I need an explanation

[Marshall Janzen]

The division of the days of the creation are always explained by `ereb (evening) and boqer (morning), followed by the number for the day -- "one", "a second", "a third", etc. These two Hebrew (except for three uses of boqer in a figurative context related to a recovery from sorrow or grief -- e.g., For His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for a lifetime; Weeping may last for the night, But a shout of joy comes in the morning. -- Psalm 30:5) are always speaking of a literal division of an actual day.

Not sure I entirely followed this, but figurative usages of evening and morning are found in Daniel 8:26 and Psalm 65:8, among others.

Further, throughout the Old Testament, in the original Hebrew, whenever a number is applied to the word yowm (day) it always means a literal day, without exception.

Incorrect. See Hosea 6:2 for an exception.

I'm not a day-ager, but I wouldn't use the arguments above to argue against it.

 

[Mallon]

Do we not use terminology such as "When does the sun set?" or "What time is the sunrise?" or even, "The sun certainly has moved through the sky quickly this afternoon!" Does that mean we believe the sun moves? Of course not. Its a statement of perspective, not what we believe.

Exactly. It is written from man's perspective; not God's perspective. So what's the problem with believing that the creation story was written from the same POV, inspired by GOD?

 

[IisJustMe]

Not sure I entirely followed this, but figurative usages of evening and morning are found in Daniel 8:26 and Psalm 65:8, among others.

These are among those figurative passages I (apparently ineffectively) referred to in my post.

Incorrect. See Hosea 6:2 for an exception.

That isn't an exception. It is a prophetic passage relating to the ultimate rescue of Israel and the world in Christ's death and resurrection.

 

[IisJustMe]

Exactly. It is written from man's perspective; not God's perspective. So what's the problem with believing that the creation story was written from the same POV, inspired by GOD?

I'm not sure I've seen it put quite that way before.

 

[vossler]

Incorrect. See Hosea 6:2 for an exception.

I've seen this argument many times before and to be perfectly honest it isn't very strong exception at all. Here is the actual text:

He will revive us after two days; He will raise us up on the third day, That we may live before Him.

This is hardly a strong case that a number combined with a day isn't a literal day. There are many theologians and/or commentaries that will compare this verse with Jesus being raised on third day.

 

[Mallon]

I'm not sure I've seen it put quite that way before.

The way I see it, the Creation story was written from the perspective of fallible humans. It speaks of the atmosphere being a solid dome (a "firmamant") with windows in it, which hold back the blue waters of the sky when it's not raining. We read several times in the Bible of an invisible barrier than holds the sea back from enveloping the land. We read of the stars being fixed in the "firmament" of the sky, beneath the waters of the heavens beyond. The entire story is written from the perspective of the fallible human mind, the way we once saw things; not the way they are. Yet while I believe this is true of the Genesis creation account, I also believe that the story conveys the essential truths by which our Lord wants us to live. Through Genesis, we learn of our need for a Sabbath, we learn of our sinful nature and need of a Saviour, and of our place in the universe with respect to God and nature. This is what I believe by "divine inspiration". That God speaks His truths through the limitations of man. And man's limited understanding is rampantly on display throughout the pages of the Bible.

 

[Marshall Janzen]

He will revive us after two days; He will raise us up on the third day, That we may live before Him.

This is hardly a strong case that a number combined with a day isn't a literal day. There are many theologians and/or commentaries that will compare this verse with Jesus being raised on third day.

That isn't an exception. It is a prophetic passage relating to the ultimate rescue of Israel and the world in Christ's death and resurrection.

It constantly amazes me how those arguing for a literal interpretation can without blushing segue right into allegorical interpretations not explicit in a text's context. This happens with finding Satan in Ezekiel and Isaiah and many other cases as well. It's not that I disagree that a text can have allegorical meaning -- even as its primary meaning -- but just that many of those who find these meanings seem to be unaware that they are not reading the text literally.

