Did you perhaps mean “scientific creationist challenges with naturalistic science”?? (maybe vice versa?)
I was about to attempt your question from the science side, but on a second read I’m not sure that was that you were asking.
Based upon the Hebrew text I believe it regional
I think it’s interesting how the discussion quietly transitions from waters being gathered, to plate tectonics and mountains rising. Did you see that?
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Yes, and that’s why I asked for clarification. Answering the wrong question is how a lot of arguments start.
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That might have been a better wording. The point being that the take on this model (the purpose of the thread) is to avoid conflicts between scriptural interpretation and naturalistic science.
But as I read it, there was still belief in 24 hour days, and something physical going on.
As it’s read in scripture, the end of day 2 (and beginning of day 3) had the world covered with water. By the end of day 3, continents with plants.
I really couldn’t see how there could be something “physical” going on on day 3 that didn’t produce a conflict with naturalistic scientific narratives.
Ok. Given that, I’m assuming you mean some small area of the world had land appearing? Like an island or peninsula perhaps? But the rest of the world, similar to what we see today? You didn’t give a lot of detail, so I’m trying to fill in a bit. I don’t want to misrepresent you here.
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When I say the Genesis creation account is regional, I’m talking about the language, not necessarily the scope of the event. The Hebrew word 'eretz never means “planet Earth” in the modern sense. It means land, territory, region, or ground. That’s how Moses uses it everywhere else, the land of Egypt, the land of Canaan, the land Israel will inherit. So when Genesis 1 says the 'eretz was covered with water, it is describing the condition of a land region, not making a geological claim about the entire globe being submerged.
This solves the Day 3 issue cleanly. The text does not require global tectonic uplift or the formation of continents in 24 hours. It only requires that in the region God was preparing, dry land appeared and vegetation grew. That avoids any conflict with naturalistic geology because the text isn’t describing global geophysics; it’s describing God preparing a specific land area for human habitation.
And to be clear, saying the language is regional does not mean the event couldn’t have been global. The Israelites had no concept of a spherical planet, global continents, or worldwide hydrology. They had no “global context” at all. So God would naturally communicate in terms they understood — 'eretz as land/region, shamayim as sky/heavens, yamim as waters. That’s the only semantic framework available to them. God is not going to speak to them in categories they have no reference point for.
So the Hebrew wording is regional because that’s how ancient Near Eastern people talked about land. But that does not restrict the event itself to being small or local. The text is simply using the vocabulary and conceptual world of its original audience. Regional language ≠ regional event. It just means the description is framed in the only way the audience could meaningfully grasp.
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I hadn’t gotten the impression that the OP is supporting scientific concordism. Did he note that somewhere? Just curious where that conclusion came from. Thanks.
no, I never argued for scientific concordism. My point was strictly linguistic.
I’m distinguishing bara, asah, and yatsar based on how Moses actually uses them across the Tanakh. The argument stands entirely on Hebrew verbal semantics, not on geology, cosmology, or any scientific timeline.
I affirm six literal 24‑hour days; I’m simply noting that Exodus 20:11 uses asah, the same verb Moses uses in Genesis 1:3–31 for God’s forming/ordering work, not bara from Genesis 1:1.
So the discussion is about Hebrew usage, not scientific harmonization
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Well “concordism” efforts are not all bad, and that topic seems to be open to various interpretations (see here: The Various Meanings of Concordism)
I think all believers make some effort at concordism, even if some land squarely on either extreme.
Personally I have come to the firm conclusion that the YEC position is the most satisfying combination of scripture and science. It by far makes The Word more fulfilling (and God honoring). And I’m personally convinced that given a small handful of supernatural interventions (three specifically), it even makes science more fulfilling.
I know that last statement will get pushback in this forum. But at this point, I can’t see anyone convincing me otherwise.
It would take a good bit to unpack why I believe that, and (I’ve concluded) most likely not worth the effort in this place.
WITHOUT going into any details, Creation week, Flood year, and …?
I feel like if science and young Earth creationism were truly reconcilable, YEC ministries wouldn’t have the need for faith statements that suggests entirely the opposite.
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I don’t have any issue with concordism in principle, everyone tries to relate Scripture and the natural world somehow. But I definitely disagree that the YEC model is “the most satisfying combination of Scripture and science.” The scientific side of YEC is mostly ad hoc: it only works when each piece is isolated, and the moment you integrate the parts into a coherent system, the internal contradictions start to show.
