Gerald Schroeder's Six Days of Creation

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Why should there be a hidden meaning?

That’s kind of a theological question that goes to God’s motives. It could be that God desired to reveal a compressed history for the sake of terse simplicity in an ancient Hebrew context and to emphasize His role as creator of all things and the importance of the seven day work week.

As Deuteronomy says, “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.” (Deuteronomy 29:29)

Or, as Proverbs explains, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.” (Proverbs 25:2)

The author of Matthew’s gospel identifies a numeric pattern when summarizing the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1:17. We’re not really told what the significance there is, but the point is that Judaism has a long tradition of finding subtextual connections.

It’s not any deeper than the traditional understanding.

It’s deeper in that it’s not immediately apparent if the face-value reading simply implies creation via six consecutive solar days with no expressed creative mechanism (evolution). It’s not really an alternative sequence, Schroeder claims that the order of events in his model is the same as the biblical account while being expressed to different degrees of complexity and clarification (though you and I would see legitimate inconsistencies, where Schroeder would likely claim there are none).

Schroeder also claims that the phrase “evening and morning” denotes a deeper meaning where each successive day consists of the world progressing from “chaos” to “order”. Things like this, along with the use of physics and math to reach his conclusions, are what lead to his view being a more mystical / esoteric approach.

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I don’t think that matters. It doesn’t have to be precisely accurate to be poetically accurate. I’m not a concordist in the usual sense, but this deviation could just be poetic license, especially with the parallelism in the passage that demands this reordering.

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That makes little sense. This isn’t a compressed history; it’s a false history, with events in the wrong order. Emphasizing God’s role as creator doesn’t require any sort of true sequence at all, so reinterpreting the false sequence as a correct sequence has nothing to do with such a purpose.

That’s not explaining, just stating a claim. Is there any clue what it means?

Then the sequence shouldn’t matter at all, and Schroeder’s efforts to reconcile it with the facts are pointless. The sequence may have some significance, but if we accept your point it isn’t a temporal sequence.

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It could be a rough temporal sequence.

Yes I agree, this does make his effort to reconcile at a finer grained detail pretty meaningless, especially because he claims high precision.

Well, it could be a rough compressed history that is really true, but includes poetic license.

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This isn’t a compressed history; it’s a false history

Well that’s a very strong statement. I’ll let Schroeder’s words speak for themselves as again, I’m not really seeking to defend his view. My intention was to raise his view as a possible means of arriving at a concordist reading of the text versus a mytho-historical or mytho-poetic one. Also, the difference I have with you is that while I agree that his view of Genesis (as I’ve understood and outlined it here) is inconsistent with natural history, I can leave room for him (or his proponents) to attempt to substantiate his model with either new data or a reworked model.

That’s not explaining, just stating a claim. Is there any clue what it means

I don’t think it’s that difficult to understand this passage. I think this back and forth is past its usefulness.

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What does that even mean? A “rough temporal sequence” could incorporate any degree of inconsistency with the actual sequence. If there’s any inspired truth in Genesis 1, it isn’t in the sequence, duration, or nature of the events described. Aren’t you fine with that?

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I heard Schroreder speak at Wash U years ago, right around the time his book came out. I remember he showed a bunch of calculations that included something about the mass of the universe. When it was time for questions, the physicists in the audience jumped all over him about using the wrong mass. Not being a physicist, I had trouble following the discussion, but I seem to recall them accusing him of choosing a value that would give him the answer he wanted. Do you know if he is still using these calculations or if he ever resolved the question of the mass of the universe.

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Just wanted to clear this up. I meant that God could have concealed a deeper meaning via a summarized history because His purpose was to accommodate the intellect of the ancient Hebrew and to highlight His role as creator, I was not addressing the sequence at all on this point. Though, I agree that the validity of this view hinges on if the literal sequence can be substantiated somehow.

EDIT: trying to be more accurate, less accusatory.

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You’re going to have to clarify what that means, because I have no real clue. Why hide a deeper meaning instead of just stating it? And you seem to be claiming that ancient Hebrews were stupid, though I doubt that was your intention.

