HOW LONG WAS A CREATION DAY IN GENESIS 1?: PART 2

The first post on this subject began to consider all, or at least most, of the different views taken by old-earth interpreters of the Creation Narrative in Genesis 1. The list continues here:

Unspecified Length Day

This approach is very close to that defended in other theories with one exception: instead of each day 

referring to aeons of time passing, some days may have been much shorter than others. I am not quite 

sure what the advantage of that nuance is, but proponents include noted conservative scholars such as 

B.B. Warfield and E.J. Young.

Days of Revelation

This is an interesting interpretation which says that God revealed the events of Day 1 of creation 

during one 24-hour day, those of Day 2 on the following day, etc. However, (a) the order in which God 

revealed these happenings does not necessarily coincide with the order in which the events actually 

occurred and (b) it says absolutely nothing regarding the length of each phase of creation.

This approach seems to me to be more clever than plausible. The obvious problem with it is that the 

text clearly states that on each of these consecutive days, God created something. It does not say that 

on each of these days, God revealed what He had created to the author (whether it was Moses or 

someone else, we will never know).

However, one book of the Bible where that general approach should be seriously considered is the 

Revelation of John in which the author is presented with a series of images portraying future events 

that may or may not be taking place in the same chronological order in which they are revealed to him. 

The vast difference between Genesis 1 and Revelation, however, is that that John clearly introduces his 

visions with words such as “Then I saw.” By contrast, the days in Genesis 1 begin by stating that God 

said something followed by the action itself.

Days of Divine Fiat

In a somewhat similar manner, a few others have suggested that perhaps God indeed spoke his words 

of command over the period of a standard week; however, the actual carrying out of these commands 

took many aeons to accomplish. I guess that may be a possibility, but it certainly does not resemble the 

intent of the text since each of the commands is followed immediately by its accomplishment.

Intermittent Days

This is a slightly more appealing theory than the previous one in that it states that each of the daily 

creations in which God completed a specific action was separated from the next literal 24-hour day of 

creation by an unspecified and untold aeons of time. But a series of 24-hour stages of complete 

creation followed by very long time periods in between does not fit the geological record either, 

although the scientific theory of Punctuated Equilibrium has been used to explain why the fossil record 

would remain static for long time periods followed by periodic bursts of evolutionary activity. But even 

those “bursts” occurred over periods longer than a 24-hour day, according to the fossil record.

Days Focused on Palestine

Sailhamer has recently come up with the idea that somehow Genesis 1 is describing, in Strauss' words, 

“God's creative acts focused on preparing the land of Canaan for the Israelites.” I really can't imagine 

what led him to that unique perspective, and it is doubtful that he will ever get much of a scholarly 

following for that almost allegorical interpretation of the text.

God's General Relativity Days

In 1990, the Jewish physicist Gerald Schroeder appealed to Einstein's Theory of Relativity to explain 

that although from God's viewpoint, creation was accomplished in consecutive 24-hour days, from our 

perspective on earth that translates to billions of years with each successive day lasting half the time of 

the previous day's creation.

Not being a physicist, I am in no position to critique this reasoning. However, I must admit that it 

reminds me strongly of my sophomoric attempts while in middle school to calculate exactly how many 

miles heaven was from earth by considering the speed of sound in relation to the cryptic mention in 

Revelation 8:1 of a 30-minute time of silence in heaven. There are times when scientists and fledgling 

scientists need to realize that the Bible was not written primarily to communicate to us scientific truths 

that we can figure out on our own with the brains God has given us.

And this is perhaps as good an introduction as any to the third major category of Genesis 1 interpreters, 

those who consider the creation story to be first and foremost intended as a theological narrative, not a 

scientific one. But in saying that, I am by no means denigrating the fact that the Genesis 1 account is 

the only one of all the creation myths ever formulated which can be taken seriously in light of current 

scientific findings. But we must be open to the possibility that these theological truths may be 

communicated to us in literary terms, as in the two approaches below.

Analogical Day

The Genesis 1 days are pictured as a typical six-day work week in analogy with mankind's six-day 

work week. C. John Collins explains this view in more detail: “The view that I shall advocate can be 

called the analogical day position: namely, the days are God's workdays, their length is neither 

specified nor important...” Concerning the refrain, “There was evening and there was morning, the

Nth day,” he states that “its effect is to present God as a workman going through his workweek, taking 

his daily rest (the night between the evening and the morning) and enjoying his Sabbath 'rest.' To speak 

this way is to speak analogically about God's activity; that is, we understand what he did by analogy 

with what we do, and in turn, that analogy provides guidance for man in the proper way to carry out his 

own work and rest. The analogy cautions us against applying strict literalism to the passage.”

In the same vein, Hamilton says that “it seems likely that this refrain in Genesis refers not to the 

computation of a day but rather to the vacant time till morning, the end of a day and the beginning of 

the next work.”

There is a NT equivalent of this sort of usage comparing a standard work day to a spiritual 

accomplishment found in John 9:4 where Jesus says, “We must work the works of him who sent me 

while it is day; night is coming when no one can work.”

Framework Hypothesis

Strauss describes this approach as follows: “There is no chronology or length of time involved, so the 

days are not necessarily sequential or consecutive. Genesis 1:2 states the two problems that the earth 

was formless and void (or “desolate” and “empty”)...The days are outlined in such a way as to address 

those problems. Days 1 through 3 deal with the formless nature of the earth – or more precisely, the 

realms God creates – and days 4 through 6 address the problem that the void or realms must be filled.” 

