Discerning Truth: How to Interpret Genesis 1.

Hi folks, welcome to Discerning Truth. I'm Jason Lyle, the founder of the Biblical Science Institute.

Now previously we looked at how Genesis is foundational to all major Christian doctrines.

That is, if Genesis is not literal history, then none of those doctrines can be justified.

They don't make any sense. That's not to say that you can't be a Christian if you don't believe in Genesis, but it is to say that the

Christian way of thinking, Christian doctrines like the gospel, marriage, and so on, make no sense apart from the literal history recorded in the book of Genesis.

We also covered the difference between exegesis and eisegesis. Exegesis, reading out of the text what the author has placed in there for us to understand, getting to the author's intention as best we can, whereas eisegesis is reading into the text.

Basically you're saying, here's what I want God to mean. It's a temptation for all of us to do eisegesis, but we've found that it doesn't make sense.

If you're going to do eisegesis, you might as well throw the book away and just say, here's my opinion on the issue, because the book is utterly irrelevant if you're going to do eisegesis.

We need to do exegesis. So what I wanted to do today is explore the arguments made by Christians who think they're doing exegesis.

They say, I do believe in Genesis, I just don't interpret it the way you do. I believe the author meant something other than God actually creating in six days.

Generally there are three positions, well you can cut the cake different ways, but I'm going to cut it into three slices.

There are those who claim that Genesis is not literal history, that the author of Genesis never intended for us to take it as literal events that happened in time.

Then there are those who claim that Genesis is history, but the words don't mean quite what they say, the details are not quite what we would expect taking

Genesis at face value. And then third, there are those who claim that Genesis is history, and the words do mean what they say, except for the time scale.

There are those who would say that God didn't really create in six literal days, but all the other details are basically how you would read them.

So let's start with that first position, the idea that Genesis is not meant to be taken as literal history, but something else.

The idea that the author never intended for us to come away thinking that God actually made things in six days, that he spoke the universe into existence and so on.

And we can sort of divide this into four subcategories. There are those who claim that Genesis is not literal history because it's poetic.

There are those who claim it's a polemic. There are those who claim it's a parable. And there are those who claim that it's a picture.

And so I hope you like that alliteration, I worked real hard on that. So let's start with poetic, those who think that Genesis is non -literal because it's a poem.

And then we'll talk about the polemic view, the idea that Genesis is an argument against pagan myths, but not meant to be taken as literal history.

And then we'll deal with the parable view, the idea that Genesis is teaching us something spiritual, but is not meant to be historically accurate.

And then those who take it, Genesis as a picture, as a sort of a literary framework designed to teach

God's purpose in creation, but without giving us actual details on how

God historically did create. So let's start with that first one, the idea that Genesis is poetic, that it's poetry.

And of course, the Bible does contain poetic literature. And so we need to take this claim seriously.

There are those who would strawman the creationist position and say, well, creationists, they take the

Bible, all of it literally. That's not true. There are sections that are poetic, and we take them poetically.

They're still true, but they're non -literal. And sections like the

Psalms, for example, or the Proverbs, when the Bible says there's no rock like our God, it doesn't mean that God is literally a rock.

He's not basalt or granite or whatever. Is Genesis poetic in nature?

What do you think? Let's take a look at some passages in Genesis. Look at Genesis 5, for example, beginning in verse, let's say verse 5,

Genesis 5 .5. So all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died. Seth lived 105 years and became the father of Enosh.

Then Seth lived 807 years after he became the father of Enosh, and he had other sons and daughters. So all the days of Seth were 912 years, and he died.

Enosh lived 90 years, and so and so lived, and so and so lived, and they died, and so on. Worst poem ever, right?

It's not written in a poetic style, not at all. And it's even more obvious when you know something about the

Hebrew language. Now, poetry in English, we tend to focus more on rhyme and meter.

That's how we recognize poetry. Not always. A poem doesn't have to rhyme to be a poem, but often they do.

If I read a poem to you and every line or every other line rhymed, the last word rhymed, you'd say, yeah, that's poetic.

We get that. Fortunately, in Hebrew, it's not that way. In Hebrew, poetry is not characterized by rhyme and meter, but rather it is characterized by parallelism.

Parallelism is when you say something and then you say kind of the same thing using different words, or the flip side, using different words.

And it's beautiful. And I think it's wonderful that God used the Hebrew language to record the

Old Testament, most of it anyway. There's some sections in Daniel that are Aramaic, but I think that's wonderful because you see, if he had used a language like English, where poetry is based on rhyme and meter, it wouldn't translate.

The beauty of the poetry would lost in translation to other languages. But in Hebrew, God uses parallelism to record poetry, and that does come across.

It does translate. And so let me give you an example here. Psalm 19 .1, the heavens declare the glory of God.

The skies proclaim the work of his hands. That's a supreme example of parallelism because it kind of says the same thing using different words.

And you can see the parallel between the two passages. Sky goes with heavens and declare and proclaim.

They kind of mean the same thing. And so that's an example of synonymous parallelism.

In that particular verse, there are two sayings, and they go together using words that are synonyms or phrases that are synonyms.

