Does yom = ordinary day imply a young earth?

This is actually what we see in Second Temple Period and early Christian era exposition. In contrast, in Christianity the “young earth” or “6,000 year old universe” doesn’t appear until at least the second century, and even then it was borrowed from Jewish sources which in turn developed it from a Greek concept of ages of the world. Interestingly the Genesis 4-5 chrono-genealogies were not used to establish this. In fact there’s no evidence for these genealogies being interpreted as relevant to the age of the earth until the later Christian era, and even then they’re being used to support a view which was already well established.

So ironically the Young Earth interpretation of Genesis 1 was originally the product of Jewish commentators trying to fit the text into a Greek historical model.

What is exactly what we see? “In contrast” to what? I can’t interpret your comment.

Ok I’ll go slow. You wrote this.

I quoted those words. I then responded to those words (which you wrote), with this.

Those are my words, that I wrote. I wrote them in response to your words, in the post of yours that I quoted. The word “this” is a pronoun, the most obvious referent of which is your words. That means that “this” refers to the words you wrote, which I quoted when responding to your words (which I quoted).

Putting this all together.

  1. You wrote “In that case the interpretation would be that yom does mean “day” but that the authors didn’t consider the literal story to be the important message”.

  2. I responded by saying “This is actually what we see in Second Temple Period and early Christian era exposition”.

  3. Conclusion. I am saying “the interpretation that yom does mean “day” but that the authors didn’t consider the literal story to be the important message, is actually what we see in Second Temple Period and early Christian era exposition”.

Let me know if that’s still unclear.

Well, it’s certainly insulting. Was that the famous “Christian charity” at work?

The reason I found that sentence confusing wasn’t the sentence itself but what came after. If yom means “day”, that does imply a young universe created in six days. That might not be an important message, but it is a message. That is, in order to show the power of God, they didn’t reach for just any cosmogony but for the one they thought was the right one, even though those details weren’t important. “In contrast” and what follows seems to conflict with the idea that early readers (and the writers) thought there was a six-day creation and conflates “it wasn’t the important message” with “they didn’t think it was true”.

It also isn’t clear why “they’re being used to support a view which was already well established” mitigates the young-earth interpretation. And it also isn’t clear why your last sentence follows from what came before. Once more “not important” has been conflated with “not believed”.

Why did you find it insulting?

How?

No; “in contrast” introduces “in Christianity the “young earth” or “6,000 year old universe” doesn’t appear until at least the second century”. I don’t want to be insulting, but since you’re expressing confusion over the contrast, here it is.

  1. One interpretation, appearing in Second Temple Period and early Christian era exposition.
  2. A different interpretation, appearing in the second century of the Christian era.

Two different interpretations (contrast), and two different time periods (contrast). And no, I am not conflating “it wasn’t the important message” with “they didn’t think it was true”. There is no evidence that the pre-Christian and early Christian commentators I’m talking about thought that the text said the earth was created in six literal days around 6,000 years earlier than their own time.

It doesn’t. I didn’t cite that as evidence mitigating the young earth interpretation of Genesis 1. I cited it as evidence mitigating the use of the chrono-genealogies to calculate the age of the earth, which is exactly the topic I introduced just before that sentence.

Would you like me to explain it, or would you find that insulting?

No. I am not saying “They thought that’s what it said, they just didn’t think it was important”.

I will say it again. The earliest systematic interpretations we have of this passage interpret the days as literal, but they do not interpret the earth as young or the entire universe as having been created in seven days.

I find it hard to take that seriously. I found it insulting because you clearly intended it to be insulting. It’s generally considered insulting to call someone an idiot, whether or not you use that word.

How can those two ideas be reconciled? How, if the days are literal days, and it’s the story of the creation of the universe, can the universe not have been created in six days (the seventh day, he rested)? How can the universe fail to be young in that case, regardless of genealogies? Were the ideas of the early church incoherent?

It was not intended to be insulting at all. I took some time to articulate in careful detail exactly how to parse my words. I did this because you exhibited considerable irritation with the difficulty you encountered in understanding my words. In my next post I again took some time explaining how to parse my words, in careful detail. Did you find that one insulting too?

