How do I interpret Exodus 12:14?

Yes, it is talking about 24 hour days. So is Genesis 1. The first six days of Genesis all end with “and then there was evening and then there was morning”. That means it’s a 24-hour day. Some say the seventh day is ambiguous because this formula doesn’t appear at the end. Genesis is talking about six days of creation, each taking 24 hours.

So, is Genesis wrong? No, because I think Genesis is an allegorical account. When understood in its ancient, near eastern context, it becomes quickly evident that the authors of Genesis 1-11 (the primeval history) took earlier mesopotamian/near eastern stories, such as the flood (see Epic of Atrahasis), the genealogies (Sumerian King List), and rewrote them in their own Israelite perspective in order to uniquely express their views of the archetypes of God, man, and sin. The Hebrew word for ‘Adam’ in Genesis, interestingly, is not even a proper noun, it is just the Hebrew word for ‘man’. Thus, Adam represents the archetype of man. This is the essence of the work of John Walton and other academics.

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