mung bean

Without getting too pedantic about it it seems to me that by his own standards Lee has never observed a Bible.

ShavenYak

No, it could not. "Let there be light" was said on the first day, and the Sun was not created or affixed to the firmament until the fourth day.

Then your views are informed by something other than the Bible, because the text does not support the day-age view. If you're going to believe that the word "yom" isn't a literal day, you might as well believe that "bereshit" doesn't mean "THE beginning" and "elohim" is an analogy for natural processes and not a personal God.

I, personally, like the translation that suggests the world was dominated by seamonsters and dragons before people were created. At least that view is supported by the evidence... plesiosaurs and apatosauruses would seem to fit the bill.

lee_merrill

This was to emphasize the point, "if you want to be pedantic, then let's see what that results in."

Yet "let there be lights" might hark back to the first "let there be light," and the perspective is of someone on the earth, when the lights might have been first seen in the fourth "era", when the lights were "placed in the heavens".

However, "yom" can mean an era, this is part of its range of Hebrew meaning.

Vicious Love

Contemplate this statement. Does it seem in any way problematic?

Only idiomatically, and usually pluralized. Almost exactly as in English, in fact.

Whatever you say. I suppose boker and erev can mean "start of an era" and "end of an era" too, huh?

lee_merrill

Maybe this thread should be moved over to BC&H? For the conclusions of science being mentioned here are not much in dispute, and the discussion is really about BC&H matters, it seems.

Vicious Love

So you acknowledge that the Earth is younger than the Sun?

Worldtraveller

There is little E/C related discussion, and more biblical discussion here.

I'm tossing this over the fence to BC&H for now.

Lane, E/C Moderator

lee_merrill

I actually subscribe to my view here, and will need you to tell me what you find to be in error.

Usually singular, actually, as in "the day of the Lord", and it does seem to be an idiom of sorts.

Quite so, as in "the dawn of an era" :

"But your dead will live; their bodies will rise. You who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy. Your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead." (Isa. 26:19)

Yup...

Sauron

I'm sorry - I must have missed where you presented any conclusions about science.

So far I count:

* three assertions from genesis, presented without any supporting evidence;
* one attempt to reclassify assertion as observation, and
* one attempt to reclassify observation as a conclusion of science.
:devil:

Vicious Love

See below.

As I'm disinclined to go through the Bible and work out the ratio of plural to singular use, I'll concede the point. Though something tells me you haven't read the original Hebrew.

Neither "morning" nor "evening" appear in the original passage, actually. But I'm sure you can find a verse which does make idiomatic use of them, if you look hard enough.

That aside, thanks for making my point for me. Yes, simple chronological terms can be used idiomatically, in Hebrew as in English. In both languages, such usage is not that hard to recognize. There's good reason for this; it eliminates the need for footnotes and parenthetical asides, so the scripture doesn't end up looking like this:

But lift thou up thy rod, and (literally) stretch out thine hand over the sea (literally. It's, like, a ritual), and divide it: and the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea (literally. It's a miracle!).

Kinda clunky, huh? That's why allegories are phrased poetically, and prose prosaically. "Winter of our discontent"? Figurative. "I'll do it next winter"? Literal. "The dawn of Man"? Figurative. "And there was evening, and there was morning of the third day"? Literal.

Now, suppose I'm completely off base, and the Biblical authors made no effort whatsoever to distinguish parable from chronicle. Would an infallible God have had any reason to suspect a primitive civilization, ignorant of modern cosmology and geology, would interpret a thus-phrased creation timeline as anything but literal? Is there some reason said God allowed his chosen goatherds to be deceived for millennia?

And you don't see this as somehow conflicting with the heavens and the Earth having been created before the Sun, or with your remark about the first day being from "the perspective [of] someone on Earth"?