That's synonymous parallelism. The other type is antithetical parallelism.

And you find that in Proverbs 1 .7. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

So you get on the one hand, the positive aspect, if you're going to have knowledge, start with God, submit to him. On the other hand, fools, they don't care about knowledge.

They reject it. And so you get an idea and its flip side. That's antithetical parallelism.

You'll find both throughout the scriptures, but particularly in passages like Psalms and Proverbs.

And that's how you recognize these sections of the Bible as poetic in nature.

Now, the key to interpreting poetic sections is to see what the two parts or more, because sometimes you'll have more than just the two, to see what those have in common.

What is it trying to convey by seeing how the two parts go together? So the heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

So heavens and skies, the celestial realm. Okay, we get that. The heavens declare, declare, the skies proclaim the work of his hands, declare, proclaim.

They're saying something about God. We're getting information about God from the celestial realm.

And then his glory, the work of his hands, the work of his hands. This is one of the aspects of God's glory is what he does, how he's created in nature.

So that we understand what that Psalm means, that when we look into the celestial realm, we recognize it as the handiwork of God.

It is glorious. We learn something about God. There's revelation there. Now, often these poetic sections form a couplet, like you have in Psalm 19 .1.

But sometimes there are three parts. For example, in Psalm 1 .1, let's have a look at that.

How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers.

And so that's a, you have three things that are said there, and they're parallel to each other. And you can look for the specific words that are synonyms, basically, or at least go together.

They don't have to be synonyms, but they go together. So for example, the posture of this man. First, walk.

He does not walk. And then the second, he does not stand. And then the third, he does not sit.

And then you have the counsel, the path, and the seat, which would be appropriate to each of those forms of posture.

And then you have the wicked, sinners, and scoffers. Well, those are the same things, right?

I'm just using three different words to explain the same thing. So we get the point of it. A man is blessed if he doesn't go along with, if he's not collaborating with the wicked, with sinners.

We get that. We understand it. And there are, there are lots of different forms of parallelism that you'll find in scripture.

We've already seen the A and B, and we've seen here A, B, C, where they all kind of go together. Sometimes you'll have

A, B, C, A, B, C. Sometimes you'll have A, B, C, C, B, A, or A, B, B, A. There's lots of different forms of it.

There's one example would be graded numerical parallelism. I like this one because it appeals to me as a mathematician, but this is where the number goes up by one.

You'll have a phrase that has a number in it, and then the next phrase, the number goes up by one. And one example of this would be

Proverbs 6, 16. There are six things which the Lord hates.

Yes, seven, which are an abomination to him. And it kind of sounds weird in English.

You're like, well, which is it, God? Is it six or seven? Well, seven includes six, right? If God hates seven things, then he necessarily hates six things and one more.

And so it seems a little awkward in English, but it's a great Hebrew poetry. A number of examples of that in the scriptures.

Hosea chapter six, verse two, he will revive us after two days.

He will raise us up on the third day that we may live before him. So again, you have the two days and then the third day.

Yeah, that's graded numerical parallelism. And we'd expect that because Hosea is a prophetic book.

Prophetic books tend to have that parallelism in there, both synonymous and antithetical.

Now, once you identify a passage of scripture by recognizing parallelism in its many forms, you would then expect to find other literary devices that tend to be more common in poetic literature, perhaps than in historical narrative.

For example, you'll find figures of speech, non -literal ways of saying things. One of those would be metaphor.

When you call something, something else, when the Bible says there's no rock like our God, it doesn't mean that God is literally a rock.

We understand that as a metaphor because there are certain properties that a rock has in common with God.

Perhaps it's strength, it's stability and what have you. We have examples of this in the scriptures.

First Samuel chapter two, verse two, there is no one wholly like the Lord. Indeed, there is no one besides you, nor is there any rock like our

God. Now, you'd have to be rather dense to think that that's saying that God is literally a rock.

He's not. We understand that. Another example, Deuteronomy chapter 32, verse 18.

You neglected the rock who begot you and forgot the God who gave you birth. Again, you can see the synonymous parallelism there.

Rock goes with God, begot you goes with your birth. Now, it's not literal.

Nobody's saying that God literally gave birth to you in a physical sense anyway, but we understand the meaning of the passage.

Brought you forth, gave birth. God is responsible for your existence. He's the one that has enabled you to exist, to be born and to live and so on.

We get that. We understand it. By the way, this also serves to illustrate another point. Deuteronomy, the book of Deuteronomy, is primarily historical narrative.

It's mostly literal, but you can see that even in literal books you can have sections of poetry.

This is quoting someone and that someone is speaking in a poetic fashion. You'll find the same in the book of Job.

Job's often classified as poetic, wisdom literature, because it's recording the speeches of Job and his friends and in the end

God himself, but these speeches are written in a poetic way. So, it's kind of both. It's recording the literal history that happened, but the literal history that happened was people speaking in poetic fashion.

Another figure of speech that you'll find typically in poetic passages, at least often, is synecdoche.

Synecdoche is the representation, the substitution of the part for the whole, or the whole for the part.

