Genesis 1, a day, and Billions of years

[Berserk]

The scholarly consensus among OT scholars is that the first creation story (the Priestly creation story in 1:1-2:4a is a poetic liturgical piece composed for worship in the Jerusalem temple to justify Sabbath rest. These scholars point to the poetic liturgical repetition: "And God said...And it was so...And God saw that it was good... Evening came, morning followed, the first (2nd, etc.) day.

2 facts demonstrate that 7 24-hour days are not envisaged here.
(1) The evening-morning transition is based on the rotatation of the Earth as it revolves around the sun. But in this story the sun is not even created until the 4th day! So the evening-morning transition makes no sense for earlier days of creation.
(2) The pattern of the 7th day breaks the pattern because the expected phrase "Evening came, morning followed the 7th day is omitted. Why? Because there is not transition from the 7th day to the 8th day, and so on, and so, we are still living in the 7th day.

 

[quietthinker]

(1) The evening-morning transition is based on the rotatation of the Earth as it revolves around the sun. But in this story the sun is not even created until the 4th day! So the evening-morning transition makes no sense for earlier days of creation.

really??....blow me down, I didn't know that day and night were determined by the Earth going around the Sun; I thought it was the determined by the earth rotating on its axis.....Shucks, I better check I've got ten fingers as well....all my counting might be skew as well!

 

[Ronald Nolette]

Not worth responding to. The last sentence evidences your confusion. The galaxy is settled in its orbit the same as the sun and the moon.
.

No it evidences my ability to read a text as it is and not add unfounded ages where there is none suggested in the Bible at all!

1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

God created light first!

14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

See verse 15? God said that teh stars and sun and moon were to give light to the earth and it was so! Not that it would be so after an indefinite period of time.

for all we know, God made the light and then reduced the light to the paths they travel in the universe! Science will never know! But the god who was there said it was so!

 

[Ronald Nolette]

I think you misunderstood. What I said was this:

Creation happened in 6 days.
Mankind was created on the 6th day.
YHVH rested on the Sabbath.
Mankind was here for an undisclosed period.
Sometime after the first Sabbath, Adam was formed.
How long after is not mentioned.

Adam was formed on the sixth day- Just as the bible says.

Genesis 2 is a recap of the creative week for the first part.

How long it took God to plant and grow teh garden and place Adam and eve init we do not know. But what you are ijmplying is God created a bunch of people, and yet we are all descended from Adam.

Did all have to go through some kind of test?
did all fall when Adam fell?
Why are they only vaguely implied and not mentioned in the bible?

It is always dangerous to make conclusions of Gods Word with only vague implications!

 

[Ronald Nolette]

So the first few days really can be an unspecified amount of time that is not necessarily 24 hour periods…they aren’t talking about a day as we see a day. They’re rather talking about something other than that.

1. How do you know they are not talking about a day as we call a day?
2. God specified the time like He did with the other 4 creation days:

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

He specifically spelled out teh time frame--- "an evening and a morning, a first day..."

To make these which are identical as the other four days allegorical days or unspecified time frames has no warrant to do so in the language and consistency of language.

 

[Ronald Nolette]

Its right there hidden in plain sight...."there was evening and morning a first (second, third ect.) day."

The Jewish day began at sundown, so for it to have been a 24 hour "day" it would have said..."there was evening and evening a first (second, third etc.) day".

These were not 24 hour periods....why do they have to be?

Because we now know that a day is a 24 hour period! They may not have known and they counted the day less precise as we do, but that difference is the same as saying tomahtoe or tomaytoe

 

[Happy Trails]

Adam was formed on the sixth day- Just as the bible says.

Genesis 2 is a recap of the creative week for the first part.

How long it took God to plant and grow teh garden and place Adam and eve init we do not know. But what you are ijmplying is God created a bunch of people, and yet we are all descended from Adam.

Did all have to go through some kind of test?
did all fall when Adam fell?
Why are they only vaguely implied and not mentioned in the bible?

It is always dangerous to make conclusions of Gods Word with only vague implications!

If Chapter 2 is a recap, why are the instructions completely different? Adam cannot go fill up the earth AND tend to the Garden.

