So, the first hour of the Earth is a consequence of the existence of a rotating earth in the darkness.
Please correct me if I’m wrong (cmiiw).
Hi Reko, I just don’t know but of course that is a distinct possibility.
God Bless,
jon
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But if we don’t know that at Gen 1:1, the whole earth experience the first 12 hours of night time or not , then how do we calculate that Day-1 = 24 hours, Jon ?
Besides:
It started in the evening . https://www.askanadventistfriend.com/adventist-beliefs/sabbath/why-is-the-sabbath-from-sundown-to-sundown/
show that the writer know that at Gen 1:1, the whole earth experience the first 12 hours of night time. But then, most likely the knowledge of the writer in that link is that the earth is flat.
Hi Reko,
please remember that I certainly do not profess to be an expert, and it is quite possible that I am wrong, or missing something relevant and important to your question.
I truly believe God is omniscient, He always has a complete knowledge of everything, and I mean everything, past, present and future.
I believe that our loving Creator Lord God has ensured we have a correct understanding about the important and profound questions most of us would have at least at some point in our lives about origins.
Consequently, when the writer of Genesis wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, I see no reason to doubt that what is written is clear and concise and easy to understand, no matter whether or not the reader is a contemporary of the writer, or a person living now or a person living in the future.
For that reason, to me at least, the clearly written straightforward chronology of the creation account taking place in six consecutive days that in the present we know since the invention of chronometers as six consecutive 24 hour days makes perfect sense.
Whether you were a reader thousands of years ago or a reader today, the meaning is the same.
God Bless,
jon
But if we also include “things in the present we know”, then the whole Earth’s Day-1 can’t be started at Gen 1:1. Because based on “DAY in the present we know”, whatever sentence we make which using “day”, it will be always there is a previous day.
Also, “DAY in the present we know” regarding the 7th Day, is different.
If in Singapore people say : "now it is the first hour of the 7th day" in Friday afternoon around 6 pm … but the people in Quito say “We still have to wait about 12 hours to experience the 7th day”.
6 consecutive days, in the present we know is also different between pov Singapore and pov Quito. (pov = point of view).
When people in Singapore in Friday say : “we’ve already experienced 6 daytime and 6 nighttime passed” … the people in Quito in Friday say : “we’ve just experienced 6 daytime and 5 nighttime, we still have to wait about 12 hours more to have our 6 daytime and 6 nighttime passed”
Hence, it can’t be that “Day-1 in Gen 1:5 = the whole earth started in the evening for the very first time”… EXCEPT the earth is flat.
Agree Jon… so if we disregard that the earth is spherical, then YES, we have a correct understanding that the whole earth’s Day-1 starts in the evening.
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Hi Reko,
I certainly do not believe that we have to disregard that the Earth is spherical.
First of all, when the Earth was created there were no people, as man had not yet been created, thus the historical creation narrative was provided to the human author of Genesis by the Creator/Holy Spirit who is the only ONE who could possibly tell us what occurred as an eyewitness.
So, from Gods eyewitness perspective, the creation account is about the whole Earth, not a false belief of a flat Earth or a domed Earth, or whatever else but as the Earth truthfully is.
Of course different cultures may have interpreted the plain text differently throughout history in accord with whatever they believed, i.e., their worldview; just as the Biologos people right now believe a convoluted myth that involves metal like domes over a flat Earth that had creation take place over periods of time that has millions of years between each of the creation days to accommodate their belief that God used evolution to create.
It is obvious and absolutely clear to me that those false Biologos beliefs do immense damage to the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus, by having death precede the sin of Adam which is NOT an option under any circumstances.
The reason is straightforward.
God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are One God in three Persons, the Holy Trinity.
The Son, from eternity is the Creator who incarnate as Jesus died on the cross, as a man blameless in all His ways, He is the Last Adam.
Because of His unfathomably deep Love for every man, woman and child who will and has ever lived since Adam and Eve were created by Him, His self sacrifice on the cross paid the penalty of death that resulted from sin entering the world about 4,000 years earlier in the Garden of Eden, or roughly six thousand years ago from the present.
We are all worthy of death because we are all related, descended from the First Adam and Eve, who are the father and mother of ALL the living and both of whom rebelled against God through disobedience, which constitutes sin against Gods perfect sense of Justice.
We therefore automatically inherit the ‘fallen’ sin nature and consequently we are ALL sinners in need of salvation. Every single one of us.
It is because God is Holy and perfectly righteous that His own absolute Holy Justice demands that sin is punishable by death.
Because we are all eternal sentient beings, God through His Love for us all, willingly died blameless for us all on the cross to pay the exact price demanded by His perfect justice so that we may be with Him in eternity.
As the word of our Lord informs us:
“Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all mankind, because all sinned.”
