A Literal Reading: Genesis 1

[cubinity]

The Creation story in the Bible, when read literally, is not beyond the capacity to be accepted along with the modern understandings of evolution and science.

The two are not mutually exclusive.

It all simply takes our willingness to appreciate the subtle nuances in the text that can be seen in light of modern discovery, and then understood in ways the old reads could not have imagined.

 

[cubinity]

In my OP, I point out how there is nothing in the Genesis text to bind us to understanding a "day" as being a twenty-four hour cycle of evenings and mornings and days and nights casually experienced by the stationary observer.

I came to this conclusion by observing in the text that the author focused on a point-of-view character that was not standing on solid ground, but hovering over water, fully capable of moving about at any speed it chose.

When we compare the experiences of the casual observer today who moved about the globe at high speeds with the described experiences of evenings and mornings and days and nights in the text, we can appreciate that there is nothing logically binding the author's description of a day to any specific amount of time.

Thus, the six days of creation could have lasted millions of our years without conflicting with the text's literal description.

 

[Hentenza]

In my OP, I point out how there is nothing in the Genesis text to bind us to understanding a "day" as being a twenty-four hour cycle of evenings and mornings and days and nights casually experienced by the stationary observer.

I came to this conclusion by observing in the text that the author focused on a point-of-view character that was not standing on solid ground, but hovering over water, fully capable of moving about at any speed it chose.

When we compare the experiences of the casual observer today who moved about the globe at high speeds with the described experiences of evenings and mornings and days and nights in the text, we can appreciate that there is nothing logically binding the author's description of a day to any specific amount of time.

Thus, the six days of creation could have lasted millions of our years without conflicting with the text's literal description.

Its interesting that you chose to keep the "movement" of the Spirit of God as a "point" of movable reference when the grammar states that the Spirit of God hovered over the waters which covered the whole globe at that point in time. If the Spirit hovered over the waters of the whole planet then a "point" of reference from the Spirit can not be used as a movable point.

Secondly, the literal reading, which merely states that the meaning of the words are 'normal" unless a modifier is included, does not support a 'day' longer then a evening-morning cycle. Genesis 1:5 begins the cycle of a normal day. With the creation of light in verse 3 it is now possible to have a cycle of light and darkness which God calls "day" and "night". Evening is the transition of day/light to darkness/night. Having an evening and a morning amounts to having one full day, hence Gen. 1:5 expresses evening plus morning equals one day (or day one as one chooses to translate yom echad). Remember that there is no article "the" in verse 5 so one can not translate it as "the" first day but as day one. God is defining what a natural day is. A natural day is not thousands, millions, or billions of years long but a evening-morning cycle. Another evening-morning cycle constituted "a" second day, another evening-morning cycle constituted "a" third day, and so on. There are no grammatical modifiers to suggest "yom" is anything beyond a normal day in Gen. 1 or 2.

 

[cubinity]

Its interesting that you chose to keep the "movement" of the Spirit of God as a "point" of movable reference when the grammar states that the Spirit of God hovered over the waters which covered the whole globe at that point in time. If the Spirit hovered over the waters of the whole planet then a "point" of reference from the Spirit can not be used as a movable point.

Secondly, the literal reading, which merely states that the meaning of the words are 'normal" unless a modifier is included, does not support a 'day' longer then a evening-morning cycle. Genesis 1:5 begins the cycle of a normal day. With the creation of light in verse 3 it is now possible to have a cycle of light and darkness which God calls "day" and "night". Evening is the transition of day/light to darkness/night. Having an evening and a morning amounts to having one full day, hence Gen. 1:5 expresses evening plus morning equals one day (or day one as one chooses to translate yom echad). Remember that there is no article "the" in verse 5 so one can not translate it as "the" first day but as day one. God is defining what a natural day is. A natural day is not thousands, millions, or billions of years long but a evening-morning cycle. Another evening-morning cycle constituted "a" second day, another evening-morning cycle constituted "a" third day, and so on. There are no grammatical modifiers to suggest "yom" is anything beyond a normal day in Gen. 1 or 2.

You continually bring up great points in your posts. I am not ignoring them.