In addition, the realms are filled in the same order in which they are created. This can be outlined as 

shown below:

                                            Table 1: The Parallel Structure of Genesis 1:1-2:3

Initial Conditions: Chaos (1:1-2)

    Light Created; light and darkness separated (1:3-5)

        Dome of the sky created; waters above and below separated (1:6-8)

            Land and seas created when they are separated from one another (1:9-10)

                Plants are brought forth from the land (1:11-13)

    Lights in the sky separate night and day (1:14-19)

        Birds inhabit the sky, and the water brings forth living creatures (1:20-23)

            Land brings forth living creatures, including man (1:24-28)

                Plants are designated as food for creatures and man (1:29-31)

Final Conditions: Rest (2:1-3)

This is my own adaptation of the Framework Hypothesis to emphasize the “chorus” shown in italics 

above.

I have heard several objections voiced against this possible understanding of the text, but they can be 

easily countered. Thus, Todd Beall complains that the last three days of creation did not in fact create 

“rulers” over each of the three realms since on the fifth day no “rulers” were assigned. That complaint 

misunderstands the way most Framework Hypothesis proponents word their proposal. The significance 

of days 4-6 is the fact that the realms are populated, even though “rulers” are indeed given on days 4 

and 6.

The second objection is that “the text of Genesis 1 is not poetic (as one would expect with such a 

literary structural approach as the framework hypothesis), but is a straightforward sequential 

narrative.” That statement is incorrect on several grounds. For one thing, at least verse 27 is written in 

standard Hebrew poetic parallelism. Secondly, the use of anthropomorphic language such as “face of 

the waters,” “face of the deep,” “dome of the sky,” and inanimate objects such as the sun and the moon 

“ruling” is quite characteristic of figurative Hebrew poetry. And the repeated litany “God saw it was 

good. And there was evening and morning, the Nth day,” as well as the telltale repetition of the 

importance of vegetation as foodstuff marking the end of the two major sections, can be favorably 

compared to the same sort of technique often utilized in the Psalms and the poetic sections of the 

prophetic books.

Beall then defines the distinction between poetry and prose according to the number of appearances of 

the waw consecutive imperfect form. But Freedman has conclusively shown that other criteria are 

much more definitive in distinguishing between the two. Not only that, but Freedman also has 

demonstrated that a great deal of of the OT is composed of writings that fall somewhere in between 

poetry and prose and should be designated as “exalted prose” instead.

A final rebuttal to Beall's arguments is that he assumes that such parallel literary constructions as in 

Table I are only present in the poetic sections of the Bible. My own studies carried out over the last 30 

years or so, and summarized in all my posts subtitled “Introduction to the Literary Structure,” has 

shown that such parallel constructions appear throughout the Bible, both poetry and prose and both the 

OT and NT.

Conclusion

Finally, I do want to agree wholeheartedly with one of Todd Beall's contention, namely that a literary 

explanation for Genesis 1 does not necessarily rule out a literal understanding as well. So my own 

position could probably be summarized as a combination of the Framework Hypothesis, the Day-Age 

Theory and the Analogical Day. I believe that Genesis 1 was written mainly to communicate valuable 

theological points by means of parallel cycles of exalted prose picturing God anthropomorphically as a 

workman carrying out all his work during the daylight hours of a six-day workweek. But while its main 

intent is certainly not to give mankind scientific knowledge which we can find out our own, it is also 

written in such a way that it is for the most part consistent with the latest scientific findings as long as 

one accepts the fact that “day” in Genesis 1 represents a long time period.

 

HOW LONG WAS A CREATION DAY IN GENESIS 1? (PART 1)

I have discussed this subject in scattered blogs on this site, but I felt that it would be more helpful to 

get all of it together in one spot, beginning with an attempt to define what the extremely common 

Hebrew word yom (“day”) means. At our church some time ago, an evening speaker gave an excellent 

defense of the old-earth creation concept. One of our church members was sitting near to me, and 

everyone could tell that he was fuming. He openly expressed his opinion afterward that the church 

should never have allowed that man to speak since it was obvious that “day” only had one meaning, a 

24-hour day. This disgruntled parishioner complained to our pastor and was at pains to make it clear 

that he was not just some uneducated and ignorant person, but had actually attended L'Abri retreat, 

begun by Francis Schaeffer. Our pastor asked me to prepare some sort of response to the man, and so I 

began by quoting from Francis Schaeffer himself, from his book Genesis in Space and Time. My 

response had no effect on the man and he resigned from our congregation.

When Schaeffer discusses Genesis 1-2, he states: “What does day mean in the days of creation? The 

answer must be held with some openness. In Genesis 5:2 we read: 'Male and female created he them; 

and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.' As it is clear that 

Adam and Eve were not created simultaneously, day in Genesis 5:2 does not mean a period of twenty-

four hours. In other places in the Old Testament the Hebrew word day refers to an era, just as it often 

does in English. See, for example, Isaiah 2:11, 12 and 17 for such a usage. The simple fact is that day 

 in Hebrew (just as in English) is used in three separate senses; to mean (1) twenty-four hours, (2) the 

period of light during the twenty-four hours, and (3) an indeterminate period of time. Therefore, we 

must leave open the exact length of time indicated by day in Genesis. From the study of the word in 

Hebrew, it is not clear which way it is to be taken; it could be either way.” (Genesis, p. 57)

The classic reference book Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, pp. 270-271, lists a sampling of 24 specific passages in the Old and New Testament in which day means “a period of undefined length marked by certain characteristics.” However, one must admit that there are thousands of occasions when it means all or part of a 24-hour period.