AND
“But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep. For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.”
AND
The last enemy that shall be abolished is death.
Therefore, the Biologos myth of Theistic evolution does NOT make any sense as belief in evolution contradicts when God tells us in the Bible that death came into the world, as it has millions of years of death in evolution prior to Adam, i.e., lots and lots of survival of the fittest, red in tooth and claw etc…
I expect that some of the strange work arounds that must be accepted to believe in Biologos theistic evolution must be difficult for many to fully accept, particularly if they have a sound grasp of the scriptures in their hearts. I sincerely hope and pray that the truth is revealed to those under the influence of the Biologos belief system.
All the best,
God Bless,
jon
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@karma , the above is just another examples of the falsehoods that YECs make as they distort and contort the messages of scriptures to force it to answer their modern concerns. We’ve continued to let Jon speak here so that you can see for yourself that truth is one of the first casualties for them in how they speak of reality and about others - such as (in this case) Biologos. Nobody who is a regular around here (that I’m aware of) has ever believed or promoted domes over the earth. They’ve only pointed out that trying to read scriptures in the same disrespectful and flattening way that YEC people are forced to - if followed consistently (which YECs never do) - would lead one to those conclusions.
I can make a fairly confident prediction here, that the responses you get will continue to be repetitive and fall back on the same standard scripts that everybody else can see through. Believers who come here in good faith tend to have a much higher view of scriptures than what you’ve seen demonstrated so far. We believe that scriptures actually attest to reality, and that there will be no discrepancy between the two things as our understanding of both grows. If we discover that our theology or understandings are wrong about something - either scientifically or theologically speaking, then we believe in letting go of known falsehoods to help our understandings grow closer to truth. This is something I don’t think you will hear Jon ever claim on behalf of his own theology (or at least I haven’t yet in such of his material as I’ve read - feel free to prove me wrong, @Burrawang ). He has arrested his understandings of scriptures and nailed them down to one particular modern tradition of man, and he has invested a brittle certainty on that which cannot grow or update or be challenged. The history of that kind of theological thinking speaks for itself. When people stop attending to reality, both their science and their theology gets revealed for what it is.
But I pray that yours and Jon’s understandings will be able to see all these things brought out into light for examination and begin to seek after truth.
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So what was the worldview of the early Church Fathers who didn’t take Genesis literally? Certainly wasn’t an ancient earth/evolution worldview.
You just answered your own question: they were in places where clean sandstone formed.
Where I live there are numerous layers of sandstone on a cape near the beach. It’s possible to tell what conditions were like when the different layers formed because there are layers that are very clean, layers that have clay mixed in, layers that have river silt mixed in, layers with organic matter, even a layer that has volcanic ash. Some of the layers have fossils of creatures one would find in a bay, some have fossils of leaves, some are completely free of fossils. All this indicates that the sandstone layers were laid down over long periods of time when that location was getting river deposits, estuary deposits, beach deposits, and of course the volcanic deposits (which could be used to date that particular stratum if I knew which volcanic eruption the ash came from; there are multiple candidates).
As for leaf litter, in the case of lakes organic litter is found along the shorelines where it drops or floats to driven by wind, so we shouldn’t expect much organic matter except along the shore.
That’s an assumption that requires investigation of the individual rock layers.
Actually probably not; high-velocity flow in a flood would carry debris large enough to knock trees over – such flows have, after all, knocked down well-engineered bridges. And since you say that the surrounding material has “amazingly consistent finely graded sandstone layers of uniform particle sizes” it was certainly not a high-velocity flow as such flows leave deposits of mixed particle sizes.
Defined how? Sharply defined boundaries rarely if ever occur where there has been high-velocity flow, especially of it was sudden; well-sorted grain size with clear boundaries delineating the layers indicates periods of steady flow at different rates in a pattern that varies regularly. And if the boundaries are marked by darker material, there’s a good chance those boundaries consist of the very organic matter you wondered about.
God runs the universe in accord with the rules He chose. When we see rock formation that match depositional regimes we observe happening today the rational conclusion is that those were laid down in the same way as we observe in the present. That God operates Creation consistently with the rules He chose is why we can have science in the first place: God is trustworthy, He is dependable, which means we can investigate and reason out what rules He is using. That applies to geology just as much as to any other science.
I think that question applies to what I’ve written above!
And that happens to be what we should expect from a dependable God.
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If you think the scriptures teach science, sure – but if they’re actually the types of ancient literature that they match, then no.
This bit from that article is interesting:
The Bible concludes the sixth day by saying, “The evening and the morning were the sixth day” (Genesis 1:31, NKJV).
So when the Sabbath shows up in Genesis 2:2, it picks up the same order of counting a day. It started in the evening, progressed through the morning, and continued until the next day began at sunset the following evening.
