This is a personal response to Justin Taylor’s Blog on understanding Genesis 1.
I have not responded to every detail of his blog but only the main areas that I think need correction.
Justin states: ‘Contrary to what is often implied or claimed by young-earth creationists, the Bible nowhere directly teaches the age of the earth.’
Young earth creationists do not claim that the Bible ‘directly teaches the age of the earth’. That is an implication drawn from the understanding of Genesis and its genealogies and also the evidence of science.
Justin suggests ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis :1) ‘is not a title or a summary of the narrative that follows. Rather, it is a background statement that describes how the universe came to be.’
I am not sure I understand the difference, but Keil and Delitzsch deal carefully with this opening phrase in the Hebrew and conclude that it refers to ‘the very first beginning, the commencement of the world, when time itself began… the creation of the heaven and the earth was the actual beginning of all things.’ In this sense it is a heading for all that follows. Delitzsch explicitly claims that any idea of ‘primeval material’ is excluded. The rest of the chapter is an explanation of how everything came into order.
Justin asks: ‘If the sun is created in day four (Gen. 1:16), why do we have light already appearing inGenesis 1:3?
The problem of light appearing before the sun in Genesis 1:3 is resolved when we remember that God himself is light. There will be no need for the sun in the new heaven and earth for the Lord himself will be its light (Revelation 21:23; 22:5). God lives in light because he is light. 'He lives in unapproachable light' (1 Timothy 6:16). The natural sun is a pale reflection of this. It is precisely because men conclude there can be no light without the sun that God deliberately called for light before he created the sun. He is declaring: I am the source of all light. I give the sun its light.
Justin states: ‘It is commonly suggested that this is such a “plain reading” of Scripture—so obviously clear and true—that the only people who doubt it are those who have been influenced by Charles Darwin and his neo-Darwinian successors. The claim is often made that no one doubted this reading until after Darwin.(This just isn’t true—from ancient rabbis to Augustine to B. B. Warfield—but that’s another post for another time.)’
The reference to Augustine is misleading. Hippolytus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Augustine of Hippo all believed that the six days were symbolic of 6000 years of world history and that God created the world instantaneously. Most other church fathers took the days literally.
To be accurate Warfield and Machen did not come before Darwin, they were directly influenced by him and the contemporary geological time-frame. They were great defenders of inerrancy, yet their understanding of Genesis 1 was shaped by the contemporary scientific theories of their day.
Significantly, Justin takes the same position as Hugh Ross in Creation and Time who, whilst spending a whole chapter on the early church Fathers, makes no mention, with the single exception of Archbishop Usher, of any of the Protestant Reformers and Puritans. Justin also does not refer to the Reformers. He jumps from Augustine to twentieth-century century theologians, all of whom were influenced by Darwinian evolution and the new geological time-frame. Allow me to fill the gap.
Martin Luther is unambiguous. He believed in six literal days, no death before the Fall and a global Flood. On Genesis he wrote: ‘We assert that Moses spoke in the literal sense, not allegorically or figuratively, ie that the world, with all its creatures, was created within six days, as the words read.’[1] He claimed that the world was not in existence before 6,000 years ago.
John Calvin on Genesis 1:5 claimed three things for the six days [2]
First, it is clear that God did not make all things ‘in a moment’ – thus he was against Augustine.
Second, Moses did not merely use six days to reveal the work of creation that God accomplished in a moment – thus he was against the revelatory day theory.
Third, God 'took the space of six days… For the purpose of accommodating his works to the capacity of men' i.e. he created in six days for our sake.
In 1619 the Dutch writer John Diotati produced a commentary on the whole Bible ordered by the Synod of Dort and claimed that the meaning of day and night in Genesis 1:5 is 'one natural day together… comprehending twenty-four hours.'
Justin is wrong to suggest the Puritans were not interested in this subject. They were Bible commentators of considerable skill in Hebrew.
Here is a selection:
The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) 4:1, states that God created all things ‘in the space of six days’.
William Perkins wrote that creation was 'between 5000 and 6000 years ago' and lists many who believed the same.
Lancelot Andrewes commented on the Hebrew word yom (‘day’ in Genesis 1:5) that it 'had a meaningful and natural use that we should esteem 24 hours one day'.
The views of Archbishop James Ussher are well known and he believed in six-day creation and a young earth. Significantly, Stephen Jay Gould, a strong evolutionist before his death in 2002, concluded that Ussher ‘represented the best of scholarship in his time.’ [3]
Thomas Boston wrote 'our next business is to show you what space of time the world was created. It was not done in a moment [as Augustine believed] but in the space of six days'
The great Bible commentators of this period: Matthew Henry, John Gill, and Thomas Scott, all believed in a young earth and six-day creation. As of course did John Wesley, who admitted that God could have made the earth in an instant ‘but he did it in six days’ to show himself a free agent and to set us an example.
What is the genre of Genesis 1?
By genre, we mean the category or style of writing intended by the original writer and how he would expect it to be understood by the readers. Therefore we must not superimpose what we think a passage means before understanding what the original writer intended and how the original readers understood it.
Prof S R Driver, one of the foremost Old Testament and Hebrew scholars of the early 20th century and not an evangelical claimed in his commentary on Genesis: ‘From all that has been said, only one conclusion can be drawn. Read without prejudice or bias, the narrative of Genesis 1 creates an impression at variance with the facts revealed by science…The expositor has no right to read into the narrative the ideas of modern science; his duty is simply to read out of it the ideas which it expresses or presupposes.’ (italics original) [4]
Keil and Delitzsch, two outstanding OT Hebrew scholars of the 19th century (and who Justin rightly commends for their skill) commenting on these early chapters conclude: 'They bear the marks, both in form and substance, of a historical document in which it is intended that we should accept as actual truth, not only the assertion that God created the heavens and the earth, and all that lives and moves in the world, but also the description of the creation itself in all its several stages...’
