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.
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