The writer is using circular reasoning, assuming that the text is talking about twenty-four hour days in order to prove that the text is talking about twenty-four hour days. But the plain reading of “and evening was, and morning was, the sixth day” is that it describes the period of darkness bounded by evening and morning.
An interesting note on this verse: this is the only instance where using “the” in a translation is justified; all the other days were “a first day”, “another day”, a third day", all without the definite article. This sets the sixth day apart from the others; the others are not indicated as consecutive – not “the third day” but “a third day” – and indeed neither is the sixth day, but the sixth day is given heightened importance as the end of this sequence of individual days. So even with a literal reading we have no idea how much time has elapsed between the command for light to exist and the statements about food (which is where one view of this Creation story comes from, with individual days followed by millions or billions of years).
All that said, yes – the writer of the Creation story understood the world as flat so that the entire world had morning at the same time and noon at the same time and sunset at the same time. (Or were you saying that the writer of the linked article knew the earth is flat?)
It was “clear and concise and easy to understand” to the original audience, i.e. to the people it was written to. But since their cosmology was not the same at all as ours, and because the writer used ancient literary types that we don’t have, to conclude that the account would be easy for us to understand is without foundation.
Scripture was not inspired and set down for the purpose of satisfying modern curiosity, so it does not speak in modern terms to teach science – in fact the ancient audience would have been baffled by a modern mind wanting to know the details of the mechanics of Creation; they weren’t interested much at all about the “what”, they were interested in “Who”.
Only if you know the original language, literary type, and worldview that the writer selected by the Holy Spirit was working with – in other words, only if you let the Bible be what it is rather than demanding or forcing it to speak in modern terms.
Insisting that the writer was forced to abandon the worldview and literary genres that his audience understood is an insult to the Holy Spirit because that insistence is based on the belief that the ancient scriptures were not written to the ancient audience(s) they were intended for!
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“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” – George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty Four.
To argue that hard, indisputable, objective reality—the most rock-solid, well-established facts in the whole of the earth and life sciences—contradicts the Bible, is not an argument against hard, indisputable, objective reality. It is an argument against the Bible. It is the kind of things that I hear hard line proselytizing atheists who don’t understand the Bible coming out with on their YouTube videos.
On the other hand, there is a word for people who denounce hard, indisputable, objective reality on the grounds that it contradicts their doctrine or ideology. The word in question is “cult.”
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That’s a fantasy: God did not dictate, He inspired, nor did He force the writer He chose to use a literary form that didn’t yet exist.
That’s not convoluted, it’s the worldview of the Genesis writer – it’s what רָקִ֖יעַ (rah-kee-ya) means.
You continue to ignore the fact that at least one Biologos person doesn’t care about evolution but about the text, and the fact that Hebrew scholars before we had modern science in essence described the Big Bang and deep time based totally on the Hebrew – just as you ignore all the evidence presented to you from science.
But in reality the reverse is true: when I was a university student, YEC is what drove Christians and other students away from the Gospel, by the hundreds, whereas accepting what science shows enabled many to hear the Gospel and come to Christ.
If you mean all death, that’s an invalid conclusion – the text only tells us about human death. Further, that death cannot mean mere physical death because they didn’t die physically the day they sinned, which indicates that this was spiritual death. Since animals and plants don’t experience spiritual death, then Genesis is only talking about human death.
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Thank you for your reply Mervin.
Firstly, let me sincerely apologise if I have offended anyone by clearly stating what I believe, that was certainly not my intention. My only wish here is to state the truth and shed some light upon the inconsistencies that I see originate from the Theistic evolution compromise.
It appears you believe that it is alright to denigrate, misrepresent, and insult Bible believing Christians like myself but when I state what the Bible clearly teaches in every translation that I know of, and point out the inconsistencies between the Bible and Biologos beliefs, I am being disrespectful.
That does sound just a bit unfair, to say the least.
The big difference for me with respect to Theistic evolution is death before Adam sinned.
It is not I that “makes a mockery of the Bible,”(to use Biologos Theistic evolutionists words used on this site), but this whole concept of death before Adam sinned.
Because that concept has God saying that all that He created was “good” and “very good”.
Yet the Bible inspired by God describes death as the last enemy to be destroyed, thus, how can it be considered good or very good, with so much pain, and killing going on all over the world for billions of years prior? That makes zero sense.
If Biologos Theistic evolution is true, then why do the 63 Bibles that were painstakingly translated from the Hebrew and Greek listed below say that death came into the world through Adam:
“Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all mankind, because all sinned.”
… … … … … AND … … … … …
The last enemy that shall be abolished is death.
Therefore, when we read any of those 63 Bibles listed below:
Why do they say that God created in six days and He rested on the seventh?