Here is why I have kept that argument going about the Spirit moving and not being over all of the globe at once.

Evening and morning, as well as day and night, are local phenomenon, not globe phenomenon. In other words, the Earth never experiences, as a whole, nighttime. One half of the globe is always illuminated, and one half is always in darkness. It is the rotation of the globe that gives the local perception of days and nights.

Therefore, a being that experiences the entire globe at once could not possibly experience evenings and mornings, days or nights, but always realizes the reality of a half-lit globe.

Unless the mechanism that provided light before the sun did flicker, a globe-consuming spirit could not experience these phenomenon. If the light source was flickering, we cannot argue for any duration as we have no physical evidence of what was happening. Therefore, in the OP, I specified that in this particular argument, we will assume the light source is, in every imaginable respect, just like the sun.

Since the character identifies the occurrence of day and night and evening and morning before there are any local observers of that phenomenon, then a simple reading of the text tells me that the one observer present is taking on a local perception, and not over all of the globe at once, as you say in your posts.

Now, if you can set aside your idea of a globe-covering spirit and step down into the idea of a local observer, and you can accept what the text says, that the local observer is not fixed to a single point on the globe but is hovering over it, then we can proceed to the next point you make.

For a local observer not fixed to a single location on the globe, time may continue to tick normally in terms of the decay of their physical body (assuming the observer possesses one, as you and I would), but the experience of days and nights is a function of the observers motion, not the rotation of the globe he or she is not attached to.

In other words, not fixed to the ground, a hovering observer could literally hide behind the mass of the planet indefinitely, casting itself in a permanent night.

Therefore, if our observer can stay on the dark side of the planet for as long as it wants, and it is measuring days in terms of its experience of evenings and mornings, then a single day could last millions of years, could it not?

Therefore, I am not ignoring your ideas about what is said in the text, but actually responding to them and accepting that they do not cancel out the descriptions I am giving.

Does that make sense?

 

[Hentenza]

You continually bring up great points in your posts. I am not ignoring them.

Here is why I have kept that argument going about the Spirit moving and not being over all of the globe at once.

Evening and morning, as well as day and night, are local phenomenon, not globe phenomenon. In other words, the Earth never experiences, as a whole, nighttime. One half of the globe is always illuminated, and one half is always in darkness. It is the rotation of the globe that gives the local perception of days and nights.

Therefore, a being that experiences the entire globe at once could not possibly experience evenings and mornings, days or nights, but always realizes the reality of a half-lit globe.

Unless the mechanism that provided light before the sun did flicker, a globe-consuming spirit could not experience these phenomenon. If the light source was flickering, we cannot argue for any duration as we have no physical evidence of what was happening. Therefore, in the OP, I specified that in this particular argument, we will assume the light source is, in every imaginable respect, just like the sun.

Since the character identifies the occurrence of day and night and evening and morning before there are any local observers of that phenomenon, then a simple reading of the text tells me that the one observer present is taking on a local perception, and not over all of the globe at once, as you say in your posts.

Now, if you can set aside your idea of a globe-covering spirit and step down into the idea of a local observer, and you can accept what the text says, that the local observer is not fixed to a single point on the globe but is hovering over it, then we can proceed to the next point you make.

For a local observer not fixed to a single location on the globe, time may continue to tick normally in terms of the decay of their physical body (assuming the observer possesses one, as you and I would), but the experience of days and nights is a function of the observers motion, not the rotation of the globe he or she is not attached to.

In other words, not fixed to the ground, a hovering observer could literally hide behind the mass of the planet indefinitely, casting itself in a permanent night.

Therefore, if our observer can stay on the dark side of the planet for as long as it wants, and it is measuring days in terms of its experience of evenings and mornings, then a single day could last millions of years, could it not?

Therefore, I am not ignoring your ideas about what is said in the text, but actually responding to them and accepting that they do not cancel out the descriptions I am giving.

Does that make sense?

I understand what you are basing your argument on but the issue is that there is nothing in the text depicting a movable point of view that stays in either the dark or light portions. The account is merely told from a historical point of view. God is omnipresent and so is His Spirit consequently God or/and His Spirit are in all places at all times. There simply is no reason to position God's Spirit in one area or the other affecting what God defined as "one" day.