If I wanted to be insulting, I would be a lot more blunt about it. I would use language like this.

  1. Not to mince words, that is a disgustingly dishonest depiction of the discussion that has taken place here. You should be ashamed.
  2. Please have the respect to admit to yourself, and not to lie to my face, that this is what is going on.
  3. If you cannot, a retraction and apologyy (not to me, but to the discussion board for lying about what I said) is in order.
  4. If you fail to see how this is the same thing I wrote, I recommend you see a neurologists as soon as possible as you could be developing a degenerative neurophysiological condition of some sort.
  5. Your ID heroes continually get caught in such blatant dishonesty. Why do you still listen to them?
  6. IOW, you don’t have the slightest understanding of the theory of evolution.
  7. Once again, the hypothesis that acceptance of Behe’s claims correlates with basic ignorance is confirmed. You’re presence here as scientific data is much appreciated.
  8. The standards of science are constantly and explicitly brought up as a direct consequence of your abandonment or failure to understand any of them.
  9. You invent “models” that don’t make logical sense, such as the asinine idea that it is a prediction of ID that “a natural process can’t produce X”.
  10. You simply have no idea whatsoever about any of this and are basically just blathering incoherently and in embarrassing ignorance every time, seemingly out of some pathological need to say something , anything, back.
  11. I guarantee he won’t be though. Can’t have a sense of shame without a sense of honesty.

Several ways. You already know there are OEC Christians who believe the universe was created six days, billions of years ago. I’ll explain another method shortly.

The earliest systematic interpretation we have is that the six days are days on which a prophet received a vision from God. On each day he received a vision of God’s creative acts in the past. Commentators reached this conclusion on the basis of several features of the text.

  1. The days are counted from evening to morning, which was not the standard method of measuring days in either the First Temple Period, or the Exilic Period, or even the early Second Temple Period. A day of work was typically measured from morning to evening. This can be found all the way through the Bible. It is so consistent that when in the late Second Temple Period various Jewish communities started changing the practice, they had to invent complicated theological reasons for doing so, and faced considerable opposition.

  2. The text presents God’s creative acts from the perspective of a human eyewitness observing God’s work, not from the perspective of God dictating to a human what He did in six days of 24 hours each. Consequently the days are understood as days in the experience of the human observer, not days in the experience of God while performing creative acts.

  3. Outside Genesis 1, there is no reference to the universe being created in only six days in any pre-exilic passage of Scripture. In other words, the vast bulk of Scripture shows no knowledge of such an idea. The week of visions was based on a previously existing concept, the concept of a week ending in a day of rest. This means the Genesis creation week was written after the Law was already written, and seven days of vision were chosen to represent God’s creative acts for theological reasons, to represent a typical week of work, not because God literally created on only seven days. The creation week is being used theologically to justify upholding the Sabbath, at a time when practice of the Sabbath had lapsed due to the Babylonian exile.

The earliest such interpretation held that this vision of creation had been given to Moses when he was on Sinai, during the six days that the mountain was covered in cloud (Exodus 24:15-16).

Even if the text intends to communicate that God created the entire universe in only six literal 24 hour days (which I don’t think it does), why must the universe necessarily be young? You haven’t explained how the universe being created in six days necessarily means the universe must be young. How does that work? Where is the data in Genesis 1 which you’re using for this conclusion? Where is the date or age information in that chapter?

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For the record, I do not think @Jonathan_Burke’s sentence was insulting. One cannot judge intentions.

For the record (and meaning no offense), @Jonathan_Burke can be offensive at times, but this does not seem like one of those times. I appreciate he asked you to clarify. I think what may be going on is that he is being relentless here, but not necessarily in a bad way.

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I will accept that you don’t have very good control over what you say, and that you didn’t intend an insult. As a courtesy to you, I won’t read what you would have said if you intended to be insulting.

No, I don’t know of anyone who thinks that. It seems patently absurd, given that the 6 days include the creation of humans. Who thinks that? Are you sure?

Whose interpretation was that? It certainly isn’t compatible with the text. I do not understand why your point number 1 argues for that interpretation. I don’t think your point number 2 is true. And point number 3 also seems irrelevant.

Whose interpretation?