A more recent standard evangelical word study book lists many usages of yom in the Old Testament and states, “Whereas in some of these instances yom is a literal day, in others it appears to denote a concrete time which may have extended for more than 24 hours, but which was nevertheless characterized by a specific event.” As an example of an indefinite time usage, they cite Genesis 2:17 since Adam and Eve did not literally die on that same 24-hour day. The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, Vol. 2, p. 889.

There is an even more obvious problem with the biblical accounts if one holds that day must always 

mean a 24-hour period. The NIV and NRSV translations of Genesis 2:4b read “When God made the 

earth and the heavens...”. But the King James, RSV and NRSV preserve the literal Hebrew wording, 

 “In the day that God made the earth and the heavens.” It is the same Hebrew word yom that is used 

throughout Genesis 1 for the days of creation. In order to avoid an out-and-out contradiction within the 

biblical account, one of two things must be true: (a) Both Genesis 1 and 2 use day in the same way to 

refer to an indefinite time period or (b) Genesis 1 uses day to refer to 24 hours and Genesis 2 uses the 

same word to refer to an indefinite time period. As noted above, the other uses of yom in the early 

chapters of Genesis are best understood as an unspecified time period.

Some scholars have pointed out that an author generally uses his words in the same sense within a 

passage of writing. But that is by no means a universal rule. Just witness the way James alternates 

between the two meanings of the Greek word peirazo, test and tempt, just within his discussion in 

James 1:12-15.

But even the above does not settle the question since (a) the vast majority of the occasions in which 

“day” appears, it refers to all or part of a 24-hour period and (b) of those appearances where an 

unspecified time sense appear is meant, the majority of them occur within the construction “in the days 

of” or similar phrases (e.g. Genesis 2:4), as both Hamilton and Wenham point out.

For those interested in a further discussion of the various theories regarding the time duration of the 

Creation, Dictionary of Christianity and Science (2017) contains several articles from proponents of 

the major viewpoints. But below is a brief discussion of the pros and cons for eleven different theories 

summarized by George Schwab in this book. The discussion will be continued in a companion post.

Young-Earth Creationism

The first general category of approaches to the subject consists of those who hold to a literal seven-day 

week of creation. Basically, they all start with a strictly literal interpretation of Genesis 1, even though 

the staunchest of those defenders would have to admit if pressed that not all passages in the Bible can 

be consistently interpreted in that manner. So the problem with which they are faced is the 

overwhelming scientific evidence pointing to the age of the earth as stretching back millions of years.

One common response of the young-earth proponents is to attempt to discredit the scientific evidence 

in one way or another. For example, the immediate response of the person I described above as 

resigning his membership in our congregation was that the speaker was “simply giving in to the spirit 

of the age.” And that was much milder than what I was told by a pastor years ago when I informed him 

I was going to major in chemistry. He said, “The only reason anyone goes into the field of science is to 

disprove the Bible.” And I have attended church services and study groups where the leaders and study 

material openly made fun of scientists by unfairly and inaccurately describing their findings. I would 

characterize all of these approaches as “shooting the messenger” when you don't like the message.

And the version of a young-earth defense that was given in my church growing up was that Satan had 

planted all the fossil evidence on earth in order to see if we would believe the evidence of the Bible or 

the evidence of our senses and intellect instead. An even worse variation of this approach was taught to 

my wife by her church during this same time, namely that it was God Himself who planted the false 

evidence as a test of our faith. That contention certainly doesn't show any great understanding of either 

the nature of God or the nature of faith.

But not all young-earth proponents take such a negative approach in order to avoid facing up to the 

facts squarely. On the positive side, are writers such as Henry Morris and his Creation Institute. As I 

have mentioned elsewhere, Morris does not really have any credentials as a scientist, but he does have 

a PhD in hydraulic engineering, which is an entirely different discipline although it certainly relies on 

findings developed by scientists. Morris and those in his group also begin with a literal understanding 

of Genesis 1 but then attempt to prove that this fits in perfectly with current scientific findings.

I have no space to adequately explain all of the ways in which these attempts at harmonization fail 

utterly. However, many of them fall into the category of stretching a point further than it can stand in 

order to justify one tiny aspect of a physical phenomenon while totally ignoring all the ways in which 

their explanation fails to explain the major aspects of the same phenomenon. For example, consider 

Morris' contentions that(a) the Grand Canyon could easily have been formed over a matter of a few 

days,  (b) fossils are formed from bones in a matter of a few years, and (c) the appearance of different 

species of animal remains in different geological strata can be readily explained by the fact that some 

of the animals were able to climb to higher elevations faster than others as the flood waters were rising. 

Quite simply stated, all of this is scientific nonsense.

And the only rejoinder that the so-called Creationists have to the undisputed carbon-14 dating results is 

that perhaps the cloud cover over the earth before the Flood filtered out enough cosmic rays that the 

amount of radiation in the atmosphere was vastly different back then. Even if that were true and that 

the explanation made scientific sense (both of them dubious contentions), the Creationists would still 

have to explain away the dozens of other radiometric method available which do not depend at all on 

the amount of C-14 in the CO2 in the atmosphere. And all of those independent methods agree 

concerning the very ancient origin of the earth.

The second major category of interpreters of Genesis 1 are those who hold to a Old-Earth Creation.

 These people generally accept the scientific evidence for an ancient earth as irrefutable, but they are 

left with the problem of how to square that proven fact with the biblical text. And the approaches that 

they take are many. Some are described below and others will be discussed in a companion post.

Gap Theory

This idea was popularized by scholars in an earlier generation such as Thomas Chalmers and C.I. 

