[[But I will say this, if you insist that St. Basil the Great was wrong in saying “it matters not whether you say ‘day’ or ‘aeon’, the thought is the same”, insist on ignoring the strangeness of the Hebrew usage in which the cardinal, rather than ordinal is used — “one day” rather than “the first day” — then ordinals for the successive days, and won’t read what many Orthodox Christians regard as the best recent commentary on the first chapter of Genesis, reading it very much in light of the parallel the Fathers and the Church’s hymnography have always drawn between Adam and Christ, between the Tree in the Garden and the Tree of the Cross, because it doesn’t uphold your preconception of “a literal six days of creation”, then all I can say, is that it is your loss.]]
I asked a simpel question about what the premise of the book was- I also asked whether you had an answer to whether or not htere was sin and death before thwe fall-
And as for ‘my loss’ Hmmm- Seems to me that readign soemthign that contradicts God’s word simpyl b ecause it’s a supposed ‘new enlightenment’ and simpyl because many are swucked into beleivign it despite the FACT that there was NO sin and death before man’s fall and therefore the idea of macroevoltuion CAN NOT jive with scriptures EXCEPT IF we deconstruct God’s word and call Him al iar - well then- I guess I’ll just have to ‘suffer’ the loss-
I’ll ask one more time- Was there, or was there not sin and death before man’s fall? If not- then how do you explain species survivign for millions or billions of years awaiting the right combinations of mutaitons to somehow supernaturally violate natural laws and combine to create NEW NON SPECIES SPECIFIC INFORMATION?
Did or did not man’s sin permeate all of creatioon causign death? Hint romans 8: 20-22 says it did- Again, we have another passage we MUST ignore or explain away in order to reconcile evoltuion and God’s word-
[[“it matters not whether you say ‘day’ or ‘aeon’, the thought is the same”, insist on ignoring the strangeness of the Hebrew usage in which the cardinal, rather than ordinal is used — “one day” rather than “the first day”]]
first you insinuate it matters not which word is used, then all of a sudden it does matter when it coems to supportign an unbiblical hypothesis of macroevoltion?
IF you bothered lookign beyond writings which support your a priori beleif in billions of years- you woudl note that the the term ‘in the beginning’ means “That which was best’ or “That which is first’, and hte Hebrew word for that reflects the Very best of the whole of creation- The first day was the Best- and sets the toen for the rest of the creation week by indicating htat a special events with a very special beginnign was takign place- Hebrew words are VERY specific and relay more informastion than our casual wiords of english do today- When it came to the cardinal of the word Yom- the reason was ocne again to set the tone for the following ordinals to follow- it is the FIRST use of the word Day, and the best becasue it is the beginning with more clarification to follow- meanign hte ordinals
IF you ar serious abotu studying Hebrew- you will find that hte word Echad, usually used as a cardinal, is usually only used as a cardinal to establish the beginning of a set of number,s then is used as ordinals from thereon out when listing hte following ‘items’ (in this case days)- The text begins by stating “ONE DAY” then goes on to describe what ONE DAY means- This is backed up by numerous such examples throughout God’s word in which prefixes are not used, and hten used at the end of the list, or length of time being described- Cardinals OFTEN stand for ordinals when small lists are concerned-
So yeah- We ‘unlightened literalists’ who aren’t privy to soem secret new (or secret old) way of itnerpretign God’s word will just have to live with our ignorance I guess- but at least we don’t have to deconstruct God’s word, and tear down key precepts in order to manipulate hte text to fit an ideology that simply isn’t consistant with the whoel of God’s word-
I cited two Greek (St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory of Nyssa) and one Latin Father of the Church (Blessed Augustine), all of whom lived in a culture and intellectual environment far closer to the Holy Apostles than we do, all of whom were dubious about taking the narrative of Genesis literally -- though St. Basil after the remark I quoted early in his Hexameron comments throughout the rest of the book as if 'day' were literally a 'day' -- with no pressure for the modern secular world or Darwinism to doubt a literal reading. The tradition of the Kingdom of God as the "eighth and eternal day" and with it the idea that all of history lies within the seventh day, on which God rested from His work of creation, is very old, very well established in the Church's consciousness, was so for centuries before Charles Darwin's great-grandfather was born, and quite frankly opposed to a literal reading of "day" as a twenty-four hour period in the early chapters of Genesis.
The real problem with literal readings is that they don't exist: all words, all turns of phrase, are always subject to interpretation, and interpretations are colored by the cultural milieu of the reader. This is one reason we Orthodox make a point of reading Scripture in light of what the Church has thought and taught about its meaning down the centuries, with particular emphasis on the early Fathers who were closer in time and in external cultural milieu to Our Lord during His earthly ministry and His Holy Apostles. (The other is that the Church was the instrument of the Holy Spirit in completing the editorial process of selecting the canon of Scripture, and thus the Scriptures are the Church's books -- they were selected because the Church knew them to be true, when read as the Church read and reads them.)
Reading Genesis through the eyes of post-'Enlightenment' (note the scorn quotes, that name for the historical period is a demonic deception) rationalism, rather than the eyes of the Church, leads to misreading. (See my earlier comment about "literally true" meaning "communicating truth when read as if written by and for post-'Enlightenment' rationalists".) And it seems to be such a reading you are clinging to. Even Orthodox Christians like Fr. Seraphim Rose, who favor a more literal reading, the Church's use of the seventh and eighth days as non-literal days notwithstanding, read the text very differently than protestant six-day-literalists.