We use that in English too. We use it in figures of speech. You might say, you know, my friend

Josh, boy he's got a huge family. He's got eight kids and him and his wife. He really needs a raise because he's got 10 mouths to feed.

Now, when we say that expression mouths to feed, he's really not feeding mouths. He's feeding people. We understand that, but the mouth is the part of the person that is most associated with eating food, and so the mouth represents the entire person.

That's an example of synecdoche. We'll see this in the scriptures too, again, in the poetic sections like Proverbs.

Proverbs chapter 6, we already looked at verse 16. There are six things which the Lord hates, yes, seven which are an abomination to him.

Verse 17, haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood. Now, does anyone think for a moment that God's okay with you shedding innocent blood and you lying?

He's just angry at your hands or your mouth for doing those things, your tongue for lying.

We understand that the tongue, the lying tongue represents the person who is lying.

The hands that shed innocent blood represent the person. It's the person who's doing these wicked things, who is haughty, who is lying, who is shedding innocent blood.

But God uses the particular body part that's most associated with that particular sin.

Great example of synecdoche. So these are the kinds of things that you'll find in poetic literature once you've identified the literature as poetic.

That's the first step. First you need to identify the section as poetic by recognizing that parallelism.

That's the key. Do we find this in Genesis chapter 1? Let's have a look.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.

Then God said, let there be light, and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness, and God called the light day.

No, you'd be hard -pressed to find any kind of synonymous parallelism in there whatsoever.

It's certainly not something you would draw out of the passage naturally. Not at all. Genesis is just a statement of this happened, and that happened, and that happened, and so on.

You do not find any of the markers of Hebrew poetry. They're not there. There's no way

Genesis is poetic. You cannot defend that position rationally. Now, some people have argued that the phrase evening and morning, because it's repeated.

There was evening and morning, day one, the first day. There was evening and morning, second day, third day, fourth day, fifth day, sixth day, and so on.

Some people have said, well, that's like a refrain that you find in the Psalms. And there are sections of the

Psalms where a particular phrase is repeated. And for example, in Psalm 46, verse 7, the phrase there is repeated in verse 11.

Verse 7, the Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our stronghold. Selah.

Verse 11, the Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our stronghold. Selah. Now, of course, we need to remember that the

Psalms, most of these, these were sung at one point. These are hymns, basically.

And in a hymn, a lot of times, there's a chorus where you will repeat a particular phrase. That's what you're seeing here.

And the Psalms, there are a number of examples of this in the Psalms where a particular verse is repeated exactly, just verbatim, because that's the way you would sing it.

Another example would be in Psalm chapter 56. In the second part of verse 4, we read, in God I have put my trust.

I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me? And then look down in verse 11, in God I have put my trust.

I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me? Now, some people have suggested that that's what you're seeing in Genesis, that it's a chorus that's repeated.

But that won't work. First of all, there's no synonymous parallelism in Genesis. You don't find, at least in Genesis chapter 1, it's not there.

And so you really can't argue that this is a psalm. It's not a psalm of praise. It's recording what happened.

And the reason that evening and morning are repeated is because that's what happened.

Evening and mornings tend to repeat, you see. And it's not a refrain, though, because the number changes.

You don't have an exact replication. You have evening and morning, day one, evening and morning a second day, evening and morning a third day, and so on.

The number changes, and therefore this is not a poetic refrain. Genesis is not poetry.

There's no rational basis for taking it that way. Another way you can know that Genesis is not poetic in nature concerns the way it's written in Hebrew.

You might notice in English translations of Genesis chapter 1, for example, a lot of the verses begin with and.

And God did this, and God did that, and so on, and so on. And when you have that in Hebrew—by the way, the word order is not always the same—but in Hebrew, when you have and followed by a verb, which is what you find throughout most of Genesis 1, with the exception of the first two verses, it's and said

God, and saw God, and so on. The verb comes first in Hebrew, normally. When you have that, and you have a sequence of that, that's called a vav consecutive.

And this happened, and that happened. Each one of those is a vav consecutive. And when you have a chain of vav consecutives, that is always indicative of historical events that are being recorded.

There are no exceptions of a long chain of vav consecutives in poetic literature. It doesn't have it.

Poetic literature will have—I mean, it might have an occasional vav consecutive, but they tend to be more vav disjunctives.

A vav disjunctive is where you have and followed by a nonverb, such as a noun, and it indicates that it's a clarification or an explanation of what came before it.

We'll come back to that a little bit later. But you don't find a lot of those in Genesis chapter 1. You do find one in verse 2.

It begins with and the earth. That's and followed by a nonverb, vaha, adetz, haita, and so on.

So, verse 2 is a vav disjunctive. But the rest of Genesis 1 is vav consecutive, and you don't find that in poetic passages.

You will not find anywhere in the Psalms a list, a sequence of vav consecutives. So, that really is proof positive.

Case closed. Genesis is intended to be historical narrative. There's no doubt about that.

What about those who claim that it's a polemic, that it's an argument against secular myths?

That kind of makes sense, right? Because the Israelites were surrounded by all these pagan nations, and they had their own creation myths about how their gods came into existence, and how the rest of the world came into existence, and so on.

