TransverseWave

I've heard this before, and it may be the case that the days were intended to be taken literally. But if some of the premodern rabbinic authorities were persuaded otherwise, I cannot, with much grace, insist that the other side defend a young earth.

spin

How would they necessarily know? They are only working from the world as the saw it in their time.

The text is clear. People who want to be metaphorical must negate one of the main purposes of the passage. The text is quite insistent, not only using day, but evening and morning, to stress the normal notion of the day. God creates during the day, as the ordinary person works, when evening comes he no longer works; there is evening and morning and a new day begins.

Although god is omnipotent, he rests on the seventh day. Why?


spin

TransverseWave

With my crassly unspiritual mind, I suppose I could say, "Because he was finished."

I didn't say why I posted the inquiry that headed this thread. I'm an atheist. My position is:
1) The events in Genesis were understood by the ancient Jews as real events, and were intended so to be understood by the writer(s), and
2) Those events did not occur.

To the end that I should examine the matter as thoroughly as possible, I am attempting to elicit evidence that falsifies 1). It doesn't particularly matter to me whether the days of Creation are literal or metaphorical, but I don't consider indications that they were meant metaphorically to be a falsification of 1).

spin

That in no way explains why he rested. (And spirituality has nothing to do with the issue.)

Whether the ancient Jews believed the events to have been real is a different matter from whether the texts were written to be taken literally. We can deal with the texts to decide the latter (to some degree) but we can't work with an ancient to check the former.


spin

TransverseWave

I don't know why you asked me the question.

And ... ?

spin

I guess you weren't really interested in your third caveat.


spin

TransverseWave

I'm not understanding where you're trying to go. All I meant by it was that finding out that someone thought the days are not literal is not the same as finding out that they thought the account was a parable.

spin

It's really hard to know how the ancients perceived aetiological works.


spin

TransverseWave

Yeah. I don't have a better idea than to look at the attitudes in the old works that still exist, and perhaps also to compare them to other nearby cultures so far as is possible.