My own approach is grammatical–historical exegesis. The EFCA tradition emphasizes that inerrancy applies to the original languages, not to later English translations. So I start with Hebrew and Greek semantics, not with a modern scientific model that the text has to be forced into.
And to be clear: I’m not claiming YEC is “wrong.” Scripture doesn’t tell us when the beginning was, and it doesn’t give a chronology that lets us calculate the age of the earth. So there’s no biblical way to declare the earth definitively “young” or “old.” What I am saying is that the YEC scientific framework doesn’t hold together without special pleading, and that’s a separate issue from what the text itself says.
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I’m sure you get a lot of disagreement on that point, but I’m still curious about what the three interventions would be.
I’m intrigued by the discussion and greatly appreciate the comments being made.
I’m not a Hebrew scholar but I understand that multiple forms of parallelism and sandwiching are a common style in Hebrew, which is how I’ve understood Gen 1. It begins with the opening statement in v1&2 (In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…) and closes that in 2v1, (Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them). In between are the 3*2 creative “yoms” (often translated as days), set out in a rhythmic pattern. I realise the Hebrew does not have the English word “Thus” but more literally begins “To be finished …” which is clearly referring to what has been written before, hence the inference of closing in a literary style, the intermediary statements.
I would actually propose that v2 describes the “moment” before the Big Bang really well… “The earth was without form (formlessness) and void (emptiness), and darkness (obscurity) was over the face of the deep (abyss). And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters (figuratively danger)”. The words shown in brackets are alternative Hebrew meanings of the words which from a science perspective, I think work really well. My understanding is that the word water is often used in Jewish thinking to imply danger, which is very representative of what’s about to happen with the Big Bang! And following the Big Bang there is light, lots of it, very highly intense energy.
Can you also clarify for me why you think the passage describes six 24 hour periods? The Hebrew word Yom can mean day or time or period. In 1v5, Yom is used twice and refers to both the period of “light” and the period called “evening & morning”. In 2v4 it uses Yom (singular) to refer to God “creating the Heavens and the Earth”. So Yom is used to describe three different lengths of time. Furthermore in 1v14 on the fourth day when creating the Sun & the Moon, the text specifically calls out that these are (now) good for determining signs, the seasons and for days and years. In other words the orbits are now stable and reliable. So before then, the implication is that the periods were not useful for that timing.
I would therefore argue that the text does not support the concept of there being 6 periods of time that are exactly the same. The word Yom is used to define different periods which are not consistent.
Let me clarify where I agree with you and where I read the text differently.
- I do accept a form/fill structure, but not poetic parallelism, per say. I actually agree that Genesis 1 has a real structural symmetry:
Days 1–3: God forms the realms
Days 4–6: God fills or assigns those realms
That’s a legitimate literary observation.
But I don’t think that structure turns the chapter into Hebrew poetry or symbolic parallelism. The grammar is still narrative, driven by the wayyiqtol sequence that marks chronological events. So for me:
the structure is real,
but it doesn’t override the chronology,
or the normal meaning of yom,
or the historical sequencing of the days.
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I accept yom as a normal 24‑hour day.. I’m not arguing for long ages or elastic “periods.” The repeated formula “evening and morning,” plus yom with ordinal numbers, plus the narrative syntax, all point to ordinary days of divine work. Genesis 2:4 uses yom idiomatically (“in the day that…” = “when”), but that doesn’t redefine the creation days.
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I distinguish bara and asah , and that shapes how I read Day 4. This is where my view diverges from yours.
bara = create, initiate, bring into existence
asah = make, fashion, appoint, assign function
I don’t treat these as interchangeable. That’s why I read: Genesis 1:1 — God created (bara) the heavens and the earth, which includes the sun. Day 4 , God made/appointed (asah) the sun and moon to govern day and night and mark seasons. In other words, Day 4 is not the creation of the sun but the commissioning of the sun for its role in the ordered world. This fits the Hebrew verbs cleanly and avoids the “no sun until Day 4” problem without resorting to symbolic days.
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I don’t see evidence that the early days were unstable or non‑chronological. The text never says the first three days were “not useful for timing.” That’s an inference from modern cosmology, not something stated in the Hebrew. The narrative treats Days 1–3 as real days with evening and morning, regardless of the sun’s later appointment.
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Summary of my position
I accept yom as a normal 24‑hour day.
I accept the form/fill pattern, but not the poetic‑parallelism argument.
I distinguish bara (create) from asah (appoint).
I see Genesis 1:1 as the creation of the sun.
