It doesn’t matter how long the days are; the sequence of events is just wrong, and the descriptions of events are just wrong.
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Thank you for looking at the resources I linked. I appreciate your thoughts. Perhaps you would enjoy this book on Scripture: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0736910549/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0736910549&linkCode=as2&tag=chrimomthou0a-20&linkId=MIUXAEKTRRQI6EV7
It is focused on the Bible of course, but you might find it interesting.
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Thank you Ken. That is an excellent article. My goal with concordism is only to put forward the best possible concordist model that address as fully as possible objections that are raised. Ultimately, if only a few find it helpful or useful, I am okay with that. I leave that up to the Lord. So, I value your feedback when you say I should prove something, or that I haven’t proven something adequately. Some people need a good-enough concordist model in order to get past cognitive roadblocks to faith in Christ. I am trying to help provide that. I will ponder the best way to present such a model, knowing that there are other ways to view things that may meet other people’s cognitive needs. The mind is a door to the heart. A model is just a wedge to keep it open.
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I am sure that as a scientist you are familiar with statistical correlation. To say that there is no fit is a very strong statement. Still, I think the fit can be improved a bit as follows.
chaos: Hadean (1-2): earth is dark, formless, and void
Day 1: Archean (3-5): light that is good drives photosynthesis
Day 2: Proterozoic (6-8): transformation of the protective firmament and the formation of an oxygenated atmosphere that will allow life on land
Day 3: Paleozoic through Lower Cretaceous (9-13): vegetated continents develop; origin of seed bearing plants and fruit trees; formation of most of the modern continents and ocean basins
Day 4: Mesozoic (Upper Cretaceous in particular) (14-19): rotation rate of Earth slows to 24 hours, Earth’s climate becomes seasonal; the sun begins marking out the 24-hour circadian clock
Day 5: Cenozoic (Paleogene-Eocene) (20-23) Rapid diversification of modern birds and teleost fish replenish the bare ecosystems caused by the Chicxulub Impactor; mammal diversification is delayed relative to birds and fish. Origin of whales.
Day 6: Cenozoic ( Oligocene-Pleistocene) (24-31) Emergence of many kinds of modern mammals and other animals. Origin of humans. Blessing of animals and humans with C4 photosynthetic green plants.
Even if the correlation is not 1.0, it is also not 0.0. It would be fun to try to calculate it. You could throw in some exceptions and some outliers and still have a pretty good correlation.
That other things also happened that are not mentioned in Genesis 1 does not invalidate the correlation among things that are mentioned.
Ultimately, even if Genesis 1 were not meant to be taken as history, to say that no fit can be made is disingenuous.
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PS - another thing I forgot. This is just such a rich field that I forget whole swathes of useful stuff.
You mention what Gen 1 leaves out that is found elsewhere - which would include the whole idea of an underworld, whether that means the fountains of fresh water described in the Flood narrative, or Sheol, which may or may not be seen as a “realm” equivalent to the Mesopotamian underworld.
Their absence is significant not so much because of anything it implies about Hebrew cosmology, but because it confirms the theme of a threefold temple architecture in the creation account: heavens (holy of holies), space below the shemayim where liminal mountains intrude (temple/tabernacle) and the earth (courtyard where worshippers ordinarily interact with God). The seas represent the “profane” or “unsanctified” world outside the temple - the ambiguous residuum of “formlessness and emptiness” including darkness and deep, only finally done away with in the New Creation (see the end of Revelation).
In such a scheme, Sheol is irrelevant (especially if you consider it as the place of the dead, when Gen 1 is all about life). And that’s evidence that we are not reading a “primitive cosmology” at all, but a targeted account intended to set the scene for the drama that follows.
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Actually, William, I see less ancient science than you suggest here.
I see “deep” as ordinary ocean, covering the ordinary earth (expressed primordially) - not as some kind of cosmic abyss stretching in all directions After all, it has a surface, with space above in which God’s spirit hovers.