Steven Boyd, professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at The Master’s College, ran a detailed computer analysis of the linguistic characteristics of the Hebrew of Genesis 1 and concluded, 'it is statistically indefensible to argue that this text is poetry.’ [5]
The sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet is known as waw (or vav); it is a stick with a hook. And when it is placed on its own as a prefix, it can be translated by the word ‘and’ or ‘then’. Used like this it is known as the waw consecutive, because it means ‘first this and then that'.
It is a typical mark of Hebrew prose as opposed to poetry; it refers to sequence, hence 'waw consecutive'. That little hooked stick waw is used no less than 51 times in Genesis 1, and 46 times you can translate it by the word ‘then’.
I suggest its use is similar to a word Mark uses over 40 times in his NT Gospel, the Greek word euthus, meaning ‘immediately’ or ‘then’. That also is a mark of historical sequential writing.
John Currid, Professor of OT at the Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, claims that this waw consecutive is ‘a fundamental feature of Hebrew narrative and thus it points to the fact that these events took place in sequence.’ [6]
Clearly, Genesis 1-3 is written as history not allegory or poetry. It may contain imagery – such as the Spirit ‘hovering’ over the waters – but it is intended as an account of what actually happened.
Why do young earth creationists believe the days in Genesis 1 are literal 24 hour periods?
All words have a primary meaning, and according to ALL Hebrew lexicons and dictionaries, and English for that matter, the primary use of the word ‘day’ is a 24 hour period. That must be our understanding of the word Hebrew word yom unless there is a clear contextual reason to take the word for a longer period. Otherwise words lose all meaning.
As in most languages the word ‘day’ can refer to a longer period of time. But the context will clearly define the meaning. For example, in verse 5 the word ‘day’ refers to the daylight hours within each 24 hours period. There are occasions in the Bible where the word ‘day’ refers to an unspecified period of time, but even the phrase ‘the day of the lord’ which occurs almost 30 times (from Isa. 13:6 to 2 Pet. 3:19), mostly refers to a specific day in the future. However, here are four reasons why it is impossible to accept these days in Genesis 1 as anything other than literal 24 hour periods.
First. When yom is used with a number, and here you have ‘the first day’, ‘the second day’ and so on, it refers to a literal 24-hour period. Outside Genesis there are almost 360 occasions when yom is used with a number and with one exception it always refers to a 24 hour period. One out of 360 can hardly challenge the primary use. Significantly, Justin refers only to Hosea 6:2 as that exception. This is because it is the only exception out of 360 uses in the Old Testament. But his position is weekend by the admission: ‘it seems to be used in an analogical way that does not refer to a precise 24-hour time period.’ True, but it is used here as an idiom meaning ‘in a short time’. One exception out of 360 hardly proves the claim. Actually some would add Zechariah 14:7 which is literally ‘one day’, or as NIV ‘a unique day’, but in context it refers to ‘the day of the lord’ and undoubtedly has a specific day in mind, and the verse closes with ‘when evening comes’
Second. The reference to ‘evening and morning’ cannot seriously be taken to refer to anything other than a 24 hour period. This phrase, used 19 times outside Genesis 1, never refers to a long period of time.
Third. Genesis 1:14 refers to ‘day’, ‘night’, ‘seasons’, ‘days’ and ‘years’; it would be remarkable to select only the word 'day' as non-literal in that list. The same word ‘day’ occurs seventeen times in the record of the global Flood (Genesis 7,8) and no one suggests it there means anything other than the cycle of night and day.
Fourth. The six creating days became the pattern for a six day working week ‘…in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.’ (Exodus 20:11) Justin’s lengthy attempt to demonstrate that the work days were not literal days overlooks the obvious fact that Moses and Israel clearly understood the Genesis creation as a pattern for the working week of six twenty-four hour days. Did they misunderstand this?
Since Justin has brought a few scholars to his defence, perhaps I may do the same.
Prof Leupold, a prominent evangelical Hebrew scholar in the middle of the last century, concluded: ‘There ought to be no need of refuting the idea that yom means period. Reputable dictionaries… know nothing of this notion’ [7]
Prof John Skinner who, in the 19th century was professor of Old Testament Language and Literature, in the International Critical Commentary (1895) insisted that the attempt to harmonise science and Genesis by claiming that ‘day’ here means an aeon is ‘exegetically indefensible’ and ‘opposed to the plain sense of the passage and has no warrant in Hebrew usage’[8].
Prof S R Driver, one of the foremost Old Testament scholars of the early 20th century and not an evangelical, concluded on the word ‘day’: ‘There is no occasion to understand the word in any but its ordinary sense’.[9]
In a widely publicized response to David Watson, Prof James Barr a liberal theologian but acknowledged Hebrew scholar concluded ‘…so far as I know there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1-11 intended to convey to the readers the idea that creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience…’ [10]
In spite of all this, Dr Desmond Alexander from Union Theological College in Belfast, in his commentary on Genesis in the ESV Study Bible claims: ‘By a simple reading of Genesis, these days must be described as days in the life of God, but how his days relate to human days is more difficult to determine.’ [11] Why must they be ‘days in the life of God’ as distinct from human days? And what does a ‘day’ in the life of the eternal God mean? These days were not ‘difficult to determine’ until nineteenth-century geological science arrived.
I have not responded to Justin’s views on the seventh day because I believe they are a matter of interpretation to fit a preconceived position. It is not how the historic commentators and creeds have understood it.