And the idea behind those who say that Genesis is a polemic but not literal history is that God then came up with his own myth to counter these pagan myths, so that the

Israelites would have a version of their own. A little bit like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Tolkien, he was

Roman Catholic. He wasn't trying to rewrite history, but he wanted a fictional story that would be kind of like the myths of these other cultures in terms of explaining how the world came to be that it is today.

And it's a wonderful story. And indeed, a lot of the myths from these other cultures are wonderful. But here's the problem with that view.

I do think that Genesis has polemic value, that it can be used as a refutation for pagan myths, because it's historically true.

But if it's not historically true, then how can you possibly use it to refute a myth? How can one myth refute another myth, right?

If these pagans are saying, here's how we think the universe came into existence, and God says, well, I don't like that, so I'm going to make up my own fictional story about how the universe began, and I'll give that to my people.

It doesn't work. You cannot refute fiction with fiction. You can only refute fiction with facts.

And so Genesis does work as a polemic, but only if it's real, literal history.

There are those who say that Genesis is a parable. And of course, we know that Jesus often spoke in parables, and we readily recognize them.

There's the parable of the seeds, and there's the parable of the wheat and the tares, and so on.

And I like those two in particular, because Jesus explains what they mean, so there's no doubt. But in a parable, you use something that is in the physical world that we're all familiar with, and you relate that to a kingdom principle.

Now, people are familiar with seeds, and particularly in the culture to which Jesus was speaking at the time, people understood planting and harvesting crops.

And so Jesus used those things, those physical things with which people were familiar, to explain principles of the kingdom, to explain how the gospel is spread, and how it depends on the soil, and how sometimes the gospel produces fruit, and sometimes it doesn't, and why.

The wheat and the tares, why God allows the wicked and the righteous to live together, and so on until the end.

We get that. We understand that. But that's not what you have in Genesis. In Genesis, you don't have something that we're familiar with physically.

You have a description of God creating the universe, speaking new things into existence. That is not something that we see in an everyday basis, and therefore it can't be related to a kingdom, a spiritual principle.

Now, that's not to say there aren't spiritual principles in Genesis 1. I think there are. But it's not a parable.

It's real history. And again, the Vaubh consecutives demonstrate that. There are those who claim that Genesis is simply a picture designed to teach us about God's purpose in creation, and that the days,

God didn't really create in six days, but these are a literary framework. The days are kind of a way of organizing the writer's thoughts, so that we are meant to understand that, yes,

God is the creator. He had a purpose in what he made, but we're not supposed to take those details as literal history, sometimes called the framework hypothesis.

Meredith Klein has been promoting that view for many years. And a lot of folks who hold to this hypothesis have recognized that there's a loose parallel between the first three days of creation and the remaining three days, days one through three, days four through six.

There's a parallel there. Now, Genesis 1 verse 2 indicates that the world was, when it was first created, it was unformed and unfilled, or empty and void, depending on your translation, tohu vavohu in the

Hebrew. And so it's empty, it's formless, and it's empty. And so the rest of creation is

God then forming and filling that which was initially formless and unfilled.

It makes sense. And a lot of folks who hold to this literary framework would say that, yeah, we're not supposed to take those details as literal.

It's just a way of explaining that God created. So, you know, on day one, he makes the heavens.

And then on day four, he fills the heavens with stars. On day two, we have oceans separated from maybe the atmosphere being created on day two.

And on day five, we have the creation of fish and birds, those things to inhabit the oceans, those things to fly in the expanse of the heavens.

And then on day three, you have the creation of the land. And on day six, you have the creation of land animals to inhabit the land.

It sounds pretty good. And by the way, I think there's something to the fact that those are connected.

I think God literally created that way, and then he had a reason for doing it. But the framework hypothesis advocate would say that these are not to be understood as literal descriptions of what happened on literal days, but they serve as a literary mechanism.

The days organize the writer's thoughts so that he can get across the point that God really is the creator.

And if that seems very strange and unnatural, difficult to understand, I think that's because it's strange and unnatural and difficult to understand.

I don't think it can be defended rationally. There is order in creation because God literally did form and fill heaven and earth the way he says he did in six days.

There is some parallel between the first three days and the second three, but it's not perfect.

And I think maybe God did that intentionally so that we couldn't just say, well, it's some kind of literary device.

For example, land is made on day three, but plants which inhabit, which are made to fill the land, they're not made on day six.

They're also made on day three. Water existed on day one, but fish were made on day five, not on day four.

And so again, the parallel, it's not perfect. And that's because there's a rational reason why

God historically created in the order that he did. More importantly, the text of Genesis uses long sequences of Vav consecutives.

We've pointed that out every verse except the first two is, and this happened and that happened.

They're all Vav consecutives. And that indicates that Genesis is meant to be understood as literal history.

That is what the writer Moses intended. It's written in the same style as Exodus. Exodus has

Vav consecutives and it lacks the poetic parallelism of the Psalms, except for a few verses where they sing to God and so on, obviously that can be poetic in nature, but it's literally recorded.

So it would be irrational to take Exodus as literal history while rejecting Genesis as literal history, since they are both written in the same style.