 

[shernren]

Secondly, the literal reading, which merely states that the meaning of the words are 'normal" unless a modifier is included, does not support a 'day' longer then a evening-morning cycle.

You are importing your conclusion into your premises by use of that sneaky word "normal".

Let me explain with an example. Suppose I were to argue that Mary was not a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus. My evidence is: "... Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ." (Matt 1:16, ESV) Now, everywhere else in the Bible, when a child is born to a woman, that woman has had sex with someone. That is the "normal" meaning or implication of "born". So, as a normal mother, Mary must have also had sex with Joseph in order to be conceived with Jesus!

Can you see how the argument fails? The conclusion I wanted to reach was actually "Mary was a normal mother". But I assumed it in the course of the argument. And in this case the assumption (heh!) is invalid, but the "modifier" that you speak of is not so much in the text (i.e. in verse 16 itself) as it is in the context: if we read on a little further, we find that Mary was in fact as abnormal a mother as you could get!

So it is with Genesis 1. If you simply insist that the days of Genesis 1 are "normal" days, you are really assuming what you actually set out to prove. And again, there is no evidence in the text itself ("there was evening, and morning, the first day") to indicate that anything other than a normal day is meant - but the context leaves room for the days to be abnormal. The earth is formless and void. The Spirit is hovering over the waters. God is poofing things into existence left, right, and center. There isn't even a Solar System in existence for the first three days! Those obviously aren't normal conditions, any more than having an angel announce your baby's name is a normal conception.

The most common canard at this point is that the Earth could have been rotating about its own axis and that rotation would have defined the length of the day. The first thing to note is that there is absolutely nothing in the text of Genesis 1 (or indeed in the rest of Scripture, as far as I'm aware) to indicate that the Earth is at any point rotating about its own axis. The creationist has imported secular, extra-Biblical science! The second thing to note is that even were the Earth rotating, are we told that its period of rotation in Genesis 1 was 24 hours long? Hardly. Again the creationist is importing extra-Biblical science (since the Bible itself never specifies the length of a day, assuming that its readers will measure it without supernatural help).

But most importantly, this does not follow a literal interpretation of the text, the very thing creationists claim to be upholding. For what does the text say determines the length of the day?

And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years ... " (Gen 1:14, ESV)
​

In other words, if one wishes to be literalistic, it is the heavenly lights that determine the length of the day, not any intrinsic movement of the Earth! Now there are three days before Gen 1:14; what determined their length? Maybe God did, or maybe some unknown astronomical reference point did, but it was not the Earth's rotation itself which determined the length of the day. For if it was so, why couldn't the Earth's rotation also determine the length of the day in Gen 1:14? If God meant to say "And let the motions of the Earth under the lights be for signs and for seasons, and for days and for years", why didn't He just ... say so?

So, ironically, the text itself gives ample proof that the first three days need not have been exactly the same length that days are today.

 

[cubinity]

I understand what you are basing your argument on but the issue is that there is nothing in the text depicting a movable point of view that stays in either the dark or light portions. The account is merely told from a historical point of view. God is omnipresent and so is His Spirit consequently God or/and His Spirit are in all places at all times. There simply is no reason to position God's Spirit in one area or the other affecting what God defined as "one" day.

There was a globe in total darkness. Then, God made light, and that light illuminated only half of the globe, not the entire thing. He called the light side of the globe day, and the dark side night.

Are we still following? If not, let's discuss that.

 

[Hentenza]

You are importing your conclusion into your premises by use of that sneaky word "normal".

Actually no. I am using the semantic range of the definition of yom.

Let me explain with an example. Suppose I were to argue that Mary was not a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus. My evidence is: "... Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ." (Matt 1:16, ESV) Now, everywhere else in the Bible, when a child is born to a woman, that woman has had sex with someone. That is the "normal" meaning or implication of "born". So, as a normal mother, Mary must have also had sex with Joseph in order to be conceived with Jesus!


Can you see how the argument fails? The conclusion I wanted to reach was actually "Mary was a normal mother". But I assumed it in the course of the argument. And in this case the assumption (heh!) is invalid, but the "modifier" that you speak of is not so much in the text (i.e. in verse 16 itself) as it is in the context: if we read on a little further, we find that Mary was in fact as abnormal a mother as you could get!