Scofield, and it still has adherents today, mainly among fundamentalist Christians. Their solution was 

to stick to a literal 24-hour day, 7-day week for the Creation of our present earth and all that is in it. 

However, they proposed that our present earth is not at all representative of the original creation, which 

actually took place between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. That original creation “became formless and 

void” (an impossible translation of the Hebrew wording in Genesis 1:2) so that it needed to be re-

created by God in seven days, as described in the rest of chapter 1..

As to what actually transpired during that hypothetical multimillion-year period between Genesis 1:1 

and 1:2, they stick in all sorts of events occurring then, including the fall of Satan and formation of all 

the prehistoric monsters like dinosaurs and hominoid creatures with which Satan had populated the 

earth. After God realized belatedly what Satan had done, He destroyed all of those creatures but left the 

fossil traces in place. To bolster up their view, the gap theorists point to Isaiah 45:18, which they 

translate as: “For thus says the LORD who created the heavens and the earth and established it; he did 

not create it a chaos, but he formed it to be inhabited.” The phrase “he did not create it a chaos” can be 

understood as “he did not create it in a chaotic state” (the gap-theorist's understanding) or “he did not 

create it to remain as a chaotic state.” The latter is obviously the meaning in mind considering the 

following phrase in the text “he formed it to be inhabited.”

Wenham and others have thoroughly discredited the grammatical arguments of the gap theorists 

concerning both Genesis 1:2 and Isaiah 45:18.

Day-Age Theory

As the title infers, this group takes a fairly literal view of Genesis 1 except for their understanding of 

the word “day,” which they interpret as a long time period of indeterminate length. Young-earth 

proponent Todd Beall gives his negative view on this theory, more recently championed by Hugh Ross 

and the group he founded, Reasons to Believe. Beall accurately characterizes the main evidence 

adduced by proponents of this view as follows:

    1. The fact that yom can sometimes refer to an indefinite time period.

    2. Passages such as Psalm 90:4 and II Peter 3:8 which indicate God's method of reckoning time is 

not the same as ours.

    3. The difficulty of fitting all the stated activities such as Adam's naming all the animals in the time 

between his creation and that of Eve on the sixth day.

    4. Since the seventh “day” is still continuing, the other six days may have been of an equally long 

duration.

Much as personally admire Hugh Ross and RTB for their reasoned and informed approach to 

harmonizing Genesis with the latest scientific evidence, one must admit that not all of their arguments 

can stand up to rigorous examination, as Beall indicates. I will not rehearse all of his rebuttal points, 

but they can be found in Dictionary of Christianity and Science and are worth considering. Some of 

Beall's points include (a) a reminder that 97% of references in the OT to yom obviously refer to part or 

all of a 24-hour day, (b) an explanation as to why Psalm 90:4 and II Peter 3:8 are really irrelevant to the 

question at hand, (c) the fact that Exodus 20:8-11 specifically links the days of creation with the days 

of the workweek, and (d) the difficulty that Ross has in making this model correspond completely with 

the scientific evidence.

Some of these arguments are stronger than others, but as a whole they tend to indicate that maybe we 

should be looking for a more acceptable model. Thus, further possibilities will be considered in a 

companion post.

 

THE CANON OF SCRIPTURE (NEW TESTAMENT)

This subject forms the second part of F.F. Bruce's excellent book with the above title (see other posts titled “The Canon of Scripture”). As to the question of which New Testament writings were included in the present canon – accepted by the Protestant, Orthodox, and Roman Catholic churches alike – the situation was quite different from that posed by the Old Testament writings. For one thing, the process for formulating the canon of the OT took place over many centuries with details lost in antiquity. By contrast, the time between the actual writing of the NT books and the full acceptance of today's canon took place over just a few hundred years and was more fully documented.

The NT collection took place in stages, with acceptance of some of the writings on a par with the Hebrew Scriptures beginning during the time of the apostles. Thus, in I Timothy 5:18 a saying of Jesus found in Luke 10:7 is introduced with the words, “For the scripture says.” And, of course, there is Peter's statement regarding the letters of Paul which are sometimes twisted by the ignorant and unstable “as they do the other scriptures.” (II Peter 3:16)

The early Church Fathers also attest to the canonical authority of portions of the NT as being on a par with the OT. These include comments by Clement of Rome (AD 96), Ignatius (ca. 110), Polycarp (AD 110-120), and Dionysius (ca. 170), among others.

The general process was as follows: The books were first copied and distributed individually among the far-flung Christian congregations and then later bound together in different groupings such as the gospels or the letters of Paul. For example, the first collection of all four gospel accounts was put together by Tatian around AD 165. It was widely circulated among the churches in both the Syriac and Greek languages. And the first collection of Paul's letters of which we are actually have a copy is the Chester Beatty manuscript written about AD 200. F.F. Bruce states, “What is important is this: from the early second century onward Paul's letters circulated not singly, but as a collection. It was as a collection that Christians of the second century and later knew them, both orthodox and heterodox.”

Each congregation was free to adopt for reading those writings which they felt to be trustworthy, using general criteria which will be discussed in another post. As a witness to the different decisions made by these early Christians, we have the writings of the various local church leaders as well as actual NT manuscripts as a guide. Below is a sampling of some of the major lists of the NT canon that were compiled at the time. You will note that there is a large amount of agreement even at this early stage of canonization although some of the works in our present NT may be missing while other books not in our accepted canon were included by certain congregations.