They really are. I find the framework hypothesis difficult to explain because I don't think it makes internal sense.

How can you argue that something's a literary device when the writer is saying, no, here's what happened.

This is what happened. If you'd like a more detailed refutation of it, Dr. Ken Gentry has written a wonderful resource called

As It Is Written. And I'd highly encourage you to get that, As It Is Written by Ken Gentry.

Okay. So what about those folks who say, yes, Genesis is history, but the details are not meant to be taken as literal.

The details are there to kind of give us the main point that God is the creator. That's what they're for.

But you're not supposed to go and say, yeah, God literally made animals on day six and birds on day five.

See, they don't want to believe that because the secular scientists say that land animals evolved long before birds.

Birds are supposed to come later. But the Bible has birds being created on day five and land animals on day six.

And so that can't really be the proper order and the sequence and so on. Those details are really just there to reinforce the main point that God is the creator.

And that is historically true. If that were the case, then Genesis could end at verse one.

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, period. And then you can skip on to chapter 12 with Abraham, which almost all conservative scholars believe is real history.

So no, but God gave those details for a and they're not just to reinforce the main point that he created.

In fact, it doesn't really make sense to say that fictional details could support a literal historical conclusion.

Let me give you an example. Suppose I said, Seth is a really bad driver. He got four speeding tickets just in the last year.

And in fact, he had three accidents last year, all of which were his fault. He's a terrible driver. Okay. And you do a little research, you do your homework, and you find out, wait a minute, there's no evidence that he got, he hasn't ever got a speeding ticket.

And he, not only was he not involved in any accidents last year, he's never been in an auto accident.

And suppose then I respond and said, well, yeah, I made up those details to reemphasize the point that he is a really bad driver.

That's the takeaway. He's a bad driver. But you see, if those details aren't true, then you really can't conclude that he's a bad driver.

The details are not irrelevant to the main point. The details establish the main point, but only if they are themselves literally true.

So, yes, God created the heaven and the earth, and that probably is the main point of Genesis chapter one.

But those details are not to be swept under the rug and to be considered non -literal. They establish that first verse.

They reaffirm it, but only because they too are literally true. They're literal history.

Finally, we have those who would say that Genesis is literal history. I believe it. I'm a creationist. But you,

Dr. Lyle, you're misunderstanding the time scale that God didn't really create in six days, just thousands of years ago.

Now, I would argue that anyone who makes that claim is not really arguing exegetically.

I would claim that whatever view you take, if it's not God creating in six days, it's really driven by something other than the text.

And some people will even admit that, that, yeah, just taking it at face value, God created in six days, but they think it can't be that way because they think science has proved millions of years.

Well, again, within this view, there are sort of three subcategories, ways that people would argue that they're reading the text exegetically, but it allows for millions of years.

Well, where are you going to put the millions of years? Well, there are those that put the millions of years before the beginning. That would be the first category, those who say that millions of years and then

Genesis 1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And that view is pretty easy to refute because if the millions of years happened before the beginning, then the beginning wouldn't be the beginning.

It would be the much later. And so that's not what we find in Genesis 1. It's in the beginning that God created the heaven and the earth, and so you can't put millions of years before that.

It wouldn't make any sense. There is the view, sometimes called the gap theory, that there is an enormous gap of time in between Genesis verse 1 and verse 2.

And the idea is that, yes, God created six days, but that happened after millions and millions of years.

And we'll come back to that a little bit later. But that is a prominent view within the church.

I think it's been thoroughly refuted, but we'll come back to that. Finally, we have the day -age theory, which postulates that God did not create in six days, but rather he created in six ages.

And so they would claim that the word day in Genesis 1 really means an enormous age, perhaps hundreds of millions of years for each of them.

So effectively, day -age advocates are arguing that the days of Genesis really have been mistranslated, that they should be translated ages or times or epics.

And translation, that's a real issue. It's a real concern. Most of us don't read the

Bible, can't read the Bible in the original Hebrew and Greek, and so we rely on English translations.

And those translations, sometimes they make mistakes. I don't think there are major mistakes in them, but you can find differences when you look at different English translations and how they dealt with a particular passage.

Because there are some words, some phrases in Hebrew that don't have an exact parallel in English.

And so different translators have to pick a different method to try and get the meaning across.

They understand what it means, but how do you convey that in English? And let's face it, human beings are the ones that translated the scriptures, and human beings make mistakes.

I know some people think that God supernaturally protected the translators so that they made no mistakes at all, but the translators themselves didn't believe that.

And I don't believe that myself. I can point to different errors in different major translations.

Again, nothing enormous, nothing that would affect any major Christian doctrine. But my point is, it is reasonable to ask, has this word been properly translated?

And fortunately, I have a Hebrew Bible. I can go back and look at that, and of course, these days it's pretty easy with software.

You can go back and check the meanings of the words and verify or refute the idea that they've been mistranslated.

But I do find it interesting that all the major English translations of the

Bible, all of them translate the days in Genesis as days, evening and morning, one day, evening and morning, a second day, and so on.