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I’m not familiar with that issue, but I know that Schroeder has updated his website at least once with a correction, see here for an example.

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And you seem to be claiming that ancient Hebrews were stupid, though I doubt that was your intention.

That was not my intention. I meant that their level of awareness and education about natural history was low compared to pretty much anyone living now.

Why hide a deeper meaning instead of just stating it?

I don’t think we’re really told. It’s speculation to suggest that God did in fact conceal a deeper meaning in Genesis 1 and it’s also speculation to provide the specific reason why He concealed the deeper meaning if He in fact did conceal it.

Speculating: It could be that God simply wanted to bring glory to Himself by concealing a deeper meaning here. Or maybe His intention was to conceal a deeper meaning because He was trying to accommodate the breadth of knowledge of natural history that ancient Hebrews had at that time.

As a parent, I do this very thing sometimes with my young children. They haven’t ascertained enough information yet about certain things to warrant an explanation with great depth or detail, so I provide a simple explanation which they can grasp while still being true.

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Then “intellect” was completely the wrong word. But why should their prior education matter? This is the word of God telling them how things are. It doesn’t have to explain quantum mechanics, just the ordering of some events. Why not just have the sun and stars before the earth and before plants? Would that have startled anyone?

I’ve never understood that. How would concealing a deeper meaning (or concealing anything, really) bring glory to God? Why would God want to bring glory to himself, at that? Is he insecure?

Again, that explanation makes no sense as far as I can tell. Maybe you could explain.

It isn’t a matter of not providing detail; it’s providing details that are untrue. I could easily write a story with the same amount of detail, understandable to a person with minimal prior knowledge, but still true. Why can’t God do the same?

I don’t think any of your explanations stand up to even cursory examination.

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I deleted my last reply to you because I don’t think I’m contributing to a helpful discussion. I think you’ve sufficiently demonstrated your disagreement with Schroeder’s view, and I don’t want to derail this into a ping-pong discussion where I’m defending his model. As a lay person, I can’t really argue the science. Apologies for anything I wrote which may have been wrong or unhelpful. I’ll leave it there for now, and I appreciate your time.

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I don’t think we’ve been arguing about science at all, have we? This is all theology.

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A year could be defined as about 3.15e7 seconds, and a second could be defined as 9.193e9 oscillations two energy levels of cesium-133. Even this convention wouldn’t make sense if there were no cesium atoms, say, before the first merging of neutron stars or dying of a low mass star, but plausibly other conventions could be set that would go earlier. Planck times, say.

I suppose the interesting thing in this context is that this cannot be what the authors of Genesis meant by years. I don’t think the existence of the solar system would have explicitly entered into the way they measure time.

It doesn’t enter into the way I measure time. The big light goes away and comes back, it’s been about a day.

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As a note… The velocity of the expansion of things in the universe match up pretty close with the stretching of space.

T1=T2/sqrt 1-V^2/C^2

gives 6 days Riding the expansion of the farthest particles ( photons) in the universe from the Big Bang moving at point . 999999999999999999999999999999999 the speed of light gives six days riding the universe and 13.8 billion years here at earth. That’s 1/1000000000000000000000000000000000 th slower than the speed of the of those photons.

In distance that 6 days above the universe would compute within .0009 millimeter of the farthest photons at 93 billion light years diameter

Also as space stretches it stretches the length of light along with it…

93 bil light year Diameter observable universe/2 x 365x60x60x24

=2.9x10^18

X 299792458 speed of light per second

=4.39 x 10^26 meters

Multiply by 1000 to get millimeters

=. 4.39 x 10^26 mm times 1/10^33

= 4.39e-7 (10 millionth of a millimeter difference in distance closer than the farthest photons in the 93 billion light years diameter of the observable universe-pretty close!

Observable universe is the part of the universe that isn’t moving away faster than light .

Even though space can expand faster than light- it stretches the light along with it the same ratio. Stretching of light is measured by the redshift, and it verifies stretching of time and Big Bang theory-stretching of spacetime.

No one knows the exact size beyond that. Minimum size measurements have been estimated .

I havn’t double checked these calculations, but I will doublecheck later this evening.