Why do they say when God looked upon all that He had created was “good” and “very good”, if death and struggle had been around for billions of years?
Why do they say, “The last enemy that shall be abolished is death.”
Why don’t they say that God created over billions of years of death and struggle?
21st Century King James Version (KJ21)
American Standard Version (ASV)
Amplified Bible (AMP)
Amplified Bible, Classic Edition (AMPC)
BRG Bible (BRG)
Christian Standard Bible (CSB)
Common English Bible (CEB)
Complete Jewish Bible (CJB)
Contemporary English Version (CEV)
Darby Translation (DARBY)
Disciples’ Literal New Testament (DLNT)
Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition (DRA)
Easy-to-Read Version (ERV)
EasyEnglish Bible (EASY)
Evangelical Heritage Version (EHV)
English Standard Version (ESV)
English Standard Version Anglicised (ESVUK)
Expanded Bible (EXB)
1599 Geneva Bible (GNV)
GOD’S WORD Translation (GW)
Good News Translation (GNT)
Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)
International Children’s Bible (ICB)
International Standard Version (ISV)
J.B. Phillips New Testament (PHILLIPS)
Jubilee Bible 2000 (JUB)
King James Version (KJV)
Authorized (King James) Version (AKJV)
Legacy Standard Bible (LSB)
Lexham English Bible (LEB)
Living Bible (TLB)
The Message (MSG)
Modern English Version (MEV)
Mounce Reverse Interlinear New Testament (MOUNCE)
Names of God Bible (NOG)
New American Bible (Revised Edition) (NABRE)
New American Standard Bible (NASB)
New American Standard Bible 1995 (NASB1995)
New Catholic Bible (NCB)
New Century Version (NCV)
New English Translation (NET)
New International Reader's Version (NIRV)
New International Version (NIV)
New International Version - UK (NIVUK)
New King James Version (NKJV)
New Life Version (NLV)
New Living Translation (NLT)
New Matthew Bible (NMB)
New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised (NRSVA)
New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition (NRSVACE)
New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE)
New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition (NRSVUE)
New Testament for Everyone (NTFE)
Orthodox Jewish Bible (OJB)
Revised Geneva Translation (RGT)
Revised Standard Version (RSV)
Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)
Tree of Life Version (TLV)
The Voice (VOICE)
World English Bible (WEB)
Worldwide English (New Testament) (WE)
Wycliffe Bible (WYC)
Young's Literal Translation (YLT)
God said to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, "but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for on the day that you eat from it you will certainly die.”
Adam and Eve disobeyed God and on that day, when they ate, they became in need of salvation as they had sinned in their hearts by disobeying God, and the wages of sin is death by God’s perfect justice as Creator, He has that right.
The Bible makes no mention of any death prior to when Adam and Eve sinned.
The Theistic evolution belief to make sense means they have to add to the Holy Scriptures that death was there all along in evolution over billions of years; adding to Gods Word is a very dangerous thing to do.
A very good article that expands on the fall in the garden is below:
Strategy of the Devil
by [Russell M. Grigg] (Russell Grigg)
In Genesis 3 we read the account of the first temptation of Adam and Eve by Satan. 1 The strategy of the devil was successful and led to our first parents’ disregard of God’s Word to them and their rebellion against God Himself. Today Satan continues to use the same tactics, which produce the same result, namely, the disregard of mankind for the Word of God, and the rebellion of mankind against the authority of God. These tactics are:
1. To doubt the Word of God
The very first temptation recorded in the Bible was for Eve to doubt the truth of something that God had said. ‘And he [the serpent] said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every2 tree of the garden?’ Genesis 3:1: ‘“Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”’ 3
Eve’s answer to this should have been a simple repetition of what God had said to Adam, ‘Of every tree of the garden thou mayst freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die’ Genesis 2:16–17.
Instead, Eve replied, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die’ Genesis 3:2–3.
Note first that, in his query about, ‘any’ tree of the garden, Satan mispresented and distorted what God had said. God had been very specific (‘the tree of the knowledge of good and evil’); Satan was suitably vague (‘any tree’).
Note second that Eve misquoted God no less than three times, and both diminished and added to what God had said [but see the discussion in the later article [Did Eve lie before the Fall? https://creation.com/did-eve-lie-before-the-fall—Editors]:
- She undervalued her privileges by misquoting the divine permission. God had said they could freely eat of every tree (except one); she reduced this to, ‘We may eat of the trees’.
- She exaggerated the restrictions by misquoting the divine prohibition. God had said nothing against touching; she included this in God’s command.