And “firmament,” as a word, has an interesting history, acquiring its “solid dome” status only through a muddy history of the Septuagint’s co-option of the Greek cosmology, and a nineteenth century mistranslation that has affected the whole of so called “ANE cosmology.”
I’ve written extensively on that both in Generations of Heaven and Earth and in more detail on my blog. Here’s a link to the first of three posts on how recent research has updated the “goldfish bowl” view of ancient cosmology, and here’s one to an early version of what I think Gen 1 is describing.
As I said above, I believe that it is a phenomenological account, seen in “cosmic temple” terms. By that I mean Moses is describing what one sees throughout the account, with little or nothing about what he thinks the physical reality behind the appearances might “really” be. In other words, he is not writing under some kind of “ancient scientific” beliefs.
The sole exception, possibly (depending how you consider it) is the appearance of the light before the heavenly bodies. That troubles us because we think it obvious that the sky is light because of the sun, but phenomenologically that isn’t true - it depends on some notion like the scattering of light in air.
But in ancient times there was no concept of air as a material substance (the Greeks discovered it far later), and whatever the sky was, it was luminous during the day. The Greeks called this spatial concept of “air” aether, whose very etymology comes from “light.” So we might say that Moses assumed the luminous sky being separated from the dark sky by the progress of day and night, but we might simply treat it, once more, phenomenologically: he saw the brightness of the sky in actuality, and wove it into his account according to his thematic purpose, which was to create realms and then populate them.
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You “improved” the fit by distorting both Genesis and science.
That doesn’t describe the Hadean.
That’s not when light began, and the bible says nothing about photosynthesis.
There is no firmament, which is a solid dome of the sky. It’s not transformed but created on day 2. No mention of an oxygenated atmosphere in the bible.
Way out of order. No mention of animals or ocean basins in the bible. No mention of the formation of dry land in your description. Further, the plants described in Genesis are clearly angiosperms.
Good try, but the bible specifically refers to the creation of the sun, moon, and stars, but says nothing about the length of a day. Further, there is no particular slowing of rotation that happens in the Upper Cretaceous; it’s a continuous and very gradual process.
Mammal diversification is in no way delayed relative to birds; there’s not a lot of difference in the origin time of families in either group. Genesis could be interpreted to refer to diversification, but that began long before the Cenozoic. You still haven’t managed to say what a “kind” is, but if you’re referring to extant families, they are not mostly Paleocene or Eocene in either birds or mammals. Teleost families are mostly Cretaceous in origin, as far as I can tell. Whales are not mentioned in Genesis 1, are they?
Again, what does “kinds” mean? What are “other animals”? A vacuous statement. What do C4 plants have to do with blessing? C4 metabolism is not mentioned in Genesis. But at least you have the origin of humans right.
The correlation is entirely invented. Sorry for saying it, but this is just pathetic.
True, I suppose. But most of the things you report above are not mentioned, so where is the correlation?
What’s disingenuous is to claim that the story you tell there has anything to do with Genesis and science. Force-fitting, as I said before.
Yes. There are some rabbinic readings that favor different points of “flashback” readings as well.
That’s very interesting. If we look at Earth’s history, we see a lot of death. This is a stumbling block for the YEC and is not mentioned in Genesis 1. Your comment gives me the idea that the exclusion was deliberate on the part of the author.
I agree. I suppose it is a “revealed cosmology”. Because it is divinely inspired, perhaps there are elements to it that would have been impossible for a non-divinely-inspired author to incorporate. Some of those you point out.
It would be missing the point though to think that we can read a scientifically-derived history of the earth into Genesis 1 and see a lot of science in Genesis 1. That not how concordist advocates like Hugh Ross and myself got started. Rather, it is because we extensively familiarized ourselves with the scientifically-derived history of the Earth that we see Genesis 1 in that history.