Now, the Hebrew word that's translated day in Genesis and throughout the scriptures is yom.

And the literal meaning of yom is day. And in fact, it's really similar to our

English word for day, where it can mean either a rotation of Earth, a 24 -hour day, the period from one sunrise to the next or one sunset to the next, or it can refer to the light portion of a day, daylight.

We use it the same way in English. It's remarkable that the word parallels those two meanings.

But there are non -literal meanings of yom as well, and so we'll talk about those. One of the non -literal meanings of yom, and it is used in scripture, is to indicate a period of time that's potentially longer than 24 hours.

And frankly, even our English word day can mean a period of time longer than 24 hours in certain contexts.

You might say, back in my father's day. Now, you don't mean 24 hours, you mean a period of time.

And we understand that. And the scriptures are similar. The Hebrew word for day, yom, can be used non -literally.

And this happens quite a bit, especially in the poetic literature, as we would expect. Poetic literature makes more use of metaphor, figures of speech.

But when yom is used as part of a prepositional phrase, such as the day of the

Lord, it need not be a 24 -hour day. The day of the Lord is a...any

time God breaks into history, that's the day of the Lord. And of course, God is sovereignly controlling all history, but sometimes he does something absolutely extraordinary, sometimes in the context of judgment, and that is the great, sometimes the

Bible, the great and terrible day of the Lord. Another expression that uses yom, in the day, be -yom in Hebrew, and that basically means when.

And you see an example of that in Genesis 5. Genesis 5 verse 1, this is the book of the generations of Adam, when

God, some versions say when God created man, or in the day God created man. Literally in Hebrew, it's in the day

God created man. I think it's interesting, the New American Standard 95 gives both.

It says in the day when God created man, so it's kind of redundant. In the day means when, when, when. And then again in verse 2, he created them male and female, he blessed them and named them man in the day when they were created, when they were created.

And so be -yom, when. But again, that's part of a prepositional phrase. It's not just yom by itself, it's used in a figure of speech, and we can see that in the scriptures.

Again, particularly in the poetic sections, you'll find that. So we might suspect a poetic usage, a non -literal usage of the word yom, if it occurs in poetic literature, which is characterized by that parallelism, or if it's part of a prepositional phrase, like in Genesis 5, 1, and 2.

Is that what we find in Genesis chapter 1? Do we find, is it part of the poetic literature?

We've already established it is not. Genesis 1 does not have synonymous parallelism, and it lacks the structure of poetry.

It has the vav consecutive, which demonstrates it's not poetic, so there's no doubt about that. You could slip in a non -literal usage of day as part of a figure of speech, like the day of the

Lord, or in the day, but you don't have that in Genesis 1. The days there are not part of a prepositional phrase.

Instead, they're the conclusion of a verse, and the evening and the morning were one day, and the evening and the morning were the second day, and so on.

It's not part of a prepositional phrase, and so we have no reason to take day as anything other than an ordinary day, and in fact, on the contrary, we have very compelling reasons to take those days as ordinary days.

For example, God defines what a day is in Genesis 1, verse 5. Let's have a look at that.

And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. So you see, God is defining the terms for you.

Day is when it's light out. God says so. That's the name that he chose to indicate the portion of an earth rotation where it's light out, day, and then he gives night the name as well for the dark portion, lila in Hebrew, and so there's no doubt about that.

And then he indicates that the evening and the morning also constituted the first day. The combination of one part of a day and another part of the day, those two parts together form a day, and so we end up with a 24 -hour day as well.

So again, both of those meanings are present there in Genesis 1, verse 5, and there can be no doubt that's what

God meant because that's what he says. He indicates, he defines the terms for us, so there's no doubt what he meant when he said the first day.

Well, what about the second day? Evening, morning, and it was evening in the morning a second day, and a third day, and so on.

In fact, anywhere in literature, in the literature of the Bible, when you find evening with day or morning with day in any of the historical narrative sections of the scripture, it's very clearly an ordinary day.

Of course, if I said there was evening that day, you'd know I'm talking about an ordinary day, or if I said there's morning that day, you'd know

I'm talking about an ordinary day. Frankly, an evening and a morning together comprise an ordinary day, and you have that combination for each of the days of creation, evening, morning, and there's a day there.

Another indication that causes us to recognize that these are ordinary days is the number associated with each one.

You have day one, you have a second day, a third day, a fourth day, and so on, and whenever you have that, an ordered list, like the first day, the third day, the second day, in all of the literature of the

Bible, that always indicates an ordinary day. It's very clear, of course, if I said he went up to such and such a city on the third day, you'd know

I'm talking about a literal day and not a long period of time. I don't mean that he went up three million years, it took him that long, or something like that, no.

Of course, they indicate an ordinary day. And by the way, everybody agrees with that outside of Genesis 1.

Of course, if I said there was evening and morning that day, it's an ordinary day. Of course, evening and morning constitute an ordinary day.

Of course, having a number with the word day, like a third day and a fourth day, and so on, if it's in the historical narrative sections of Scripture, of course that's an ordinary day.

