Quibbling or Learning from the Creation narrative?

[Aaron]

The days of Creation are basically the work of salvation in allegory, but so is the narrative of Hagar and Sarah, and Isaac and Ishmael, Galatians 4:21-31.

Can I say Sarah and Hagar are just concepts? Symbols of the old and new Jerusalems? and not individual women, as long as I get the lesson concerning bondage and freedom?

 

[Van]

Could they be less than 24 hours? How about a 24-second day? Or are you just trying to make room for millions of years?

Yes, it would not invalidate the Bible to interpret some usages of "yom" as 12 hour or so hours, some as 24 or so hours, and so as indeterminate periods of time, possibly billions of years. It also would not invalidate the Bible to attribute some apparent time spans as an illusion because God created something with apparent age that actually had none, such as Adam as an adult, or the wine at Cana. If we saw either, we would think they had existed in some form for a prior period of time.

 

[percho]

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

I wonder why these are capitalized?

Jesus answered, 'Are there not twelve hours in the day? if any one may walk in the day, he doth not stumble, because the light of this world he doth see; and if any one may walk in the night, he stumbleth, because the light is not in him.'

Is the day and night of John 11:9,10 the same as the Day and Night of Gen 1:5?

 

[Van]

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

I wonder why these are capitalized?

Jesus answered, 'Are there not twelve hours in the day? if any one may walk in the day, he doth not stumble, because the light of this world he doth see; and if any one may walk in the night, he stumbleth, because the light is not in him.'

Is the day and night of John 11:9,10 the same as the Day and Night of Gen 1:5?

Some translations (KJV, ESV) capitalize the words to draw attention to at least one of the defined durations, but other translations (NASB, NET) put the words within quote marks rather than capitalize, for the same "highlighting" reason. No duration is indicated for Genesis 1:5, but about 12 hours is indicated for John 1:19.

By day 5, Genesis 1:20, the daylight and darkness period has now been established as about 24 hours. Some people believe the "day" was also that long before day 5, others disagree. Of course, per Job 38, we actually do not know.

 

[Van]

The application of the Genesis narrative is not to quibble over details based on speculation, but to seek God's rest and follow the Lord of the Sabbath.

 

[Alan Dale Gross]

What portion of the nondescript day would you call the evening?

A few million years of darkness wouldn't have sat well with any life on the planet.