LinuxPup

To answer your question, the Bible contradicts the theory of a global flood in Psalm 104, a creation account. In verse 9 it says the water will never return to cover the earth again... The context is not of the flood, but of creation, meaning the flood waters could not have risen again to cover the whole planet in Noah's day. As far as the Genesis 7:2, "the mountains were covered"... the Hebrew word for mountain can mean anything from a small hill to Everest... It's important to remember that the Old Testament was not written in English, but in Hebrew, a language with (excluding proper nouns) has about 3000 words in it's vocabulary... compare this to English's millions of words... Because something is the "plain literal reading", does force it to be the correct interpretation. The idea that the days of creation were not 24 hour days goes back thousands of years... early church fathers such as Justin Martyr believed them to be 1000 year periods, and later on, Isaac Newton believed the days to be some unknown length. The Day-Age theory has not been established to fit modern science, as it has been around long before modern science.

Also, the Bible does not say the sky is a solid roof over our head... the word "firmament" in Genesis 1:6 is used in the King James Version, which was written back in 1611... and some people actually believed the sky to be a solid dome. The Hebrew word is raqiya, and is generally used to indicate an expanse... which is an accurate description of the sky... some translations even use the word sky. And as far as the "canopy theory"... the Bible not only does support it, but seems to contradict in Psalm 148 and Proverbs 8... the "waters" in the sky were clouds... there was no canopy of water... I'm leaving now to watch a movie... I'll probably write some more later...

ps418

I sympathize, but I still have to disagree.

I've read Psalm 104, and I think there's plenty of room to disagree with your interpretation. In fact, you could interpret vrs. 6 as referring to a global flood rather than a creation. But even if your interpretation is correct, it is irrelevant since we're talking about what the author of Genesis intended, not the author of Psalms.

The idea that the days of creation were not 24 hour days goes back thousands of years... early church fathers such as Justin Martyr believed them to be 1000 year periods, and later on, Isaac Newton believed the days to be some unknown length. The Day-Age theory has not been established to fit modern science, as it has been around long before modern science.

I would rather talk about the text of Genesis than "what people believe." According to the ICR's <a href="http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-081.htm" target="_blank">Theistic Evolution and the Day-Age Theory</a>:

The Hebrew word yom is used more than 2000 times in the Old Testament. A cursory examination reveals that in over 1900 cases (95%) the word is clearly used of a 24-hour day, or of the daylight portion of a normal day. Many of the other 5% refer to expressions such as "the day of the Lord" (Joel 2:1) which may not be exceptions at all, since the second coming of Christ will occur on one particular day (1 Cor. 15:51-52), even though His reign extends over a longer period of time.1 Therefore, even without a context, an unbiased translator would normally understand the idea of "24-hour period" for the word yom.

The word "day" appears over 200 times in the Old Testament with numbers (i.e., first day, second day, etc.). In every single case, without exception, it refers to a 24-hour day. Each of the six days of the creation week is so qualified and therefore the consistency of Old Testament usage requires a 24-hour day in Genesis 1 as well.

The words evening (52 times) and morning (220 times) always refer to normal days where they are used elsewhere in the Old Testament. The Jewish day began in the evening (sunset) and ended with the start of the evening the following day. Thus it is appropriate that the sequence is evening-morning (of a normal day) rather than morning-evening (= start and finish). The literal Hebrew is even more pronounced: "There was evening and there was morning, day one. . . . There was evening and there was morning, day two," etc.

If each day were indeed a billion years, as theistic evolutionists require, then half of that day (500 million years) would have been dark. We are explicitly told in verse 5 that the light was called day and the darkness was called night, and that each day had one period of light-darkness. How then would the plants, insects, and animals have survived through each 500 million year stretch of darkness? Clearly a 24-hour day is called for.

It is sometimes claimed that the church fathers believed in long ages for the days in Genesis 1. That is a half truth. The only two who held to this view were Origen and Clement of Alexandria, and they were allegorizers who devised unusual interpretations for every part of Scripture. Their system of allegorizing led to the most unbelievable interpretations, which were bounded only by the limits of their fertile imaginations. Other early commentators on Genesis 1 include the Epistle of Barnabas, Irenacus, and Justin Martyr. Their remarks have frequently been misunderstood to mean that they believed in the day-age theory. That is not true. What they were doing was developing an eschatological framework which included a literal 1000-year reign of Christ on earth (the millennium). Their logic followed these lines:

a. God worked for six days and rested on the seventh.
b. One day is with the Lord as a thousand years (cf. 2 Peter 3:8).
c. The six days of creation and one day of rest therefore typify the six thousand years of human history that will be concluded by the one thousand-year millennium, followed by eternity. Creation took place on 4000 B.C. therefore the millennium should commence on A.D. 2000, terminate on A.D. 3000, and usher in the timeless period of eternity.