Marcion (b. AD 100) gives us the first extant listing of what would be called the New Testament. Unfortunately, Marcion would be called a heretic by early standards and by most of us Christians today since he rejected all of the Old Testament as well as distinguishing between the God of the OT from the God of the NT. As a result, he rejected any Christian writings that appeared in part or whole to be favorable to the Hebrew Scripture. His version of the gospels was an edited form of Luke's Gospel. His edition of Paul's letters contained ten of them and was missing (either purposely or accidentally) the Pastoral Epistles. Bruce quotes von Zahn in regard to Marcion: “Marcion formed his Bible in declared opposition to the holy scriptures of the church from which he had separated; it was in opposition to his criticism that the church in its turn first became rightly conscious of its heritage of apostolic writings.”

Thus we see a process that was played out many times throughout church history by which, paradoxically, it was the beliefs of heretical groups that prompted the church to become more definite concerning what constituted acceptable and non-acceptable beliefs and behavior.

In terms of a more orthodox church leaders and what they had to say on the subject, there is Valentinus who came from Alexandria, Egypt and lived in Rome from approximately AD 135 to 160. In his individual writings he cites from most of our current NT canon in terms which suggest that he considered them equal in authority to the OT writings.

The Muratorian Fragment dating to roughly as early as the end of the second century is the next important document worth discussing since the author goes into detail discussing each of the acceptable NT writings. Every one of the books in our present canon is mentioned with the exception of Hebrews. It is a bit uncertain whether I Peter and all three of Peter's epistles are referred to also since not all of the text of the Fragment have been preserved. The Fragment does also allude to writings not present in our canon such as The Shepherd of Hermas (not to be included) and the Apocalypse of Peter (toward which the author was favorable disposed).

Turning to the prominent leaders of the Greek-speaking church in the post-apostolic generation, Irenaeus was one of the most influential during the second century. Unfortunately, our knowledge of Irenaeus' pronouncements concerning the valid Scriptures only comes to us filtered through the writings of the early church historian Eusebius. However, we do know that Irenaeus appeared to at least accept the four Gospels, John's Revelation, I John, and I Peter. And from scattered uses of NT writings by Irenaeus elsewhere we can deduce that he accepted as canonical all of the books in the Muratorian Fragment as well as I Peter. The only non-canonical writing Irenaeus did accept as scripture was The Shepherd of Hermas.

The noted Greek scholar Hippolytus of Rome (ca. 170—235) did not leave us any sort of canonical list, but he appeared to accept most of the we would call the New Testament, placing them under the categories of “the prophets, the Lord, and the apostles.” He definitely quoted from James, II Peter and Jude and wrote a treatise defending the Revelation of John.

Tertullian of Carthage, writing around AD 196-212, appears to have accepted the fact that there was a recognized group of Christian documents within most congretations. These books included, in his mind, almost all of those in our present canon although he makes no comment one way or another regarding James, II Peter, and II & III John. He expresses the personal opinion that Hebrews should be included in the list of acceptable writings and that Shepherd of Hermas should be excluded.

Clement of Alexandria was a contemporary of Tertullian who referred to the term “New Testament” but did not precisely delineate its contents. However, from his writings we can deduce that it included all of our present NT. He also quoted from a number of books outside that canon, but we do not know if he considered them as canonical.

Much of our information concerning early lists of acceptable books comes from the Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea from about 314 to 339 since he collected as many previous writings and church traditions as he could and used them as sources for his Ecclesiastical History. He categorized the various books accepted to one degree or another during his own time in to three groups: (1) those recognized by all the churches, (2) disputed books, and (3) spurious books.

Even though the second category was called “disputed,” the books listed there were said to be accepted by the majority of the congregations. They included James, Jude, II Peter, and II & III John. The spurious writings included even the highly respected Shepherd of Hermas and Teachings of the Apostles (also know as the Didache).

In AD 330, the first Christian emperor, Constantine, wrote to Eusebius asking him to prepare fifty bound copies of the entire Bible for his use. We do not have any existing copies of those manuscripts today and were not told which books were included in the New Testament of these Bibles. “We are not told, but the answer is not seriously in doubt.” (F.F. Bruce) It appears that the contents were the same as in our present New Testament.

The contents of the three earliest manuscripts that we possess are summarized below:

    Sinaiticus (4^th century) – all of our present NT plus Letter of Barnabas and Shepherd of Hermas.

    Vaticanus (4^th century) – this manuscript is incomplete and so we are missing all the books after Hebrews

    Alexandrinus (5^th century) – all of our present NT plus 1 and 2 Clement.

As far as official pronouncements concerning this subject, they did not begin until about AD 393 with the Council of Hippo and the Third Council of Carthage (397), well after a general consensus among most individual Christian groups had already been reached. These confirmed the NT canon as we have it today. Of interest is the fact that Pope Innocent in 405 came up with a list which is missing Hebrews. The rulings of these church councils thus tended to ratify the decisions made in a number of different church congregations rather than striking any new ground with their pronouncements.

"CRETANS ARE ALWAYS LIARS" (TITUS 1:12-14)

 Below is an expansion on some of my earlier comments found in the post “Titus 1:12-13a.”

As one indication of the wide learning that Paul possessed, he quotes from a pagan source here to warn Titus concerning the many “rebellious people, idle talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision; they must be silenced, since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for sordid gain what is not right to teach. It was one of them, their very own prophet, who said...” This is followed by the quotation: “Cretans are always liars, vicious brutes, lazy gluttons.” Paul then endorses this statement and urges Titus to reprove them strongly.

The source of Paul's quote was from Epimenides, a 6th-century BC philosopher and religious prophet who stated in his De Oraculis that Zeus was immortal, in contradiction to the general feeling of those living on the island of Crete:

They fashioned a tomb for thee, O holy and high one
The Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies!
But you are not dead: you live and abide forever,
For in you we live and move and have our being.