Since space time and light temperature stretch the same ratios ( cooler light is stretched light waves… hence space and time), Another way to check Gerald’s idea is to take the temperature and time And double Until to you reach quark confinement. It’s a crude way of doing it and it’s not going to be precise but I did it on a spreadsheet and the 1st 6 days came out to be pretty close to what gerald schroeder says.

This site says time space temp all stretch the same ratio

Gerald starts his time before the cmbr…he starts his time with the first matter.

Tanniyn is usually reptiles…gadowl means great. Owph can be winged insects.

Some of the replies here need to look up the Hebrew and read closer what gerald is saying.

And the photons were there before they were released when the universe cooled.

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Gerald never said the earth wasn’t 4.5 billion years old. What he said was time has slowed an " average " of .9 trillion. So he is comparing 2 clocks. The curve from 10.8 trillion k to 2.7k gives an average of 1 trillion , but it has to be further reduced by 10% because the universe is accelerating. I can post dozens of posts including gov articles saying the doppler effect applied to electromagnetic waves brings time dilation into play. Time dilation means there are two clocks at different rates. The age of the universe is both 13.8 billion years and 5.5 days according to gerald. I have peebles text p 96 …it says the change in the redshift (k)is the change in the rate of events.

I have a gov article saying time space and temp change the same ratio. All these articles appear to be agreeing with gerald.

.9 trillion x 5.6 / 365 gives 13.8 billion years

I have a couple dozen links but I’m only allowed to post two

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Hi Dwayne, welcome…I have a question. I like the thoughts expressed, but it seems then that day 7 (God resting) didn’t happen and Genesis 2 lumps Eden and Adam into the Genesis 1 account. Which seems off to me biblically.

Maybe the .9 trillion multiplier is the issue…either way, the model does not account for the seventh day, which happened before Adam was created in Genesis 2:7. God rested in Genesis 2:1, then created Adam and Eden.

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If you’ll notice the king James translators which they really boggle this chapter up a lot anyhow but they did not use the name Adam in chapter 1. Yes the events in chapter 2 are out of order with chapter 1 many people feel that chapter 2 is a different contexts where chapter 1 is the creation of everything chapter 2 is an event that happened later in the garden. And that the context is in the garden

Man is 1st made ASA H in Hebrew means something that already exist

Ultimately it’s referring to Jesus Christ because the New Testament says that he is completely the image of God

Adam was created during the 6 day. The Bible doesn’t say when during the 6 day. The some of the traditional Jews held that it was the middle of the 6 day.

According to Hebrews chapter 4 we are still in the 7th day so apparently there is Possibly a symbolism going on there

But even if this is not the meaning of Genesis the numbers actually work out. If it’s a quincidence the ratio was one in a trillion approximately so I’m guessing it would be slimmer odds than a 1 in a trillion quincidence because it could have been any number through infinity…

Please excuse the auto correct

So would it be one in approaching affinity infinity quincidence? Perhaps?

But even if Gerald’s approach is not the intention if you read I think psalms 90 is is a with God a 1000 years are as A-day and as a watch in the night which is like 3 or 4 hours.

It also mentions evening in morning as being either Applied to a 1000 years or to people’s lives I’m not certain on that period either way it’s still relative ity.

I’m not a fan of Stephen Hawking … I know he said there are an infinite number of times occurring in the universe and I believe that is correct

So relativity is a fact of the universe. There would be a lot of ways that it would be both 6 days and 14 billion years.

The idea of relativity is that there’s more than one clock and the bigger part of the universe you look at the more relatively comes into play.

If a person were riding the fartherest photons that came from the big Bang David experience 0 time

As the universe stretches it’s inevitable that time is slowing down.

I have over a dozen article some of them government articles that say this

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I don’t understand…you think Adam was Jesus? not so.

I also think this is wrong. Entering God’s rest as described in Hebrews 4 does not mean that God is currently at rest, God does not operate in the same constraint of time that man does. So, I would argue that we are not still in the 7th day, or if we are then your math means the second coming will be in 115 million AD…long time to wait.

I think this is a good argument for describing how God’s timing is indescribable in human terms, not that there is a mathematical equation.