Whether or not we agree with their reasoning and the resulting prophetic framework, we conclude that these early church fathers were not denying the literal six-day creation, but were affirming their faith in it.

Theophage

Thank you, Lpetrich, for that correction. While I've never heard it translated as "sea monster", and never heard a creationist defend that passage in that way, I can see where the possibility of a defense lies within. I shall use the much clearer example of the "birds before land animals" from now on.

LinuxPup

The difference with the "day"s in Genesis 1, and the all the other days in the Old Testament is that man is not around... this is strictly God's time... Virtually every reference to a 24 hour day is in respect to man's activity, not God's... as the Bible says... a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like a day... a person with good knowledge is Dr. Gleason Archer... he's a Hebrew scholar who knows like 30+ languages and was a main translator of the New American Standard translation, which is considered by many to be one of the most literal translations... he was quoted as saying: "Entirely apart from any findings of modern science or challenges of contemporary scientism, the twenty-four-hour theory was never correct and should never have been believed."

The Day-Age is the most cohesive biblical creation theory... and it's one of the reasons many astronomers have become Christians, being compelled by it's accuracy with science.

excreationist

What about when God calls the light "day" and darkness "night"... then after each day it says "there was evening and there was morning..."
This implies that it was dark and then light for each of the six days. (It doesn't mention evening and morning for the seventh day)
So did the earth become lit and then darkened several times over the history of the universe? (6 times to be exact)

[ January 03, 2002: Message edited by: excreationist ]</p>

LinuxPup

The way I understand it, the phrase "evening and morning" is used to note closure. In Daniel chapter 8, the same phrase is used to indicate the closing of a vision which spans a long period of time (some say it has yet to be completely fulfilled today).

excreationist

Yes in Daniel it is talking about a *vision* - something that was seen. Maybe God had a hallucination and saw the Earth getting light and dark.

I think having morning and night, with light and darkness implies that the earth is getting light and dark, at least in God's hallucination. It seems a stretch to interpret that as meaning no changes in light-levels, just a general passage of time (where some "days" could be billions of years, and some only a few hundred million).

Liquidrage

"The difference with the "day"s in Genesis 1, and the all the other days in the Old Testament is that man is not around... this is strictly God's time... Virtually every reference to a 24 hour day is in respect to man's activity, not God's... as the Bible says... a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like a day... a person with good knowledge is Dr. Gleason Archer... he's a Hebrew scholar who knows like 30+ languages and was a main translator of the New American Standard translation, which is considered by many to be one of the most literal translations... he was quoted as saying: "Entirely apart from any findings of modern science or challenges of contemporary scientism, the twenty-four-hour theory was never correct and should never have been believed."
The Day-Age is the most cohesive biblical creation theory... and it's one of the reasons many astronomers have become Christians, being compelled by it's accuracy with science"


The Reason the Day-Age is the most cohesive biblical creation theory is not because it's what the Bible says. It's because unless the devout spin what the Bible says it's obvious there's no truth to it.

I generally write what I mean.
The Hebrew language may have been lacking but there were ways to communicate long periods of time. Some examples here (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/1770.asp).

The Bible clearly expresses a day as a day.
If some other form of time was meant, the words used would have been different.

The knowledge of the time was of a young, flat Earth. This is what the writing of Genesis expresses. If you want it to match what is now believed to be true then Genesis needs to be spun into symbolism and metaphor. Which is exactly what is happening with Day-Age theories.

[ January 03, 2002: Message edited by: Liquidrage ]</p>

Kosh

Precisely. A drowning man clutches at straws....

LinuxPup

Again, the interpretation of the days of Genesis as being more than 24 hour days go back thousands of years... the idea of Christians today trying to 'spin' it into their own view by making the days long periods of time to fit it with science is no good. Genesis 2 seems to make it clear that day 6 is not a 24 hour period of time. Why? Because of the work that was to be performed by Adam... clearly this would take more than 24 hours... actually it would need to be more than about 12 hours considering daylight. There is no hermeneutical conflicts with an earth of billions of years of age. Ken Ham's opinion is a minority view, which doesn't make it false, but it stands to reason that it would be wise to view the other views of biblical creation before comming to the conclusion that the Bible strictly states a young earth. Non-Theists like the idea of the Bible strictly stating a young earth, because arguing against YECs is like shooting ducks in a barrel....sorry, but that's not the case.

For a list of some biblical reasons for an old earth, check out: <a href="http://www.swordandspirit.com/texts/RTB" target="_blank">http://www.swordandspirit.com/texts/RTB</a> Texts/bibevidlongcreation.html

Also, a brief runthrough of the Day-Age interpretation of Genesis 1 is here: <a href="http://www.swordandspirit.com/texts/TXTbeginning.html" target="_blank">http://www.swordandspirit.com/texts/TXTbeginning.html</a>

Please actually read these two sites before responding to this post. And please, be willing to reason and don't be too quick to load up your offensive arguments... I see a lot of trash talking around here... not by everyone of course.