A Daily Genesis

Genesis 1:4b-5

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[B][COLOR=#ff0000]†.[/COLOR] Gen 1:4b-5a . . and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night.[/B]

Day and Night simply label two distinct physical conditions-- the absence of light, and/or the absence of darkness. Labeling those physical conditions may seem like a superfluous detail, but when analyzing crucifixion week in the New Testament, it's essential to keep those physical conditions separate in regards to Christ's burial and resurrection if one is to have any hope of deducing the correct chronology of Easter week.

Anyplace there's light, there is no true darkness because light always dispels darkness. However, darkness is powerless to dispel light. In other words; science and industry have given the world a flashlight; but they have yet to give the world a flashdark. So then, light is the superior of the two and rules the dark; for example:

"And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it." (John 1:5)

The koiné Greek word for "comprehend" is [I]katalambano[/I] (kat-al-am-ban'-o) which basically means to take, seize, or possess eagerly. At 1Thess 5:4 it's translated overtake (as a thief, in a sudden and/or unexpected way). At Mark 9:18 it's translated seizure (as in demon possession).

The idea is, darkness is powerless to stop light from dominating it. Even a little kid with a candle can conquer darkness; because light, even the light from a candle, is impervious to darkness, and darkness has no way to fight it off and/or beat it back. However, where there is no light, then darkness definitely has the advantage.

[B][COLOR=#ff0000]†.[/COLOR] Gen 1:5b . . And there was evening and there was morning, a first Day.[/B]

In accordance with a normal, strict chronological sequence; evening and morning would indicate overnight; viz: a day of creation would take place entirely in the dark; which fails to comply with the definitions of Day given at Gen 1:4-5a and Gen 1:14-18.

Seeing as how it says evening and morning instead of evening to morning, then we're not really looking at a chronological sequence but merely the Am/Pm portions of daytime because evening and morning is all the same as morning and evening.

In other words: morning represents the hours of daylight between sunup and high noon, while evening represents the hours of daylight between high noon and sunset.

[B][SIZE=1]NOTE[/SIZE]:[/B] I suspect that God did His work of creation during what is defined as daytime rather than what is defined as nighttime in order to convey the idea that His work was a work of light as opposed to a work of darkness. That makes sense to me seeing as how there were no actual mornings and afternoons till the fourth day. I also suspect that Christ rose from the dead during daytime instead of nighttime in order to convey the very same idea.

Now, just exactly how long were the days of creation? Well; according to Gen 1:24-31, God created humans and all land animals on the sixth day; which has to include dinosaurs because on no other day did God create land animals but the sixth.

Hard-core Bible thumpers insist the days of creation were 24-hour calendar days in length; but scientific dating methods have easily proven that dinosaurs preceded human life by several million years. So then, in my estimation, the days of creation should be taken to represent epochs of indeterminable length rather than 24-hour calendar days.

That's not an unreasonable estimation; for example:

"These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that Jehovah God made earth and heaven." (Gen 2:4)

The Hebrew word for "day" in that verse is [I]yowm[/I] (yome) which is the very same word for each of the six days of God's creation labors. Since yowm in Gen 2:4 refers to a period of time obviously much longer than a 24-hour calendar day; it justifies suggesting that each of the six days of creation were longer than 24 hours apiece too. In other words: yowm is ambiguous and not all that easy to interpret sometimes.

Another useful hint as to the length of the days of creation is located in the sixth chapter of Genesis where Noah is instructed to coat the interior and exterior of his ark with a substance the Bible calls "pitch". The Hebrew word is [I]kopher[/I] (ko'-fer) which indicates a material called bitumen: a naturally-occurring kind of asphalt formed from the remains of ancient, microscopic algae (diatoms) and other once-living things. In order for bitumen to be available in Noah's day, the organisms from whence it was formed had to have existed on the earth several thousands of years before him.

So then, why can't Bible thumpers accept a six-epoch explanation? Because they're hung up on the expression "evening and morning".

The interesting thing is: there were no physical evenings and mornings till the fourth day when the sun was created and brought on line. So I suggest that the expression "evening and morning" is simply a convenient way to indicate the simultaneous wrap of one epoch and the beginning of another; and even more important, evening and morning indicate periods of light only, rather than periods of light and darkness together. In other words: none of God's creative activity was done in the dark. I think that is very significant.

Anyway; this "day" thing has been a chronic problem for just about everybody who takes Genesis seriously. It's typically assumed that the days of creation consisted of twenty-four hours apiece; so we end up stumped when trying to figure out how to cope with the 4[B].[/B]5 billion-year age of the earth, and factor in the various eras, e.g. Triassic, Jurassic, Mesozoic, Cenozoic, Cretaceous, etc, plus the ice ages and the mass extinction events. It just never seems to occur to us that it might be okay in some cases to go ahead and think outside the box. When we do that-- when we allow ourselves to think outside the box --that's when we begin to really appreciate the contributions science has made towards providing modern men a window into the Earth's amazing past.

Galileo believed that science and religion are allies rather than enemies-- two different languages telling the same story. In other words: science and religion compliment each other-- science answers questions that religion doesn't answer, and religion answers questions that science cannot answer; viz: science and religion are not enemies; no, to the contrary, science and religion assist each other in their respective quests to get to the bottom of some of the cosmos' greatest mysteries.

If you haven't already seen it, I highly recommend watching History Channel's two-season series titled: "How The Earth Was Made". The earth's geological past, and its present, are just astounding. The series takes some liberties here and there-- especially in its theories about the origin of the blue planet's huge volume of water --but by and large, it's very informative; and I believe quite useful to students of Genesis.

[B][SIZE=1]NOTE[/SIZE]:[/B] Right about here I should give honorable mention to the process of accretion. There was yet a solar system, and thus there was not yet an enormous, powerful source of gravity in Earth's neighborhood; viz: the Earth was not yet established in an orbit; so it was adrift and vulnerable to random bombardment by objects flying around loose in the cosmos. Scientists feel that quite a bit of Earth's mass is due to sustaining those impacts.

Those impacts would generate a tremendous amount of heat and thus prevent the formation of organic molecules until the Earth cooled down quite a bit. Well; if accretion and cooling really did happen, then they inserted a pretty big time lapse between Gen 1:5 and the next few verses.

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Updated 09-02-2015 at 12:10 PM by WebersHome

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