from the origin to man by dividing it by day which was the only measure of time that his contemporaries could understand. If we also understand it to the letter, what we reduce our intelligence compared to the people 3500 years ago. As to whether the biblical scheme of creation is scientific or not, first of all, it is a story that is told in a literal way with the vocabulary of their time. If today, we can restore it scientifically without concordism and present observable proofs, then it is this restitution that will become scientific. Here I am no longer in the realm of theory because I have done it in the Universal Cosmological Model.

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Your divide and conquer technique doesn’t work. That is apologetics. Real scholarship understands we cannot segregate concepts like this in order to interpret them. Not to mention all major commentaries on Genesis I read use the word day.

If the Bible gets so many other things wrong (solid dome in the sky) why should anyone accept an anachronistic reading of Genesis where the “days” are magically turned into “epochs” just so an ancient mythological creation story can be harmonized with modern science? You are starting with conclusions and reading them into the text.

And he was not discrediting the foundation of the Bible. Many Bible believing Christians accept the mythological character of Genesis 1-11.

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This demonstration is what you are reading into the text. And day wasn’t the only measure of time. I am sure the ancients would have the concept of a lunar month and the changing seasons of a year. Even the idea of a 7 day week was known.

Restoring it “scientifically” is the definition of concordism so it is hard to say that is not what you are doing. And you are using “proofs” and “scientific” in a less than correct manner.

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You said that “If the Bible is wrong about so many other things (solid dome in the sky), then why should we accept an anachronistic reading of Genesis where “days” are magically transformed into “eras” just so that an ancient mythological creation story can be harmonized with modern science?” That’s what you do with all the texts you find in papyrus if you want to know the secret contained inside. For me, the biblical scheme also deserved to be studied again. And, you concluded with “Many Bible-believing Christians accept the mythological character of Genesis 1-11”. These believing Christians of whom you speak are the theologians who are taught at the university that the biblical scheme of creation is a myth. I refute this judgment, not because of my faith, but because I have examined this diagram from A to Z and I have discovered that it is real.

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That I use And you use “evidence” and “scientific” in a less than correct way doesn’t matter enough. These are theoretical concepts. What is important is what I demonstrate. You say that the ancients knew the concept of time. would their notions of time allow them to announce the arrival of the time of an event that took place billions of years ago? Even if in France, the first university was created only in the 13th century (University; Wikipedia). And, in modern cosmology, we started talking about billions of years for the formation of the Universe only from the 20th century. But, why are you severe for the biblical authors from whom they sometimes receive these truths by inspirations?

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How does God express perfect knowledge to sinful humans in language that is not perfect, to people with slightly different cultures and worldviews that are imperfect? That is where I think you go wrong. God is perfect but we are not and cannot comprehend a perfect message. For this reason scripture is accommodated through the cultural lenses and worldviews of its authors. God is sovereign and will
Communicate with us however he wants to. The Bible was not written to us so it was written in a way that makes sense to it’s original audience but sometimes not to us. That is the nature of language and world views.

The Bible can contain both direct and indirect statements from God. Things softly or firmly inspired. We don’t need to imagine it’s all the same or that inspiration means God wrote things down from his divine perspective. He may have simply given authors ideas and moved them to write in some cases, not dictated the very words of every page.

Or because you misunderstand the literary genre of Genesis 1-2 and all the other older creation and flood ideology Genesis finds itself in competing with for theological supremacy?

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57

I’m not wrong about anything, but everything you just said is correct, namely “God is perfect but we are not and cannot understand a perfect message. For this reason, Scripture is received through the cultural lenses and worldviews of its authors.” What we need to know is that often most of God’s message comes in the form of a slide show and it is up to the recipient to render it. This is where the problem begins, because this restitution also depends on the training of the person who received it. In addition, I also understand the literary genre of Genesis 1-2 well.

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The Bible is the greatest novel ever written. As with any great novel, it starts by introducing us to the main characters. It first tells us about God in the context of creation by saying that He created time, space and matter but is not bound by it as we are. The Bible then introduces us to ourselves in the context of relationship to Him and His creation. It highlights the awakening of human consciousness with responsibility to tend the creation but the ability to think beyond instinctive programs of behavior. The varying interpretations of Genesis serve to demonstrate this capacity. It should be apparent that humans can believe almost anything and power is not in ‘truth’ but in the ‘passion of belief’ that seems related to the desire and aptitude of the believer. Choose the understanding that suits your aptitude for faith.

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Evidence and the scientific method are rather concrete and well defined so if you want to argue “scientifically” it would help if you would use the correct definitions.

Of course not, but if God wanted to convey the notion of a vast number of years He could have done so with something like “days that number as the grains of sand on the beach”. Instead He chose to use day and even mentioned there was an evening and morning on that first day to make it clear He was talking about a 24 hour day.

Simply because they didn’t receive hidden truth by inspiration. Remember Genesis was written to the ancients and there was no need for hidden truth that wouldn’t make sense for thousands of years. You want to add to Genesis to make it more acceptable to a modern western mind. There is no need to do this.

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You are right in everything you just said. But when to say: “Choose the understanding that suits your aptitude for faith”; this is the basis of the creation of many sects and denominations. But, I did not say that these sects and denominations are bad.