As an aside, the final line of this poem may also seem familiar to you since Paul uses it in lecturing to the philosophers gathered on the Areopagus of Athens, as related in Acts 17:16-31. Despite the fact that the quotation in Titus seems to come from Epimenides, Matthews states that Posidonius is more likely the original source upon which Paul was relying. And to further complicate the situation, J.D. Charles notes, “Some NT scholars attribute the proverb to the third-century B.C. Poet Callimachus, whose Hymn to Zeus contains only the expression 'Cretans are always liars.'” The problem with these two attributions is that neither Posidonius nor Callimachus was a native of Crete. So either Paul was incorrect or Epimenides is the author about which Paul is speaking.

Another factor in favor of Epimenides being the original author of the saying is the fact that Paul calls him “one of their own prophets.” In fact, Peisker and others note that Epimenides was considered to be a prophet and wonder-worker by both Plutarch and Plato, and so Paul is not exaggerating in his statement.

Some may be concerned that Paul was so conversant with pagan literature that he even quoted it directly (see also Acts 17:28 and I Corinthians 15:33). But Yamauchi points out, “As these were commonplace sayings, they do not prove that Paul read the literary works or that he attended plays, but they do show that he had enough acquaintance with such works to use them as illustrations in his sermons and in his letters.”

And if you are upset that Paul apparently quoted pagan sources as being authoritative, just keep in mind the current practice of preachers to get their sermon illustrations from TV shows, podcasts, movies, or sports events. That does not in any way indicate that those pastors endorse everything that might be in those sources; it just provides a convenient means of communicating with an audience using things in the current culture with which they are familiar.

The so-called Epimenides Paradox is quite famous among logicians and philosophers. The nature of the supposed paradox goes something like this, as expressed by an Oxford scholar Thomas Fowler in 1869: "Epimenides the Cretan says, 'that all the Cretans are liars,' but Epimenides is himself a Cretan; therefore he is himself a liar. But if he is a liar, what he says is untrue, and consequently, the Cretans are truthful; but Epimenides is a Cretan, and therefore what he says is true; saying the Cretans are liars, Epimenides is himself a liar, and what he says is untrue. Thus we may go on alternately proving that Epimenides and the Cretans are truthful and untruthful."

From the whole context of Titus 1, it is obvious that Paul is not intending to make a blanket condemnation of the whole population of Crete. For one thing, he tells Titus to appoint church leaders from among the people who are “blameless.” (Titus 1:5-9) Secondly, in introducing the quotation, Paul pointedly states that it applies specifically to one portion of the population (vv. 10-11). In doing that, Paul was really following the example of Epimenides himself, who is not condemning the Cretans in lying about everything, just specifically their belief in the death of Zeus. In both cases, we should keep in mind the penchant for hyperbole (purposeful exaggeration) among ancient writers, especially when they had a specific ax to grind, as did both Epimenides and Paul during their respective diatribes.

But even taking the passage literally, there are also logical methods for avoiding the implication that we are facing an insolvable paradox. Some of them depend upon how the original statement was worded:

    a. “Cretans are always liars” – This is the accepted translation from the Greek, and it seems to express the fact that many, but not necessarily all, Cretans cannot open their mouth with out stating a lie.

    b. “All Cretans are liars” – This is how Fowler poses the statement, but at best it expresses the thought that all Cretans tend to lie on a number of occasions, not necessarily in every single statement they make. And it does not seem to be the best translation from the Greek of either Epimenides or Paul. And logicians point out that Fowler and others seem to think that the negation of "all Cretans are liars" is "all Cretans are honest" when in fact the statement might be negated by saying that there exists at least one Cretan who is honest, and thus not all Cretans are liars.

    c. or “All Cretans are always liars.” – This is not really how the original was stated. If it were, it might definitely lead to a true paradox in which one would never really know what the truth was.

As a final comment, I would like to quote a contrary opinion by Thiselton concerning this passage:

“Its inclusion in the Pastorals with the added statement 'this testimony is true' suggests not that the author has misunderstood the philosophical point, but that the Cretan antinomy [paradox] constitutes a valid example of the kind of profitless controversy described above, which makes truth a merely theoretical matter.” It is doubtful whether Thiselton is correct either in his depiction of Paul's misunderstanding of the quotation or in the explanation as to what Paul meant since there is no evidence that the paradoxical nature of Epimenides' statement was of any widespread controversy, and was probably not even recognized as a paradox worth discussion until many centuries later.

THE CANON OF SCRIPTURE: OLD TESTAMENT

As with many other areas relating to the Bible, one can fall into one of several errors in approaching the subject. That is in addition to those Christians who would just as soon not consider the subject at all.

One extreme view is that paradoxically adopted by both fundamentalists and skeptics alike. It is to state that the Canon was laid down by fiat by some authoritative and or authoritarian source and therefore is not worth discussing any further. Thus, many fundamentalists feel that the books chosen to be in the Scriptures were decided by God and confirmed in the “Authorized Version” of King James in 1611 based on the “Received Text.” This simple view ignores the fact that there were indeed many discussions within the church over the years regarding the question. In addition, the phrases in quotes above found in the title page of many King James bibles do not refer to what people think they do. “Authorized Version” just meant that it was approved for publication by an official branch of the English government at the time, and “Received Text” was a phrase coined by the Dutch publishers of Erastus' version of the Hebrew and Greek texts as a publicity stunt. The first phrase certainly does not mean that it was authorized by God just as the second phrase does not indicate that it was handed down directly from Him.

