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Calls are charged at basic rate. Most Christians today interpret the first creation account in the Bible, Genesis , in one of three ways:. The first three days describe the creation of realms of habitation, while the second three creation days describe the inhabitants of those realms.
For example, darkness and light are separated on the first day, but the sun, moon and stars are not created until the fourth day. Used by permission. The analogical day view is another literary approach. In another literary approach, the cosmic temple view , the seven days of Genesis 1 point back to the ancient practice of temple dedication.
Literary approaches to the days of Genesis 1 are preferred by evolutionary creationists—like those in the BioLogos community—as well as some notable scholars who oppose, or are unsure about, evolution. Many variations of the calendar day, day-age, and literary views exist, and scholars classify them in different ways. The biblical text itself is the ultimate guide to the best interpretation of Genesis 1. Many of the clues we find in the text point to literary views.
Proponents of the day-age view note that the Hebrew word for day yom is sometimes used in Scripture for periods longer than a day. However, the uses that are often cited e. Another essential clue about the purposes of Genesis 1 is its juxtaposition to a second creation account beginning in Genesis Each account offers a different creation sequence and a different focus see table.
A common approach to this problem has been to squeeze the events of Genesis 2 into the sixth day of Genesis 1, but the numerous differences between the two accounts see chart have convinced many biblical scholars that they are not meant to be seamlessly intertwined in one account.
Instead, Genesis is better understood as a prologue to the rest of Genesis. According to biblical scholar J. Richard Middleton ,. In Genesis 1 we find God calling the cosmos heaven and earth, and all that is in them into existence.
These textual insights point to a remarkable literary depth in the early chapters of Genesis. What may seem like two disjointed creation narratives turns out to be a strategic arrangement serving the book as a whole. The fact that God inspired the text in such a way that these two distinct creation accounts appear side by side strongly indicates that the chronology of creation is not the main focus of these texts.
Over the past century, biblical scholars have made significant advances in understanding ANE culture, the context in which Genesis was written. Babylonian and Egyptian creation stories predating Genesis have been discovered that suggest that Genesis was written as a response to polytheism. Countering a culture in which celestial bodies were worshiped by earth dwellers, Genesis describes their purpose in terms of providing service light and calendrical time to earth dwellers.
In the Babylonian creation story Enuma Elish , the storm-god Marduk forms heaven and earth from the body of the goddess Tiamat, whom he has just vanquished in battle; by contrast in Genesis, there is one God, and creation is an act of generosity and love, bringing into being a good world in which humans and other creatures can flourish.
Image: Upper part of a clay tablet, part of the Creation legend Enuma elish. God chose to reveal himself to a particular people with a particular conception of the world. It is evident in the biblical text that he was not interested in correcting pre-scientific ideas the Israelites shared with other ANE peoples. For example, they may have understood the waters of the heavens to be held back by a solid dome —the so-called firmament described in Genesis The stars and possibly the sun and moon were believed to be embedded in the dome, and the earth was thought to be flat, with water all around both above the firmament and below the earth.
All ANE people shared this general two-tiered cosmology of heaven and earth and Genesis takes this view of the world for granted. Does the fact that Scripture uses pre-scientific ways of describing the world invalidate its message? Christians have long noted that God revealed himself to the biblical writers in ways they could understand , a principle known as accommodation.
As John Calvin wrote,. Thus such forms of speaking do not so much express clearly what God is like as accommodate the knowledge of him to our slight capacity. To do this he must descend far beneath his loftiness Institutes of the Christian Religion , 1. The frequent references to ancient cosmology in Genesis 1 indicate that God did not choose to reveal modern scientific information to the ancient Hebrews.
For him, it was difficult to understand why an infinite God would take a whole week to create the cosmos. He concluded that God created instantaneously, but with the capacity to develop , much like a seed has the capacity to develop into a mature tree. So are the days of Genesis 1 meant to be understood as regular, hour days? Yes and no.
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