03-29-2008, 03:10 PM
Shlama Akhi Chuck,
What I said was that when "Yowm" is used in conjunction with an ordinal or cardinal number, outside of Genesis 1, it is a 24 hour day. When it is used with "evening" or "morning", it is a 24 hour day. In Genesis 1, each of the six days is used in conjunction with all 3! "Yowm" in Genesis one simply cannot refer to anything but what we call a solar day.
The length of the 6 creation days did not become an issue until the theory of cosmological evolution arose in the 19th century. None of the church fathers taught that the creation days were long ages of time. None of the reformers taught that. A few of them taught that the creation days were shorter than 24 hours- instantaneous! Augustine was one of those. All the church fathers and reformers who commented on the subject of the age of the earth, (and most did), taught that the earth was less than 7000 years old.
Even a day-ager proponent, Davis Young writes:
"The virtually unanimous opinion among early Christians until the time of Augustine was that human history had lasted about 5500 years.It is also very probable that the age of the world was regarded as the same number of years..., for the church fathers generally do not reveal any sharp distinctions between the initial creation of the world and the creation of man.We find absolutely no one arguing that the earth is tens of thousands of years old on the grounds that the days are used figuratively for long periods of time."
The Westminster Confession (1646) says "It pleased God The Father, Son and Holy Ghost, for the manifestation of the glory of His eternal power, wisdom, and goodness, in the beginning, to create or make of nothing, the world, and all things therein, whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days, and all very good."
If there be doubt left as to the length of those days, the Westminster Annotations (1657) - a commentary on the entire Bible, have on Genesis 1:5:
"The word "day" is taken for the day natural, consisting of 24 hours, which is measured most usually from sun rising to sun rising, or from the sun setting to the sun setting. In the Hebrew, it is one day in number, not expressly the first day in order."
This had been the view of Christendom for 1800 years until Lyell's uniformatarian doctrine of Geology's millions of years took hold in the early 1800's, and gave rise to Darwin's biological theory soon after.
Hugh Ross has been promoting the lie that Christians have believed the day-age theory of creation since the early centuries of Christianity. His books have had a wide audience and his radio and TV appearances have convinced many Christians that Big-Bang science can enlighten us as to what Genesis one really is all about.
Ge 2:3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
So we agree that God rested on the seventh day from all His work which He created and made. We know that Ge 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Ge 1:21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
Ge 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Eph 3:9 And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ:Re 4:11 Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.
We can agree then, I think, that God was creating and making during the six days, since scripture says he created all living creatures (day five) and man (day six). Indeed, He created all things, so the six days of making Heaven and Earth were also six days of creating Heaven and Earth. He did not cease from creating until the 7th day. I see no point in maintaining the first six days were not all creation days. They certainly were.
Another point overlooked by day-agers: The plants need sunlight or something very like it to photosynthesize make food and live. But each day is described as having an evening and morning. Evening is the onset of darkness of night. Morning is the onset of light of day. God made day and night (light and darkness) on day one and separated them and named them on day one, so evening and morning occurred on day one and every day thereafter. If a day were a thousand years, this would leave plants on day three in the dark for about 500 years.That is not a minor difficulty! It would seem to me that is an untenable position, to say the least.
If all the days 1 to six were the same, (and they would have to be the same to be grouped together and numbered, otherwise the narrative is senseless and incoherent) then all the animals on day five must live through 500 years of darkness of night, as must Adam and Eve on day six! What kind of Paradise is that? Their lives would have been also half over at the end of the day, if they were made at the start of the day, and I don't believe God needed all day to do it.He simply spoke, and it was done. And if the seventh day was 1000 years, Adam and Eve never lived through it! Neither did any of the animals made the day before!
Just a few thoughts to ponder.
