I have often wondered why.
I’m not at all casual about the matter. As I said, I’ve given significant thought to it…and still do from time to time, because it’s a question that deserves much thought.
Not at all. Rather, I’m conveying that I’ve done some work before coming here and asking questions. I’m not asking others to do my homework for me.
Gave me a chuckle. Thanks.
Part of what I do in my classes is have the students read through the Genesis account, making a list of what happens on each day. The reason I do this is that we often determined what meaning to go with for a particular word based upon its local, and then global context (with non-local or Scriptures from over the Bible). Side note: I personally extended my own study to other creation accounts from the ancient near east to see how they thought of creation.
So we begin on Day 1 and work our way through Day 6 asking if there is any indication of how long various events took. Most of the events it is hard to say, like we can’t say ‘oh I know just how long it would take God to separate expanse from expanse.’ One interesting day though is day 3 where God commands the Earth to produce vegetation–verse 12 is very particular which reads something like:
The earth produced vegetation: seed-bearing plants according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds.
This is the first thing that provides some context to how to understand what a ‘day’ is supposed to mean. You can ask, why does the text tell us that the Earth produced vegetation, especially noting that they were seed-bearing plants. How long does that process usually take? It is an interesting question I think, and it would be reading something into the text to somehow force it to say that this process was supernaturally quick on ‘day’ 3. This type of language is strongly similar to Psalm 90, which is attributed to Moses:
3 You return mankind to the dust,
saying, “Return, descendants of Adam.”
4 For in your sight a thousand years
are like yesterday that passes by,
like a few hours of the night.
5 You end their lives; they sleep.
They are like grass that grows in the morning—
6 in the morning it sprouts and grows;
by evening it withers and dries up.
There is a lot there to unpack but I will leave it to you and others to decide. There isn’t much else in terms of a time marker other than all the stuff that is packed into day 6-
God creates land animals (could be quick), God makes man (could be quick), God puts man in the garden, God plants a garden (where the trees and such grow out of the ground), God again makes the birds and land animals (a second time?) and the man names all of them (how long would that take?), did the man do any work on this day in the Garden as well? (there’s only 24 hours to work with here 
) , the man needs to realize that he’s lonely (did the man enter into a state of loneliness after just a few hours?), the Lord knocks the man out with anesthesia and does a surgery making the woman (this probably took at least a few seconds), the man has a deep emotional response and bursts forth in poetic glory (it takes me a lot of agony before I burst forth in poetic beauty at the lifting of my agony but maybe that’s just me), God also gives them the creation mandate listed in chapter 1 and they go to bed, only to find out God is sleeping the next day when they wake up.
The point of all of this is that the text itself describes ideas and concepts locally that have a measure of time built in to them, some of which seem to be quite a bit longer than 24 hours. This does not take one to billions of years, but it does free up reading strict 24 hour periods into the text.
I think these are all valid points. However, as I explain above, interpreting “day” as longer than 24 hours does not ipso facto solve the problem.
You simply won’t find it in the text otherwise is my personal opinion. Most creation stories (when you add up the years literally only add up to several tens or hundreds of thousands of years). Interestingly enough, Hindu cosmology actually predicted the universe would repeat in 8.6 billion year cycles. That’s the only creation story that actually indicates billions of years literally.
All we can do as Christians is
a) free up the Genesis text to not mean 6-24 hour periods which reasonably can be done
b) perhaps argue that the laws of science can be used to determine age (like 2 Peter 3:4-all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation or maybe squinting at Jeremiah 33:25 and arguing that the laws of heaven and Earth are fixed)
c) can we argue that we are encouraged to study God’s natural world to learn more about Him? Sure
I don’t have any other ideas for you and want to apologize if I’ve personally come off as combative, condescending or any other of the 7Cs.
