Does the Bible say the Earth was created in 6 days, 6000 years ago?

My question: What are you quoting specifically?It is true that Chaos first meant a gaping void. Are you quoting the poet Hesiod (ca. 900 B.C.)? Whatever Muspelheim and Ginnungagap were, they existed and were seperate, So this example is not quite as good as the first. This is may be a little closer, I think, to creation of something from nothing. I don't know too much about Taoism. But there is something rather than nothing. So where did it come from if not God ? I look at it that way.I'll consider your challenge to the Bible's uniqueness in this regard. Thanks.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

you will also notice that no other ancient creation accounts describe the order of earths creationAn existing Planet
Atmosphere Created
Dry Land Bought Forth
Sea Creatures Created
Flying Creatures Created
Vegetation created
Land Animals Created
Mammals Created
Mankind Createdyou wont find another creation account as believable as this one

So, what is it that you find so believable about it?

one thing is the order of eventsatmosphere- land - sea creatures - flying creatures - vegetation - land animals - mani believe that sits pretty well with current scientific knowledge ... pretty amazing that an ancient could have got this order of events even partially correctand he doesnt have any of those crazy gods stories like one who fought with his wife and used part of her body to create the sea and another to create the land and then when they had a child, that childs tears dripped onto a leaf that turned into a human

Excellent.So you also believe the current scientific views that there was no worldwide flood, people have never lived to 969 years of age, the universe is 12 billion years old, there was no Exodus from Egypt, and there was no conquest of Canaan?

Hi jaywill, That's interesting. It's not especially relevant though.Modern Gap Creationism is not an extension of the beliefs of a group of 2nd century rabbis. There is no continuity between the two. For the best part of two millennia Christians have been content to believe in a literal creation week. Today however, pesky reality has interfered with this cosy belief.Gap Theory Creationism has only emerged in the modern age because some Christians feel it can rationalise away the discrepancies that exist between modern scientific discoveries and the Genesis account. It is entirely post hoc and frankly, pretty desperate.Mutate and Survive.

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

Hi Peg,Are you seriously claiming that the order of events in Genesis mirrors modern scientific thought? Really? God creates light and there is evening and morning; all before creating the sun. Plants too come before the sun exists to drive their photosynthesis. The sun itself seems to be made separately from the stars. Flowering plants come before insects. Whales are the first mammals mentioned.All of that is wrong. Not just a little bit wrong, but big time wrong.In no way does any of that "sit well with" modern ideas of cosmology or biology. No it's not. Genesis is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any planets living or dead is purely co-incidental.You should look into Hindu myth. Some of their creation stories bear a marked resemblance to modern ideas of evolution. Is this proof that they had access to special knowledge? Nope. They just lucked out. They got a lot of other things wrong. The same goes for Genesis. Not "he". "They". Genesis is written by at least two hands.Besides, which bit of Eve's creation from Adam's rib sounds sane and scientific to you?You are trying to turn Genesis is not something it is not. It is not a scientific treatise. It is an ancient religious text, written by people whose understanding of their universe was very, very limited. They did the best they could to make sense of their world, but they got it pretty badly wrong for the most part. Of course, the text may not even have been intended to be taken literally.No matter how much you torture it, Genesis is never going to turn into a modern physics or biology text. Why not approach it as the myth that it is? Genesis is very valuable as mythology, but useless as a science primer.Mutate and Survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

The general academic view is that there are 4 sources (individuals or schools) that have been spliced together in Genesis.The splicing is really quite easy to spot in many cases.

You skewed your "order of creation" and left out some key elements. Here is the correct order straight from Genesis 1:Genesis 1:1-5 Day 1 - Light/Dark
Genesis 1:6-8 Day 2 - Atmosphere ("Heaven")
Genesis 1:9-13 Day 3 - Dry Land ("Earth")
Land plants
Genesis 1:14-19 Day 4 - Sun & Moon
Stars
Genesis 1:20-23 Day 5 - Sea animals
Flying animals
Genesis 1:24-31 Day 6 - Land animals
HumansThus according to the Biblical creation account the sun, moon and stars are created 3 days into his creation.Also the word for word Hebrew of Genesis 1:1 from the Masoratic text is ‘ ‘ — which literally means " In (a) beginning filled God the heavens and the earth". In the more literal English Bible translations such as the NRSV it states "In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth" and from Young's Literal Translation "1 In the beginning of God's preparing the heavens and the earth 2 the earth hath existed waste and void, and darkness [is] on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God fluttering on the face of the waters,". The Jewish translation of the Hebrew is "In the beginning of God's creation of the heavens and the earth." (Judaica Press Complete Tanach) or "When God began to create heaven and Earth"(Jewish Publication Society 3rd ed).The modern translation of "In the beginning God create the heavens and earth" really derives from the Greek Septuagint of the OT which literally word for word translates to "In beginning God made the heaven and the earth". However it seems likely that the Hebrew to Greek translation process introduced some translation errors i.e. some words and phrases in Hebrew have no Greek counterpart. Thus it is more accurate to work off of the Masoratic text. It is also important to note that most accurate translations of the OT rely more heavily on the MT to the Septuagint when they differ. Thus the assumption by modern Christians that Genesis 1:1 implies ex nihlo is really unfounded.Ex nihlo is a latin phrase meaning "out of nothing" Therefore, it is more likely that the original meaning of this verse is similar to that ancient Canaanite view of creatio ex materia or "creation out of eternally preexistent matter". The Hebrew word ‘ "bara" does not directly translate to the English word "create" instead it more literally means "to fatten" or more loosely "to fill up" thus implieng previously existing matter (chaotic earth) in which to "fill". You can study this further here: Word of the Week ‘ (BaRA) as well as elsewhere.The ex nihlo concept is not native to the ancient Israelite thinking and is found nowhere in the Hebrew Bible (the Christian OT). In fact the only references of ex nihlo can be found in the NT and in a reference in the deuterocanonical book of II Maccabees which are both heavily influenced by the Greek philosophical world views and were imported directly into the Christian religion. For example, the Greek writer Xenophon wrote that parents "bring forth their children out of non-being'To expound on this. The Hebrew word "shamayim" literally means "heaven" used to mean the visible area where the sun, moon, planets and stars reside. In ancient civilizations the heavens was thought to be the realm of the gods. The two pre-semitic root words making up the compounded word Shamayim actually means "lofty" and "water" respectively, probably derived from the obvious realization that water fell from the sky in the form of rain. It is also interesting to note that the Canaanites
Shamayim (Heaven) is the father of El (El-ohim in the Bible literally means "He who is the object of fear or reverence" however the word is actually plural).The Hebrew word "eretz" (or "erets") literally means "earth", "soil", "land", "world", or "country". The root of eretz(s) is er which means literally "to be firm".Why do I bring this up? The fact is that a chaotic earth (eretz) and heaven (shamayim) exist at the beginning along with Elohim according to Genesis 1:1-2. However on day 2 he creates the firmament or sky (raqiya`) and on day 3 dry land (ra'ah) not etez or shamayim. So really the Biblical creation should be described as ex chaos (out of chaotic material) not ex nihilo (out of nothing).Here is a link of what Rashi (or Rabbi Solomon Izhaqi) a Jewish scholar writes of Genesis 1 (translated into English.Also Dr. Peter Hayman the president of the British Society for Jewish Studies said this: Of course this is my own personal opinion, but I spent several hours studying this specific material (not counting my 20+ years studying of intra and extra biblical evidence and apologetics) and have based it on a wide range of evidence.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

