Playing devil’s advocate, the fundamental flaw is the assumption of concordism. Schroeder’s view is a more complex form of it, but it still goes back to concordism.
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@TaylorS is a theology student in @kkeathley’s orbit, who just read my Dabar paper. @deuteroKJ is a very helpful Hebrew scholar here.
@TaylorS, certainly ask your questions here, as @deuteroKJ’s thoughts have been helpful to a lot of us.
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@deuteroKJ, now that its out there and you have been thinking about it, does this proposal (telling in six ordinary days) seem like more or less of a valid reading of Genesis?
Yes, the assumption is definitely there. But, I don’t want to count out a theory simply because of the assumption. 
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It is not the assumption that is the problem per se. Rather it is the mental model that leads us to this problem:
If you are going to take it literally, they can be ordinary days, but not ordinary days in space. No such things exist.
It’s not my preference, though I can’t discount it outright. I simply do not see scientific concordism tenable. I do prefer the “telling” view better than day-age, but I can’t imagine “thinking like an ancient Israelite” gets us anywhere close to either.
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In what sense is this scientific concordism? I had not classified it this way. Rather, I am taking an authorial intent view here, thinking of the original audience.
That, though, is a big win, as the day-age is far more popular it seems, and it has not won many YECs over.
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Yes, I agree.
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you’re right, it’s not strictly scientific concordism. But it’s still stressing actual “days” in the ordinary sense that matches days in time-space-history. I just don’t see this literalism in the authorial intent (though I understand why others do).
Yep. I’d much rather debate this view than day-age, which I find more unreasonable exegetically than YEC. Day means day in the rhetoric of Gen 1. While I don’t see the “telling” view in Gen 1, there’s at least some plausibility when one considers Moses’ experience on Sinai in Exodus.
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It there way to give this a test drive by sparing with a YEC colleague?
What is the right way to get this out in prep for ETS 2019?
Good questions. I’m not sure about the first–the YECs I can think that would be good debate partners I’m not sure would have time to jump in. I’ve been thinking about the 2nd question already. We need to be focused on the intent. I have some people in mind to contact. I’ll run by my ideas with you beforehand.
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Yes, we should be focused.
If this is good enough for prime time, I should add it to book and someone should think about getting it published in an article in time. That way, even if it doesn’t get much airtime, there is a trail for people to follow.
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This thread has been dormant for a long time, but I thought I’d add some references here for those who might find it through a search engine.
There are several aspects of the “telling” interpretation that intrigue me. The first is an alleged parallel to ANE accounts. In “Creation Revealed in Six Days”, Wiseman says, “an old Babylonian account said that ‘for six days he instructed Alorus (according to the story, Alorus was the first man who reigned) and when the sun went down he withdrew till next morning’. The Babylonians knew nothing whatever of a creation in six days; the reference is quite clearly to an occasion when six days’ instruction was given…”
I have been unable to identify any primary source for this assertion by Wiseman. The most I see is the passage in Berossus’s Babyloniaca which says that the god Oannes, “spent the days with the men…It gave to the men the knowledge of letters letters and sciences and crafts of all types. It also taught them how to found cities, establish temples, introduce laws and measure land. It also revealed to them seeds and the gathering of fruits, and in general it gave men everything which is connected with the civilized life…But when the sun set this beast Oannes plunged back into the sea and spent the nights in the deep…” (S. M. Burstein, The Babyloniaca of Berossus.) To me it would be quite significant if there was a Babylonian parallel to a “telling” of the creation to the first man in six days. Can anybody help with sourcing this?
The second aspect of this interpretation that intrigues me is that it makes sense of the puzzling and seemingly inverted “evening/morning” formula, if the “telling” takes place during the day and then ceases in the evening so that the man can rest.
Another aspect of this brought out by Damien Mackey in his “Book of Origins” essay is that this interpretation makes good sense of the reference in Exod 20 – these are literal, twenty-four hour days, after all, and Mackey emphasizes the point that Exod 20:11 does not say that God “created” (בָּרָא), but just that He “did” (עָשָׂה) the heavens and land in six days. My Hebrew is too scanty and too long ago to know if עָשָׂה is broad enough to reference a “telling” of the heavens and land.
In summary, “Wiseman considered himself to have determined that God was not creating the universe during the “Six Days”, but was instead doing something after man had already been created, and in which man was concerned. The scriptural record, he said, gives a very simple answer to the question of what God was doing in the presence of man for “six days”. God was saying something about creation. Each of the “Six Days” commences with “God said”. Here, claimed Wiseman, was a record “of what God said to man”, as stated in verse 28: “And God said unto them”.” (Mackey, Origins.)
I have to agree with @swamidass that this is not a concordist reading of the text. God need not have “told” the creation in any chronological order nor by revealing any particular scientific details. Indeed, as far as I can see this view doesn’t obviate the legitimacy of other views concerning the content of the revelation during the days such as the framework hypothesis or Walton’s functional creation view. The content of what was “told” on the days remains very much open to various literary interpretations, but interestingly this view does have the days themselves be literally, 24-hour days.
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Isn’t that just the standard Jewish definition of “day”, which starts and ends when the sun goes down?
That’s not entirely clear. See e.g. “Evening or Morning: When Does the Biblical Day Begin?”
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Then why do the Sabbath and all the Jewish holidays begin and end at sunset?
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