Actually I was looking at an interlinear which is dangerous when you don’t know the original language and I noticed the “in” was missing in both places. Is there an equivalent for “in” in Hebrew? If there is, to a Hebrew speaker, would it make a difference that the word wasn’t used? In English we could say “a creation in six days” or “six days of creation” and get different meanings.
Why do you defend if you are not here to debate, and only here to learn?
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Hi Mike,
Hope you are doing well on this Monday.
Here’s what you stated:
Is it not fair to say that you expect to find clear answers when you turn to the Bible? Is there some other reason you would look to the Bible for guidance? That’s why I stated that your assumption appears to be:
My interpretation of why you have spent time here is that you find a contradiction between (what you perceive to be) a complete and clear answer in the Bible regarding the age of the earth, and the answer given by the scientific disciplines of geology, astronomy, and biology. If you thought the answer in the Bible were unclear or incomplete, there’s no reason to feel a tension.
Am I missing something here? I feel like what I just stated should be very obvious, so if I even have to state it I must be overlooking something.
I’m not sure I agree, but to advance the discussion I propose removing the words “scientific and”, leaving the following assumption:
God expects me to use the Bible to infer conclusions to historical questions, even when the Bible itself is silent about the inferences.
This essential assumption behind MC belongs in your OP, I think.
It really is an assumption of Mosaic Creationism. If it’s not, there’s no reason whatsoever to accept a literalistic 144-hour period for the creation of the entire universe in a basically finished state.
You mention that you have expressed a willingness to explore whether the assumption is warranted. That’s a road worth taking. But it doesn’t mean that the statement is not an assumption at the core of MC, so I think it should be added to the list of assumptions.
I’m fine with your addendum, and I urge you to add the assumption (phrased as you have suggested) to the opening post.
Grace and peace,
Chris Falter
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Chris,
I appreciate your trying to mend matters. Rather than responding to the points one by one, I’m doing some work directly on the assumptions. Some of your suggestions will affect what you see there.
Mike
You and I don’t always understand each other, but engaging with you is edifying because you don’t think in patterns predictable to me, and because you seem to be an independent thinker. Thank you.
Yes, an interlinear will correctly leave it out or put the implied or supplied word in brackets to show it doesn’t exist in the original Hebrew text.
In this passage, no.
The wording is (as I recall) something like “For six-days God created…” and there is no sense of anything being missing. It is just how Hebrew and English differ in expression.
Yes, this is a good example of what I’ve described in various posts when telling people that chronological and tense details were not as important to the culture and language as Western minds assume is important.
I see your point about “a creation in six days” and “six days of creation” have different meanings in English—mostly in emphasis/focus. Yet, it is easy to imagine English Bible readers arguing over which of those two alternatives is appropriate, and Bible translators would be justified in arguing that some distinctions made in English attempts at rendering the Hebrew original simply wouldn’t have occurred to the original Hebrew author and audience.
To illustrate that last point, here’s an example I like to use from the Noahic flood pericope. Did the rising flood waters cover hills or mountains or both? That would seem like a reasonable question for English Bible readers because English strongly distinguishes between hills and mountains except that it is very hard to draw an exact line between the two. Yet, in the Hebrew text of Genesis, the word most commonly used doesn’t distinguish between hills and mountains! (Thus, I sometimes like to informally translate the word as “high elevations”, just to help students avoid the hill/mountain distinction in English which the Hebrew reader probably never paused to think about.)
