The Creator Revealed: A Physicist Examines the Big Bang and the Bible by Michael G. Strauss PhD

Author:Michael G. Strauss PhD [Strauss PhD, Michael G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781973629931
Publisher: WestBow Press
Published: 2018-06-21T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

THE DAYS OF GENESIS

This is supposed to be a book that shows how the scientific discoveries about our universe coincide with the biblical text and how an understanding of that might affect our lives. But in the previous chapter, instead of talking about any of those subjects, I took you on a short detour that discussed how to properly interpret the Bible. Of course, the principles outlined in chapter 10 are essential for any dialogue about science and the Bible. I know from experience that without a common understanding of how to interpret the Bible, any discussion about the meaning of Genesis, including the days of creation, could deteriorate into the same kind of disaster as that precipitated by a family who plays Monopoly using different unwritten rules.

Now that we have some good tools to properly understand the meaning of the days of Genesis, we can use these tools in the next few chapters to show how the big bang fits nicely into the biblical record. In fact, we can now get back to the discussion that I started in the prior chapter, “How long are the ‘days’ of Genesis?” Since I am a professor, I would like to start this discussion with a quiz on what was discussed in the previous chapter. Here’s the question: If you want to know what is meant by the word day in Genesis, what is one of the first principles of biblical interpretation you should follow? If your answer is to look at the literary context, then you are absolutely correct. So let’s do that.

The Hebrew word that is translated as “day” in Genesis chapters 1 and 2 is yôm. The word yôm, like the English word day, has many meanings. This is a very important principle. Most words in any language do not have a single literal meaning; instead, they have a range of possible meanings, depending on the context. For example, the word day can mean the period of daylight, a long period of time, twenty-four hours, or something else. W. D. Mounce states in his Expository Dictionary,

Although yôm has a variety nuances, there are five primary categories that encompass the majority of its occurrences:

1. The most basic meaning of yôm is the period of light in a day and night cycle (i.e., daylight, from sunrise to sunset).

2. Yôm is also, as is day in English, the normal designation of a 24-hour period of time.

3. Yôm may also refer to a general, unspecified period of time.

4. Yôm may also signify a specific point of time or in time.

5. Finally, the plural yômîm in some contexts designates a period of a year or the sense of “annually.”26

Yôm is used sixteen times in Genesis 1 and 2. Nine of those times refer to the six days of creation and God’s seventh day of rest. Since we are trying to understand what is meant by the days of creation, let’s start by looking at the context. How does the author use yôm the other seven times

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