The Earth, following God's directions to it, brings forth what God said, green growing plant life, some with spores and some with seeds, but all of which give rise to offspring which are basically identical. There is no hint given here that Darwinian processes are occurring. The words here are clear, after its kind-meaning like the same. It doesn't mean that slime gave rise to Redwoods.
You've had three days-yom- listed and still no sun, moon, or stars to mark time. So, what does day-yom- mean in these contexts? How can we as Biblical readers and critics give any set time period to at least these 3 "days" within the creation story. None is given so if we are to biblically follow God's command we are not supposed to add something into the text that is not there and in this instance, in order to get to 3, 24 hour days we would have to add something else into the text that isn't there, namely time!
© 2009 Roy Blizzard III
Here is a comment I received. Roy
ReplyDeleteOkay, I guess I'm confused... if we are not to give it "time" then why does scripture say "the evening and the morning were the third day" - what is "evening and morning" if not some sort of time. Also, why would it be referred to as "the third day"? Why would God change "time", from that part of creation, to the "time" that we know now (24 hours a day) and still refer
to it as "day"?
Natalie
Thanks for your question. Again I have to say that this is a difficult issue for most of us in the west to understand. Time is relative as Albert Einstein showed. Time has been different and is different every day. We know that the earth's rotation is slowing by a part of a second every year. So, what was a 24 hour day yesterday is different from a 24 hour day 5,000 years ago. Time in the Bible is quite generic really. Sometimes from context we can tell how long time is, but usually in Hebrew time is not very precise as in the west. Remember that Yom or Day in Hebrew can mean any number of things, from a second, to a minute, to a day, a year or an unspecified amount of "time". When you write a story you must write it in such a way as to communicate something to the readers that they can understand. How can you communicate an evening and a morning to a people in terms that are unspecific but understandable. That is the problem. When the Worlds as we know it were created and the universe began to expand, things were traveling so fast that time was "stretched". This means that time cannot be calculated as it was not "set" into a speed that really can be calculated. Time for us here in this world is regulated by the Sun and the Moon and the Stars. If we don't see them created until the third day, that would mean that for us that the "time" that we think of as an hour, minute, etc were not regulated as a means of time for us. To put Yom in terms that may be better understood in these few verses may be to say "a creative stage". This Evening and Morning (whatever that was) was a creative stage that was regulated not by any set "time" but by what God was creating. You have to remember that God didn't change the time or the way it is interpreted. God is "timeless". He operates totally out of the boundaries of time and space that we are constrained by, but that we have to try and understand and explain. Again, Yom or day can mean over 20 different things, so we could be just as easily be reading year as opposed to day,(The evening and morning were the first year). Remember that evening meant a period without light and morning meant a period with light. How long were these periods?????? Words are always going to fall far short in describing what God has and will do as He is indescribable as is His creation. All we can do is try to understand that God did it. We are unable to process the entirety of God's creation and if we were to try we would go insane and so in some ways it is better for our small limited minds to accept the fact and move on to what is important and that is Loving God for creating us and Loving our fellow man by being creative in life and bringing life where there was none.