Genesis, Religion, College Term Papers.com


		Data Bases
		• Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism?

		Links
		• Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com

		Free Essays
		• Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers

Search Lots of Essays

Back to Subjects - Religion

Genesis

Genesis A matter that weighs heavily between the science world and the biblical world is the meaning of the ?days? of creation in Genesis 1. Are God?s creative days to be taken as long periods of time, eons, or short periods of time, i.e. 24 hours? We will examine the biblical evidence for possibly applying a long-term definition to the word, ?day? in English, yom in Hebrew, and see that in the Bible; it is all a matter of timing. Remember the article by Pinnock; we must not let our long-standing presuppositions fog our objective look at the issue. After God divided the light from the darkness, ?God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day? (Gen. 1:5). For Moses, was it his intention to convey a day?s period of time in this and succeeding passages in exactly the same measure as a man?s day? Or was a day of God?s time intended, which could contrast as sharply from our measure, as man in the flesh contrasts against God Himself? As we saw in class, the stages of God?s creation are written in sequence. The first day began when the sun was created and the first bright light struck the planet Earth. On the second day, the Lord divided the waters; vapor or mist was in the air, and water covered the surface. Dry land and vegetation were created on the third day. The sun, moon, and stars were designated created on the fourth day. Day five was devoted to creating the world?s fish and fowl flying creatures. Land animals came on the scene, and man was created on day six. The Lord rested on the seventh day, signaling his completeness and his favor on His work. Next we come to the question of the hour, what were the actual time constraints that happened during the entire creation process? The Hebrew word yom has the same meaning as ?day? in English. It can mean the daylight portion of a day, the entire 24-hour period, a time of undesignated length, or a day of celebration. Which usage did Moses intend in the first passages of Genesis? Better yet, what meaning did God intend to convey through Moses? Many have come to believe that interpreting those creative days as long periods is a relatively modern phenomenon dictated by the recent findings of science, i.e. sedimentation rates, radioactive decay rates, a vast and expanding universe, and so forth, but such may not be the case. Some of the early church fathers took their cues from Scripture alone without the benefit of all the scientific information available today. Ross argues that Irenaeus, Origen, Basil, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas, to name a few, argued that the days of creation must have been long periods of time solely from their understanding of the biblical text. (1) There are some today, however, who advocate that the creation days in Genesis were strictly 24 hours in duration. Henry Morris in The Genesis Record states, ?... the Biblical record itself makes it plain that the days of creation are literal days, not long indefinite ages, If he (Moses) wished to convey the idea of long geological ages, he could surely have done it far more clearly and effectively in other words than in those which he selected.? (2) Perhaps in anticipation of future misunderstanding, God carefully defined His terms. The very first time He used the word ?day? (Hebrew ?yom?), he (Moses) defined it as the ?light?, to distinguish it from the ?darkness? called ?night.? Having separated the day and night, God completed His first day's work. ?The evening and the morning were the first day.? This same formula is used at the conclusion of each of the six days, so it could seem obvious that the duration of each of the days, including the first, was the same. Furthermore, the ?day? was the ?light? time, when God did His work; the darkness was the ?night? time when God did no work--nothing new was created between the ?evening? and ?morning? of each day. The Ryrie Study Bible follows the same line; and there was evening and there was morning, one day. Better, ?day one.? Later Jewish reckoning began the day with eventide (Lev. 23:32). This may be the reason for the order here, or it may simply mean that one day-night cycle was completed. Since daytime closes at evening and the night ends with the morning, the phrase indicates that the first day and night had been completed. Evening and morning cannot be construed to mean an age, but only a day; everywhere in the Pentateuch the word ?day,? when used (as here) with a numerical adjective, means a solar day (now calibrated as 24 hours). (3) The keys to interpretation are not found by scrutinizing Scripture with the world's logic, which can be faulty, or with its knowledge, which is incomplete, but by comparing Scripture with Scripture itself. Since Moses was God?s human instrument, and he used yom for a creative day, what was he talking about? For the answer we need look no further than to the Bible itself. I guess that we could take a look at nature, it is like reading a mystery novel, we can skip to the last pages and find out who did it, and then read the book knowing from the beginning that the culprit would be in the