 

[Assyrian]

I forgot to make the key argument for why the Hebrew of chapter one in Genesis must be seen in a literal light. The division of the days of the creation are always explained by `ereb (evening) and boqer (morning), followed by the number for the day -- "one", "a second", "a third", etc.

Actually as you have pointed out there, the numbers used with day are very unusual. The standard system is to say 'the first day... the second day... the third...' instead it starts off with one day... and leaves out the definite article until we get to 'the sixth day'. Even is we take the day literally I see no reason to think 'one day was the first day (in fact there was another day mentioned before day one began) or that 'a second day' followed immediately after 'one day'.

These two Hebrew (except for three uses of boqer in a figurative context related to a recovery from sorrow or grief -- e.g.,

For His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for a lifetime; Weeping may last for the night, But a shout of joy comes in the morning. -- Psalm 30:5) are always speaking of a literal division of an actual day.

Gen 49:27"Benjamin is a ravenous wolf, in the morning devouring the prey and at evening dividing the spoil."
Zeph 3:3 Her officials within her are roaring lions; her judges are evening wolves that leave nothing till the morning.
The wolves are figurative so their days are figurative too. My favourite is Psalm 90:5You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning: 6 in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers. Here we see a Psalm of Moses, the writer people quote to get their literal six day creation. He is writing a psalm that start off discussing the creation and goes on to tell us what a day is in God's sight (as a thousand years verse 4) and then shows us how evening and morning can be used figuratively too.

Further, throughout the Old Testament, in the original Hebrew, whenever a number is applied to the word yowm (day) it always means a literal day, without exception. So, while there may be Hebrew scholars who would argue that the use of yowm can mean a day-age in that signle chapter, they never apply the (broken) vocabulary rule they use to arrive at that conclusion to any other similar biblical verse.

Incorrect. See Hosea 6:2 for an exception.

This is hardly a strong case that a number combined with a day isn't a literal day. There are many theologians and/or commentaries that will compare this verse with Jesus being raised on third day.

The question is, is this a literal application of the prophecy to apply it to Jesus, or is the prophecy being applied allegorically? More to follow...

 

[Pats]

The Bible shouldn't be looked on as a science book.

 

[IisJustMe]

It constantly amazes me how those arguing for a literal interpretation can without blushing segue right into allegorical interpretations not explicit in a text's context.

Apparently I'm having a really hard time making myself clear today. Or maybe I'm assuming my generalized statements will be clear to all. At any rate, I'm not making a "segue" into allegorical interpretation in Hosea 6:2. It is a literal passage. Hosea says, in v. 1, "Let us return to the LORD. For He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has wounded us but He will bandage us."

How does the Lord heal? Through Jesus Christ.

How does Jesus heal? Through His resurrection, which of course was three days after His crucifixion.

The reference to two days to "revive us" points back to the Sabbath in the desert, when two days' worth of manna was given while all Israel rested. Thus the connection is made to Jesus (The Messiah) being Israel's revival, not just our own. Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath, and where the Sabbath revives temporally, He personally revives all, Jew and Gentile alike, eternally.

This happens with finding Satan in Ezekiel and Isaiah and many other cases as well.

As the Isaiah 14:12 reference to the "star of the morning," or as the KJV renders it, "Lucifer," characterizes some being as usurping Jesus' title of "bright morning star" and the only being repeatedly referenced throughout Scripture as desiring the worship that rightfully belongs to the Godhead, who but Satan can this be? Yes, this is an allegory, fraught with analogy, irony, oxymoron, etc., but it is a literal reference, through those storytelling venues, to Satan.

It's not that I disagree that a text can have allegorical meaning -- even as its primary meaning -- but just that many of those who find these meanings seem to be unaware that they are not reading the text literally.