That is not my argument at all. Most words have a range of semantic meaning which is usually determined by the context in which is used.

So it is with Genesis 1. If you simply insist that the days of Genesis 1 are "normal" days, you are really assuming what you actually set out to prove. And again, there is no evidence in the text itself ("there was evening, and morning, the first day") to indicate that anything other than a normal day is meant - but the context leaves room for the days to be abnormal. The earth is formless and void. The Spirit is hovering over the waters. God is poofing things into existence left, right, and center. There isn't even a Solar System in existence for the first three days! Those obviously aren't normal conditions, any more than having an angel announce your baby's name is a normal conception.

1. There is Hebrew article is verse 5 for "the" and the numerical is numeral not ordinal so the actual translation is day one not "the first day".

2. There is no grammatical modifiers nor is there anything in the context to suggest other than a normal evening-morning cycle.

3. God is sustaining His young creation to this point just as He does now. The days of creations are depicted linearly. The light that God created in verse 3 is what He used to define an evening-morning cycle not the sun itself since the sun was not created until the fourth day. However, no textual or grammatical reason exists to change the evening-morning cycle clearly defined in verse 5.

The most common canard at this point is that the Earth could have been rotating about its own axis and that rotation would have defined the length of the day. The first thing to note is that there is absolutely nothing in the text of Genesis 1 (or indeed in the rest of Scripture, as far as I'm aware) to indicate that the Earth is at any point rotating about its own axis. The creationist has imported secular, extra-Biblical science! The second thing to note is that even were the Earth rotating, are we told that its period of rotation in Genesis 1 was 24 hours long? Hardly. Again the creationist is importing extra-Biblical science (since the Bible itself never specifies the length of a day, assuming that its
readers will measure it without supernatural help).

1. Creationists do not "throw" away science but interpret science from a different framework just as naturalists interpret science from a priori naturalistic framework.

2. There is nothing in the text of Genesis 1 or 2 that refute a rotating Earth. In fact, there is nothing anywhere in scripture to refute that the Earth was not rotating from the moment of its creation. All that one needs to create a day and a night, as God defined it, is a light shining from one direction on a rotating body, an evening-morning cycle.

But most importantly, this does not follow a literal interpretation of the text, the very thing creationists claim to be upholding. For what does the text say determines the length of the day?

And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years ... " (Gen 1:14, ESV)
​

In other words, if one wishes to be literalistic, it is the heavenly lights that determine the length of the day, not any intrinsic movement of the Earth! Now there are three days before Gen 1:14; what determined their length? Maybe God did, or maybe some unknown astronomical reference point did, but it was not the Earth's rotation itself which determined the length of the day. For if it was so, why couldn't the Earth's rotation also determine the length of the day in Gen 1:14? If God meant to say "And let the motions of the Earth under the lights be for signs and for seasons, and for days and for years", why didn't He just ... say so?

Why would He have to further define what He already defined in verse 5 (although He did by referencing the evening-morning cycle in all 6 days of creation)? God defined one day as that of "a" evening-morning cycle. There is no grammatical or contextual modifier to allow a reading of 'yom" as anything other than a normal, evening to morning cycle day.

So, ironically, the text itself gives ample proof that the first three days need not have been exactly the same length that days are today.

Where?

 

[Hentenza]

There was a globe in total darkness. Then, God made light, and that light illuminated only half of the globe, not the entire thing. He called the light side of the globe day, and the dark side night.

Are we still following? If not, let's discuss that.

I'm following.

Yes, the globe was in total darkness. Yes, the light illuminated one side of the globe and not the other. Yes, God defined yom as an evening-morning cycle just as what we have today. No, the text does not support a movable point of reference from Earth.

 

[cubinity]

I'm following.

Yes, the globe was in total darkness. Yes, the light illuminated one side of the globe and not the other. Yes, God defined yom as an evening-morning cycle just as what we have today. No, the text does not support a movable point of reference from Earth.

In what way, if any, does the text mandate a fixed point of reference on the Earth?

