We Should Not Arrive at Conclusions by Degree Alone

“[They examined] the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.”—Acts 17:11

 

Since my interpretation of the creation days in the first chapters of Genesis is a minority view in my denomination, I have obligated myself to the submission of my paper, “The Biblical Demand to Take Another Look,” in order that it might receive rigorous critique.  It is my personal standard to avoid all errors and all misrepresentations in my papers, and to quickly correct them wherever discovered.  To fulfill this goal I went to the “experts” (approximately ten) in the specific fields of study that my paper addresses in order to receive their scholarly assessment.  Included on this list were two professors of Old Testament, the first of which freely and effectively employs the Hebrew text to emphasize and clarify his points.  I was astonished to receive his reply that he was not comfortable with addressing the Genesis creation account (even though I have encountered his comments on this area in public documents).  He instead deferred me to the “’Answers in Genesis’ man” on the same faculty who was also department head.

Having already received my paper for examination, what follows is a significant portion of his reply:

You asked whether I could point you to “a sustained exegetical study of Genesis 1 that argues successfully for the 24-hour day position.” Frankly, since you are already committed to the view that the word 'day' in Genesis 1 is used by the author to represent some long period of time, I doubt whether any treatment of the question could possibly "argue successfully" for the view that you have already rejected. In any case, I have never made a special effort to hunt around to see whether anyone has attempted to address this issue in detail. I am unaware of any serious academic commentary on Genesis that treats the question at all for the simple reason that neither those who hold to a traditional view of Genesis 1 or those who hold to a liberal view of Genesis 1 regard this as a serious question. Both liberals and traditional conservatives know quite well that the Hebrew word 'yom' is used most of the time in Genesis 1 to refer to what we might call a 'common day'. Liberals, of course, acknowledge that while 'yom' is used in Genesis 1 to refer to a common day, the entire account is 'mythological' and therefore by definition non-historical. What you describe as the 'day-age position' is a view promoted by those who desire to find some middle ground between traditional conservatism and liberalism, and do so in such a way that they can harmonize Genesis 1 to views of contemporary science about the origins of the material world. As the liberal commentator John Skinner has noted, “It is recognized by all recent harmonists that the definition of ‘day’ as ‘geological period’ is essential to their theory: it is exegetically indefensible (John Skinner, Genesis (ICC 1930), 5n.)”. In this Skinner is right. Nothing in Genesis 1 suggests that most of the account of the creation of the material world in seven yoms should be taken to imply seven 'ages' or long periods of time, and everything in the text militates against it.

There are a handful of challenges I might offer to his letter.  But it is most important here to highlight his “appeal to authority” for the express purpose of stifling a thorough investigation of the actual facts of the Hebrew text in Genesis.

To be continued…