The alternative is that humans are ancient, being only 5 days younger than the universe. Is that a credible reading of Genesis?

Sentence? I’m talking about the entire post.

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That’s no courtesy to me, since those words aren’t my words. They are words which have been used on this form with the full approval of the moderators, and I am sure you found them acceptable.

Most OECs interpret the Genesis 1 days of creation as referring only to the creation of the earth, rather than the entire universe, but still interpret the days as literal 24 days and the earth as very old. If you don’t know anyone who thinks that, I can provide you with plenty of citations. Some OECs interpret the Genesis 1 days of creation as referring to the creation of the entire universe, with a specific focus on the creation of the earth, and believe that very large ages of time took place between the days.

The Book of Jubilees (second century BCE).

“The importance of Jubilees for the question of Moses and the first chapter of Genesis is that it describes how Moses had a vision on Sinai of everything that had happened before he lived, including the creation. In other words, the first chapter of Genesis is a record of Moses’ vision.”, Magaret Barker, Creation: A Biblical Vision for the Environment (AC & Black, 2010), 36.

“Jub. is the earliest extant source that explicitly claims Mosaic authorship of Genesis and grants to Moses revelation of creational secrets.”, Sharon E J Gerstel, Thresholds of the sacred : architectural, art historical, liturgical, and theological perspectives on religious screens, East and West, Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Studies (Washington, D.C. : Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2006), 77.

Philo (first century).

“In the Life of Moses, Philo explained that the Tabernacle proves that the image of Creation was impressed upon Moses’ mind through the divine Revelation at Mount Sinai and that his understanding of this vision enabled him to construct the Tabernacle on Earth.”, Shulamit Laderman, Images of Cosmology in Jewish and Byzantine Art: God’s Blueprint of Creation (Brill: Leiden, 2013), 40.

“Philo wrestled with this: all things were made simultaneously but described as a sequence, he said, because a numbered sequence indicated good order. He also said that the six days of creation (Gen. 1.1-2.3) described the invisible creation, the pattern for the material world.”, Magaret Barker, Creation: A Biblical Vision for the Environment (AC & Black, 2010), 113.

Cosmos Indicopleustes (sixth century).

“The ‘six days’ when Moses had been in the cloud on Sinai (Exod. 24.15-16) had been six days of vision which became the six days of Genesis 1.”, Margaret Barker, Great High Priest: The Temple Roots of Christian Liturgy (A&C Black, 2003). 208.

This would be more convincing if it was accompanied by evidence.

At the risk of insulting you by explaining my meaning, the reasoning is thus.

  1. When someone wanted to describe a typical work day, they described it as starting in the morning and finishing in the evening. They may also describe someone as working “from morning to evening”. They might describe someone as “starting work” in the morning and “finishing work” in the evening. We don’t see any of these in Genesis 1.

  2. When someone describes events without saying how long they took place, it is clear they are not interested in recording how long it took for the events to take place. This is what we see in Genesis 1. The only time recorded is the time during which God is not acting; the time from evening to morning, which is when people sleep.

Thus the function of the evenings and mornings is to mark the passage of time from the perspective of the writer’s personal experience, not to mark the duration during which God was working.

Ancient commentators observed that the only place in the Bible where this same “evening and morning” language is found, is in the vision of Daniel 8, which is described as “the vision of the evenings and mornings”. Thus the only place where this same unusual evening/morning construction is found is in another exilic or post-exilic passage, which treats evenings and mornings as part of a vision given to a prophet.

That’s ok, you don’t have to think it’s true. You can think that Genesis 1 is being dictated in the first person by God, instead of by a third person who is not God, and who is describing what they see. That’s fine. I am simply explaining to you how early exegetes arrived at this conclusion. To them, phrases such as “And God said” indicate a third person observer, not the first person perspective of God Himself. Of course you could argue that God is dictating the text and speaking of Himself in the third person, that’s an alternative. That would be like you saying “And John Harshman said”.

That’s fine, you can think it’s irrelevant. Again, I’m pointing out that this is how early exegetes arrived at this interpretation; the creation account was written after the Law, in a way which validates the Law.