 

[Hentenza]

In what way, if any, does the text mandate a fixed point of reference on the Earth?

It doesn't but it doesn't support a movable one either. The narration is historical.

 

[cubinity]

It doesn't but it doesn't support a movable one either. The narration is historical.

Can you explain what you mean and encompass when you use the expression, "The narration is historical?"

 

[Hentenza]

Can you explain what you mean and encompass when you use the expression, "The narration is historical?"

Sure. The narration simply describes what happened. Since there was no one there to witness these events (prior to Adam and Eve) other than the Trinity then what we have is God's account as the only witness to creation.

 

[cubinity]

Sure. The narration simply describes what happened. Since there was no one there to witness these events (prior to Adam and Eve) other than the Trinity then what we have is God's account as the only witness to creation.

And since that witness defines a day as a single evening and a single morning, we are left with a definition of day as that which contains one evening and one morning.

Since this is a historical record of a God telling a mortal who has no understanding of the mechanism that causes his localized experience of day and night what happened in a solar system he cannot possibly understand, then we must assume the ignorant human's definitions of the words used, and not the ultimate meanings of the things being described. Is that, or something like it, what you are saying?

 

[Hentenza]

And since that witness defines a day as a single evening and a single morning, we are left with a definition of day as that which contains one evening and one morning.

Yep.

Since this is a historical record of a God telling a mortal who has no understanding of the mechanism that causes his localized experience of day and night what happened in a solar system he cannot possibly understand, then we must assume the ignorant human's definitions of the words used, and not the ultimate meanings of the things being described. Is that, or something like it, what you are saying?

You lost me here. :o

 

[Sum1sGruj]

Sure. The narration simply describes what happened. Since there was no one there to witness these events (prior to Adam and Eve) other than the Trinity then what we have is God's account as the only witness to creation.

From what I gather, we can only assume that the author was given this enlightenment from God rather then actually witnessing it.

 

[cubinity]

You lost me here. :o

The author of Genesis - that is, the human that wrote it down - was told a tale by God.

But, for God to communicate to said author, God had to use language the author understood.

So, when God spoke of evenings and mornings and days and nights and light and darkness, He intentionally spoke of things in a context the author would understand.

Thus, he did not discuss rotating, half-lit globes or anything astronomical, really.

God limited the story to what the author could understand and write down, in spite of the author's ignorance regarding astronomical things.

Follow?

 

[Hentenza]

The author of Genesis - that is, the human that wrote it down - was told a tale by God.

But, for God to communicate to said author, God had to use language the author understood.

So, when God spoke of evenings and mornings and days and nights and light and darkness, He intentionally spoke of things in a context the author would understand.

Thus, he did not discuss rotating, half-lit globes or anything astronomical, really.

God limited the story to what the author could understand and write down, in spite of the author's ignorance regarding astronomical things.

Follow?

Yes I do.

The bible was written by men under the guidance of the Spirit consequently anthropomorphisms are common and it needed to be understood by all generations since then. The account is merely told so that all could understand it from their human perspective.

 

[cubinity]

Yes I do.

The bible was written by men under the guidance of the Spirit consequently anthropomorphisms are common and it needed to be understood by all generations since then. The account is merely told so that all could understand it from their human perspective.

But... we don't understand it from our human perspective. Isn't that the point of all this? The descriptions in the text are difficult to reconcile with our perspective at this point.

Now, I accept that the descriptions were understood by the author and his timely audience. However, today we have a much better understanding of astronomy then they did, and that understanding is difficult to reconcile with the content of the text.

Therefore, I'll agree that the original audience understood it from their perspective, but that says very little about our understanding it from our perspective today.

For example, the very fact that light on earth precedes the astronomical bodies by four days is completely misunderstood to a generation that accepts that light is produced by those astronomical bodies and reaches us in a measurable amount of time determined by the speed of light. Quite frankly, this description isn't really understandable at all to our generation, unless we disregard concepts very important to our generation, which just seems counter-intuitive...

 

[Sum1sGruj]

God is not the author of confusion. That is also something to reconcile if one concludes that the Creation accounts were issued by Him.
That would mean that the context must be taken into account thoroughly, even if it doesn't mean to take it literally.