Words that God could have used to convey something other than a 24 hr ordinary day?
Why didn’t God use ‘quedem’ means days of old
Why didn’t God use ‘olam’ means everlasting
Why didn’t God use ‘dor’ means age
Why didn’t God use ‘tamid’ means continually
Why didn’t God use ‘ad’ means unlimited time
Why didn’t God use ‘orek’, means length of days
Why didn’t God use ‘shanah’ mean a year
Why didn’t God use ‘netsach’ means forever
Why didn’t God use ‘eth’ or
Why didn’t God use ‘moed’ means seasons
Why dodn’t God use ‘yamim’ means days of evening and morning (BEST)
You think when God put the word “day” with a number next to it, He actually meant 24 hr days? Because I think God is powerful enough to get his point across, in that He picked the word, ‘day’, because He actually meant day, and with a number next to it indicates a literal 24 hour day, my friend
I will. Thank you UPDATE: I read it. It was quite interesting, but it was lacking. It didn’t address a lot of issues. How a theistic evolution interpretation would affect biblical hermeneutics for many. Most of all, that Jesus constantly reiterates Genesis as if were fact. That would put into question God’s character and nature by allowing Jesus to promote falsehoods. i.e. Abel
(Luke 11:50-51)
50 so that the blood of all the prophets, shed since the foundation of the world, may be charged against this generation, 51 from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the house of God; yes, I tell you, it shall be charged against this generation.’
"one often finds a sense of relief expressed in noting that the sequence of days in Genesis 1 is relatively “modern,”
If this is the case. Why does a week consist of 7 days? How long has a week been 7 days?
“Attempting to be loyal to the Bible by turning the creation accounts into a kind of science or history is like trying to be loyal to the teachings of Jesus by arguing that his parables are actual historical events”
That is an oversimplified and highly inaccurate parallel he is making. We can easily see parables from reading scripture plainly. There are patterns i.e. when Jesus says, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear” . I will admit that the ‘rich man and Lazarus’ is murky among some Christians, but even those who believe it is would not be definitive.
I just want to point out that you make similar arguments of those who want to discredit the bible. To answer your question. The Israelites had originally come from Mesopotamia and Egypt, where the celestial bodies were worshiped. God was making it known to the Jews that the sun, moon, stars worshiped by their neighbors were His creation, and that all worship should be directed at the creator rather than the created. Furthermore I do not know why God created the sun. I assume the light in the beginning was God, as God is light, just as in the end, the light will be Him when He does away with the sun and moon.
(Revelation 22:5) “And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.”
As I understand it, the “yom with a number” rule is a YEC fabrication. Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe did some research into it, and found that there is no reference to it anywhere prior to the 1970s when it first appeared in literature published by the Institute for Creation Research. To the best of my knowledge, there are no Hebrew scholars independent of the young-earth creation science movement who acknowledge this rule, and most if not all of them explicitly reject it.
I’m not an expert on Hebrew, but I do know some Hebrew words. This argument that you’re proposing does not negate my points about daylight existing independently from the sun. Nor was my argument to suggest that these “days” are long periods of time … rather it was, “Should these days be taken literally or non-literally” … taken in their strict sequential order is problematic for reasons I’ve already stated … day and night cycles existing before the creation of the sun, daylight and nighttime existing with apparently no need for the sun, in contradiction to Gen. 1:14 that states the reason for their creation.
I DO believe there’s a reason why “yom” was used in Genesis 1 … but it’s not for the same reasons you propose, but rather more literary and figurative reasons.
The days of Genesis were written in a chiastic structure (day 1 relates to day 4, day 2 to day to day 5, and day 3 to day 6 … and so forth. Day 7 being the climax of the narrative) …
[quote=“Wookin_Panub, post:63, topic:5534”] Because I think God is powerful enough to get his point across, in that He picked the word, ‘day’, because He actually meant day, and with a number next to it indicates a literal 24 hour day, my friend
[/quote] … emphasis mine.
Wookin, it feels to me like you’re putting God in a box, by implying God’s power is contingent on his being able to get his point across. Not everything in the Bible is 100% crystal clear, as you yourself have concluded … but I don’t go out and start implying that God’s power is diminished because He couldn’t make it perfectly clear to me?
This ironclad “rule” is brought into question with Hosea 6:2 … which most commentaries I’ve read tend to think of it in a more figurative lens.
Interestingly, In the prophecies of Daniel, chapter 9, the word “weeks” are used to indicated “periods of seven years”
To my understanding the seven day week has Babylonian and Jewish origins. Other cultures had different types of week, like the Roman had an 8 day week, and my study on Mayans, they had a 5 day work week. (Curiously, I believe somewhere I read that during the French Revolution, some were wanting to change it to a 10 day week, but it never caught on) … the other forms of weeks died off, and the seven day week remained.