I’ve sometimes asked students, “What is the difference between a hill and a mountain?” Everybody agrees that it is a matter of degree: mountains are taller and bigger than hills, but nobody knows the dividing line. Four hundred feet? Some people will say that mountains tend to have lots of exposed rocks while hills are soil covered and can be green and suitable for sheep and goat grazing. Yet, Americans from the eastern USA may say, “No! Our Appalachian Mountains are so beautiful because they are so lush and green. They aren’t mere hills…” So because we modern day English speakers bring all of that “baggage” to the topic, we are inclined to want Hebrew writers to make similar distinctions—and we can get frustrated when they don’t. And when I tell a global-flood-believing Young Earth Creationist that the Noahic Flood covered “all of the high hills” or that Noah’s ark came to rest in the hill country of Ararat (and that there was no such place as Mount Ararat in the Bible and certainly no evidence of a landing in Turkey) with no explicit claim that all of planet earth’s mountains were covered (such as 5+ mile high Mt. Everest), they can get quite angry with me. Of course, they may go really ballistic when I tell them that I believe the intention of the Hebrew wording of the only passage describing the magnitude of the flood waters specifies only about 22 feet in depth—which was quite enough to cover “the high hills”, because the author had no reason to include huge mountain ranges elsewhere on planet earth and no knowledge of them. (Indeed, the Hebrew text speaks of “the entire ERETZ” which probably meant the entire land or country which Noah knew as his homeland. As I constantly remind everyone I can, ERETZ is OK to translate as “earth” as long as nobody automatically assumes that it means “planet earth.”)
I went into that tangent for several reasons but mostly this one: The kinds of fine point distinction you are trying to resolve over the English word “in” is exactly the sort of issue which an English Bible reader can’t resolve without relying upon Hebrew exegetes writing very detailed commentaries. Of course, even then you may find that the Hebrew text either (1) is “ambiguous” on the issue in question. (That is, it may be ambiguous from a western mindset or from the expectations of an English language speaker.) (2) The Hebrew author wasn’t taking a position or even considering the issue, so no amount of dissecting of the Hebrew text may tell us how to answer the question.
Yet again we are facing the kind of issue that Mike Gantt is trying to tackle. He’s not comfortable with the idea that Genesis 1 could give us a six YOM/day outline jam packed with all sorts of literary structural elements (like chiasmas and the 1/4, 2/5, 3/6 day patterns that Caspar H. described) without referring to an actual, literal six-day sequence of a conventional real week of days. Yet, all of these issues are related to an ancient culture looking at the world and expression itself in ways that are strange to us. We chronological and “literalistic” westerners assume the six numbered days must be a “real” workweek—especially when used as the basis of sabbath observance in Exodus 20:11. Yet, an ancient Hebrew audience would see emphasis in the “SIX days” of God creating, while many Christians today assume that the emphasis must surely be “six DAYS” (as in 24-hour days) or even “SIX DAYS” instead of “six days”. (I think you see what I’m getting at by using upper-case for emphasis.)
I have several times in the past mentioned Carl Sagan’s use of the “cosmic calendar” or “cosmic year”. (I may be forgetting the actual term.Sorry. I can no longer trust my memories.) He used a literary device where the entire history of the earth was compared to a single calendar year of 365 days. He did it to help convey comparative lengths of time, such as no life appearing until the autumn and no mammals until the last days of December. Human history was a relative short blip of time in the evening of December 31, if I recall. Someone from another culture might read it sometime in the distant future and think “Those ancient Americans had no idea how old the earth is!”
I think also of a famous song from the Broadway musical _The Fantasticks". It used just a portion of a single year to reflect on one human life:
Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh, so mellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain so yellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When you were a young and callow fellow,
Try to remember and if you remember then follow.
Deep in December it’s nice to remember
Although you know the snow will follow.
Deep in December it’s nice to remember
Without a hurt the heart is hollow.
Deep in December it’s nice to remember
The fire of September that made you mellow.
Deep in December our hearts should remember then follow.
I’ve had some students strongly object to any assumption that Bible writers were being so “non-literal on important matters!” It never occurred to them that Genesis 1 contains six stanzas (one per YOM/day), each followed by a repetitious chorus: “And the evening and the morning was the Nth day.” Does standard prose that is describing an historical event covering a single week usually involve a repeating chorus? (I’ve sometimes asked those who insist that Genesis 1 is just another “historical narrative” to point to another historical account in the Old Testament where a repeating chorus was used.)
At the very least, I want them to recognize that Genesis 1 has many very striking and atypical elements. Of course, I would like them to recognize that Genesis 1 (and Genesis 2, for that matter) could be based on oral traditions that were ancient even in Moses’ day and that that ancient tradition may have been transmitted through multiple languages and cultures before the Hebrew writer(s) crafted it for their purposes as the ancient text we know today.