I see Day 4 as the appointment of the sun to its governing functions.
I don’t see the text supporting unequal or symbolic “periods.”
I don’t think that it does work that well - how could the Spirit of God hover over “danger”? Even figuratively it looks odd to me. And why does the text then jump to the establishment of the day-night cycle in vs 3-5 ?
It really does make more sense to me for it to be referring to the Primordial Ocean - in the historical context, too.
Yeah, not real sure it’s worth it here, even “without going into details”.
PeacefulScience seems to have changed over the years since I first arrived. It seems it’s now isolated to dialog among naturalists, along with being a pretty strong anti-YEC “echo chamber.” (BTW I’m not using “echo chamber” derogatorily here). There’s so much misinformation in this place. It’s unbelievable to watch, and too much to even try to reply to.
I do enjoy sharing my enthusiasm for biblical creation with others. It took a lot of research to discover all that I’ve learned. Through it I’ve discovered that it’s the most rational worldview (and like my other statement, there’s far too much to unpack on that topic). However, I’m concluding that there probably aren’t any “middle of the road” or undecided people here interested in hearing about it here. I’ve kept waiting for ones to show up. But none have. And at this point I don’t think they will. So really, why waste my time?
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If the Big Bang is the expansion of space itself from an earlier hot, dense state, then where would a formless and empty earth be sitting? There is no “somewhere” for it to occupy.
It depends on the context. The semantic domain of “water” is not narrowed to just “danger” in Hebrew or Jewish thought. Its lexical meaning is water, and symbolically (depending on context) water may signify many things: life, cleansing, fertility, blessing, chaos, danger, judgment, boundary, death, or new creation. So the interpretive move has to be governed by context, not by a free-floating symbolic association.
For roughly the first 400,000 years, the universe was like an incomprehensibly hot, dense, opaque glowing fog. Then, after recombination, it became transparent and faded from a reddish-orange glow to utterly pitch black, which is how things remained for a couple hundred million years until, finally, Population III stars began forming.
Exactly. This Hebrew word has a range of meanings: daylight, a normal day, or an indefinite period. But semantic range doesn’t answer the meaning question; context answers that. Context determines meaning in a particular case.
In Genesis 1:5, the word is used in two related but distinct ways: “God called the light ‘day’ [yom] and the darkness ‘night.’ There was evening, and there was morning, marking the first day [yom].” The first use is more narrow, referring to the daylight portion, contrasted with night. The second use is broader, referring to the full cycle marked by “evening and morning.”
We do the same thing in the English language. When I say, “I worked all day, then slept soundly all night,” day refers narrowly to daylight hours. But if I then say, “By the fifth day I was ready to go home,” day refers more broadly to the full calendar day. And if I add, “I had more energy back in the day,” the word refers to an indefinite period. Same word each time, but it is the context that determines meaning.
Why do we think Genesis 1 describes six 24-hour periods? Because the days are presented in a numbered sequence and bounded by the repeated “evening and morning” formula (which denotes a complete cycle of time). [1] Evening marks the end of one day, with morning bringing the light of the next day. In Jewish reckoning, this became closely associated with the day beginning at evening. The Sabbath, for example, is observed from evening to evening, which is grounded explicitly in Leviticus 23:32 (“from evening until evening you must observe your Sabbath”).
There is also a liturgical resonance to the “evening and morning” formula. The exalted prose narrative of Genesis 1 presents creation in a way that is temple-shaped and liturgically structured. The world is being ordered as God’s cosmic dwelling place, with humanity installed as his image-bearing vice-regents. The open-ended seventh day is indicative, climaxing not with another “evening and morning” formula but with divine rest. That omission is significant. The first six days are cycles of bounded workdays, yet the seventh day is not closed by the same formula. Why? Because God’s rest is the telos of creation. Creation is the ordering of sacred space for God’s royal presence and covenantal communion.
Not exactly. That passage uses yom within the idiomatic construction beyom ‘asot (literally “in the day of making”), wherein we have be- (“in/at/when”) and yom (“day”). In that construction, beyom functions idiomatically as “when,” which is how many English translations treat it. So yes, Genesis 2:4 uses yom in a broader sense than a 24-hour day. However, that doesn’t determine its meaning in Genesis 1. Again, context governs usage.
The phrase “evening and morning” functions as a merism-like temporal formula, naming the two boundary-points of the daily cycle in order to indicate the completion of a day. ↩︎
Why have you already wasted your time twice in this thread without actually saying anything? It seems perverse, and not very friendly despite your title.
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