- She underrated her obligations by misquoting the divine penalty. God had said they would ‘surely die’; she changed this to ‘lest you die’. 4
Dr Henry Morris, commenting on this, says ‘It is always dangerous to alter God’s Word, either by addition (as do modern cultists) or by deletion (as do modern liberals). God, being omniscient, can always be trusted to say exactly, and only, what He means Deuteronomy 4:2; Proverbs 30:5; Revelation 22:18–19; and finite man is inexcusable when he seeks to change God’s Word. Such will lead either to divine reproof Proverbs 30:6 or death Revelation 22:19’ 5
2. To deny the Word of God
Having misrepresented what God had said, and sown the seeds of doubt in Eve’s mind, Satan proceeded to outright denial of the truth of what God had said. ‘And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die’ Genesis 3:4.
Note the progression: Satan distorted the Word of God, which caused the woman to doubt the Word of God, and finally he denied the Word of God.
3. To disregard the judgment of God
That sin has consequences is something that we probably all learn only from experience, and Eve as yet had had none in this area. What she did have was a solemn forewarning of the judgment of God—the death penalty that would follow disobedience. Any thought of such judgment was quickly expunged from her mind by Satan’s suggestion that ‘in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods [Hebrew: ‘God’], knowing good and evil’ Genesis 3:5.
To be as God was the same desire that had led to Satan’s own downfall Isaiah 14:13–14 ; 6 he now sought to infect Eve with the same desire and she found the prospect irresistible. 7 However, the benefit offered was spurious. From now on, she (and Adam) would know good by the loss of it, and evil by bitter experience. Furthermore, they would know good without having the power to consistently do it, and they would know evil without having the power to refrain from doing it. Far from ‘being as God’, from now on they would be slaves to Satan. Their eyes were opened not to superior wisdom, but to guilt expressed in shame and fear.
4. To defame the character of God
Satan’s suggestion that if Eve ate the fruit she would be ‘as God’ was put in the context that God knows that you will obtain this advantage Genesis 3:5. The goodness of God was thus impugned, as if He was unfairly and arbitrarily withholding something to which Eve was entitled and from which she would greatly profit; as if through meanness He was keeping her in a state of ignorance and dependence on Himself.
Once Eve had allowed her mind to travel thus far down the road of resentment against God, it was but a small step to total rebellion:
- She saw that the tree was ‘good for food’ (i.e. appealing to her bodily appetite), ‘pleasant to the eyes’ (i.e. appealing to her senses and emotions, ‘desired to make one wise’ (i.e. appealing to her intellect). 8
- ‘She took of the fruit and ate thereof’ It was her own act and deed.
- ‘She gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat’ Genesis 3:6. Having fallen into sin herself, she desired that Adam should join her, and he willingly did so.
Thus the forbidden fruit was looked upon, desired, taken, eaten, and given to another. In the process the Word of God was rejected, the will of God was resisted, and the way of God was repudiated.
The essence of all sin is the desire in the heart to be independent of God. This results in the choosing of self-interests rather than God’s interests, and the gratifying of self as the chief end rather than obeying God. In the case of Adam and Eve, the final act was an expression of the sin that had already been committed in the heart and mind.
Conclusion
In the past one-and-a-half centuries the rise of Darwinism and the associated acceptance of theistic evolution and liberal theology by many church leaders have done more to cast doubt on and to deny the truth of the Word of God than any other cause. The effect has been that Western society not only does not believe in the judgment of God—it does not even believe in the existence of a God whose chief attribute is holiness. Satan’s strategy, 9 ‘which worked with Eve, has proved to be no less effective with modern man. 9
Published: 22 September 2010
References and footnotes
- Satan appropriated and used the body of a specific serpent on this occasion to carry out his subtle purpose of tempting Eve to sin. See the author’s article Who was the serpent?, Creation 13(4):36–38, 1991.
- Hebrew ‘any’. The question is a little ambiguous and could mean either, ‘Has God indeed enjoined that you should not dare to touch any tree, or, ‘Have you not then the liberty granted you of eating promiscuously from whatever tree you please?’—John Calvin, Genesis, Banner of Truth Trust, 1965, p. 148.
- Compare the modern theistic-evolutionary jibe, ‘Did God really say, “Six days”?’.
- Adapted from WH. Griffith Thomas, Genesis, Eerdmans, Michigan, 1946, p. 48.
- Dr Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Record, Master Books, El Cajon, California, 1976, p. 111.
- For a discussion of the meaning of these verses see Ref. 1, p. 38, note 5.
- It is possible also that Eve thought that if they ate and became like God, they would be beyond the reach of His vengeance. See Ref 2, p. 150, editor’s note.
- Many commentators have noted that this account of Eve’s coveting the forbidden fruit is perfectly described in 1 John 2:16: ‘For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world.’ The (unsuccessful) three temptations of Christ by Satan, described in Luke 4:1–12, followed a similar pattern.