If one says they see the Genesis 1 in the scientific record, that’s not the same thing as saying they see the scientific record in Genesis 1. There is a bit of a communication issue that arises when someone points out some of the things in science that invoke comparison to Day 1, Day 2, etc. It often invites an immediate response such as “I don’t see that in Genesis so you can’t validly be seeing that either.” Before starting my concordist blog at agesofjoy.blogspot.com I read through hundreds of articles and created a massive spreadsheet of important events in scientific history of Earth to see if patterns in Genesis 1 stood out to me. Which they did. You won’t see hundreds of scientific articles worth of content in Genesis 1. But I think you can see Genesis 1 in those hundreds of articles.
It’s a matter of perspective.
Believing in the plenary inspiration of Scripture, I have no objection in principle to the existence of earth’s formation history being in Genesis, except the general way in which inspiration works in Scripture. And that is, it usually works through the culture and knowledge of the writer, even when we are talking about the prophetic word and visions of far off events.
And so John (for example) sees the final conflict before the return of Christ in terms of swords and horses, and doesn’t describe something outside his experience that we now realise would have to be tanks and missiles if it’s a literal battle. Isaiah’s eschatology owes everything to the pastoral ideal of Israel’s covenant, and not to a “video of the world to come.” And so on.
Similarly, it makes more sense to me that the core of the Eden narrative is an historical tradition passed down from hand to hand, and not a Quranic dictation of palaeolithic events that only God knows about. And that is favoured by the parallels discovered with Mesopotamian literature of great antiquity: varied folk memories of real events makes sense, but a divinely revealed story-cycle that somehow got into pagan myths too is a problem to explain.
For Genesis 1, then, it becomes to me a matter of “best fit,” with a bias against the dictation model of a scientific chronicle that happens to fit late-Enlightenment materialist discoveries and concerns, and be alien to the scientific beliefs of every other time and place in the last several millennia.
In this particular conversation, the two models to check the text against would be:
(a) The modern scientific chronology of the earth and
(b) An ancient phenomenological description of the world as experienced dailyby Moses (or whoever) and his readers, interpreted through the prophetic vision of its significance as a temple like the “pattern shown you in the high mountain,” which was actually constructed in the wilderness, perhaps by the very people who were being instructed by Genesis, if one accepts Mosaic authorship.
The second model gives a didactic purpose for Israel - as soon as they understand Genesis 1, then wherever they look in the world around they will see sacred space. Once you see the tabernacle in nature, you can never unsee it again - the world becomes forever God’s.
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Recent it may be, but to call science “pavrochial” is an absurdity. Truth or falsity in science is judged by universal criteria, not by any local or subjective considerations. Or to put it differently, your parish is irrelevant to the scientific explanation of gravity.
The specific point of this thread was to set what John Walton calls “cosmic geography” over to the side and focus specifically on the sequence of events of cosmic history. It doesn’t take any non-ANE cultural knowledge to receive inspiration that the events happened in a particular order: certain plants before certain birds vs. certain birds before certain plants for example.
Furthermore, I would say the author is only addressing the origins of extant creations in the ANE environment. (hence no mention of dinosaurs or the origin of extinct pre-angiosperm fish)
Nice. I was thinking of using that as an example. So the question is, in John’s revelation, since we cannot discern what “weapons” are employed (i.e. swords vs missiles), does that mean we have to also throw out the sequence of events? Some might say so. What do you think?
I agree with that whole-heartedly. I’m thinking of Genesis 2:5 and foreword. That makes me think that the original story came from a pre-ANE culture that we know less about and it got distributed and twisted and adapted by various ANE cultures. Hopefully what is in the Bible is close to the original with any errors or necessary adjustments for translation fixed up by Moses under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
They weasel room there is all in which “certain” you pick. New species of plants and birds are evolving all the time, and you can set your criteria to make either one happen first. But are you doing anything other than cherry-picking?
What makes you think that?
I actually like this second model, but I don’t see it as excluding the first model. I don’t see them in competition or in conflict. There are passages in Scripture that describe the fabrication and construction of the Tabernacle and Solomon’s temple in exacting terms and there are other passages that describe the purpose and significance of the same. Some passages may interweave both the construction and the purpose in one account.