The rest are straw men.

 

[stunnedbygrace]

1. How do you know they are not talking about a day as we call a day?
2. God specified the time like He did with the other 4 creation days:

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

He specifically spelled out teh time frame--- "an evening and a morning, a first day..."

To make these which are identical as the other four days allegorical days or unspecified time frames has no warrant to do so in the language and consistency of language.

First of all, as usual, you don’t read carefully enough. Can be or could be are phrases that mean something.
Secondly, well…never mind, you can read the whole thread if you desire to. Or not.

 

[Happy Trails]

The scholarly consensus among OT scholars is that the first creation story (the Priestly creation story in 1:1-2:4a is a poetic liturgical piece composed for worship in the Jerusalem temple to justify Sabbath rest. These scholars point to the poetic liturgical repetition: "And God said...And it was so...And God saw that it was good... Evening came, morning followed, the first (2nd, etc.) day.

2 facts demonstrate that 7 24-hour days are not envisaged here.
(1) The evening-morning transition is based on the rotatation of the Earth as it revolves around the sun. But in this story the sun is not even created until the 4th day! So the evening-morning transition makes no sense for earlier days of creation.
(2) The pattern of the 7th day breaks the pattern because the expected phrase "Evening came, morning followed the 7th day is omitted. Why? Because there is not transition from the 7th day to the 8th day, and so on, and so, we are still living in the 7th day.

The consensus of NT scholars is that Jesus legalized sin, except the ones a particular person says are still a sin. Scripture shows that fundamental concept is demonstrably false. So, their opinions mean very little.

Your first "fact" means that there was no time at all until someone invented the clock. You are arguing that the absence of a measuring device equals the absence of that which is measured.
Your second "fact" is equally flawed because it does not acknowledge 2 Peter 3:8 as a prophetic utterance. We have had 6 days of human history. The 7th day, the day of rest, is the 1,000-year reign of Messiah. Afterwards, we have the 2nd resurrection and the judgment of the nations.

 

[stunnedbygrace]

The consensus of NT scholars is that Jesus legalized sin

Whoa…thumbs up!

 

[Ronald Nolette]

If Chapter 2 is a recap, why are the instructions completely different? Adam cannot go fill up the earth AND tend to the Garden.

The rest are straw men.

Wrong and I don't think you know what a straw man is!

But if you go to a Hebrew grammar guide, you will see when God made male and female He made just a single one each!

Adam could fill teh earth in time. I am sorry you feel the need Adam had to do it in a little bit of time!

And what instructions are completely different???

 

[Ronald Nolette]

First of all, as usual, you don’t read carefully enough. Can be or could be are phrases that mean something.
Secondly, well…never mind, you can read the whole thread if you desire to. Or not.

Well I was simply responding to what you said in post 97. Language, construct and grammar do not justify calling the first 2 days unspecified time frames and the rest normal days.

The whole conjecture about light and darkness is just that conjecture! You imply Jesus was created because God created the light and separated it from darkness.

Tohu wa bohu in its usual usage simply means formless and empty.

The hwole precreation creation of angels and the Luciferian fall is not based on Scripture but by attempting to make deductions based on vague implications.

 

[stunnedbygrace]

Ronald, you are very stubborn.

 

[Happy Trails]

Wrong and I don't think you know what a straw man is!

But if you go to a Hebrew grammar guide, you will see when God made male and female He made just a single one each!

Adam could fill teh earth in time. I am sorry you feel the need Adam had to do it in a little bit of time!

And what instructions are completely different???

I know exactly what a straw man is. It is the irrelevant and easily rebutted point you hope is the lynchpin of my claim.

====

Straw man 1:
How long it took God to plant and grow teh garden and place Adam and eve init we do not know. But what you are ijmplying is God created a bunch of people, and yet we are all descended from Adam.

A: Adam's offspring blending with an existing population would make us all descendants of Adam. Moot.

Straw man 2:
Did all have to go through some kind of test?

A: I don't know. it doesn't matter. Moot.

Straw man 3:
did all fall when Adam fell?

A: I doubt it. They were already living in an environment that was missing the Tree of Life. Adam's ejection from the Garden put him in the same position. Moot.