- The Apostle Paul wrote, concerning the strategy of Satan in the world, that ‘… we are not ignorant of his devices’ 2 Corinthians 2:11. However, he also wrote to the same church at Corinth, ‘There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it’ ([1 Corinthians 10:13].
Mervin, I hope that you are able to understand that there are many millions of Bible believing Christians like myself who sincerely love the Lord Jesus, who know Him and obey the exhortation of Simon Peter:
#15 but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defence to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, but with gentleness and respect;
1 Peter 3:15
God Bless,
jon
What needs to be explained? I agree, God’s word was given in words (verbally) and visions. Most of the texts were oral texts before they were written down.
Yes. Moses did not have a concept of a spherical planet and whatever God directly revealed to Moses would have made sense with his conception of the world and his ancient cosmic geography. God had to work with the brain Moses had.
We aren’t talking about early Christian church fathers, though, we are talking about ancient Hebrews. We are talking about the 13th century BC, not the fifth century BC.
- Authorship of 2 Peter is highly debated.
- Being eyewitnesses to Jesus is not referencing the same kind of “literal history” as referencing the Flood or Sodom and Gomorrah. Obviously. One is referencing their own testimony and one is referencing ancient literary tradition. Just because it’s Scripture doesn’t make it “eyewitness history.”
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Further to my previous post, an excellent article expands on the situation in the Garden of Eden titled:
Why did God prevent Adam from eating from the Tree of Life after he had sinned?
The article was Published: 29 November 2016 and can be found at God prevent Adam eating from Tree of Life
God Bless,
jon
The subject of the point has to be recognized: mankind. That means Paul is talking about human death.
And that fits what we see in Genesis: the writer doesn’t record that Adam and Eve were baffled by the warning against death, which would have been the case if they’d never seen it happen. So where did they see death happen? Obviously it was animals dying.
The flow of the argument must be seen as well: Paul gives the reason that we can know that death spread to “all mankind”: because we see everyone sinning! Sinning is thus the evidence of the death that Paul is teaching about, which means that his point isn’t about physical death, it’s about spiritual death.
It’s a different kind of literature. The days are a literary device to organize the account and to keep interest of listeners (remember that for millennia things were written to be read out loud to others); they’re an example of a literary hook that keeps the listener interested.
Given the ancient literary type, the days are meant literally within the story but not in themselves apart from the story – a strange way of thinking to us moderns, but just a way that stories were written and told back then.
Where are animal and plant “death and struggle” defined as being not good? The Psalmist suggests that animal death is good when he writes that God provides prey to carnivores, so right there we know that suffering and death fall into the category of “good”.
Yes, we regard all death as a bad thing, but that’s a very, very recent development in human history and is still also a minority view. Most humans regard it as good when animals grow and mature and are killed because that is a system that functions to provide food for people, and that has been the majority view through history until the last few generations in the West. And given that the opening Creation account is more about things functioning properly, that is the best choice for the term “good” there – not what we regard as good due to cultural influence.
Because the last enemy of humans is death. Paul told us that it’s death that makes us the kind of people who sin, so to end the grip sin has on us requires ending death – and since our physical death is a symptom of spiritual death, physical death gets defeated as well.
Because that would have served no point. The opening Creation account isn’t about the physical things that happened, it’s about Yahweh being king (one literary top) and God over all things that exist (the other literary type), and about humans being the image in God’s temple that He made and filled – the equivalent of the dead idols in pagan temples; since God is the author of life, He put living ‘idols’, living images, in His temple.
The scriptures weren’t given to satisfy our curiosity, they were given to tell us what we need to know about God, especially what He wants from us (to be His earthly family) and how we should respond (with trust and loyalty). I would have loved it if in I Kings 7 God had said to make the molten sea ten cubits across and thirty-one cubits around, because that would have been a much better value for pi, but God didn’t care about scientific accuracy, He just cared about rough figures that would get the job done – and the same is true of the Creation.
Which has nothing to do with evolution either for or against, unless you think the Bible teaches science.
No, they don’t, because the topic isn’t death in general, it’s human death, primarily the death of our relationship to God – the very definition of spiritual death.
Henry Morris was not a biblical scholar – I met him, and it was obvious that he was no expert in the field. In fact he wasn’t an expert in any of the fields he wrote in, so he’s hardly a good source (his B.S. in engineering hardly makes him a good source even in engineering).
But God relates to man in human terms, which means that what He means rests on the ancient literature type in the ancient language and within the ancient worldview.
The argument isn’t over whether God can be trusted, it’s over whether He was required to speak in ways that make sense to a modern world rather than speaking to His people of the time in the terms they would understand. Forcing the scriptures to be understood from a modern worldview both detracts from and adds to the text.