Apparently there are those who chastise us "biblical literalists" who fail to comprehend the description does not mean we take absolutely every word in the Bible literally. For the most part -- and I use that qualifier knowing there are people out there who think every word in the Bible describes an actual, literal event, but I find these to be babes in Christ, with little real knowledge of the Word -- we know there is allegory, analogy, parable, etc., throughout God's word, and that His writers used such vehicles to get their point across. As I've repeatedly said, it depends on the sentence structure in Hebrew, the verb tense in Greek, and always a contextual view, to determine what method is being used to describe the literal truth of God.

I believe in the literal truth of the Bible. That is, there is no biblical passage that does not contain God's truth, there are no errors or contradictions in the Bible, there is no part of it that doesn't teach, illustrate, contemplate, or otherwise describe God's absolute truth. He did not leave us any "wiggle room" regarding righteousness, salvation, sin, or other biblical doctrines. From here, we could get into a really complex and potentially harmful discussion about translations vs. the inspired original languages, but let's not.

 

[Marshall Janzen]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it my view is that the main reason TE'ists and OEC'ists and other non-YEC'ists seek other explanations than a literal, six-day creation some 10,000 years ago is that they don't think God would function that way. Since it is the most economical use of time and resources (and we've never seen God wasteful or capricious) my question is, why wouldn't He work that way?

I think most non-YECs would say the main reason they seek other explanations is because God's creation itself shows that God didn't work that way. Claims about what God would or wouldn't do are far weaker than evidence about what God did do. In any case, why is creating the universe in six days a more economical use of time than creating it in an instant?

 

[Marshall Janzen]

I'm not making a "segue" into allegorical interpretation in Hosea 6:2. It is a literal passage. Hosea says, in v. 1, "Let us return to the LORD. For He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has wounded us but He will bandage us."

How does the Lord heal? Through Jesus Christ.

How does Jesus heal? Through His resurrection, which of course was three days after His crucifixion.

The reference to two days to "revive us" points back to the Sabbath in the desert, when two days' worth of manna was given while all Israel rested. Thus the connection is made to Jesus (The Messiah) being Israel's revival, not just our own. Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath, and where the Sabbath revives temporally, He personally revives all, Jew and Gentile alike, eternally.

If you want to call this a literal interpretation rather than an allegorical interpretation, so be it. From what I can tell, you consider it literal because the days are still literal days. However, the days aren't actually about how long it will be until Israel's rescue, but rather about the length of time between Jesus' death and resurrection.

Let's try the same thing with Genesis 1:1-2:3. I think the days are literal too, but based on Exodus 20:11 and 31:17, I think their purpose is to outline the work week and especially the Sabbath. Just as Israel would have to wait far more than two or three days to be revived, yet Jesus rose on the literal third day, so too God's creation took place over an unspecified period of time, yet the work week and Sabbath are seven literal days.

Now, I normally wouldn't call this interpretation "literal", but according to your standard above, I think it would be.

As the Isaiah 14:12 reference to the "star of the morning," or as the KJV renders it, "Lucifer," characterizes some being as usurping Jesus' title of "bright morning star" and the only being repeatedly referenced throughout Scripture as desiring the worship that rightfully belongs to the Godhead, who but Satan can this be?

Anyone full of pride -- like the king of Babylon for instance. One doesn't need to be Satan to desire to be God.

 

[Assyrian]

...The New Testament seems to apply the third day to Christ's resurrection (probably allegorically as I said), But Israel wasn't raised us on the third day on the third day he will raise us up. Now some Jews were resurrected spiritually 50 days later at Pentecost, Israel as a whole is still waiting. After two days he will revive us. How are the two days literal? I am very dubious about the two days referring to the manna. There is nothing in the passage to suggest that. Even if it was a allusion back to the Exodus, it is still a prophecy of the future. But a prophecy of what? There is nothing that fits a literal two and three days but it works beautifully as a figurative description of a gradual work of restoration.

