When listening to certain Christians we only can have the impression they do not understand the Hebrew way of talking and do not see how often idioms, parables and allegory are used. Too often they take words as names and texts literally when they are not meant as such.
We do not think we should take the Genesis 1 story speaking about a 24 hour day but about a day in the eyes of God which is much longer than 1000 hours. We should consider it more as a symbolic way of telling like we still sometimes use in our language and in “our day” or it “takes a day (at least)” indicating it takes many days or when talking about years or an age (number of years since it was made + period in history + generation + to mean a very long time + lifetime + period or state of humanlife).
From the context and looking at what is written in other chapters of the Bible we may assume it is not mankind’s “day” of “24 hours” but God’s day or periods in the creation of God.
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To remember:
Our opinion is that the Hebrew in Genesis 1 when it speaks of days is not describing a 24 hour earth day as we know it now.
consider 6 days of Creation in Genesis 1 as being other than literal.
EG Henry Sulley
“As to the period occupied in the six days of the work of creation, we have no means of knowing how long a “day” is from the Divine point of view.”[1]
Bro Walker stated
“we cannot agree to restrict the “days” of creation to literal days, and the original “rest” of God likewise to twenty-four hours! Critics will please be merciful to us”[2] possibly a fair request!
Bro Watkins observed
“sequence of events described in Genesis 1 is the same as the sequence that geologists have discovered by studying the rocks. This cannot be mere coincidence…”[3]
+ proposed days of Genesis 1 = 6 days of fiats (or commands by God).
Bro Carter said
Bible = record of God’s creative activity in the beginning and onwards.
Alfred Norris > Moses putting down what he heard + describing what he saw + announcing end of each period of revelation as day’s disclosure comes to its end
Bro LG Sargent stated to “leave the time involved in creation as an open question”[6].
slightly different model advocated by Bro Hayward > followed Bro Watkins > advocating 6 days of fiats = work being done at a later lengthier timeframe.[9]
Bro Andrew Perry expressed > “localised old earth”[11] model.
I don’t have any doubt that the Hebrew in Genesis 1 when it speaks of days is describing a 24 hour earth day as we know it now. The bigger question is whether Genesis 1 is a literal historical record of how God made all things.
There are some surprising examples exist of brethren who absolutely did not accept evolution but were prepared to consider the 6 days of Creation in Genesis 1 as being other than literal.
We are limiting the meaning of the text of the first two chapters of Genesis when we would only consider earth to be our globe. From the whole Biblical contexts we may assume that we must see the difference between eretz (earth or land) and haaretz (earth or ground) and aphar ha’aretz (dust of the earth or the sand or grains of earth) having also the globe and other planets around in the universe with their suns and stars.
When Jehovah created the universe, he created so many stars and planets that we could never count them all.
Problem with man is that they always think they know exactly how something is. But man’s knowledge is much more limited than God’s knowledge so often scientific results first taken as the answer seem some years later not true. As such we had one time the newspaper, the Houston, Texas Chronicle, reported that
“after a recent study, scientists now think that there are 300 sextillion stars in the universe.”
NGC 4414, a typical spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices, is about 55,000 light-years in diameter and approximately 60 million light-years away from Earth
That is a 3 followed by 23 zeros! But we should know it could be many more and we should see that somehow they are all organized. Yes, groups of stars are organized into galaxies. Each galaxy contains many planets and billions or even trillions of stars. Most galaxies are then organized into groups called clusters, and these clusters are organized into larger groups called superclusters.
The first chapter of Moshe’s book does not want to bring a scientific report on how everything is placed and structured but only wants to give a short review in a way which is easy to tell to others so that they can easily remember. For that reason the story-telling is the easiest form for oral tradition, for which it was provided. As such we should not take the story to be taken literally but figuratively. Also not considering the 6 days as literally six 24 hours but more as periods of development or if you wish ‘evolution’ .
A Caucasoid female skull (National Museum of Health and Medicine).
Today we still evolve and we should see how our own children and grandchildren are already so much different than us (see their body build). Those who want to see the first man as our contemporary man from Europe or the United states of America (the Caucasian type) mostly have a superiority feeling of their own race and are ashamed to have come from living souls (Leneʹfesj chai·jahʹh) who walked on their four limbs. (If you look at the body perhaps it was even not being made to walk on two limbs.)
Those who want to adhere to creationist views show they are missing many points of later books which form together the library of Book of books we call the Bible.
One pro Gap position suggests Gen 1:1 is a summary statement of the whole chapter. While we read heavens and earth as meaning the universe and the planet, possibly the verse should be understood as meaning the sky and the land since the terms heaven and earth are used later in chapter 1. We can test this suggestion by reviewing the chapter and context.
When we look at the Hebrew there is nothing particularly to affirm or deny the suggestion. The word ‘heaven’ has a wide range of uses from the universe through to the sky and air. Similarly, the word for ‘earth’ is extremely broad. So we must go to the context of Gen1 and see how the expressions are used.
Heaven
Used in v1
V6 the firmament is defined as heaven (with waters above and below it)
V14 the sun, moon & stars are set/placed in the firmament…
The Bible opens with the story of the beginning of everything, presenting the six periods of development (six days of creation) and the final period of establishment or rest.
Jeshuaisten / Jeshuaists 