(I must leave for an appointment so I apologize for likely typos from lack of time to proofread. I see very poorly.)
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Thanks for taking the time to respond to my layman’s non-Hebrew speaking question.
Proofread? What’s that? 
Revisions to Assumptions and Stipulations of Mosaic Creationism (MC) in the OP
I am today revising the OP, particularly the “Assumptions” and “Stipulations,” to reflect our dialogue. The changes I have made are the result of your questions and challenges sharpening and drawing out my thinking. That’s not to say you will all be pleased with what you see, but, whether you are pleased or not, you have helped me and I appreciate it.
I have decided to sign off BioLogos sometime tomorrow. That’s why I want to do this tidying up today. If you have anything else you want me to think about, you have about 24 hours to post it. I have been here since June 22nd. I have not reached the closure I had hoped for when I came here, but I do think it’s clear that there’s a season for everything, and this season is passing. I’ll write a final note tomorrow before I sign off.
Here are some clean-up items.
On Assumptions
I think the only changes are revisions to the existing #2 items and the addition of multiple sub-items.
On Stipulations
I revised the first stipulation to make it more to the point - the point that we’ve discussed over and over.
I’m completely removing the fifth stipulation. That’s going to require some explanation, so let me start by first reproducing Stipulation #5 here:
I added this stipulation a couple of days ago because as I was keeping an open-mind on the subject, it seemed to me a possibility. That is, as the temple, animal sacrifice, dietary restrictions, and other things passed away, perhaps the importance of OT history passed away. (I explain this more thoroughly here.) I don’t recall anyone specifically suggesting this possibility to me. I just posted it, and got some responses - which led me to add to what I’d originally written.
The more I’ve thought about this, however, I’ve come to see that it doesn’t deserve to be listed with the other stipulations. Here are two reasons why.
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If a parable is presented as a parable, everyone knows it’s a fiction designed to convey a truth. Now history can also be used to convey truth. And it’s not as if one is a better way of conveying truth than the other. However, if I present a parable as history, and it later turns out that the history is false, the truth conveyed by the parable may still stand but I have damaged my credibility in the process. The same would apply with OT history. If certain people and events are portrayed as having been real, and we draw certain principles from those people’s lives and the events, the principles may stand but God’s credibility will have been damaged by the consignment of the history He gave to some category of non-history. (I know some people on this board consider what’s presented in Gen 1-11 as something less than history as it’s commonly understood, but that position is outside the scope of this stipulation.)
-
I remembered how frequently the NT writers referred to OT history, including historical people and events from Gen 1-11. If OT history had passed away, we would not see the NT writers referring to it. Rather, we would see as little from them on OT history as we saw from them on how to sacrifice an animal.
Therefore, it doesn’t make sense to list as a stipulation something that cannot be argued.
Other Revisions
It’s possible I’ll make some other clean-up revisions to the OP today, but I won’t make any tomorrow, and certainly none after that. Unless there’s something specific which requires my response, my next and last post will be my sign-off note.
Chris, I’ve incorporated all I can from your suggestions into the OP. If you’ll think a bit about how those first three classic Protestant doctrines interact, they cover most, if not all, the questions we’ve had back and forth about Augustine, Origen, etc.
(By the way, there are people who’ll blanch if they see you lump together Augustine and Origen, the former being regarded as a firm pillar, the latter as a less than reliable one.)
If you’ll go to the OP, and specifically to the section headed "Defining Mosaic Creation (MC) you’ll see that the statement in question is a rough summary of this section. To call it an assumption would be to gut the definition of MC. There’d be assumptions underlying MC, but no MC.
Oh, @Socratic.Fanatic you did such a fine job of elucidating the issues of the ANE verbal narrative being put into text. There are so many things I would like to comment on, but leave them for another time and place. (and the song is one of my favorites, almost got something in my eye reading it…)
So for now,
. , , …
Anybody see anything in the claps? Does this have any meaning?
Ray 
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I have mentioned the classic example of this in some other threads.