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And as Dr. John Walton notes, if God had shown Moses a rotating sphere, Moses could not have understood that it was the Earth – that was too far from his worldview!
Dr. Michael Heiser gives an interesting commentary on the idea that God had people write things suitable for us to read; he presents Moses as saying, “Wow, I have no idea what I just wrote, it makes no sense to me! Maybe someday God will inspire something I will understand”. That’s a great illustration of what would have happened due to the gulf between worldviews.
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Well that is a very, very, very, big assumption to make, but I see that it is required to accommodate the killing, pain and misery and death of all animals over billions of years.
For one thing you don’t appear to think that Adam and Eve had much intelligence that as they are the first created humans made in the image of God, immediately knew what language was, Adam was able to name all the animals and Eve understood the words of both Satan, possessing the serpent and God who asked them questions in the Garden. It is clear to me that they were amazingly intelligent people (who incidentally, would have had perfect genomes until the fall when it all started to unravel), who clearly understood from when they were created what words meant.
I get it that to accommodate the Theistic evolution beliefs, all these caveats have to be invented and woven, (or perhaps indoctrinated is a more accurate word), into the Theistic evolution story to make it coherent, but again to quote you, “it doesn’t say that in the text” not in the 63 Bible translations and not in the original Hebrew as handed down by the line of Judah to the present day, or in the Dead Sea scrolls.
Well then why do eminent leading scholars of Hebrew affirm that the correct interpretation of the text is six literal consecutive days, for example:
Dr Stephen R. Schrader has served as Old Testament Department Chair and Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament, Baptist Bible Graduate School, Springfield, Missouri, since 1995. Previously, he taught these subjects at some other biblically sound leading seminaries. He earned both M.Div. and Th.M. specializing in Old Testament and Hebrew from Grace Theological Seminary, Winona Lake, Indiana.
Dr Schrader states:
“I am convinced the creation account is a genuine historical narrative and not an artistic account. A poetic account would show parallelism, while Genesis is full of a certain verb type called the waw consecutive that makes it clear that it was written as a historical account. It is interesting that the waw consecutive appears 55 times in just 34 verses in Genesis 1:1–2:3. The use of this verbal form in the prologue to the historical narrative of Genesis, Genesis 1:1–2:3, is therefore significant and consistent with the narrative material found in the rest of the book of Genesis”.
Also, many think the meaning of ‘day’ is hard to understand. But Dr Schrader first compares Scripture with Scripture:
The pattern is set by God’s testimony in Exodus 20:11: ‘For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.’
He further points out that Genesis 1 is clear enough even without that:
Yôm (day) is modified in Genesis 1:1–2:3 by a numerical qualifier, so each day must be a literal day. Note Moses’ use as ‘day one’ (v. 5), ‘second day’ (v. 8) and so on. When yôm appears with a numerical qualifier in the Old Testament, it is never used in a figurative sense.
Yôm (day) is modified in Genesis 1:1–2:3 by a numerical qualifier, so each day must be a literal day. Note Moses’ use as ‘day one’ (v. 5), ‘second day’ (v. 8) and so on. When yôm appears with a numerical qualifier in the Old Testament, it is never used in a figurative sense.
Dr Schrader concludes:
“And I love how the phrase “evening and morning” ends days 1–6 and ties each successive day together, but is not repeated at the end of the 7th day as God had finished his work of creation in six days and rested on the seventh day to set a pattern for mankind”.
But what about Genesis 2:4, “in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens”?
Dr Schrader points out that this is a different syntactical construct (beyôm or “in the day”) best translated ‘when’, indicating the whole week of creation in summary fashion. “But yom employed in Genesis 1 always refers to a normal literal day when used as a singular noun.”
James Barr (1924–2006), Oriel Professor of the interpretation of the Holy Scripture, Oxford University, England, in a letter to David C.C. Watson, 23 April 1984. Barr, consistent with his neo-orthodox views, did not believe Genesis, but he understood what the Hebrew so clearly taught. It was only the perceived need to harmonise with the alleged age of the earth which led people to think anything different—it was nothing to do with the text itself. James Barr stated himself the following:
" ‘… probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1–11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that:
- creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience
- the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story
- Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark.’"
Dr Ting Wang earned his M.Div. from Westminster Theological Seminary in California (Escondido) and his doctorate in Biblical Studies at the Hebrew Union College, Jewish Institute of Religion (Cincinnati, Ohio). He now lectures on biblical Hebrew at Stanford University in California, and is a pastor for the Youth and Children’s Ministries at Korean Central Presbyterian Church. Dr Wang is a member of the Society of Biblical Literature and the National Association of Professors of Hebrew.
Dr Wang firmly states:
‘The semantic range [list of all possible meanings] of the English word “day” is not unlike the range of the Hebrew word
(yôm). No-one denies that “day” can mean a period or era in some contexts in both languages. For example, that’s what we mean if we say, “in Martin Luther’s day … .”