I’ve always wondered why it is no one is recorded to have observed the Sabbath, until thousands of years later when Moses came along?
Wookin, this is an ad hominem attack against me … attacking my character rather than my argument. I am simply making a common sense observation. Questioning something about the Bible, does not mean I am ridiculing. It MEANS I am engaging with the text …
My view is that Day 1 and Day 4 are referring to the same event, and that Genesis 1, taken as a whole, is a literary construction, meant to honor God, and to present theological truths to the world.
I totally agree with you Wookin. The primary focus of the narrative is to present the idea that those “things that you believe to be gods” are ACTUALLY creations, made by the one true God. That creation is good, and not the result of a pantheon of gods in combat. I actually believe this is further evidenced by the fact that the words “sun and moon” aren’t actually used in the text … rather “great lights” terminology was used, which is a rarity. To my understanding, the words used for “sun and moon” were the same words used for Sun Gods and Moon Gods. It would have sounded confusing to the Israelites to hear, that God was creating other gods…
Knowing this, however, it seems a bit strange to be arguing about “how long was God creating” (a modern question), when the questions back then would have been completely different: i.e., “Is nature attacking me? Should I worship kings as Gods? Is there one God or many gods?” …
In my personal opinion, it seems like we are trying to make Genesis 1 say more than it was intended to say.
I’ve heard this argument used before, but it doesn’t work when you think about the text critically. With this understanding, would the text have come about like this?
“And God say, “Let there be God!” and there was God. And God saw the God: that it was good. And God separated the God from the darkness. And God called the God Day, and the darkness He called Night …”
Are you saying that God created Himself, AFTER the earth was created? Did God separate himself from darkness? There are many binary distinctions made in Genesis 1 … heaven and earth … sky and land … birds of the air, fish of the sea … male and female … etc., etc. If the light spoken of is God himself, then in order for the text to be consistent, I would then have to conclude that “darkness” in the text was the opposite of God … not a physical darkness, but some sort of evil entity.
Taken even further things get even weirder. “And God made two great lights … to divide God from the darkness” … this interpretation, for me, makes the text inconsistent and theologically confusing.
I would caution against using Revelation to give a scientific understanding of the universe. Much of Revelations uses very apocalyptic and highly symbolic language. At one point there is a dragon whose tail wipes away a third of the stars in the night sky and sends them cascading toward earth.
In Genesis 1:14 it tells us why God created the sun … to divide the light from the dark; to mark signs, and seasons, and days, and years.
Thank you for reading Hyers’ article, Wookin. I’m sorry you found it lacking, but of course there are so many issues related to Genesis One that cannot be addressed in any single article: there’s just too much that can be said!
I’ve quoted part of your reply to @Mazrocon b/c it’s relevant to the point I want to make. I wouldn’t say that “God was making it known to the Hebrews” that their neighbors worshiped the stars, since they already knew that for themselves simply by living in that part of the world at that time. But, I’m glad we agree (and I include Hyers as part of “we” here) that demolishing polytheism was a big part of God’s message in Genesis One.
Concerning Egypt vs Babylon, let me note that the Egyptian religious calendar (not their secular calendar) has months beginning in the morning, after the disappearance of the crescent moon the previous night; whereas the Babylonian calendar has months beginning in the evening instead. OK, what’s my point? The “days” in Genesis follow the Babylonian pattern, not the Egyptian pattern. This is (IMO) a singularly powerful piece of evidence that Genesis One was put into its current literary form during the period when the Hebrews were influenced by the Babylonians, not in the time of Moses who wrote under Egyptian influence. YEC authors typically hold that Moses wrote Genesis, but if so then someone else probably rewrote it later. Certainly the story as we find it now post-dates the Babylonian creation stories, and much of the content of Genesis One is best seen as a commentary on those stories, in which God presents a far more profound theological picture of nature.
Thank you, Dr. Davis, for your thought provoking article.
As I entered the Biologos site this morning, I read a testimony from Reverend Harvey Clemons Jr. which stated that Biologos, ‘creates a safe atmosphere to pursue probing and intellectual conversations while holding to our faith and confidence in God the Creator’
Then I go on to read your article which states, ‘Young-Earth creationists should cease their efforts to convince the lay Christian public that geology supports a young Earth when it does not do so. To continue that effort is misguided and is detrimental to the health of the church and the cause of Christ.’
I’m not sure how that creates a safe atmosphere to pursue probing and intellectual conversations - unless all involved in that conversation agree with Biologos’ positions. So if I understand you correctly, YEC’s, as an expression of faithfulness to Christ, should repent of this position and agree with you. So telling Christians to ‘cease and desist’ disagreeing with Biologos is the same as being faithful to Christ and His word? Really?