end. The abundance of geological and astrophysical evidence underscoring only one answer - an old earth - is a heavy persuader, but the Bible can be gauged on its own terms. Following the six days of creation and God?s sanctification of the seventh day of rest, a shift of focus begins at Genesis 2:4: ?These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.? Here Moses used the word ?day? as a blanket to apply to the previous six days of creation. But how can one 24-hour day equal six 24-hour days? This does not seem to be a problem in semantics; this could be a mathematical issue. If a day of creation is a time of indefinite length, then one large time of indefinite length could equal six smaller times of indefinite length. What happens when we slice a pizza into six pieces? The word ?pie? could apply to the whole, or to each piece. But one 24-hour day cannot equal six 24-hour days. To possibly use a ?24-hour period? inappropriately as a definition for the word ?day? when that word has a variety of meanings, puts Scripture at odds with Scripture when it is not unnecessary. Attempts to be literal with some passages, while ignoring other passages, may make the Bible appear to be contradictory when that is not the case at all. Archer says ?... it is abundantly clear that ?yom? in Genesis 2:4 cannot possibly be meant as a twenty-four hour day--unless perchance the Scripture contradicts itself! (4) As a matter of interest, the operative Hebrew word in this passage is not the word ?day? (yom), but rather ?generation? (toledah). According to Hebrew lexicons, the word toledah always pertains to a long time period, never to such a short span as a mere week. And since the word is plural, we know with certainty that ?generations? can refer to multiple periods of time, each of which is longer than a calendar week. (5) If we take Genesis 2:4 literally, the entire creation event from day one through six is defined by the author of Genesis as a sequence of long periods of time, not a sequence of 24-hour days. Furthermore, those time periods need not be equal in length. In everyday English usage, just as in Hebrew, the word ?day? is used frequently for varying amounts of time. It is the context surrounding the word that determines meaning, not the word taken in isolation. William Wilson?s Old Testament Word Studies sums up the possible variations, A day; it is frequently put for time in general, or for a long time; a whole period under consideration ... Day is also put for a particular season or time when any extraordinary event happens ... (6) The ?days? of creation certainly do appear to be periods of extraordinary happenings which fit ?a long time? definition better than a 24-hour definition. What about Ryrie?s argument that the word ?day? in conjunction with a numerical adjective means a solar day? The theologian J. Oliver Buswell answered that question as he replied to another author trying to use a similar line of reasoning, ?It may be true that this is the only case in which the word day is used figuratively when preceded by any numeral, but the reason is that this is the only case in Scripture in which any indefinitely long periods of time are enumerated. The words ?aion? in Greek and ?olam? in Hebrew are literal words for ?age,? but we do not happen to have any case in which God has said ?first age,? ?second age,? ?third age,? etc. The attempt to make a grammatical rule to the effect that the numeral preceding the word day makes it literal, breaks down on the simple fact that this is the only case in all the Scriptures, and in all Hebrew language, I think, in which ages are enumerated one after the other. There is no such rule in anybody?s Hebrew grammar anywhere. The author of this objection, or the one from whom he has attempted to quote, has simply put forth with a sound of authority a grammatical rule which does not exist?. (7) And God said, ?Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years? And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; He made the stars also. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day (Gen. 1:14,16,19). On the first day God created light, yet the sun, moon, and stars were not visible until the fourth day. Some liberal scholars might (I do not believe this at all) say there is no problem to a creation taking roughly 12 billion years to unfold. It would be some 7-10 billion years after the inception, commonly known as the hot big bang, or simply the Big Bang, which brought not only light, but heat and noise as well, before the sun would form and switch on eventually to become our energy and light source. Prior to that, the earth was ?formless and void,? and darkness prevailed according to Genesis 1:2. One might think that in the young-earth version, six 24-hour days punctuated by intervals of daylight and darkness would be hard to come by, since they claim the sun was not created until the fourth day. This is no deterrence if your mind is made up. Morris says, The formula may be rendered literally: ?And there was evening, then morning --day one,? and so on. It is clear that, beginning with the first day and continuing thereafter, there was established a cyclical succession of days and nights--periods of light and periods of darkness. Such a cyclical light-dark arrangement clearly means that the earth was now rotating on its axis and that there was a source of light on one side of the