Blessings,
Dave
Quote:If we always say that Yowm must mean a 24-hour period???then that would mean that we would have to teach that God created and made the Heaven and the Earth in a single Day/Yowm???But that is not what I have said. "Yowm" can refer to a longer period, as Genesis 2:4 indicates. There the "day" is a 6 day period. If "yowm" is used with the preposition "Beth" attached and is a general temporal reference, "byowm" as a part of a compound grammatical construction, (followed here by an infinitive) is an idiomatic statement meaning simply, "when" (Refuting Compromise, pages 70,71).
What I said was that when "Yowm" is used in conjunction with an ordinal or cardinal number, outside of Genesis 1, it is a 24 hour day. When it is used with "evening" or "morning", it is a 24 hour day. In Genesis 1, each of the six days is used in conjunction with all 3! "Yowm" in Genesis one simply cannot refer to anything but what we call a solar day.
The length of the 6 creation days did not become an issue until the theory of cosmological evolution arose in the 19th century. None of the church fathers taught that the creation days were long ages of time. None of the reformers taught that. A few of them taught that the creation days were shorter than 24 hours- instantaneous! Augustine was one of those. All the church fathers and reformers who commented on the subject of the age of the earth, (and most did), taught that the earth was less than 7000 years old.
Even a day-ager proponent, Davis Young writes:
"The virtually unanimous opinion among early Christians until the time of Augustine was that human history had lasted about 5500 years.It is also very probable that the age of the world was regarded as the same number of years..., for the church fathers generally do not reveal any sharp distinctions between the initial creation of the world and the creation of man.We find absolutely no one arguing that the earth is tens of thousands of years old on the grounds that the days are used figuratively for long periods of time."
The Westminster Confession (1646) says "It pleased God The Father, Son and Holy Ghost, for the manifestation of the glory of His eternal power, wisdom, and goodness, in the beginning, to create or make of nothing, the world, and all things therein, whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days, and all very good."
If there be doubt left as to the length of those days, the Westminster Annotations (1657) - a commentary on the entire Bible, have on Genesis 1:5:
"The word "day" is taken for the day natural, consisting of 24 hours, which is measured most usually from sun rising to sun rising, or from the sun setting to the sun setting. In the Hebrew, it is one day in number, not expressly the first day in order."
This had been the view of Christendom for 1800 years until Lyell's uniformatarian doctrine of Geology's millions of years took hold in the early 1800's, and gave rise to Darwin's biological theory soon after.
Hugh Ross has been promoting the lie that Christians have believed the day-age theory of creation since the early centuries of Christianity. His books have had a wide audience and his radio and TV appearances have convinced many Christians that Big-Bang science can enlighten us as to what Genesis one really is all about.
Ge 2:3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
So we agree that God rested on the seventh day from all His work which He created and made. We know that Ge 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Ge 1:21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
Ge 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Eph 3:9 And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ:Re 4:11 Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.
We can agree then, I think, that God was creating and making during the six days, since scripture says he created all living creatures (day five) and man (day six). Indeed, He created all things, so the six days of making Heaven and Earth were also six days of creating Heaven and Earth. He did not cease from creating until the 7th day. I see no point in maintaining the first six days were not all creation days. They certainly were.
Another point overlooked by day-agers: The plants need sunlight or something very like it to photosynthesize make food and live. But each day is described as having an evening and morning. Evening is the onset of darkness of night. Morning is the onset of light of day. God made day and night (light and darkness) on day one and separated them and named them on day one, so evening and morning occurred on day one and every day thereafter. If a day were a thousand years, this would leave plants on day three in the dark for about 500 years.That is not a minor difficulty! It would seem to me that is an untenable position, to say the least.
If all the days 1 to six were the same, (and they would have to be the same to be grouped together and numbered, otherwise the narrative is senseless and incoherent) then all the animals on day five must live through 500 years of darkness of night, as must Adam and Eve on day six! What kind of Paradise is that? Their lives would have been also half over at the end of the day, if they were made at the start of the day, and I don't believe God needed all day to do it.He simply spoke, and it was done. And if the seventh day was 1000 years, Adam and Eve never lived through it! Neither did any of the animals made the day before!
Just a few thoughts to ponder.
Blessings,
Dave