1Kings 20:32 describes what an enemy king, Ben-Hadad, did to obtain mercy from the King of Israel:
“… they girded sackcloth on their loins, and put ropes on their heads, and came to the king of Israel, and said, Thy servant Ben-Hadad saith, I pray thee, let me live…”
What the devil?! They put rope on their Heads !?!?!?!? That’s nuts, yes? But this was an error of the King James translators.
Ben-Hadad was not putting rope on his head … he was putting it “around” his head … as a noose (historians frequently call this a halter).
It was the traditional gesture for publicly acknowledging that one’s life was at the complete mercy of a recognized authority. As a matter of fact, this practice is specifcally described in the “Templar Rules” … where the noose is called a cord or a rope (Templar enthusiasts like to call it a “cable-tow” … ironically, derived from Biblical Hebrew!).
The devil can sometimes be in the “unspoken preposition” !
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And the same would apply to the natural history of the earth. But you have no problem with God having created a fake history of the earth, which has the appearance of truth but in actual fact is false. You think that’s fine, you think that doesn’t damage God’s credibility. Why?
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Socratic.Fanatic has given a great short answer on why Genesis 1 shouldn’t be considered an account of a literal 144 hour creation in his post above. If you would like a longer, as in book length, answer there is Rodney Whitefield’s Reading Genesis One. You can read the first chapter here. I can’t speak to his accuracy but the folks over at Reasons to Believe seem to accept his arguments so you can’t assume there is a EC bias in his writing.
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If Genesis 1 appeared in the Psalms instead, I think most Bible readers would recognize it as a Hymnic Tribute to the Creator instead of as an “historical account” in some traditional sense.
(I put “historical account” in quotation marks because it doesn’t even read like a typical historical narrative under Old Testament standards.)
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And after a few more centuries pass, this custom of putting rope on one’s head may become rare----but the the reference may nevertheless be retained as an idiom. Thus, if that transition occurred in some culture, native speakers may have eventually become unaware of the original significance of “he has rope on his head”. Yet, they might have routinely used the expression as a show of humility. I used to tell my students to think of an idiom as a phrase which has a meaning greater than the sum of its words. It is possible that “he’s got rope on his head” may have retained a well understood meaning even if nobody by that time was literally placing rope on, around, or below their head.
The hyper-literalist Bible reader sometimes fails to recognize this very common linguistic phenomenon. I was reminded of this language feature just this morning when a news report mentioned little children saluting a group of soldiers carrying an American flag. I don’t know if the news reporter realized that the word he used is a gesture and stance rooted in very distant history—and that nobody knows with absolute certainty how it originated, just as some phrases in the Hebrew Bible may be rooted in ancient customers and meanings which we’ve lost entirely. (Yes, some of those idiomatic meanings may even be unknown to the most brilliant rabbis who teach Hebrew and Talmudic Studies at major universities.)
Popular explanations of the military salute describe medieval knights raising their visors to greet and mutually identify friends and allies, as well as the much more ancient custom of exposing the top of the head while bowing (in order to show subservience and humility.) Yet nobody knows for sure how, when, and where the custom of the salute got started and what the original literal movements might have been.
There may be important Hebrew idioms in Genesis 1 which have been completely lost to history. (For that matter, how does one determine if _And the evening and the morning . . . " was idiomatic?) Indeed, when I’ve casually surveyed my Sunday School classes and home Bible study groups, significant numbers were stumped by these Hebrew idiom examples:
(1) “beginning of his strength” (Gen 31:35). A firstborn.
(2) “Covered his feet”. A latrine visit.
(3) “Lift up his head.” A restoration of honor.
(4) “slept with his fathers”. Nice synonym for dying.
(5) “Hide one’s face”. Refuse to answer.
(6) “Know no quiet in the belly” To be greedy.
(7) “Buried his hand in his dish”. Idling away the time.
And I love the following example as an illustration of a well-known idiom in English which has a completely different idiomatic meaning in ancient Hebrew: “Four eyes” in English is a common taunt for a person who wears eyeglasses. But in Biblical Hebrew it refers to two people who are face to face!