earth corresponding to the sun, even though the sun was not yet made (Genesis 1:16). It is equally clear that the length of such days could only have been that of a normal solar day. (8) ?Clear?? One could hardly make the case for this being clear. And what does Morris mean by a ?source of light on one side of the earth corresponding to the sun,? but which wasn't the sun? Are we to believe that God set up a giant spotlight or to light up the earth for 72 hours before He energized the sun? Couldn?t this cast the Creator and His creation in a somewhat artificial light? Here is another example of perfectly credible Scripture being made to appear incredible through faulty inconsistencies. If the first four days of creation are periods of time of indefinite length, as many theologians maintain, and not 24-hour periods, as some would say, then the sequence of events becomes possibly plausible. When the Lord created the heavens and the earth, the earth condensed into a fiery, molten ball. Water was vaporized as steam surrounding the superheated globe. Although the sun, moon, and stars were in place and functional, dense clouds would have obscured their view. We have no way of knowing when the sun started giving off sunlight, but certainly the sun?s energy was required to facilitate photosynthesis for the vegetation that began on the third day. Finally, the earth cooled to where the water vapor in the atmosphere condensed, whereupon the sun, moon, and stars shined through. An alternate explanation is that sighted creatures began to use the luminaries to measure time on the fourth day. An earth-bound observer who could have witnessed sunset and sunrise did not exist through the first four days of creation. Archer says, Genesis 1:14-19 reveals that in the fourth creative stage God parted the cloud cover enough for direct sunlight to fall on the earth and for accurate observation of the movements of the sun, moon, and stars to take place. Verse 16 should not be understood as indicating the creation of the heavenly bodies for the first time on the fourth creative day; rather it informs us that the sun, moon, and stars created on Day One as the source of light had been placed in their appointed places by God with a view to their eventually functioning as indicators of time (signs, seasons, days, years) to terrestrial observers. The Hebrew verb ?wayya? ?as? in v. 16 could better be rendered ?Now God had made the two great luminaries, etc., rather than as simple past tense, God made. 9 Instead of the word ?create? in the passage cited by Archer, a different verb was used meaning, ?made? or ?had made.? This could make good sense. The Lord created heaven and earth on day one, but on day four the celestial bodies were available for earthly observers to use as measures of time. Not only is the word ?day? defined by usage in Scripture, the words ?evening? and ?morning? are also resolved. In Psalm 90, humans are likened to grass. ?In the morning it flourishes, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth? (Psa. 90:6). Although we usually liken this to the human life cycle, we must remain literal. Perry Phillips comments, ?I know of no grass that literally springs up in the morning and then is dead by the same evening. Rather, the Psalmist has in mind the life cycle of grass in the Levant, which begins its growth with the November rains and dies with the hot, dry, March, desert winds. In this psalm, therefore, ?morning? stands for the period of growth and ?evening? stands for the period of death?. (10) Fiat Days? Some interpreters treat the creation days as 24 hours in duration and in proper sequence, but not necessarily consecutive. As this theory goes, God commanded, ?Let there be light,? but the implementation following His command could have taken any amount of time. Some argue that the ?evening? and ?morning? applied only to His divine fiat or command, not to the entire events, which followed. According to this view, the first 24-hour day may have occurred 4 billion years ago. The second 24-hour day was a billion years after the earth was established, with the third 24-hour day taking place two and a half billion years after that, and so on. Separating those six 24-hour periods with at first billions and later millions of years is simply a harmonistic device that seems to distort the data. First of all, it does not take 24 hours to say, ?Let there be light.? Also, just as the sun never set on the British Empire in the days when Britannia ruled the waves? and its colonies ringed the globe, likewise the sun never sets on God. Transcending time and space, sunset and sunrise are visual phenomena. For one to see or experience evening or morning requires that such an observer be in a fixed position on one of the planets which revolve around our sun, in this case Earth. God is not fixed in a compartment of time or space. We do not view the world as He views it. If any of us could be observers standing on the bright side of the Moon, we could see the small hand on our watch make numerous revolutions without witnessing a sunset or a sunrise. Morning (boquer) may have an absolute meaning on God?s scale; yet have only symbolic meaning on our scale. Conversely, an early morning sunrise may be an absolute experience to us, yet be symbolic to God, as His sunrise is perpetual, just as His sunset is perpetual, likewise His day is perpetual, as is His night. For