I think reversing the equation makes for more a acceptable, and even logically necessary, Biblically-consistent conclusion:
If you insist on taking Genesis 1, with its significant text-critical vulnerabilities, you literally have no Biblical method for rejecting the literal meaning of the Job text on ‘Snow’ and ‘Hail’. The Job text is comparatively more secure, being a direct quote from Yahweh to a living human witness, and being used to demonstrate the relative ignorance of Job compared to God. [How can Job’s ignorance be demonstrated by God implying that Job should know about imaginary heavenly storehouses of imaginary heavenly snow and imaginary heavenly hail?]
There are no Logical, Biblical or Text-Critical defenses for treating Genesis 1 the way you do without also treating the Job text the same way. What’s more, there is less reason to hold to a literal meaning since there are no human witnesses to this Six Day Creation, nor is the narrative of Genesis 1 written in a way that suggests humans should have known these details of the Six Days of Creation.
You are attempting to force a rejection of a figurative interpretation if there is not a one-for-one correspondence of every element of the figurative text . . . translating to some important Biblical meaning (veiled or otherwise).
Sometimes stories include figurative details that have no narrative intent other than to embellish the story.
Your approach is a thinly veiled attempt to make the requirements of a figurative interpretation so rigorous that it leaves only the literal interpretation. Nice debating tactic; but an overly muscular method of overly ambitious exegesis.
Can you point to stories of this type elsewere in the Bible?
By the way, do you believe Jesus is Lord of heaven and earth?
Do you receive the Bible as God’s word written for us?
Personally, I don’t find the Exodus passages to be extremely convincing arguments for a young earth. If the usage of yom in Genesis is indeed referring to a longer period, I don’t think it is unreasonable for God’s instructions to be of symbolic nature.
8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 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. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (Exodus 20:8-11, ESV)
12 And the Lord said to Moses, 13 “You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, ‘Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you. 14 You shall keep the Sabbath, because it is holy for you. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. 15 Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death. 16 Therefore the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations, as a covenant forever. 17 It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.’” (Exodus 31:12-17, ESV)
It is not unreasonable to think that God’s instructions for the day of rest could simply be symbolic of “God’s day of rest”, especially since we’ve agreed that God certainly did not need a recuperation day. It would be a little silly to insist that humans had an era/epoch of no work, but perfectly reasonable for God to instruct for a day of rest as a symbol.
A similar situation can be found in denominational beliefs about the sacrament. There are not many denominations that hold to Jesus’ literal words of “This is my body” and “This is my blood”.
Mike, Think for a moment: Parables! Analogical, metaphorical, anecdotal, all aimed at getting a point across. Not to mention most of Revelation! Unless you believe an actual dragon is attacking a woman about to give birth in the sky!
Ray 
I left that open as I had to run, but that is the issue. One way to look at is to ask how you can reconcile them. Can you interpret the physical evidence in such a way as to reconcile it with a literal historical interpretation? To me, the answer to that question is honestly no. Attempts to do so tend to twist both scripture and observations of creation into false statements. Can you interpret the Bible to find compatability with nature? Yes.
I’ve never thought of any of those as stories with “figurative details that have no narrative intent other than to embellish the story.”
Moreover, when someone thinks that everything in Genesis 1 beyond “God did it” is mere embellishment, I have to say that myth or fable are the two descriptive words that come to mind - and I read the Bible as dismissive of such narrative devices (1 Tim 1:4; 2 Tim 4:4, Tit 1:14).
First, just a clarification about semantics.
I see how there is a similarity between understanding body and blood in this context on the one hand and day in the Pentateuch on the other, but I would not call them both symbolic. The former I would indeed call symbolic or figurative, but the latter I think of as just different meanings for the same word. Thus I think that those who insist that understanding “day” as an indefinite period of time is being just as literal as taking it to mean 24 hours have a point.
That said, I think I will try to understand the word symbolic as you are using here:
I can see how you might say this, but doesn’t that take you from “Six days you shall labor…For in six days the Lord made…” to “Six indefinite periods of time you shall labor…For in six indefinite periods of time the Lord made…”? If not, how do you justify the mixture of “Six days you shall labor…For in six indefinite periods of time the Lord made…”
(I am not trying to challenge you; I’m trying to understand your thinking.)
