Roger Pearse

Absolutely. The question in the OP is misconceived; a dictionary is not going to give an answer to this one. What we have to do is to see how the writers of the period understood it.

That is a very interesting quotation, and an interesting website. It backs up with specifics the idea of allegorical interpretation going on in Alexandria in that period and followed by the early Church.

I am nervous, tho, about the lack of specific references, and I've written to the website author to tell him to deal with this.

However I find that the Philo must be in the lex.alleg. 1.2.2. Here is the old Yonge translation of this, from here at Peter Kirby's site (although I can make no sense of the allocation of books):

II. (2) And on the sixth day God finished his work which he had made.

It would be a sign of great simplicity to think that the world was created in six days, or indeed at all in time; because all time is only the space of days and nights, and these things the motion of the sun as he passes over the earth and under the earth does necessarily make. But the sun is a portion of heaven, so that one must confess that time is a thing posterior to the world.

Therefore it would be correctly said that the world was not created in time, but that time had its existence in consequence of the world. For it is the motion of the heaven that has displayed the nature of time.

Likewise the following from Clement of Alexandria, which I have verified is indeed in the Stromateis 6, 16:

"And how could creation take place in time, seeing time was born along with things which exist?"

I knew that this is a standard modern Christian idea -- and I'm as fundamentalist as it gets -- but it is interesting to see it in the Fathers as clearly as this.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

rhutchin

According to Genesis 1--

14 Then God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years;..."

Thus, there was no "time" before the sun and the moon because those bodies were the means by which time could be tracked.

While the creation of the sun and the moon established a means to track time, there is nothing wrong with referring to events prior to the fourth day as occurring in "days" so long as the meaning is the same as that used after the fourth day.

spin

This is basically correct. Even the Qumran calendar commenced on a Wednesday, with the sabbath falling on the fourth day, so that was how Jews before the 1st century understood Genesis.


spin

Johnny Skeptic

While academically interesting, knowing what some ancient people believed does not help people living today choose the best worldview, whatever the best worldview is. Making brief little posts in this thread will not get you anywhere. If you want to be as successful as possible, sooner of later you will have to come up with a comprehensive defense of fundamentalist Christianity at this forum. After that, you will have to go to the General Religous Discussions Forum, the Moral Foundations and Principles Forum, or the Philosphy Forum, and adequately defend the character of God. I have made almost 9,000 posts at the IIDB. it has been my experience than fundies have much more trouble defending the character of God, including his motives, than anything else. You ought to know that there is not a necessary correlation between power and goodness, and that God is not good just because the Bible writers said that he is good. How could they have known that?

Joan of Bark

The writers of the period clearly understood them to be literal, 24-hour 'days', Roger. Why else use such a word? If the problem is with translation, then all the translators of modern Bibles need to be told to change the word to 'periods', or 'times', or 'ages', or some other less specific term. My understanding is that modern translators do consider the colloquial meaning of a word at the time it was used, and update to a more understandable modern word in order to avoid confusion. So clearly, modern translators feel that the modern definition of the word 'day' applies in Genesis

Roger Pearse

Which writers? Where do they say this?

We have above the quotations from Philo, Clement of Alexandria, Origen and Augustine that at least some people did not, which I would have thought was enough to show that the above statement was not correct, without further qualification.

Why not back up your statement here, and we will all be interested to see what comes out. It won't be enough, of course, to find ancient writers who do consider the day a period of time the same as in our own day, of course; no doubt some did, or indeed many did.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Joan of Bark

I am talking about the authors of Genesis: the Elohist, or Yahwist, or whichever one used the Hebrew word for 'day'.

I refer to Spin's post:

Again I ask, are modern translators all wrong in using the English word 'day'?

Roger Pearse

OK. Your argument then becomes:

1. The text of Genesis says day.
2. This means a 24 hour day as we understand it. (the point at issue).
3. We know this because other writers of the period say so.
4. By the 'other writers' we mean the text of Genesis.

Please think before posting.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

rhutchin

Information is useful. The issue here is which information is accurate and which has been corrupted.

Amaleq13

A laughable and obvious straw man that completely ignores what was proffered as the basis for her conclusion? No.

1. The text of Genesis says day.
2. The text describes each day as though it was the typical day we all know.
3. The text explicitly relates the days of creation to the days of the week.

4. The text of Genesis says "day" and means "day".

QED

Please take your own advice. Otherwise, the knee-jerk reaction to which you are clearly prone is likely to knock you unconscious.