us humans, we cannot envision the world as God must see it. Not only is God omniscient, He is omnipresent. God has the unique characteristic or capability of being everywhere at once - at an infinite number of locations simultaneously. We are situated both in time and space. When we speak of evening and morning, we consider it synonymous with sunset and sunrise. This is because, as observers, we are locked in time and space at one specific geographical location at any given time. Astronauts, when they are in orbit around the earth, are less restricted. They see many ?evenings? and ?mornings? during a 24-hour day as they watch the sun disappear and reappear rapidly over the horizon. From God?s perspective, the earth is always half in daylight and half in darkness perennially; day after day from the moment He created it until the moment of its ultimate destruction. In one respect, we might say that God never sees ?evening? or ?morning,? or maybe we could say that He sees an infinite number of ?evenings? and ?mornings? every single day. But we cannot trap God in Jerusalem or Jericho, and think that He like us is limited to one sunrise and one sunset per 24-hour period, lest we feel like Henry Morris and think God cannot work at night. To human observers, who did not exist until day six, the term ?morning? could be thought of as sunrise. The same thing may be true with the lower ?living creatures,? on day five. But from day one to day four, God?s timing alone applied, unmitigated by any human or animal observers. We have no reason to reach any conclusions as to what timetable might have been operating for at least the first four days. Satan?s Fall (I know this may not be a large deal but I want to address it for the sake of argument) The fall of Satan, and with him one third of the heavenly hosts (Rev. 12:3,4), seems to have had to occur before the creation of Adam, as the serpent (Satan?) was lurking in the garden ready to make his move the first chance he got. The whole story of Satan?s fall needs to be pieced together. From Ezekiel 28:14-15, he was the ?anointed cherub,? was ?on the holy mountain of God,? and was ?perfect in his ways? from the day he was created until ?iniquity? was found in him. His heart was ?lifted up? because of his ?beauty.? From Revelation 12:7-9, we learn there was ?war in heaven.? Satan fought against ?Michael and his angels,? and was ?cast out into the earth.? How long a period of time lay between the creation of this ?angel of light? until his pride overcame him, and he was cast down to earth? Barring two creations, we would have to fit the entire saga into less than 144 hours (6 days x 24 hours), if we were to ascribe to the days of creation being 24-hour periods. At the beginning of day six, the Lord creates ?cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth? (Gen. 1:24). Adam and Eve were created before God rested on the Sabbath Day. Had that sixth day of Creation been a 24-hour day, it would have been absolutely jam packed with activity. First, God made land animals. That is the easy part. In Genesis 2:20, Adam has to name them all, that is: all ?cattle, all the fowl of the air and every beast of the field.? If that sounds like a large task for one day, consider this: In the young-earth creationist?s model, death does not occur in the world, even among the animals of the world, until Adam commits Original Sin. (11) Some have said that the species of animals that exist today comprise less than 1% of what has inhabited this planet since it began. Over 99% of all the species which once roamed the earth are now extinct. If we can get a handle on the magnitude of what a naming problem would be like with the thousands of species in existence today, multiply those species one hundred fold, and then have Adam name ALL of them in one day. It must have been a sight to behold. Adam would have been naming animals faster than a greased bullet. Also keep in mind; he also would have been tending the Garden of Eden during this (Gen. 2:15). No wonder he was looking for a helper (Gen. 2:20). As a perfect ending to a busy day, Adam has a portion of his side removed, and a wife presented to him (Gen. 2:21-22). That certainly would have kept his first few hours on earth, well, interesting. Archer says, ?It must have required some years, or, at the very least, a considerable number of months for him to complete this comprehensive inventory of all the birds, beasts, and insects that populated the Garden of Eden. Finally, after this assignment with all its absorbing interest had been completed, Adam felt a renewed sense of emptiness. Genesis 2:20 ends with the words ?but for Adam no suitable helper was found.? After this long experience as a lonely creature, God saw that Adam was emotionally prepared for a wife??a suitable helper.? God, therefore, subjected him to a deep sleep, removed from his body the bone that was his rib, and from that physical core of man fashioned the first woman. Finally God presented woman to Adam in all her fresh, unspoiled beauty. Archer says, ?... it has become very apparent that Genesis 1 was never intended to teach that the sixth creative day, when Adam and Eve were both created, lasted a mere twenty-four hours. In view of the long interval of time between these two, it would seem to border on sheer irrationality to insist that all of Adam?s experiences in Genesis 2:15-22 could have been