‘Similarly, in Proverbs 25:13 we find “as the cold of snow in the time/‘day’ of the harvest.” However, it’s totally improper to claim “day” can mean “era” in a different context. For instance, “on the last day of Luther’s life … ,” “day” clearly must mean an ordinary day—the modifier “last” and the context—Luther’s passing—render the meaning clear.
‘In Genesis 1, yôm comes with “evening” and “morning”, and is modified by a number. So it’s obvious that the Hebrew text is describing a 24-hour day—the exegetical burden of proof rests crushingly upon those who view otherwise (notice too that in Jeremiah 33:17–22, God’s covenant with the day and the night, so that both will come at the appointed time, is as unalterable as the promise that a son of David will reign). But no amount of evidence will convince those who are persuaded to play devil’s advocate—just like the serpent in Genesis 3, they must ask, “Did God really say?”’
Some have claimed that biblical Hebrew had no long-age words available. However, Dr Wang showed the falsity of this:
One of the most familiar passages in the Hebrew Bible is found in Ecclesiastes 3:1–8, the “God makes all things beautiful in his time” passage. In Hebrew, two words for “time” appear. The passage begins “There is a season (זְמָן zeman) for everything, and a time (עֵת ‘et) for every activity under heaven: a time (עֵת) to be born and a time (עֵת) to die, a time (עֵת) to plant and a time (עֵת) to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal … ,” and so on. Whereas זְמָן is only used in the later books Esther, Ecclesiastes, Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah, (עֵת) is used throughout Scripture, and would be an appropriate term to communicate an indefinite period of time, though most likely used without a number.
‘God as Creator is essential and foundational to Christianity,’ said Dr Wang.
Dr Wang also stated the following seven paragraphs:
‘The wisdom of people is not to be trusted, as reasonable as it may seem. How reasonable was Eve’s “good for food, pleasing to the eye” “and taking the fruit and eating?” Sounds good to me! Let’s eat! And once again, how much like the Serpent’s “did God really say?” in Genesis 3 is the approach most people take towards Genesis 1 and 2?
‘Often, people will use the old argument that we should concentrate on preaching the Gospel, rather than get distracted by “side-issues” such as Creation. But if we cannot believe the record of Creation, then why believe the record of the New Creation (“if anyone is in Christ, he is a New Creation; the old is gone, the new has come!”—2 Corinthians 5:17)?
‘If we cannot believe in the First Adam, why believe in the Last [1 Corinthians 15:45]? Death came through the First, life through the Last [1 Corinthians 15:21–22].
‘Evolution, of course, would say that death (through the Unholy Trinity of evolution: Time, Chance Mutations and Natural Selection) formed and shaped the first humans. This imperils the parallels between death from the first Adam and life from Christ. And if Christ is not raised (and the first Adam did not bring death), then we are to be pitied more than all people (1 Corinthians 15:17–19).
‘God as Creator is also central to his sovereignty. So He has mercy upon whom He has mercy (Romans 9:15–21), upon those called by His name. God communicates the fact that He is Creator to Jonah, Habakkuk and others (especially Job) who question the justice of their situation.
‘In all things, God points to the fact that He is the Potter, we the clay; He the Creator, we the creature (Romans 9). Everything about our relationship with Him is based upon this distinction.
‘God’s very name, YHWH, is related to His being Creator, for He identified Himself as “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14, cf. John 8:58), “the beginning and the end” (Revelation 21:6, 22:13).’
God Bless,
jon
No-one is denigrating, misrepresenting or insulting Bible believing Christians, Jon. People are rebuking and correcting young earth creationists.
“Bible believing Christian” is NOT a synonym for “young earth creationist.” I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: young earth creationism is not the Bible; it is a cartoon caricature of the Bible with a thick layer of science fiction slathered on top of it.
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The conservation so far here reminded me of one that took me a while: the concept that a given section of scripture can be two things at once – my Western mind says a thing is what it is, not two different things. I suppose it didn’t help that some of my professors insisted that no passage can have multiple meanings, but then there were those who followed the evidence where it led and in some cases it led to a passage saying two things at once, which made it easier to grasp that a passage could be two kinds of literature at once.
Another one that’s been in play since I’ve been on Biologos is that for a long time I refused to believe that the scriptures could use other pieces of literature. Even the references to the Book of Jasher that weren’t quotes bugged me. But I’m finally over that thanks in part to discussions here where I finally integrated what I knew – such as the opening Creation account in Genesis constituting two distinct literary genres at once – into what I was comfortable with . . . which led to appreciating the genius of blending two types of literature into one.
Yeah, like burning people at the stake, or drowning them.