No, but the Bible does have some pretty wild and outlandish tall tales. I am sorry I couldn't resist but I found these stories from the Top 10 Bizarre Biblical Tales pretty hysterical: Hope you enjoy and don't take these too seriously, I was just trying to inject some humor here.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

Hi Brian, I thought that Genesis was attributed to "J" and "P", with the odd bit from the redactor. Is there a fourth source?Mutate and Survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

in a thick atmosphere, the light from the sun could have reached the earth without the sun being visible. Just like on an overcast day, there is still light coming through but no sun. there is nothing unscientific about that.the next day is the 2nd day in which it is said that an 'expanse' is made between the 'waters above and the waters below' this same expanse is later said to be where the flying creatures fly, therefore, the primitive atmosphere was a lot thicker and its logical that the light from the sun came thru it graduallyphotosynthesis happens where there is no direct sunlight...there are plenty of shade loving plants that thrive where there is no sun, and just look in a rainforest...the lushest undergrowth comes from plants that NEVER see the sunand finally, in the first instance of Genesis the expression 'let light come to be' uses a hebrew word which means 'general light'but in the second instance when its talking about the sun and moon coming to be, it uses a different hebrew word which means 'source of light'this tells us that the initial light was coming from the sources of light, but not directly so because the atmosphere was so overcast...but once that all cleared, then the sources of light could be seen in the sky.

thanks for that brian,
its true there are some horrible tales in the biblethe bible doesnt shy away from telling of the faults and crimes of the people. That in itself is evidence to me that they really are inspired by God. Nor do the writers hold back from recording their punishments by God when they had gone astray.but lets be honest, im sure we can read even more horror stories in the daily paper.

That isn't the point. The point is that Genesis gets the order of creation wrong. You don't have an evening or morning before you have the sun and the Earth. The concepts don't even make sense without reference to the sun and the earth. I'm not saying that plants couldn't have survived a day without sun. I'm saying that the order is wrong. The Bible has places plants before the creation of the sun. That's wrong. The sun is billions of years older than plant life.You said; It doesn't. It's flat-out wrong (even Genesis puts vegetation before flying creatures by the way).Insects enter the fossil record millions of years before flowering plants. Genesis has flowering plants existing before insects (or "creeping things" if you prefer).Whales evolved from land animals, they didn't precede them. The Bible gets this backwards(whales on the fifth day, land mammals on the sixth).It's just wrong. Claiming that Genesis gives an accurate chronology of the Earth which is in agreement with modern science is completely bogus.All this talk of "thicker atmosphere" is just more over-reaching and rationalisation. Instead of twisting the text to fit a model of the world it was never intended for, why not accept the obvious truth of the matter? The authors of Genesis didn't know much about cosmology and what they thought they knew was wrong.Mutate and Survive

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"The Bible is like a person, and if you torture it long enough, you can get it to say almost anything you'd like it to say." -- Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade

Hi GM,We also have the Deuteronomist (D) source in Genesis, which is subdivided by some scholars into Deuteronomist redactor 1 and 2. This is an interesting article that discusses D in Genesis.Anbar Moshe Genesis 15: A Conflation of Two Deuteronomic Narratives Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 101, No. 1 (Mar., 1982), pp. 39-55The other source is the Elohist (E), here are three articles that discuss this.White, Hugh C. The Divine Oath in Genesis Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 92, No. 2 (Jun., 1973), pp. 165-179Fox, Michael V. Wisdom in the Joseph Story Vetus Testamentum, Vol. 51, Fasc. 1 (Jan., 2001), pp. 26-41Gnuse, Robert K. Redefining the Elohist Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 119, No. 2 (Summer, 2000), pp. 201-220