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To: Red Badger
Hi, RB.

I guess you posted the Genesis text to make a case for short creation days (six 24-hour days). That's possible. It's also possible they were six long eras.

Let's look at Genesis 1:23's "And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day." The word "evening" in the Hebrew is "‘ereb", which has multiple literal meanings. One of those is evening, and one of those is beginning. The same with the word "morning" original Hebrew word "boqer" meaning morning, or ending, or other literal definitions. And the word "day" in Hebrew is "yôm" and can mean daytime, a 24-hour day, or era of unspecified length. (Think of your grandpa saying, "back in my day".) Repeat that for the other 5 creation days (not counting the 7th day).

Basically, the Genesis 1 text alone give neither old earth creationists nor young earth creationists a leg to stand on in making our cases for the age of the earth or how long each of God's creation "days" lasted. (Think esegis reading, not exeges reading.) Of interesting note, the 7th day in Genesis 2:2 has no evening and morning to note a beginning and end of the 7th "day". This to me suggests (but doesn't imply) that the 7th "day" itself hasn't ended (at least not by Moses' time), suggesting that the 7th yôm is to be translated as era of rest instead of day of rest. Perhaps the other 6 creation yôm's are eras too.

So IMHO us Christians have no dog in the fight on the age of the earth or the length of the creation "days". Our faith in the Bible's creation story isn't shaken no matter what archaeology shows us about the age of the earth. However, the atheists faith in natural selection is shaken when the record of nature doesn't show a gradual speciation across billions of years like their belief demands. The record of nature IMHO shows God's miraculous hand brought forth new species of organisms in various bursts that natural selection can't explain, and even appearing in the fossil record in the same order listed in Genesis (plants, fish and birds, land animals, human beings).

43 posted on 05/17/2023 2:20:39 PM PDT by Tell It Right (1st Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
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To: Tell It Right

2 Peter 3:8

But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

“... the atheists faith in natural selection is shaken when the record of nature doesn’t show a gradual speciation across billions of years like their belief demands.”

There is no Half-Giraffe......................😉


50 posted on 05/18/2023 5:10:43 AM PDT by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegal aliens are put up in hotels.....................)
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