But when you apply these contextual clues to Genesis 1, we see that God used about every contextual indicator he could possibly have used, because all of the days of creation, days 1 through 6, evening, morning, number, day, evening, morning, number, day, evening, morning, number, day, evening, morning, number, day, it really is very clear what

God is saying. And to add insult to injury, he defines the term in verse 5, so that there can be no doubt what he means when he says that he created in six days.

Now, some people have said, but the seventh day doesn't have an evening and a morning. Well, of course the seventh day had an evening and a morning.

What they should say is the evening and the morning of the seventh day is not recorded in the text. And that's true.

That phrase, and was evening and was morning, you know, day six, day seven, it's not included with the seventh day.

That's true. And some people have suggested, well, that means that the seventh day could be a long period of time. Maybe we're still in the seventh day.

And of course, the interesting thing about that, first of all, they're claiming, well, it could be a long period of time because evening and morning are not there.

That's a tacit admission that the other six days are ordinary days, because they, you do have an evening and a morning associated with them.

And by the way, making the seventh day a long period of time doesn't add anything to the age of the earth.

You see, people are motivated to try and make the days long because they want the earth to be billions of years old. But the problem is

Adam is made on the sixth day, which we know is an ordinary day because of that evening and morning. And we know the time between Adam, approximately the time between Adam and Christ at 4 ,000 years.

So even if you argued that we're still on the seventh day, which we're not, it wouldn't affect the age of the earth.

And frankly, the seventh day still has a number with it. It's got this, it's got the seventh day. And so we know it's an ordinary day as well.

Some people have said, oh, but, but God's still resting. You see? So that means the seventh day is still, it's a, it's a day of rest and God's still resting.

Therefore it's still the seventh day. That does not follow logically. If I said two weeks ago,

I worked Monday through Saturday and I rested on Sunday and today I'm still resting.

That doesn't mean today is Sunday, right? God's rest continued after the seventh day closed.

There's no doubt there. People get confused about that. I understand that there is a rest for God's people that's mentioned in Hebrews, but that's not referring to these.

It doesn't mean the seventh day is continuing. Okay. We understand that your rest can continue beyond the day of rest.

And of course, weeks are cyclic. So we get a day of rest every, every week. Now, some people have tried to say, oh, but, but, but the days of creation, those are

God's days. And so they might be very different from our days, right? God's ways are so different from our ways.

Perhaps his days are different from our days. And sometimes they'll even cite 2 Peter 3, 8, in an attempt to defend that.

See, a day is what the Lord is a thousand years. And they forget to quote the rest of the verse. And a thousand years is one day, which cancels that right out.

I mean, think about it. If, if how can a thousand years be like a day to God and a day, like a thousand years, because God is beyond time.

And that's really what 2 Peter 3, 8 is telling us that God is timeless. He's eternal. He created time.

And so obviously he's not bound within it as we are. Now, some people think that that makes

God stuck in kind of an eternal now, whatever that means, as if God has less freedom than those creatures that work within the space -time continuum.

No, it gives God greater freedom. God can step into time and do things, but he's not bound by it in the way that we are.

And that's the meaning of 2 Peter 3, 8. It's not indicating that, that God doesn't understand time.

Of course, God understands time. He created it. It's, we're the ones that don't always understand time, but since God created time and since he understands it, whenever God uses time language, it's always to be understood on our terms.

God knows how to communicate with the creatures that he made in his image. And so when God tells us he made in six days, we're to understand that those are six days.

Really the idea that God's days are different from our days is the notion that words mean different things to different people.

So when God uses the word day, it means something different than when Joe uses the word day. That is linguistic relativism, and it is absurd, because if words meant different things to different people, then no communication would be possible.

Communication presupposes that the sender of the information and the recipient understand the words to mean the same thing.

Otherwise, communication is not accomplished. If words meant something different to God than they did to human beings, then when

God says, you shall not murder, that could mean put broccoli in your ears. Because after all, who knows what murder, we understand what it means to man, but maybe

God's murder is not man's murder. It's funny too, because people don't do that with other aspects of Genesis 1.

I mean, yeah, God made the trees on day three, but are God's trees our trees? Maybe God's trees are 10 miles tall and made of aluminum.

It just, it gets absurd very quickly. God knows how to communicate, so when

God tells us he made in six days, you can take that to the bank. God knows how to tell us how he created.

We have Exodus chapter 20, verse 11, in six days the Lord made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and all that's in them.

It really closes that out. It indicates that God really did create in six ordinary days, and it's interesting, that is in context, that's part of the

Ten Commandments. That verse was written by the finger of God in stone as the explanation for verse 8.

Verse 8 is, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, and the Bible explains in six days you'll do all your labor, the seventh is the

Lord's. Verse 11 is the explanation for why. Why is it that we have a seven -day week? God created in six days and rested one as a pattern for us to follow, and in case you're wondering, yes,

God uses the same word for days in verses 8 through 10 as he does in verse 11.

It's actually the plural form of yom, which is yamim, and by the way, the plural form of day, yamim, is never, it never means a long period of time.

It's always literal days. Now, there might be a lot of them, but it's never used to mean long periods of time, and so when we read

Exodus 20 11, in six days the Lord made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and all that's in them, those are the same days as our work week.