Now the earliest exegetes thought this was written by Moses, as I mentioned, so they believed it was written by Moses to enforce the Sabbath he was giving the people at the time. Modern scholars believe that the creation account of Genesis 1 post-dates Moses, and was written in the exilic or post-exilic era, and that one of its functions was specifically to re-enforce the Sabbath, since the exilic Hebrews had abandoned its practice. We have records in the Bible itself (in the post-exilic book of Nehemiah), that the Sabbath had been abandoned and that religious leaders (such as Nehemiah), sought to restore and re-inforce the Sabbath, so we know for a fact that this was an important theological concern.

These are reasons why mainstream critical scholarship not only accepts that the Genesis 1 account is exilic or post-exilic, but also broadly accepts (though there isn’t a consensus on this), that the Genesis 1 narrative was intended to be understood as a vision of creation given to a prophet, traditionally understood as Moses.

“In order to clarify these ideas, it is helpful to recall that the tabernacle was understood to be a microcosm of the six days of creation (Gen. 1-2), revealed to Moses during his six-day sojourn on the summit of Mount Sinai (Exod. 14.16).”, Sharon E J Gerstel, Thresholds of the sacred : architectural, art historical, liturgical, and theological perspectives on religious screens, East and West, Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Studies (Washington, D.C. : Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2006), 173.

“It is true that it is Moses who perceives that literal days are passing. God Himself does not say so in the vision, but He does choose this order and the darkness/light pattern recognized as “days”.”, Ed Christian, Genesis 1 as Vision: What Are the Implications?, Journal of the Adventist Theological Society, 12/1 (Spring 2001): 141.

“Moses on Mt. Sinai was told to build the tabernacle as an exact copy of what he had seen (Exod 25:9, 40), but the summary account of the tabernacle building in Exod 40:17-32 suggests strongly that what Moses “copied” was not a heavenly temple but a vision of the whole creation which the tabernacle/temple represented.”, James Dunn & John Rogerson (eds), Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible (Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.), 525.

“It would appear that the “Book of the Origin of Heaven and Earth” (Gen 2:4a, LXX), refers to the preceding account in Genesis 1 and was a record of the vision seen in the sanctuary (heaven) by those granted the secrets of the creation. The tradition in Jubilees is identical; Moses on Mt. Sinai is told to write an account of the six days of creation (Jub. 2:1) and then of history until the institution of the Passover.” James Dunn & John Rogerson (eds), Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible (Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.), 525.

It’s not a credible reading of Genesis in my view, but it’s something some people don’t have a problem with. Of course it is not a reading which would occur to anyone ignorant of the scientific facts which require the universe to be very old, while humans are very young. So now it’s clear that the only reason why you think a literal six day creation interpretation of Genesis requires a very young earth, is in fact nothing to do with the text and everything to do with science. It’s not that the text teaches this, it’s that the scientific knowledge you bring to the text leads you to this conclusion as an inevitability of reading the text that way. Which is kind of ironic, isn’t it?

So now perhaps you can understand why ancient commentators did not derive any age of the earth from what the text actually says, even when they did believe it was speaking of the creation of the entire universe in only six days.

You make three assumptions, one of them especially dubious: that failure to censure counts as approval; that insults are never approved; and that I had any opinion on the various statements or in fact ever read them.

Again, I find that surprising. Then again, most of my knowledge of OECs comes from RTB. How can the creation of light itself be supposed to involve only the earth? I would indeed like a citation.

I would like to see a citation for that too. This is perhaps distinct from the day-age theory?

You provide nothing from that book to say that the 6 days were days of vision rather than days of creation, only that Moses received a vision. The stuff about Philo does make such a claim, though.

The evidence would be the text itself, which refers not to visions but to days of God’s action.

And yet the traditional day in Judaism begins at sunset, right? How is this different? Note that the text does not refer to “the time between evening and morning”; it refers to “the evening and the morning”, which is clearly a description of the sunset-to-sunset period of a day.

Why should the period in which Genesis was written be relevant?

It seems neither. It’s being related by a narrator who speaks of God in the third person. But this is the (you should pardon the expression) omniscient narrator common in fiction, who sees all events, including the inner thoughts of the characters. That’s why the narrator knows that God saw that it was good. Where the narrator got his information is a second question not relevant to the form. Do you really think Moses wrote the Pentateuch, incidentally?