crowded into the last hour or two of a literal twenty-four-hour day.? (12) Adam, in apparent agreement with Archer?s conclusion, exclaims in Genesis 2:23, ?This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh...? The word ?now? in this passage is the Hebrew happa?am usually translated ?now at length? or ?at last.? This term would be appropriate after a long wait or a lengthy search, but perhaps not if Eve had been presented to him only a few hours after he was created. Even if a 24-hour period could be construed for any one of the first six days of creation, it might not work for the seventh. Here again, Scripture would have to contradict Scripture just to fit an unjustified presupposition. The New Testament refers to the Lord in His rest continuing from the end of creation on through both the Old and New Testaments. In Hebrews 4:3, ?For we which have believed do enter into rest, as He said, as I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.? According to Archer ?...that seventh day, that ?Sabbath rest,? in a very definite sense has continued on right into the church age. (13) If the seventh day, the Lord?s day of rest, is a long period of time encompassing thousands of years as implied by Scripture, then consistency should demand that the first six days be given similar treatment - that is, ages or eons, but perhaps not 24-hour periods. A passage in Exodus has usually been used as a proof text to bolster the 24-hour day definition, but here again the Bible seems to e uncooperative. ?Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it? (Exodus. 2:8-11). Buswell says, ? If we had no other example of Moses? language, this passage might be taken as evidence for a twenty-four creative day, but we have Scriptural evidence that Moses made a radical distinction between God?s attitude toward time and the attitude of man. What Moses is saying, in the total Scriptural context, must be understood as teaching that man should observe a periodicity in the ratio of work to rest, of six days to one day, because God, in the creation, set an example of an analogous periodicity of six and one of his kind of days. Surely the fourth commandment gives no right to say that God?s days always must be understood to be of the same length as man?s days, when we have so much evidence to the contrary. (14) Just as God labored for six days and rested on the seventh, so should man rest on the seventh after six days of work. That is a lesson that seems to be drawn from analogy. Even as God rests, so should man rest. That does not necessarily mean that God and man are on the same timetable. In Psalm 90:4, Moses said, ?For a thousand years in Thy sight are like yesterday when it passes by, or as a watch in the night [three to four hours].? These words leave no doubt that God?s timing and man?s timing are not to be confused, nor will any simple equation rectify the discrepancy. We have neither the information nor the intellectual idea to figure out what His time might be in relation to our time. In case we missed the point in Psalms, we have another chance in 2 Peter. After the apostle declares that false prophets and false teachers will come in the last days, he warns in 2 Peter 3:5, ?For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old...? Who says the earth and heavens are young? Those who are ?willingly ignorant.? And to drive the point home, the apostle follows in 2 Peter 3:8, ?But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day.? Although heavily disputed in meaning, clearly man?s measurements are mere yardsticks indeed. How long is a day of God?s creation? We are not told how long it is, it seems that me may be told how long it is not. Specifically, His time and our time are dissimilar. A 24-hour day is the one interpretation that may be downgraded as a possibility. In the words of Augustine, they were ?God-divided days,? not ?sun-divided days?. So, the bottom line is this, do I actually believe that the 24-hour literal view is wrong? not necessarily. I do believe that through the evidence presented, we should not only take the view as the correct one. As Pinnock said, ?Our exegesis ought to let the text speak and let the chips fall where they may? Bibliography: 1. Hugh Ross, The Fingerprint of God (Orange: Promise Publishing Co., 1989), 141. 2. Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Record (San Diego: Creation-Life Publishers, 1976), 54-55. 3. Charles C. Ryrie, The Ryrie Study Bible (Chicago: Moody Press, 1976), 7. 4. Gleason L. Archer, Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (Grand Rapids: The Zondervan Corporation, 1982), 63. 5. Ross, Hugh 6. William Wilson, Old Testament Word Studies (McLean: MacDonald Publishing Co., 1978), 109. 7. Pattle P. T. Pun, Evolution: Nature and Scripture in Conflict? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1982), 269. 8. Morris, The Genesis Record, 55. 9. Archer, Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, 61. 10. Perry G. Phillips, ?Are the Days of Genesis Longer than 24 hours? The Bible Says Yes!? IBRI Research Report No. 40 (1991), 3. 11. Morris, The Genesis Record, 79. 12. Archer, Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, 68. 13. Archer, Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, 62. 14. J. Oliver Buswell, Jr., A Systemic Theology of the Christian Religion (Grand Rapids:The Zondervan Corporation, 1962), 1:144-5.

Word Count: 4775