The age off the earth is a difficult issue, with much unresolved on both sides of the issue I believe.
What is more clear is the biblical account of a worldwide flood.
“The water prevailed more and more upon the earth, so that all the high mountains everywhere under the heavens were covered. The water prevailed fifteen cubits higher, and the mountains were covered. All flesh that moved on the earth perished, birds and cattle and beasts and every swarming thing that swarms upon the earth, and all mankind; of all that was on the dry land, all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, died.” (Genesis 7:19-22, NASB)
What interpretation of this allows a local flood? I believe that at some point you have to actually believe what the Scriptures say even if you can’t fully explain it. Such is the nature of faith, described by the writer of Hebrews as ‘the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen’ (Hebrews 11:1)
As Christians, let us describe faithfulness to God not in terms of our own fallible opinions and observations, but on the infallible word of God.
"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.
Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.
If they find a Christian mistaken in a field in which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?
Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although “they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion”."
No. He said very clearly “Young-Earth creationists should cease their efforts to convince the lay Christian public that geology supports a young Earth when it does not do so”. He said nothing about you changing or repenting of your conviction in YEC. He said nothing about you not being allowed to talk about YEC. He said nothing about you not being able to teach or preach YEC.
The point he made is that in doing so YECs should not claim support for their position from geology, since geology offers no support for YEC views and contradicts them flatly.
The same interpretation held by the first century Jewish writers Philo of Alexandria and Flavius Josephus, as well as some of the rabbinical commentary in the Talmud, and a number of the early Christian writers up to the fourth century, especially within Syrian Christianity. If you like I can walk you through it. The evidence is right there in the text.
You mean a lie. First of all, I do not respect Hugh Ross’s use of biblical hermeneutics. It is atrocious. Secondly, it is called systematic theology. We see nothing in ALL of scripture when a number is put next to a day (yom), that it doesn’t mean the number of those days. Courtesy of Gotquestions.org
“The Hebrew word yom is used 2301 times in the Old Testament. Outside of Genesis 1, yom plus a number (used 410 times) ALWAYS indicates an ordinary day, i.e., a 24-hour period. The words “evening” and “morning” together (38 times) ALWAYS indicate an ordinary day. Yom + “evening” or “morning” (23 times) ALWAYS indicates an ordinary day. Yom + “night” (52 times) ALWAYS indicates an ordinary day.”
YECs who make this argument are anything but inconsistent in their use of scripture, my friend
That’s because of your bias presupposition interprets your understanding of Genesis 1. You believe in secular science in the origin of the world, so you “interpret” mold and shape Genesis 1 to fit your model. I have noticed a pattern with theistic evolutionists such as yourselves. You constantly go outside of scripture to make your arguments for scripture. People in my camp stay inside of scripture in order to interpret scripture. “solas scriptura” I myself try not to get into the mind of God, my friend
The bible does not tell us why God replaced the first light (unknown) with the second light (sun) God could have easily measured days etc… with the first light, and how do I know that? because he said that He did (solas scriptura). You injected that so that it would fit with your presupposition that day is a longer period of time.
The difference is our scholarship follows a biblical model in their use of hermeneutics; whereas theistic evolutionists follow a secular scientific model
There is no difference. You are relying on the same scholarship as everyone else, while wrongly claiming you are only reading the Word of God and only relying on the Bible. Theistic Evolutionists don’t need any science at all in order to interpret Scripture. The irony is that it’s YECs who repeatedly appeal to science in their interpretation of Scripture.
Wookin, irrespective of what you think of Hugh Ross’s use of biblical hermeneutics, he makes a valid point here that, yet again, you have not addressed.
Who were the Hebrew scholars who were making the “yom with a number” argument prior to its appearance in 1970s YEC literature?
Who are the Hebrew scholars who are making the “yom with a number” argument today independently of the young-earth creation science movement?
And no, gotquestions.org is not independent of YEC. It quotes YEC claims about science verbatim with no fact-checking, including claims which can easily be shown to be untrue.
Incidentally, Hosea 6:1-2 is usually cited as an exception to this “rule.” I’ll leave it to others to argue the merits of this one.
I find that impossible to believe as theistic evolutionists believe in ape men whereas the bible speaks of two people, Theistic evolutionists believes in billions of years as bible doesn’t even come close to hinting that. I could go on and on.
You are welcome to research the below claim, my friend
“The Hebrew word yom is used 2301 times in the Old Testament. Outside of Genesis 1, yom plus a number (used 410 times) ALWAYS indicates an ordinary day, i.e., a 24-hour period. The words “evening” and “morning” together (38 times) ALWAYS indicate an ordinary day. Yom + “evening” or “morning” (23 times) ALWAYS indicates an ordinary day. Yom + “night” (52 times) ALWAYS indicates an ordinary day.”