Who are those people?

Not really relevant. Curious, though: do you know why the Jewish calendar puts the creation at approximately 6000 years ago, though if I recall slightly older than Ussher does?

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@John_Harshman

Ha… the Soot pile calling the Pewter Pot black.

Whataboutism is a poor argument. And are you not insulting me here by calling me a soot pile?

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It’s not an assumption that when a moderator fails to censure a post, that they approve of it being on the board, even if they don’t approve of all the content. I am speaking of moderators approving the content being on the board, even if they don’t approve of the content. I am not assuming that when they fail to censure a comment they approve of the content.

When someone replies to a post, it’s clear they read it. When someone clicks “like” on a post, it’s clear they read it and liked it. When a moderator replies to a post and doesn’t censure any of the content, it’s clear they approve of the post in the sense that they are willing to have it on the board, even if they don’t approve of the content.

In my particular case it’s clear that a moderator did read my post, and did approve of the content, and did approve of the post being on the forum. No assumptions there.

No I am not assuming that insults are never approved. I believe they are sometimes approved, and that whether or not they are approved depends heavily on who wrote them.

This is a conclusion I am making on the basis of your posting history here; it’s an evidence based conclusion. Until I have evidence that you don’t agree with any of those statements, I’m happy with my conclusion.

I would be surprised if you have not seen this argument before. The idea is that the creation of light is the creation of the sun, but the sun’s light didn’t reach the earth until later, because the sun’s light was obscured by a thick vapor canopy.

The sun and the moon were created in the beginning. The light of course came from the sun, but the vapour diffused the light. Later the sun appeared in an unclouded sky.", C.I. Scofield, The Scofield Reference Bible (New York, Oxford University Press, 1909), 3.

Another view is that God created a local light source on the first day which was not the sun, and then created the sun on the fourth day.

“God created a fixed and localized light source in the heaven in reference to which the rotating earth passed through the same kind of day/night cycle as it has since the creation of the sun.”, John Whitcomb, The Early Earth, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, Baker Book House, 1986), 31.

There are other views, such as the idea that the light of the first day was the glory of God shining on the earth, with the sun created on the fourth day.

Ok.

“This view does not view Genesis 1:1 as an age, but inserts the various ages between each day of creation.”, William Hemsworth, Life in Christ: Essays on the Christian Life, Church History, and Theology (2017).

“The days of Genesis 1 could have a time lapse before the days began (before Gen. 1:3), or a time gap between the days.”, Edward D. Andrews, " BIBLE DIFFICULTIES Genesis: CPH Apologetic Commentary" (Christian Publishing House, 2016), 82.

Yes.

Ok so a circular argument; “The text means X; this is proved by the text itself, which means X”.

I went over this in some detail in a previous post. I will explain it again. If by “the traditional day in Judaism” you mean the traditional day in our era, then yes. As I explained previously, this was not true during the time when this text was written. As I explained previously, the Jewish day was originally measured from morning to evening. I pointed out that this form of measurement is used consistently throughout the entire Old Testament (for example, Deuteronomy 28:67, 1 Samuel 17:16, Job 4:20, Psalm 104:22)., and is also used in the early Second Temple Period. Here is some relevant commentary on the subject.

“There is some evidence that strongly suggests that the day was considered to begin in the morning at sunrise. For example, this view is supported by the fact that when the OT refers to a second day the time reference is the morning (Gen. 19:33–34; Judg. 6:38; 21:4). Similarly, the phrase “day and night” is much more frequent than “night and day.” Thus it seems likely that this refrain in Genesis refers not to the computation of a day but rather to the “vacant time till the morning, the end of a day and the beginning of the next work.””, Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1–17 (The New International Commentary on the Old Testament; Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1990), 121.

“As Rashbam noted, the day is here seen to begin with the dawn. The same idea dictates the order of words in the oft used phrase “day and night,” and it underlies the regulations of Leviticus 7:15 and 22:30, which mark off the morning following the bringing of certain sacrifices as the time limit by which they may be eaten.”, Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (The JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 8.