That's the reason he did it that way, as a pattern for us to follow. What about the gap theory?

There are those who say, yeah, there's no getting around the days being ordinary days. That's contextually required, but maybe we can shove millions of years, you know, kind of after verse 1, but before verse 2.

That's where we'll put the millions of years. An enormous gap. They'd like to translate verse 2, and the earth became without form and void.

You really can't translate it that way in that context. People will try and support the gap theory in a number of ways, but the fact is that you cannot put a gap of time in between verse 1 and verse 2 because of the

Hebrew grammar. Recall from what we discussed earlier that Genesis chapter 1, all of the verses except the first two begin with, in the

Hebrew language, begin with and followed by a verb, and that is telling us basically that Genesis is historical narrative, and this happened, and that happened, and so on.

Verse 2 is the exception. Verse 2 begins with and, but followed by a noun, the earth, v 'ha -aretz, and the earth, and when you have that in the

Hebrew language, that's called evov, disjunctive. So, and basically evov, disjunctive, where you have and followed by a noun, a non -verb.

It doesn't have to be a noun. When you have that, it indicates that that verse is a clarification or explanation of what came previously.

Verse 2 is describing the conditions of the earth that existed when God first created it, and so it's very interesting.

A lot of people want to put that gap in there, but you can't because verse 2 does not follow in time.

It's not like in the beginning God created the heaven, the earth, and then later the earth was without form and void. No. Verse 2 is explaining verse 1.

It's saying at that time when God, when God created the heaven and the earth, the earth was without form and void initially, and there was a reason why that explanation is there.

If you had no knowledge of the Bible and you just read Genesis 1 .1, in the beginning God created heaven and the earth, you might assume that God created them as they are now, full of life with the continents separated from oceans and so on, stars in the universe.

Verse 2 is explaining that that was not initially the case. When God first created the heaven and the earth, they were, they didn't have the current shape that they have, or the earth didn't have the current shape that it has.

It was formless. It was empty. It didn't have the life that exists on it now. It didn't have plants on it. It didn't even have continents on it initially.

It was a water ball that God made initially, and then the rest of Genesis is explaining how God took that, what he did initially, and worked it to make it right for life, and again we know from Exodus chapter 20 that God had a very specific reason why he did it that way.

He did it that way as a pattern for us. God had the power to make the universe in an instant. He really had to slow himself down to make in six days, and then he rested for one day, and again the critics say, well was

God tired? No, but God knew that we would get tired, and so he made in six days and rested for one day as a pattern for us to follow.

So there can be no rational doubt that the author of Genesis, Moses, inspired by the

Holy Spirit, intended it to be taken as literal history. This is simply what

God did. It's not giving us all the details, but the details it does give are accurate.

That God really did speak the universe into existence. He really did this in six days.

The question is, are you going to believe it? Are you going to believe what God said?

Satan's tactic has always been to question the word of God. Did God really say you shall not eat from that tree?

That's how he tempted Eve, and we still fall for it. Did God really say he created in six days?

I hope you can turn around and say, get behind me, Satan. Yes, God said he created in six days. If he even had that approach, history might have turned out a little bit differently, but of course

God works all things for his glory, even when people rebel against him. People say, what about all that science?

Well, actually, the science confirms the biblical timescale, and I'm very happy to talk about science, and we'll do that in some of these podcasts,

Lord willing. I can give you all kinds of scientific evidence that challenges the secular timescale and confirms biblical creation, but some people refuse to believe the literal history of Genesis until they are satisfied that the scientific evidence allows for it.

That's an issue, and I try to help people over that stumbling block by showing them that science does confirm the biblical creation, but I want to suggest to you that that's not really the best attitude to have.

It's the attitude Thomas had, right? Because how many times did Jesus tell his disciples that he was going to have to die and he was going to rise again, and for some reason they didn't seem to get it, and when he rose again and the disciples told

Thomas about it, how did he respond? Did he respond with faith? Did he say, oh yeah,

Jesus told us he was going to do that. It was foretold in the scriptures. That's not how he responded.

He said, unless I see the imprint of the nails in his hand, unless I can put my finger in those and put my hand on his side, unless I can confirm this with my senses according to my standard,

I'm not going to believe it. Interesting, and Jesus did appear to Thomas, graciously allowed him to see the imprints of the nails in his hand, and Thomas did believe, but I think it's interesting.

Jesus gently, very gently, rebuked Thomas for his lack of faith. Have you believed because you've seen?

Blessed are those who believe without seeing. The implication is that Thomas missed out on a blessing because he wasn't willing to accept what the word of God clearly stated until he was satisfied that it made sense to him and confirmed by his sensory experiences, and I think a lot of Christians would like to think that they would do better than Thomas.

I would like to think that I would have been different. I would have said, yeah, I don't need to see it. I believe, but the fact is not a lot of us are that way.

Well, here's your chance. Here's your chance to demonstrate it. We have God's word clearly teaching that God created in six days, and yet we have the majority of secular scientists saying that's not possible.

Who do you really have your faith in? That's the question I'll leave you with today. I hope this has been helpful to you.