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.
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