I pointed out that this was not changed until later, and that there was considerable resistance to this change. The issue was debated in the Talmud, because some time after the Babylonian exile in the later Second Temple Period (either during the Persian or Greek era), the Jews switched to measuring the day from evening to evening. Lengthy debates were conducted in attempts to justify this change,[1] which was resisted by more conservative Jews who refused to abandon the Scriptural definition.[2]

Nevertheless, the Talmud still preserves evidence of the original understanding that a day according to the Bible was to be measured from morning to evening (“Everyone agrees that the day begins with the break of dawn”),[3] and the passage describing Moses judging Israel from morning to evening is understood as meaning “all day long”, measuring a day from the morning to the evening.[4]

Pardon me if I find it hard to accept that “the evening and the morning” actually means “the evening and the evening”. It would help if you showed your “working out”, especially your lexicographical evidence.

Because determining the date of an ancient text is a sine qua non of its interpretation. Without it you cannot perform accurate leixcographical analysis, or socio-historical analysis. This is so well established in secular literary criticism, I am more than surprised that you’re unaware of it. If you need more information on why this is relevant, I can explain further.

In critical scholarship the date of Genesis 1 is considered essential to understanding its language, meaning, and purpose. A exilic or post-exilic date is generally accepted precisely because of its explanatory power. The text cannot just be fitted into any era people choose. If the text is situated at the wrong date, most of its features become inexplicable. For example, you’re convinced that the days in Genesis 1 must be measured from evening to evening, since that’s how Jews measure them these days. But the Jews have not originally measure the day from evening to evening, and in the pre-Christian era of this text, they did not measure them from evening to evening; they measured them from morning to evening. You’ve misunderstood the text by bringing assumptions to it which don’t take into account its chronological context.

Exactly.

Where the narrator got his information is a primary question which helps determine the form. That’s precisely why you just appealed to the narrator’s knowledge of the fact that “God saw it was good”. You used that to demonstrate that the author must have been the third person omniscient author of fiction, because otherwise they couldn’t have known this. But again, I am not trying to convince you that Genesis 1 is a vision, I am explaining to you why it was understood as a vision by ancient commentators.

No, and the Bible never credits the Pentateuch to him. It comparatively little of the Pentateuch to him.

I don’t know of any specific groups, only random people I’ve engaged on discussion forums. I was on a Mormon forum for a while, and there was a huge range of different views on the subject, including humans being created hundreds of millions of years ago.

It’s completely relevant to what you wrote. Remember, your claim was this.

We can now see that it’s entirely possible for the days to be literal days, and for this to be the story of the creation of the universe, and the universe still not be created in six literal days, and that this does not require the universe to be young.

I explained this previously.

I can make a separate post on this to provide more detail, if necessary.


[1] “Traces of the dispute are discernable in rabbinic literature.”, Yosef Green, “When Does the Day Begin?”, Jewish Bible Quarterly 36, 2 (Jewish Bible Association, 2008): 83.

[2] “The sages could not ignore or conceal the fact that these dissenters, like the Samaritans, kept “every commandment which they kept . . . more strictly than Israel.””, Yosef Green, “When Does the Day Begin?”, Jewish Bible Quarterly 36, 2 (Jewish Bible Association, 2008): 83.

[3] Talmud Jerusalem y. Ber. 1:1, I.7.B, Jacob Neusner, The Jerusalem Talmud: A Translation and Commentary (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008).

[4] “R. Hisda and Rabbah bar R. Huna were in session in court all day long. They felt weak. R. Hiyya bar Rab of Difti repeated for them the following Tannaite statement:” ‘And the people stood about Moses from the morning unto the evening’ (Ex. 18:13)—now can it enter your mind that Moses was sitting and judging cases all day long?”, Talmud Babylon b. Shabb. 1:2, V.13.A, Jacob Neusner, The Babylonian Talmud: A Translation and Commentary (vol. 2; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2011), 33.

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One quibble:

It’s frequently clear that they’ve not. I didn’t read the rest of yours.

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You’re right, I just realised I didn’t read any of this either.

The creation of the sun is not the creation of the earth. None of your sources claim that Genesis 1 is not about the creation of the universe, and all of them talk about a source of light outside the earth. But I agree that your citations of gaps between days do work.

