Kurt Slade

I need some assistance with the term “Day “in Genesis.

We read about how three days go by and the on the third “ day “ I read this:� 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�

To me a day is the rotational period of earth but other things have different rotational periods.

I mean if the “day “we know was not created till the Third “day� in Genesis what were the first two days based on. Could the “god� mentioned be using a different reference point like the rational period of the Milky Way as a “Day�?

Has anyone read or have a link talking about this?

Thanks
Kurt

CX

This is only a a problem for apologists. For the authors of the OT a day went something like this. Sun goes down, sun comes up, sun goes down again, 1 day completed.

spin

Oh dear. There has been a lot of tendentious rot written about Genesis in order to explain ancient ideas so as to tart them up to be scientifically relevant.

A day is 24 hours. The text of Genesis 1-1:3 tells of God's creation in six days and having created he rested on the Shabat, thus inaugurating the Shabat for all time. It the writer didn't intend twenty-four hour days then he ruins his argument for the inauguration of the Shabat. If they weren't six days, then what is the point of the seventh day of rest? None. Besides, the text intimates that we are dealing with 24 hour periods when it also mentions morning evening and night. There are no clues to help one think that the writer intended anything other than 24 hours for each day. If there are no clues then all other analyses have no basis.

So, God created lifht before there was a sun. So what? That's part of the plan. Ancients didn't know that you needed the sun to have light. It was an inhabitant of the light, just as the moon and stars an inhabitant of the dark. The creation is broken into two sections: the first giving form to the world and the second filling the parts created in the first section. Check it out:

Read the text literally and give up on the xian apologists.


spin

Kurt Slade

Thanks all.

It was just a simple question I had on how this had been addressed.

The question has been answered.


Kurt

PS

I am not a xian apologists. LOL

spin

The sort of response you've had from the people you've been talking to suggests that they definitely are. There is little to be gained from discussing a text which has been totally mystified, unless of course you have the gift of making clear the implications of the text despite their prior beliefs on the matter.


spin

LP675

Well said. I agree. Those who attempt to manipulate the meaning of Genesis to conform with contemporary popular scientific theory, when their interpretations so obviously fly in the face of the plain meaning of the text, really give me the heeby jeebie’s.

CX

Additionally, literal interpretations of cosmogonical myths with the intent of harmonizing them with science is a thoroughly modern notion. People in antiquity were scientifically illiterate, science having not really been invented in the modern sense. Creation myths and or myths of origins were the attempt of largely ignorant peoples to understand origins in absence of real explanations. Nobody in the Xianized west tries to harmonize ancient syro-babylonian cosmogony with modern scientific understandings of cosmology. Nor the Greek myths of creation nor any other. As a result of the modern protestant doctrine of sola scriptura and 19th and 20th century fundamentalist literalism all kinds of otherwise absurd debates have come forward.

iLoveKnowledge

I figured a "day" was 24 hrs. Sun rises, sun goes down. that is pretty much teh same way we measure it today.
Personally, i don't care how long a day is in the Bible. I say it's 24 hours long and by golly, if it's good enough for me, it ought to be good enough for the Big Chief upstairs too b/c he STARTED THE WHOLE DAY/NIGHT THING!

LP675

I suppose I should just note in passing that because my views would most probably be thought of as ‘fundamentalist literalist’ (whether they are really entirely ‘literalist’ I am not so sure), I think the label ‘myth’( i.e. ‘creation myth’, ‘myth of origins’, or any other sort of mythology) is at best misleading, and at worst ‘plain old’ wrong.

But I don’t think any of us really want to go there.

Sven

Well, if restrict ourselves to the first definition of myth from dictionary.com:

I think we can agree on that it's not 'plain old' wrong. The second definition is still OK:

Only when using the third or fourth definition:
the disagreements start.