Straw man 4:
Why are they only vaguely implied and not mentioned in the bible?

A: God created some people. Then he formed one and put him in the place where we are all trying to go. And God told the story of the man who was setting the example for Who Jesus is. You probably don't understand why Adam is the "First Adam" and Jesus is the "Last Adam." That's a different matter altogether.

But, you do realize that returning to the Garden is the objective of this entire experience, right? You do know that we are not going to go to heaven for eternity, right?

When a person looks at the Bible with the "well, they ain't saved the way I think they should be saved, so they must be burning in hell," that person is only showing that the box they have built for their god is not fitting the god that wrote the Bible.

If you want to talk Hebrew grammar, I've been studying it very seriously for a while. So, before you make a singular predicate the basis for a doctrine, we might take a minute and look deeper.

 

[Happy Trails]

Whoa…thumbs up!

I'm stunned!

 

[Cooper]

Wrong and I don't think you know what a straw man is!

But if you go to a Hebrew grammar guide, you will see when God made male and female He made just a single one each!

Adam could fill teh earth in time. I am sorry you feel the need Adam had to do it in a little bit of time!

And what instructions are completely different???

For man read mankind or to be politically correct humankind.
.

 

[Aunty Jane]

Because we now know that a day is a 24 hour period! They may not have known and they counted the day less precise as we do, but that difference is the same as saying tomahtoe or tomaytoe

And you really believe that the Jews had no idea what a day was? Seriously?
Sundown to sundown was a pretty obvious distinction. They would not have had a problem with that in the lands of the Middle East.....if they had moved to the Arctic as part of the diaspora, then they might have encountered a problem.

Evening to morning is half a day......to a Jew. Evening to evening is a full day. No excuses will alter that fact. It still applies even now. Orthodox Jews are very strict about their Sabbath laws. They know when a day begins and ends.

 

[quietthinker]

And you really believe that the Jews had no idea what a day was? Seriously?
Sundown to sundown was a pretty obvious distinction. They would not have had a problem with that in the lands of the Middle East.....if they had moved to the Arctic as part of the diaspora, then they might have encountered a problem.

Evening to morning is half a day......to a Jew. Evening to evening is a full day. No excuses will alter that fact. It still applies even now. Orthodox Jews are very strict about their Sabbath laws. They know when a day begins and ends.

Of course you don't understand anything cryptic by your own admission or cultural idioms and it seems you're not willing to....it might contradict your views. It sets you up for a world of guesswork when it comes to understanding Prophecies which employ these things.
Straining knats and swallowing camels becomes the trip....all under the banner of perceived truth. Jesus says of such, leave them, they are blind guides.

 

[Aunty Jane]

Of course you don't understand anything cryptic by your own admission or cultural idioms and it seems you're not willing to....it might contradict your views. It sets you up for a world of guesswork when it comes to understanding Prophecies which employ these things.
Straining knats and swallowing camels becomes the trip....all under the banner of perceived truth. Jesus says of such, leave them, they are blind guides.

So I take it you must be the one who is not blind and can see things that are cryptic in scripture because.....? You would never strain out the gnats whilst gulping down camels, would you?
Are you claiming that you are special? I have seen nothing special about what you believe. In fact I have seen a lot of misinterpretation in your weird and oddly phrased posts....but hey...that’s just me.

I am happy to let Jesus be the judge...what about you? I will tell the truth as I understand it from a careful study of the scriptures, and let the judge of all of us, do the rest.

 

[quietthinker]

So I take it you must be the one who is not blind and can see things that are cryptic in scripture because.....? You would never strain out the gnats whilst gulping down camels, would you?
Are you claiming that you are special? I have seen nothing special about what you believe. In fact I have seen a lot of misinterpretation in your weird and oddly phrased posts....but hey...that’s just me.

I am happy to let Jesus be the judge...what about you? I will tell the truth as I understand it from a careful study of the scriptures, and let the judge of all of us, do the rest.

AJ, why are you so resistant to anything that could be possible apart from your WT theories?
Why divert attention by trying to squirm out of the hot seat and attempt to put me in it? To me it smacks of dogged stubbornness and desperation.