I could probably construct a Hebrew idiom chart with dozens of entries. And most of those idioms commonly escape the notice of the vast majority of English Bible readers. Yet many Bible readers would be greatly offended to be told that they might be unqualified to determine which Bible passages were meant to be interpreted literally. Nevertheless, does it seem likely that a Bible reader with no knowledge of ancient Hebrew would be well equipped for determining which words, phrases, clauses, sentences, and passages should be interpreted literally? Should they be citing their favorite Doctrine of the Perspicuity of the Scriptures as their imagined “great hermeneutical equalizer”?
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I don’t find fault with anyone who calls attention to the fact that Gen 1 reads differently from typical OT narrative…unless they simultaneously ignore the fact that it reads differently from typical OT poetry, too. Gen 1 is a biblical text with a unique style, but then it is a biblical text that uniquely deals with a unique set of events. We should expect a certain uniqueness of style when creation is recounted, regardless of how long ago creation took place. To claim the uniqueness points to an old earth is claiming too much. Other factors might point to an old earth, and it may indeed be true that the earth is old - but not because the prose of Gen 1 is lyrical.
As for the link you gave, I glanced at it. It sounds like the gap theory, such as promoted by Scofield or some other variation. It’s a traditional OEC view - which means it will give you some comfort on the age of the earth…but take it away when you read what he says about the “truth claims” of the Bible (which will run up against the “pre-history” character you want to assign to Gen 1-11 events).
I should add that the author’s belief in a gap made for a particularly strained interpretation of Ex 20:11 and Ex 31:17.
I don’t think anyone here at BioLogos has told me that they hold to the gap theory. (Of course, only a few people here at BL have told me what they do hold to - most just tell me what they don’t hold to.) One of the reasons for the proliferation of interpretations of Gen 1-2 is that it’s much easier to find adherents to a new interpretation than to an old one. This is because the new one talks about all the problems it solves, and not enough time has elapsed to identify all the problems it creates. I think this will be the case with John Walton’s thesis. Many evangelicals are enamored now because it gives them liberty to believe what they already want to believe. In such cases, even a weak argument can win someone over. Eventually, however, the popularity of Walton’s thesis will wane.
I am still willing to believe in an old earth and in evolution, but it must be by my convincing my conscience, not by overriding it. Some people here don’t understand why I put up a fight on certain issues if I say I am willing to change my mind. The explanation is conscience. Even knowing you as little as I do, I think you are someone who can appreciate this.
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I bet you could! Here are just a few of the idioms that entered the English language via the King James translation:
At wit’s end - Ps 107.27
Crystal clear - Rev 21.11
Eye to eye - Is. 52:8
Fell flat on his face - Num. 22.31
Fly in the ointment - Ecc 10.1
From time to time - Ezek. 4.10
Hold your peace - Exod. 14.14
Holier than thou - Is. 65.5
Labor of love - Heb. 6.10
Land of the living - Job 28.13
My brother’s keeper - Gen. 4.9
Put words in his mouth - Exod. 4.15
Rise and shine - Is. 60.1
Run for your life - 1 Kings 19.3
Sick to death - 2 Kings 20.1
Sign of the times - Matt. 16.3
Stand in awe - Ps. 4.4
The fat of the land - Gen. 45.18
The powers that be - Rom. 13.1
I’m sure there are more …
Granted the KJV had a three-hundred-year head start, but one of the indications of modern America’s biblical illiteracy and moral decline is how few biblical idioms are entering the English language from the English translations of the last hundred years.
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Great list, Jay! I wonder: Do high school English classes make any effort to systematically review English language idioms? In a multicultural America one would think that this would be important for students who don’t necessarily learn these phrases at home (or from reading the KJV Bible.)
By the way, for German speakers, Martin Luther’s Bible translation (and the German dictionary he created to go with it) played a similarly important role in the development of modern day German. (I assume the same could be said of the Reina Valera version of the Bible in Spanish, but I don’t read Spanish.)
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Well, as a former English teacher also certified in ESL (English as a Second Language), idioms come easily to native speakers, since idioms become idioms through common use, but non-native speakers are usually baffled by them. Since we are non-native Hebrew speakers, draw your own conclusions!
Late addendum: I should qualify that by saying that inner city kids did require explanations for many idioms that educated, middle-class folks take for granted, and I had to learn their idioms, as well.