The best illustration of numbers being used with days with a figurative meaning is Ezek 4:4-9"Then lie on your left side, and place the punishment of the house of Israel upon it. For the number of the days that you lie on it, you shall bear their punishment.
5 For I assign to you a number of days, 390 days, equal to the number of the years of their punishment. So long shall you bear the punishment of the house of Israel.
6 And when you have completed these, you shall lie down a second time, but on your right side, and bear the punishment of the house of Judah. Forty days I assign you, a day for each year.
7 And you shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem, with your arm bared, and you shall prophesy against the city.
8 And behold, I will place cords upon you, so that you cannot turn from one side to the other, till you have completed the days of your siege.
9 "And you, take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and emmer, and put them into a single vessel and make your bread from them. During the number of days that you lie on your side, 390 days, you shall eat it.

What I see OEC'ists, TE'ists, and others doing, is giving less weight to God's word than the arguable scientific evidence. Perhaps that's too harsh a judgment, but everything I see others besides YEC'ists doing is trying to make science fit Scripture, ignoring the obvious fact that God is not constrained by physical rules, laws, or limitations. Psalm 19 speaks eloquently of the evidence of creation, the joys of acknowledging His truth, and also the dangers of ignoring that evidence:

1 The heavens are telling of the glory of God;
And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.
2 Day to day pours forth speech,
And night to night reveals knowledge.
3 There is no speech, nor are there words;
Their voice is not heard.
4 Their line has gone out through all the earth,
And their utterances to the end of the world.
In them He has placed a tent for the sun,

You see, God created the universe as well as giving us the scriptures I don't see why there should be any conflict between the evidence of creation in science and what the word of God tells us. The psalm you quoted tells us that the universe is declaring the work of God's hand, and what it is telling scientists is that it has been made 15 billion years ago. It does not tell them that God changed the speed of light and the psalm tells us this is really what God made, not an illusion of light formed en route that merely looks older. The scientific evidence is sound, and the bible tells me it should be trustworthy.

On the other hand when I look at scripture I find no solid basis for the claim of some Christians that it teaches a six day creation. Genesis never even says the world was made in six days, without even getting into whether the days are literal or not. In fact the word day is used in 3 or four different ways in the first 2 chapters.

Yes God could have created the world in six days. But his creation is real, and as the real world, it show the evidence of what has happened to it. The evidence tells us that, while God could have created the world in six literal days, he didn't.

 

[steen]

I believe in the literal truth of the Bible. That is, there is no biblical passage that does not contain God's truth, there are no errors or contradictions in the Bible, there is no part of it that doesn't teach, illustrate, contemplate, or otherwise describe God's absolute truth. He did not leave us any "wiggle room" regarding righteousness, salvation, sin, or other biblical doctrines. From here, we could get into a really complex and potentially harmful discussion about translations vs. the inspired original languages, but let's not.

But are you saying that Pi=3.0?

 

[IisJustMe]

But are you saying that Pi=3.0?

The perfect 3.0 ratio of the diameter to the circumfurance, as opposed to 3.14159etc., is applied to the inner lip of the bowl. If you check the diameter of the bowl, you will see this is mathmatically accurate. The pi ratio would apply to the outer edge.

 

[gluadys]

Please don't make the obvious error of thinking David wrote of the Sun circling the earth. The relationship of the Sun to the the Earth is not the subject of vv. 5, 6. The relationship of God to His creation is the subject matter of this entire Psalm.

It wouldn't be an error to say that David wrote of the sun circling the earth, since he would have considered that a fact. But you are right in saying that is not the point of his psalm.

So the explanation that I seek is: Why ponder the error-prone, sin-based answers of man to a creation accomplished by the power of God?

Scientists can make errors, but they are also pretty good at correcting them. For what reason would you call science "sin-based"? Can anything in science be correct in its description of creation if it is sin-based? Can you show me the errors introduced into the law of gravity by the sin-based answers of man?

How big is your God? How do you claim to be a believer in part of His word, but not all of it?

I claim to be a believer in all of God's Word. Why would you assume TEs think otherwise?

