Define literal vs non-literal.

...and surprisingly, in an attempt to agree on the meaning of the word "literal" we STILL can't agree.I think it means "the simplest most unadorned meaning of a word" - if you need to "interpret" the word in any way, then that's not literal.this to me means that taking the phrase "god created the world in six days" means (if taken literally) that the amount of time is equal (more or less) to six actual days now.JRTjr doesn't agree and says that because the word "day" is used with multiple meanings (as in "in the days of") that a "literal" meaning can be longer than what we'd call a day - something I'd call "non literal".But rather than put words in his mouth, I think he can say it himself better.

can you back up that assertion?I mean, we use the word "day" in what I would call a "poetic fashion" all the time ; "in the days of old", "in my day we...", and so on.That's a valid use, a literary use, but it's not "literal" unless you boneheadedly believe the word literal to mean "written down" when it doesn't mean "simplest, most unadorned meaning".If the hebrew word "day" could be any length, how WAS it defined? Can you show me?

I'll ignore the fact it doesn't mention duration - just divides the two types of time period into the colloquial usage, but this isn't a problem OR the solution for literalists, surely? It would appear that the colloquial term for "the period of time when it's light" is "daytime" and the period of darkness is "nighttime", but we already know that? Now we have the first of two obvious meanings of the word "day" - "that bit of time when it's light". I can take that literally with no problem. Now, what's the key, crucial and decisive piece of information you're using that shows in any way that "the day that God made the heaven AND earth" isn't meant to be taken in the non-literal "in the days of" sense?I see it used "poetically", I don't see the reasoning behind saying "oh, well, a day can now mean a week!"I'm not saying it's not possible, I don't see the proof. I know YEC's use that to bolster their argument, but I don't see the beef. This is more like it, but doesn't change anything - it only highlights that they didn't have something, not that what they had was so fluid that you can call "a day" a billion years or so and still call it "literal".Can you show me "day" being used in a clearly non-poetic, literal fashion to mean something other than one of the two standard, obvious uses (namely "DAYtime" and "~24 hours")?

Until you pointed to Wilson in the second paragraph, I only had your word on that - and I still haven't read Wilson (or any other similar book) I'm not trying to be difficult, it's just I have to avoid biased sources. This is a crucial bit of information, thank you! would it be necessary to compare a day to a thousand years, if YOM was already "as long as a piece of string" (i.e. indeterminate)?Would a YOM of indeterminate length (supposedly even billions of years) still have an "evening and a morning"?Is this YOM what we would call "literal" language?If YOM can be used (literally or not) in a folk-tale to describe any length of time, is there a reason to believe that this YOM literally happened the way it goes in the bible? I mean, what's the proof it is actually meant to be literal (even taking that YOM can mean "any length of time)?Given that a YOM can mean any length of time (and I'm not necessarily agreeing, just positing the question), is there a reason to believe that this "YOM" is actually meant as a real period of time rather than the passage being meant in a descriptive manner - i.e. it still being a story?

quote:

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5: And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

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yom does not mean "light". It means "the part of the day that is light".Please, be absurd with your deductions all you want, but don't ignore context when it suits you, and cry "context!" when it doesn't.Yom is strictly a time-based word - the "light" part of the day, the whole 24 hour day, sure - and I'll give it that yom seems identical to our "days" usage as in "the days of" or "the day of", although you're lacking proof from the bible itself that you're correct in your application of any other meaning that the standard one, and it personally seems more complicated than needed to claim that Genesis must be "literal" rather than figurative, which doesn't change the meaning at all, it just makes it...more complicated than necessary.

woah, wait, no - when god created the heaven and the earth, and divided the waters from the waters, and the light from the dark, that was the evening and the morning of the first day. That first day - which starts with the evening remember - did NOT have a morning before it.Just, you know, pointing that out Edited by AdminPD, : Warning