I can see why someone would look at things this way. However, I can’t see it this way because God can only speak through nature implicitly, but through Scripture He can speak explicitly. All other things being equal, I think explicit communications leave less room for misunderstanding than implicit communications. On this basis, I find it easier to interpret nature to find compatibility with the Bible.
I recognize that makes me odd in this world and not just in this forum, and that’s why I’m working extra hard to make sure I’m not missing something. Thanks for helping me try to work my way through this.
I took no offense. Thanks for helping me try to work my way through this.
I’ve made it well known that I am a Unitarian Universalist. You know the position that Unitarians hold regarding Jesus.
As for the Bible’s texts… if I don’t take literally God’s quoted “ironic sarcasm” (aimed at Job regarding his ignorance of the [fictional] heavenly storehouses) … I don’t see how I could possibly take a six day creation literally.
What does your non-literal interpretation of Genesis 1 tell you, if anything, beyond “God did it”?
Right, since it doesn’t make sense for humans to work 6 eons and do no work on the seventh, it is reasonable to use the human week as a symbol for the Genesis week. The length of the week in Genesis is still open for debate (if one ignores the science) but I don’t believe that the verses in Exodus demand a literal week in Genesis.
A) I see that what separates humans from the rest of the animals is moral responsibility;
B) I see an etymological explanation for why Snakes don’t have legs and why humans should kill snakes.
C) I see a polemic exercise against any deities linked to snake or serpentine deities;
D) I see a polemic exercise against any worshippers of the Sun, Moon or the Host (aka “The Seven”).
E) An etymological story explaining why humans are not immortal, are destined to a life of labor, and why women suffer labor pains.
F) The etymological reason for the practice of Resting on the 7th day.
I’m sure there are additional themes that can be excavated from the Eden story.
An example of an ornamental embellishment (with no metaphysical or theological content) is the idea that women herald from an ancient tradition of the Lady of the Rib - which is clever word play in the Sumerian myth including a female being named Lady of the Rib (or Lady Rib) who cured GILGAMESH of pain in his ribs. The Hebrew version co-opts the pagan version’s use of the Sumerian phrase.
How do you help a man gymnast who feels he must always hold a loaded gun in his hand (even with the safety switched to “on”) while performing his gymnastic routine… but who is terrified that the gun might go off and kill him or someone he loves?
It has been explained that the gun could be unloaded… or that he could put the gun down just when he performs… but he says his convictions do not allow him either option!
I don’t believe anyone can formulate an answer for such a man.
Sorry if I missed emphasizing the embellishment aspect. Yet the stories are designed (embellished) to make a point, and every piece of it has a purpose!
Genesis 1 is a mythos!
You’re missing the point of a narrative story like this. It is defined precisely as a “Mythology” as the technical term! The word has been devalued in our society to automatically mean something “not true”. Yet, the technical term for a narrative Cosmology is a Mythos! Definition of Mythos
Even a “scientific” explanation is a mythos because it is explaining a belief structure of a group of people. Is the Scientific, or Biblical explanation a Mythos? They both are.
The question is, which one is a mythos that accurately defines the chapters of Genesis 1? They both do! As I have siad over and over, Science is the mythos of How and Bible Mythos of Why. Both correct for the venue they speak to and have authority in!
I am inclined to answer your question with another question, “Should we find any biblical reason for any age of the earth?”
As a Christian, my understanding of creation commences with the gospel according to John, proclaiming the Creator as the Word of God. I cannot see any reference to time or age in this. Once I commence with this, Genesis makes sense as teaching us the where and what of work, and the ultimate goal, God’s Sabbath rest.
To indulge in time and ages, if creation in Genesis occurs when God spoke, again it removes a scientific basis for any time (certainly I cannot think of God speaking for 24 hours, or years, or whatever).
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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