danny writes:
As it stands, the chronology of universal presented in Genesis is as follows:
Light - the Big Bang
Firmament - the expanse/expansion of the Universe
Earth
Seas
Vegetation
Sun, Moon and stars
Oceanic Life
Land based Animals
Mankind
HOW TO READ THE BIBLE.
Unfortunately you are making some of the same erroneous Young Earth Creationist extra-scriptural assumptions from the middle ages, before we knew much about the age of the earth and the solar system, etc. God requires us to look at the glory of His creation in Psalm 19 - not ignore what His creation teaches us.
God requires us to test everything especially such opinions of men which can be based on mistaken assumptions. We should accept claims consistent with known truth, and test them by looking at what they predict which can be verified. This is not only the way we are to determine useful scientific claims, God gave the same principles several thousand years before scientists did, when He told Israel how to discern which prophet must be obeyed and which should be stoned in Deuteronomy 18. Sir Francis Bacon first put forth those principles, and he was a Bible student, but I can't give an actual quote that it came from the Bible.
Read ONLY what the Bible actually says, and when you have questions look carefully at the original Hebrew because that was what earlier or biased translators were trying to do. The Bible requires us to read it in the most obvious way possible which makes sense, but consider related Scripture, PLUS well verified knowledge of His creation if you really want His truth.
Be VERY careful not to accept additions to Scripture without a clear reference, because...
In Revelation 22:18, God writes:
If anyone adds anything to what is written here, God will add to that person the plagues described in this book.
CREATE IS NOT MAKE, MAKE IS NOT CREATE.
The first assumption to forget is that God always means creation from nothing. If God doesn't use "create" (the Hebrew "bara"), don't assume that is what He means (that would be adding to scripture against Proverbs 30:5-6). The heavens and the earth were created from nothing in Gen 1:1, so the stars and sun were created from nothing first, then probably later the earth. Since it says "and earth" it may have been later but we cannot assert that must be what God means.
Read it again in one of the more modern translations.
Genesis 1, New Living Translation (Courtesy of
BibleGateway.com)
THE SIX DAYS COME AFTER "IN THE BEGINNING".
When God discusses the six days specifically, He mentions nothing about
creating any part of heaven or earth (Gen 1:31, Gen 2:1, Gen 2:4b,
Exodus 20:11). We should assume the first day begins like the other five, with God speaking something into creation or appearance (Gen 1:3). During the time represented by the six days, only three kinds of living things are created from nothing, no part of the heavens nor the earth.
In the beginning must come prior to the first day by some unspecified time, because nothing done during in the beginning occurs during the six days and vice versa. The word translated as "in the beginning" is used many other places for unspecified time introducing a new period of activity, such as in
Jeremiah 28:1 and 49:34 about the beginning of some king's reigns (courtesy of
BlueletterBible.org's Concordance "C" button).
There is every reason to assume that during the first day God lets light reach the surface of the waters, and there is no scriptural basis to assert God did anything else about the creation process that day. Reading Gen 1:3-4, it is almost a definition of a day. The best way to see this is in the
New American Standard Bible version of Genesis one, which emphasises word-for-word translation rather than thought for thought.
Emphasis added in this excerpt.
In Genesis 1 (NASB), God writes:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.
3Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness He called night And there was evening and there was morning,
one day.
Then God said, "Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.... And there was evening and there was morning,
a second day.
9Then God said, "Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear"; and it was so.... Then God said, "Let the earth sprout vegetation, ... The earth brought forth vegetation, ... There was evening and there was morning,
a third day.
14Then God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, ... and for days and years; ... God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also....
There was evening and there was morning,
a fourth day.
20Then God said, "Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens. God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves... and every winged bird after its kind.... There was evening and there was morning,
a fifth day.
24 Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind"; and it was so.... Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth.... there was evening and there was morning,
the sixth day.
What every other Bible calls "the first day", the NASB calls "one day" not "the first" day. "The first" might be mistaken to mean no creation occured before that point, which is probably why God words it so. The second through fifth day references are NOT "the" second, for example but "a second". It is my assumption this should be read as if God is not referring to five specific consecutive 24 hour days, but rather five consecutive series of days, with each series (except the first) being of unmentioned length and each series represented by one day of the seven-day week God is trying to teach us about here (see
Exodus 20:11 again). This is more clearly true when you realize God is saying at least one typical vegetation growing season occured during the period represented by "a third day" (Genesis 1:11-12).