If you look at atheistic views on the subject found on the internet, you will see that their approach is just as simple-minded and incorrect. They give the firm impression that there were all sorts of rival religious writings circulating within the Roman world at the time and none of the churches knew which ones were authentic. Therefore a small council of ecclesiastical highers-up in their fancy robes met at the Vatican and took a vote as to which writings to include and which ones to exclude. By a slim margin, the majority selected the books they liked and declared them to be the official canon of the Bible. And all those excluded religious writings were put under a strict ban with orders given to all Christian congregations to burn the spurious books. The truth is nothing at all like that fanciful scenario, as I described in a an earlier post, “Answering Atheists: The Bible's Flawed Origin.”

For anyone interested in pursuing this subject more deeply, I would very highly recommend the excellent book The Canon of Scripture by F.F. Bruce and published by InterVarsity Press. I will only give a highly simplified overview of the subject below, and this discussion will have to necessarily be divided into three different posts, coinciding with the major divisions in Bruce's book. The first concerns the history of the canon of the Old Testament.

Most of the actual details surrounding both the writing and acceptance of the books in the Hebrew Bible are lost to antiquity. However, the current canon of the OT appears to have been fairly settled by about the time of Christ. For evidence of this fact we can cite the references to almost all of the books in our currently accepted Old Testament canon in early sources such as (a) cross-references within the OT writings to other OT passages, (b) the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls containing all but the book of Esther, (c) the works of Josephus, and (d) the many references in the New Testament to most of the OT books (allusions to Esther, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs are missing).

But it should be noted that the Hebrew canon was not organized in the same way as our current Bible in that it was divided into the Law (the Pentateuch); the Prophets, which contained our major and minor prophets as well as the “former prophets” (i.e. most of the history books); and the Writings (poetry and wisdom books as well as other later books such as Daniel and Chronicles).

But between the closing of this canon and the time of the Roman occupation, there were several important historical events that complicated the situation somewhat. During most of that time period, Israel was under the firm control of Greek leaders first appointed by Alexander the Great. This was a time of harsh persecution of the Jews until they rebelled under the leadership of the Maccabees and became independent for a while.

This era brought about the creation of a number of religious writings in Greek, many written under the pseudonym of various Old Testament personages such as Enoch and Solomon. Some of these books were considered of enough value that when the time came to translate the Scriptures into the Greek language (i.e. the Septuagint) so that more Jews could read them, these Greek books (later known as the Apocrypha) were included along with the translations of the Hebrew canon. For those interested, a list and brief descriptions of the apocryphal books is given in an Appendix below.

Thus, by the time of Christ, the Septuagint became almost the de facto Bible of the people. Despite this fact, it is telling that the New Testament writers never quote from the Apocryphal books even though they extensively cite the books in the Hebrew canon (often utilizing the Septuagint version) and on rare occasions may even allude to extracanonical writings that were not even included in the Apocrypha.

At the same time, the Samaritans produced a translation of the Bible in the widely spoken language of Aramaic. However, they only accepted the Pentateuch as Scripture.

This brings us up to the post-apostolic era during which we must now look at the separate ways the Old Testament canon was viewed by the Jews, early Christians in the east and the west, the Roman Catholic church, and the later Protestant world. Briefly, here is how these various groups began to depart from one another in their understanding of what constituted the Old Testament canon.

Once the Septuagint was adopted as the accepted version of the early church, the Jewish world reinvestigated the position of the Apocryphal books in it and removed them from their canon partly in reaction against their use by the Christian church and partly because there was no evidence that those books had ever been written in Hebrew other than I Maccabees. It has been understood that this decision was officially pronounced at the so-called Council of Jamnia which took place some time after the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. As Bruce explains, “So far as these scriptures are concerned, the rabbis at Jamnia introduced no innovations; they reviewed the tradition they had received and left it more or less as it was.” Their extended discussions at these meetings do not indicate that there was any real doubt in their minds as to their final conclusion. “But this simply means that the rabbis of Jamnia, like religious disputants of other ages, enjoyed a really tough subject for theological debate.”

The Jewish nomenclature used in conjunction with those discussions is a bit confusing to our way of thinking since they talked about which books did or did not “defile the hands.” According to this expression, they were thus deciding which books defiled the hands with their holiness (canonical books) and which ones did not defile the hands but were strictly profane in nature.

Most of the earliest founded churches were in the east and spoke Greek. One of our sources for deducing which OT books they included in their canon is the evidence of our three oldest bound Greek manuscripts: Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, and Alexandrinus. Not all of them are complete manuscripts, but we can generally state that all of today's accepted OT books are present in addition to much of what we would call the Apocrypha.

In addition, we have the writings of the early Church Fathers in the generation following the apostles as indications of which OT books (generally in the Septuagint version) were accepted as canonical in various geographical regions of the East. However, Bruce explains, “Few of the early Christian writers had occasion to give a precise list of the Old Testament books recognized and used in their own circles; therefore, for our present purpose, special interest attaches to those who do give such a list. One of these was Melito, bishop of Sardis about AD 170.” The telling fact is that his list is identical to today's Protestant canon of the OT with none of the books of the Apocrypha included.

There is another identical, but bilingual (Greek and Aramaic), listing dating to about the same period. The noted scholar Origen (AD 185-254) provides the next extensive listing of books in the OT canon. His greatest achievement was the production of the Hexapla (“threefold”) edition of the OT with parallel columns for the text in Hebrew and five different Greek translations. The original of the Hexapla was kept at Caesarea for scholars to study until the seventh century. The only book from outside the accepted Hebrew canon that is found in the Hexapla is the Letter of Jeremiah (one of the books of the Apocrypha). And Athanasius around AD 350 produced his listing, which agreed with that of Origen except that he omitted Esther and added the book of Baruch (found in the Apocrypha). It is possible that he also accepted the apocryphal additions to Daniel and Jeremiah as well, but we cannot be sure.