I’ve been pondering this objection. Actually wondering if it is bit of a straw man. I’m not sure that inspiration to arrange events in a particular order really requires dictation, per se. Also, other than accommodating an “old earth” I’m not sure what specific discoveries in particular you are objecting to. Belief in an old earth is not unique to post late-Enlightenment in any case.
How is this a good point? There is no requirement of any kind that the scientific beliefs held in various cultures around the world over the last several millennia be true in any particular way or true at all. If they are not true, why should we expect God’s Word to be anything but alien to them, apart from perhaps a bit of granted ANE perspective at the time Genesis was written? What do all the other times and places have to do with it?
BTW I complete endorse and respect this. It’s quite similar to @swamidass’ rationale in the GAE model, at least in so far as removing a hurdle from some. I sometimes ask myself where I would land if I thought Genesis were teaching something more scientifically precise (concordism). At the moment, I’d probably opt for “appearance of age,” but perhaps your developing model would be stronger.
In theology, we call these “what if” scenarios speculative theology. They are of great value, so I commend your work.
Except the GAE is also motivated by moving away from the science of genetics towards the ordinary understanding of ancestry…that’s the opposite of scientific concordism.
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Of course. Just seeing the pastoral parallel.
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Weasels come in on the 6th Day. 
That’s a great question John. Maybe you can help me out on that one. So I do use some filters to select the data for my model.
Consider the full 4.5 billion year history of the earth.
For plants, I think the text for Day 3 is referring to seed bearing plants and woody angiosperms (fruit trees) so I filter my data to that. When in Earth’s history is the origin of seed bearing plants and woody angiosperms? That yields potentially two different dates both of which would be considered to occur sometime during Day 3.
For Day 5, I look for a time window in which birds begin to fly across the heavens and the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures. It should resemble a time when it could be said that “swarming water creatures are fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas and birds multiply on the earth.” Again, you could pick two different times, one for the flourishing of the swarming water creatures, and another for the flourishing of birds.
For the swarming water creations, some have used the date of the Cambrian Explosion, but one could consider the earlier Avalon, or in the aftermath of any of the great Extinction events that follow. At each of these points, the waters are sparsely populated and God may have blessed the creatures to multiply and fill them.
But then, include in the time frame the existence of birds. You have the origination of birds and then the subsequent extinction events that could have occurred affecting birds, after which they flourish.
Now you have a bunch of data points. The birds and swarming water creatures referred to in Genesis 1 are the ones that flourish after the emergence of seed bearing plants and woody angiosperms. That rules out the things like the Cambrian explosion and so forth, because those event are too early.
Via this method, you can choose from the many events in Earth’s history those events that match up to Genesis 1.
There is a second kind of filter that can be applied. That filter can be used to discount origins of creatures that go extinct leaving no representatives alive during human existence - the idea being that God is not revealing paleontological data per se, but rather the sequence of the origin of extant features of creation. This filters out dinosaurs and trilobites, for instance.
So, applying this kind of logic, the recovery after the K-Pg seems to resemble the Day 5 account because it occurs after woody angiosperms flourish on Earth and because woody angiosperms don’t go extinct in the K-Pg.
So I would ask you, is the another time in Earth’s history that more closely resembles Day 5 by any reasonable interpretation?
Now, it is possible to lay on some additional data filters:
The time window for the birds you select should include the origin of bats.
The kind of sea creatures have to be “swarming, living” which interpreted from Hebrew is sometimes thought of as schooling fish (not all fish school); but if you can argue for another interpretation, go for it.
To me, it looks like Genesis 1 kind of cherry picks from Earth’s history to tell us about a few significant events, the times when various important changes occurred. There’s no need for Genesis 1 to tell everything or be totally complete.
Anyway, that’s a glimpse into the “sausage making” for my model. I could elaborate for all of the other days. What do you think?
Hmmm. Not quite sure. I will have to think on that.