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Are the Seven Days of Genesis to a different time scale?

The King James Bible has this in Genesis:

1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

Various acts of Creation go on till the Fourth Day.

1:14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

This was on the Fourth ’Day’.

It is on this ‘day’ that day and night, days, seasons, and years as we know them today get defined.

Is there a confusion about God resting on the Seventh Day as we understand day now?

Did the Seven Days of Genesis span the same time period as we understand now or is there a possibility that Genesis was to a different time scale and that it is the (semantic) use of the same word ‘day’ in two different contexts leading to the present understanding of the Sabbath.

21 Answers

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  • 1 decade ago
    Favourite answer

    I think I see where you are going with this.

    I will briefly state what I believe and have learned.

    We as humans created time, or in other words, perception of time. Time is just counting things, such as the Earth revolving around the sun. And counting, is math.

    So, yes, there is a major confusion about "God" resting on the Seventh day. There was no time then. And, there still isn't time to some people. The perception of time just keeps on spreading due to obvious reasons.

    If a child was born in the forest, with no parents, would there be time? No. Sure, he would see the light from the sun go, and it rise once again. Sure, he would see the seasons pass by. But, he wouldn't think it is time. He would just think those things happening just happen, and they do, with or without "time."

    We made time. When "God" was making the "world" was the sun even around yet? I certainly don't know that answer, but I do know that is where "time" is derived from.

    One last note, if you then think "God" created time, you are still incorrect. "God" may have created the sun, or Earth and so on, but "God" did just that, nothing else.

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    A day during the Creation week must really mean one 24 hour period.

    If you look at Genesis 6, God decides to limit all of man's "days" to 120 years. He has set the maximum number of years we can each live.

    In Genesis 7:4, God instructs Noah that "seven days from now I will send rain upon the Earth. The Ark is already completed, and Noah has 7 days to collect the animals and bring them to the Ark.

    How is it that just a few pages back, a "day" can be so arbitrarily judged? If these are truly symbolic periods of time, then there are exceptions to the literal view of the Bible.

    .

  • dee
    Lv 4
    1 decade ago

    A day (as defined on earth) has always been a period of darkness and light. The number of hours within that day is of little relevance. When the bible speaks of a day, it is referring to the period of darkness and light.

    "God named the light "day" and the darkness "night." Evening passed, and morning came. This was the first day" (Genesis 1:5 NCV)

    There is no evidence to support the idea that days would have been longer then; the earth's speed of rotation has not fluctuated significantly in any recorded history (other than times the Bible records a miracle that would cause such).

    Source(s): The Bible
  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    First of all, there are two separate creation stories at the beginning of Genesis. In the first one he creates the universe all at once, creates man and woman together. The second one is the 6-day creation.

    A lot of people think '6 days' really means 6 discrete periods of undetermined length. Genesis screams to be interpreted as symbolic or allegorical--just for example 'Adam' is an old Hebrew word meaning 'Man'. And, as has been pointed out, how could you tell how long the first 3 days were when the sun wasn't created until the 4th day?

    I have read at least half a dozen commentaries on Genesis from authors who interpret it non-literally. They are all interesting. OTOH the literal interpretation just sounds silly! Like the writer is trying to prove something he doesn't believe himself.

  • 5 years ago

    Todat we see as impossible that Athenea was born from the ehad of zeus but for the greeks it was their religion. maybe in some years the people think is impossible that a good create two peoples... this is imposible and where are the dinosaurs, the mamuts.....?? yes the teory of evolution is a teory but only it is more credible than all the bible. Teach thsi is an error. I went to a catholic college in Spain and my science teacher was a priest and he never talk us about the creationism. he said you're free to believe what you want but this is what I have to teach. US will never be advanced if they don'tsepare the religion and the state. How is possible that the politicians says In God we trust, God helps us and something else in the "most advanced " nation of the world when even in the most cristians countries (Spain, Portugal, Italy...) the church and the state are separated?

  • 1 decade ago

    A Day in the bible rarely means a literal 24 hour period. What is Time to the timeless? If you are the beginning and the end of something, you don't count time. Humans count time because we die, plain and simple. However, to the truly 'timeless' there is only NOW. Which is kind of strange because it is the only time that humans CANNOT count, is NOW. How long is Now? Will we ever grasp it? Ooops, it's gone, and I'm on a different Now, now. Confusing? Well, whaddaya expect from a watery jumping cow and cohort? LOL

    Source(s): A Day in the Genesis account is a way to count time. But we do not know how long a Day to God is.
  • 1 decade ago

    It could be, but it doesnt matter because whether its a day for a day or a day for 1 billion days it still won't add correctly to how old the earth really is....about 4.5 billion years and thats fact. The greatest fairy tale of all time written in the bible doesnt account for the undeniable disputes between science and religion.

    Its in mans nature to need an answer for everything and the greatest mystery of all time man need the greatest story of all time, having being completely ignorant in the ways of how the universe began or how people are even made. They feared the unknown as is completely human to do so.

    It eventually was told for so long they began convincing themselves that it was true. (i am not talking about Christianity iam talking about the belief in god period) So it found a place in our world as the answer and its only recently that we are finding the true answers, lots of people are afraid and will eventually have to just use "faith" as there only defense as science will inevitably debunk the myth of creationism. I promise you all this will happen. Religion has been around for thousands of years and its hard for humanity to let it go, science and finding out real answers have been around for less than a hundred. In time the world will open there blinded eyes, this i promise.

  • 1 decade ago

    The 7 days the bible says God created the earth in is not to be taken literally, necessarily, but each day represents an era, a period longer than a day in which it was made. That is what the word means in the original Hebrew. Through all the translations to, eventually, English, it got changed to the word day. Which to us means 24-hours.

  • You would need to translate the original (Greek or Hebrew, I don't know) text of the book of Genesis and see which terms were used. If we assume the translation done by others is correct then "and the evening and the morning were the third day" would mean that close to 24 hours just elapsed- not 24 billion years.

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    I think this can be answered simply on just a few fronts:

    1. The periods of light and darkness defined what a day was. If they were longer, ie thousands of years which the gap theorists would have us believe, then you have plants enduring thousands of years of night before thousands of years of day. This would destroy them at a bare minimum; in the worst case, this means the earth alternated between thousands of years of being a frozen wasteland to thousands of years of being a burning desert wasteland - hardly conducive to plant life!

    2. The people to whom Moses wrote were simple folk, and he wrote in simple terms. If Moses wrote that light and darkness determined the days for the first four days, why would there be no switch in the manner of description in describing the next days if they were in fact different?

    3. The earth is slowly spinning to a stop, and NASA astrophysicists have mathematically demonstrated this. It is for this reason that we have a leap second added every century. This means that the days are now LONGER than they ever have been, not shorter, barring some miracle or some other explanation.

    4. Applying Ockham's razor, the simplest answer is likely the best answer, and this is what Christians and Jews have believed for thousands of years: that when Genesis says that the evening and the morning were the first day, that's exactly what it means.

    Blessings!

    Tom

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