In later Orthodox synods of the Middle Ages, the books of the Apocrypha were given official canonical status. “Most Orthodox scholars today, however, follow Athanasius and others in placing the books of the [Apocrypha] on a lower level of authority than the 'proto-canonical writings.” (Bruce) A final quirk of the Orthodox canon is worth noting – it contains Psalm 151 (see my post aptly titled “Psalm 151” for more detail).

Meanwhile in the western world, we have early church leaders such as Tertullian writing at the end of the second century. He does not provide a detailed OT canon, but he discusses some of the disputed books not even included in the Apocrypha. It becomes obvious that he probably took it for granted that all of the OT books in the Septuagint were to be considered canonical. And he even speaks favorably of books such as I Enoch (accepted as part of the OT much later by the Ethiopic church only) and The Sibylline Oracles.

The western church became centered more and more in the culture of Rome, and so it became obvious that a Latin translation of Scripture was needed. One of the few scholars at the time who was fluent in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew was Jerome. When he was commissioned around A.D. 382 to produce the first Latin version of the Bible (the Vulgate), for the OT books he went back to the original Hebrew rather than starting with the Greek Septuagint. At that point, he realized that the apocryphal books were not found in the original Hebrew Bible. However, he translated them from Greek into Latin anyway and prefaced them with an explanation that they were to be received “for the edification of the people but not for establishing the authority of ecclesiastical dogmas.”

With subsequent editions of the Vulgate, Jerome's explanatory note was deleted. Thus, by default the Apocrypha became unquestionably accepted as part of the OT canon by the later Roman Catholic church. A series of official church councils and papal pronouncements between the years 393 and 419 further cemented the OT canon, which included the books of the Apocrypha. As Bruce says, “When they did so, they did not impose any innovation on the churches; they simply endorsed what had become the general consensus of the churches of the west and of the greater part of the east.”

The situation for centuries afterward is well summarized by Bruce: “Throughout the following centuries most users of the Bible made no distinction between the apocryphal books and the others: all alike were handed down as part of the Vulgate. But the vast majority of western European Christians, clerical as well as lay, in those centuries could not be described as 'users' of the Bible. They were familiar with certain parts of the Bible which were repeated in church services, and with the well-known Bible stories, but the idea of well defined limits to the sacred books was something that would not have occurred to them.”

During the Reformation when the Bible became translated into English, German, and other European languages, the practice regarding the OT was to go back to the original Hebrew to yield the most accurate version. This was the point at which the Protestant churches adopted the Hebrew Bible only as our current OT canon. However, because of the long tradition of utilizing the books of the Apocrypha in the church readings and liturgy, some of the early reform movements such as those in England (Anglican) and Germany (Lutheran Church) included the Apocrypha in their published editions of the Bible, giving them a sort of deuterocanonical status in which they could be used as devotional aids but not to establish any doctrines. Thus, “Luther showed his acceptance of Jerome's distinction between the two categories of Old Testament books by gathering the Apocrypha together in his German Bible as a sort of appendix to the Old Testament (1534), instead of leaving them as they stood in the Vulgate...The section containing them was entitled: 'The Apocrypha: Books which are not to be held equal to holy scripture, but are useful and good to read.'” In the following year, Coverdale's English Bible was published in which the Apocrypha was gathered together after Malachi and a title page stated that these books “are not reckoned to be of like authority with the other books of the Bible, neither are they found in the Hebrew Canon” (spelling modernized). In that manner they were following the original intent of Jerome in his production of the Vulgate.

Those who insist that the King James Version of the Bible is the only acceptable translation should keep in mind that the early editions were all printed with inclusion of the full Apocrypha.

As part of the Counter-Reformation movement within the Catholic Church, they convened the Council of Trent in 1545 to make pronouncements regarding the text and canon of the Bible, among other issues. It cemented even firmer their insistence that it was fully part of the OT canon. But with the next Latin edition of the Catholic Bible, the books of 3 and 4 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh were relegated to an appendix. Bruce explains, “As for the status of the books which Jerome called apocryphal, there is general agreement among Roman Catholic scholars today (as among their colleagues of other Christian traditions) to call them 'deuterocanonical' (a term first used, it appears, in the sixteenth century); Jerome's distinction is thus maintained in practice, even if it does not enjoy conciliar support.”

Finally, in subsequent waves of the Protestant Movement, there was a strong reaction against any inclusion of the Apocrypha in the Bible due to its strong association with the Roman Catholic Church and its use there to bolster up doctrines such as the praying to saints for the souls of the dead (taken from the apocryphal II Maccabees 12:45-46).

APPENDIX: Books in the Apocrypha

1 & 2 Esdras: supplementing Ezra and Nehemiah

Tobit: a short story

Judith: a short story

Additions to Esther: mainly prayers and proclamations

The Wisdom of Solomon (also called Ecclesiasticus or Sirach): wisdom literature

Baruch: supposedly written by Jeremiah's brother

The Letter of Jeremiah: addition to the book of Jeremiah

The Prayer of Azariah

The Song of the Three young Men (while in the Lions' Den)

Susanna: a short story involving Daniel

Bel and the Dragon: two short stories involving Daniel

The Prayer of Manasseh

1 Maccabees: a fairly accurate historical account of the period between the OT and NT

2 Maccabees: more fanciful account of the same time period