The "and it was so" of Gen 1:24 means God accomplished that land creatures reproduced their kind in the most obvious way, requiring at least months of normal time like it does today. It is also true God sometimes speaks of His future work as if it is already accomplished because He foreknows it will be fulfilled. So these declarations God accomplished a growing season or animal gestation in one day could be read as that He ordained all the parameters of success in one day, and it was later fulfilled. Another example of calling done what God foreknows will be done later is the language actually used about Abraham already being the "father of nations" several years before his first child was born
Genesis 17:1-8. The actual Hebrew is that God says Abraham IS already the father of nations, but this NLT translates it in more modern English as a promise about the future.
I assume God calls the final day of the six "the sixth day" because that is when everything came to completion for His purposes. "The sixth" could also be specific because God has one specific day in mind representing the entire period, or because He actually did complete all that in one twenty-four hour day. So many many things seem to occur at their normal pace then that the 24 hour interpretation seems not so obvious.
The Hebrew word translated as "day" is "yom" which is a word for a period of activity or daylight that can be many days or years, or just an hour. God doesn't try to speak of His activity before there was observable daylight on the earth because it would make no sense to speak of daylight activity before men could have seen daylight. The word "yom" is also used in Gen 2:4 referring to the entire six yoms when God made heaven and earth complete.
Why does God use the terms morning and evening with each day reference if it isn't about a 24 hour day? I assume we are to read them as the beginning and ending of each series of days represented by that corresponding day of the week God is teaching us about. There is scriptural precedent for that interpretation in Psalm 90:5-6, by Moses himself about the beginning and ending of the life of grass.
WHY WAS IT DARK ON "ONE DAY"?
If God created the sun in the beginning, why is it dark at the start of "one day"? You need to read the scripture which shatters the YEC reading of Genesis 1 in pieces. Someone nearly posted it here before, but now I get to glorify His truth...
In Job 38:2-9 (NASB), God writes:
Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? ... Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? ... Who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together...? Or who enclosed the sea with doors when, bursting forth, it went out from the womb; When I made a cloud its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band,
Plainly the earth was constructed after the morning stars, then the sea burst forth, and then thick clouds covered the earth. Since God does not claim this all happened in an instant, we should assume it occured before daylight reached the surface of the waters. God is loosely referring to the construction of this entire blue planet for men of all ages so they may learn how to relate to the Creator and His work (and how foolish was the Egyptian worship of false gods of the sun, earth, and animals). We should expect illustrative terms from typical human activity, not celestial mechanics. This appears to agree with current science that the earth surface was some sort of land-form before the seas existed. It does not preclude forming the seas by condensation, since the water might have burst forth partly as steam before it became those thick clouds, plus of course the thick clouds are well described as thinning dramatically between "one day" and "a fourth day".
THE FIRMAMENT.
The usual interpretation of forming the firmament is simply that the thick clouds above the water separated from the seas. This formed the sky under clouds and above the sea, which could be described from the surface as like an upside down bowl (a partial sphere) in shape.
PLANTS BEFORE SUNLIGHT?
Energy from sunlight reaches the surface of the earth even when it is cloudy, so there is no contradiction in claiming that land vegetation was produced after the day/night cycle was observable and before the sun itself could be discerned as a body in the heavens. Nor is there any need for a extra-scriptural miraculous source of light and energy God does not mention (a common sin of the YEC's).
WHEN ANIMAL LIFE BEGAN.
As for when many kinds of animal life began, God is not specific. About sea and land creatures God is mentioning only those with the "breath of life" in them, presumably air-breathers like a prototype whale, crocodile, or horse which would be familiar to men for example. Those mentioned are probably the ancestral animal type for all of their genus. This means God does not say when fish, bacteria, molluscs, insects, or earthworms began, nor whether they were created from nothing or more primitive types of creatures.
There is much more to be said, but I will have to come back to this when I can. Enjoy!
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Edited by AdminPD, : Warning
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