Not circular. The text says X. In order to reach another interpretation, you have to interpret as meaning something other than what it literally says.

You put words in my mouth there. But you make a convincing point that Genesis was written before the day was measured starting at sunset. The reference becomes puzzling in that case, and I find several interpretations online.

By some ancient commentators, right? Even if it’s a vision, it’s a vision privy to inside information, and it appears to be a vision showing six days of creation.

Well, that makes sense. Mormons have all sorts of beliefs, including that God began as a man on another planet. But were these beliefs coupled with a literal 6-day creation?

This is supported by the idea of gaps between days. I don’t see your other references as supporting it.

I don’t recall that. Do you mean that it post-dates the writing of Genesis, because it’s borrowed from Greek sources?

@Jonathan_Burke If you think the moderation is biased, you should take it up with the moderators.

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I have done this on several occasions.

Your question was “How can the creation of light itself be supposed to involve only the earth?”. I provided two citations demonstrating this. Now you say “None of your sources claim that Genesis 1 is not about the creation of the universe, and all of them talk about a source of light outside the earth”. Please put the goalposts down.

Of course they talk about a source of light outside the earth. That’s addressing exactly what you asked for. You asked how the creation of light itself be supposed to involve only the earth, and I provided you with sources which identify the “light” here as only the light visible from the earth not the entire universe.

You said “None of your sources claim that Genesis 1 is not about the creation of the universe”. The commentary of Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown I quoted states specifically that the creation days of Genesis one only concern the earth.

the heaven and the earth–the universe. This first verse is a general introduction to the inspired volume, declaring the great and important truth that all things had a beginning; that nothing throughout the wide extent of nature existed from eternity, originated by chance, or from the skill of any inferior agent; but that the whole universe was produced by the creative power of God (Ac 17:24; Ro 11:36). After this preface, the narrative is confined to the earth.

They interpret Genesis 1:1 as a reference to the creation of the universe, including the sun and the earth, and then the days as referring to a “refurnishing” of the earth which had fallen into a chaotic state in the deep past.

2. the earth was without form and void --or in “confusion and emptiness,” as the words are rendered in Isa 34:11. This globe, at some undescribed period, having been convulsed and broken up, was a dark and watery waste for ages perhaps, till out of this chaotic state, the present fabric of the world was made to arise.

So for them, the days of Genesis 1 start with the sun and earth already created, and light already existing in the universe, and the “light” of day one relates only to the earth.

The Scofield commentary I quoted does exactly the same, confining Genesis 1:1 to the distant past (“The first creative act refers to the dateless past, and gives scope to all the geologic ages”), and identifying the days of Genesis 1 as referring only to the creation of the earth.

So as you can see, both of these sources confine the days of Genesis 1 to the refurbishment of earth (which they believed already existed, and was not created within the days), and the revealing of the sun, moon, and stars (which they believed already existed, and were not created within the days), from the perspective of someone on the earth.

Yes. On that forum you could find just about every possible permutation of beliefs about Genesis, since their church supposedly has no official position on it. Certainly no less wacky than some ideas we’ve seen on this forum, which involve complicated “alternative time” theories.

Again, you’re using “The text says X” as support for the claim “The text says X”. If you want to claim “The text says X”, then instead of behaving like a typical Christian fundamentalist you need to do the kind of work which critical scholars spend their time on. Why do you think critical scholars don’t simply read the English text and conclude “The text says X”, the way you do? Wouldn’t it save a lot of time? Why waste time on all that Hebrew stuff, and archaeology, and socio-historical context, and lexicography?

It is also supported by the idea of the days as days on which a vision was given to a prophet. I did not cite the Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown commentary, or Scofield commentary, as supporting this view. I cited them for a different purpose, since neither of them believe the days involve the creation of the universe.

It was in a post of mine to which you responded, even quoting directly from the post. I have just quoted to you the relevant sentences. If you missed them the first time, it demonstrates that you are not reading all of what I write; you’re reading part of them and skipping bits and pieces. This would certainly explain why you have found some of my posts confusing. It might help to read entire posts. I will make a new post to explain the point.