 

[gluadys]

As a powerful, great, and good God, is He not able to simply speak the universe into existence?

Of course. And as a powerful, great and good God, is he not able to plan/guide the history of the universe to accomplish his will through natural processes?

the language of Genesis chapter one is literal, rather than figurative. ... But the tense and context of Genesis 1 rule out anything but a literal interpretation.

As a student and teacher of literature, I very much doubt that. Please provide an example of tense that must be literal, and the counterpart that would be used in a non-literal text.

Please indicate what features of context confirm that Genesis 1 must be literal.

 

[gluadys]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it my view is that the main reason TE'ists and OEC'ists and other non-YEC'ists seek other explanations than a literal, six-day creation some 10,000 years ago is that they don't think God would function that way.

No, it is not a matter of whether God would function in this way or that. What we think, based on the evidence God built into creation, is that he did not function in the way YECs describe.

Since it is the most economical use of time and resources (and we've never seen God wasteful or capricious) my question is, why wouldn't He work that way?[/FONT][/COLOR]

Given the fall, would not the most economical use of time and resources be to have Jesus born in the next generation instead of waiting 4,000+ years?

And why drown all life if only humans were wicked? Why not just eliminate the one problematical species?

Why has Christ still not returned to claim his church after 2,000 + years?

I think the evidence shows that God is patient. Patient enough to wait the 10 billion years it takes to form the heavy elements needed for making life-sustaining planets. Patient enough to wait the 3.8 billion years for the emergence of a species capable of communicating with God and knowing him as Creator. Patient enough to wait for a human like Abraham who would hear him and obey. Patient enough to bear with the people he chose until the time was right for his Son to come among us. Patient enought to wait 2000+ years for people to repent of sin and come to Christ before the day of judgment.

 

[gluadys]

.

I forgot to make the key argument for why the Hebrew of chapter one in Genesis must be seen in a literal light. The division of the days of the creation are always explained by `ereb (evening) and boqer (morning), followed by the number for the day -- "one", "a second", "a third", etc.

This may make the term "day" an ordinary day within the framework of the creation story. But it doesn't mean the days are part of the chronology of the history of the cosmos.

Every day in Bridget Jones Diary is properly dated to a real calendar date. Yet the whole story is fiction. There was no Bridget Jones, she never wrote a diary, and none of the events in the diary happened. But if you didn't know it was fiction, it certainly sounds real. It has the characteristics of an actual diary penned by an actual person.

 

[gluadys]

Do we not use terminology such as "When does the sun set?" or "What time is the sunrise?" or even, "The sun certainly has moved through the sky quickly this afternoon!" Does that mean we believe the sun moves? Of course not. Its a statement of perspective, not what we believe. The same could be arguably assumed about David.

Even the earliest Greek philosophers who raised the possibility that the sun, rather than the earth, occupies the centre of the cosmos lived many centuries after David. And these were in a small minority whose ideas only became acceptable when Copernicus and Galileo showed the true relationship of the earth and sun.

So, no, the same cannot be arguably assumed about David. What can be arguably assumed is that David would take for granted the common assumptions of his time. When David and his contemporaries spoke of the sun rising and setting and moving through the sky they believed they were describing actual solar motion. They had no context for considering these phrases to be mere custom.

To do so violates vocabulary laws in use for centuries, laws that are not similarly violated in non-creationist passages where the same structure exists.

Again, I would like to see an example of vocabulary, verb tense, syntax, etc. that must be literal and cannot be figurative. I taught grammar and composition for many years. And although Hebrew is not among the languages I have studied, I have studied several others. And whether it is English, French, Russian or whatever, I have never heard of a language that has this sort of structural contrast. The grammatical structure of poetry is identical to the grammatical structure of prose. The grammatical structure of an allegory is identical to the grammatical structure of a journalist's report.

Certainly, they sound different and one can usually tell when language is being used figuratively, but I don't see them using language with different vocabulary or syntax.