@krissmith777: It is very hard to argue with the definition …

Comment on SDA Darwinians compromise key church doctrines by Sean Pitman.

@krissmith777:

It is very hard to argue with the definition of “days” being marked off by “evenings and mornings” representing anything other, in the mind of the author of Genesis, than literal days. That is certainly how the rest of the Biblical authors interpreted the Genesis account – including Jesus who referred to the Genesis account as literal history.

Jesus quoted Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 as an authoritative Divinely inspired historical account in His teaching about divorce (Matthew 19:3-6; Mark 10:2-9), and by referring to Noah as a real historical person and the Flood as a real historical event, and in His teaching about the ‘coming of the Son of man’ (Matthew 24:37-39; Luke 17:26-27).

Do you, as a Christian, think that Jesus, as the direct Son of God, didn’t really know true history? If so, how can you believe Jesus when He said, “I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightening”? (Luke 10:18 NIV) – speaking of a time before the creation week of Genesis? Or, how can you believe Jesus when He claimed to have personally known and even existed before Abraham? (John 8:58 NIV)

Other biblical authors held the same view. For example, Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, and Noah are referred to in 15 other books of the Bible in literal terms. For example, Paul writes: ‘For as by one man’s [Adam’s] disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one [Jesus] shall many be made righteous’ (Romans 5:19). And, ‘For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive… And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit’ (1 Corinthians 15:21-22; 45).

In short, according to Paul, the historical truth of the record concerning the first Adam is a guarantee that what God says in His Word about the last Adam [Jesus] is also true. Likewise, the historical, literal truth of the record concerning Jesus is a guarantee that what God says about the first Adam is also historically and literally true.

It is for such reasons that the significant majority of Hebrew scholars, ancient and modern, have come to this very same conclusion: that the author of Genesis intended to write a literal historical narrative, for obvious reasons. Cherry picking a few rare outliers here and there really isn’t convincing to most candid minds who carefully consider the text.

Hebrew scholar Dr Stephen Boyd has shown, using a statistical comparison of verb type frequencies of historical and poetic Hebrew texts, that Genesis 1 is clearly historical narrative, not just allegorical ‘poetry’. His conclusion:

‘There is only one tenable view of its plain sense: God created everything in six literal days.’

Stephen W. Boyd in chapter 6, “The Genre of Genesis 1:1-2:3”

Some other Hebrew scholars who support literal creation days include:

­ Dr Andrew Steinmann, Associate Professor of Theology and Hebrew at Concordia University in Illinois.

o Steinmann, A., 2002. אחד [echad] as an ordinal number and the meaning of Genesis 1:5, JETS 45(4):577–584.

­ Dr Robert McCabe, Professor of Old Testament at Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary in Allen Park, MI.

o McCabe, R.V., 2000. A defense of literal days in the Creation Week, Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal 5:97–123. .

­ Dr Ting Wang, lecturer in biblical Hebrew at Stanford University.

o Sarfati, J., 2005. Hebrew scholar affirms that Genesis means what it says! Interview with Dr Ting Wang, Lecturer in Biblical Hebrew, Creation 27(4):48–51.

And, of course, James Barr; late Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford (of whom you are already aware)

Also, form critic Hermann Gunkel concluded long ago:

“The ‘days’ are of course days and nothing else.”

Hermann Gunkel, Genesis übersetzt und erklärt (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1901), 97.

This refrain can be continued with many additional voices, sharing the same non-concordist position. Victor P. Hamilton concludes, as do other broad concordist neoevangelical scholars:

“And whoever wrote Gen. l believed he was talking about literal days.”

Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1-17, The New International Commentary of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, Ml: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1990), 54.

John H. Stek, another broad concordist, makes a number of points in his support for literal “days”:

Surely there is no sign or hint within the narrative [of Genesis 1] itself that the author thought his ‘days’ to be irregular designations — first a series of undefined periods, then a series of solar days — or that the ‘days’ he bounded with ‘evening and morning’ could possibly be understood as long aeons of time. His language is plain and simple, and he speaks in plain and simple terms of one of the most common elements in humanity’s experience of the world…. In his storying of God’s creative acts, the author was ‘moved’ to sequence them after the manner of human acts and ‘time’ them after the pattern of created time in humanity’s arena of experience.

John H. Stek, “What Says Scripture?” Portraits of Creation, 237-238.

Numerous scholars and commentators, regardless of whether they are concordist or non-concordist, have concluded that the creation “days” cannot be anything but literal 24-hour days. They are fully aware of the figurative, non-literal interpretations of the word “day” in Genesis 1 for the sake of harmonization with the long ages demanded by the evolutionary model of origins. Yet, they insist on the ground of careful investigations of the usage of “day” in Genesis 1 and elsewhere that the true meaning and intention of a creation “day” is a literal day of 24 hours.

In short, there are very few if any serious scholars of Hebrew who would support the idea that the author(s) of the Genesis account intended to convey anything other than a literal historical narrative of events. Now, there are many serious scholars of Hebrew who don’t believe the Genesis author(s) got it right, but arguing that the author(s) got it wrong isn’t the same thing as arguing that they didn’t intend to write a literal narrative of actual historical events.

Sean Pitman, M.D.
www.DetectingDesign.com

Sean Pitman Also Commented

SDA Darwinians compromise key church doctrines
@Professor Kent:

Totally agreed…even though they reject a literal 6-day creation 6,000 years ago. Fancy that.

Fancy that. Knowledge, by itself, doesn’t save. The motive of selfless love is what saves. Yet, knowledge has the power to provide one with a solid hope of bright future in this life, making this life more tolerable and giving us a closer and more intimate walk with God here and now. It also has the power to quicken the conscience and in this way has an indirect role in contributing to our salvation.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


SDA Darwinians compromise key church doctrines
@Professor Kent:

I ask, yet again, what do you do with the evaluation of the former Education Director for the Adventist World Church, Humberto Rasi, of Dr. Davidon’s paper?

“This paper [by Dr. Davidson] does not deal with the issue of epistemology (i.e., how we come to believe, and in particular, how we come to accept the authority of Scripture); in the pages that follow we assume the acceptance of the Bible as the Word of God. Within this presupposition of faith, the question that occupies our attention is the issue of biblical hermeutics, i.e., how to properly interpret the text”.

http://www.andrews.edu/~davidson/Publications/Hermeneutics,%20Biblical/Bible%20&%20Hermeneutics.pdf

Further repetitions of your very same argument without even addressing the counters presented to you will not be posted in this forum…

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


SDA Darwinians compromise key church doctrines
@Professor Kent:

There are many different voices claiming to be “God’s” voice. Picking out the true voice of God must be based on understood empirical evidence if it is to be rationally convincing to the intelligent candid mind.

This is why only God can tell if one has honestly considered the evidence that was made available to him/her – to include those who take on the “atheist” position. Salvation isn’t based on a correct understanding of the empirical evidence, but on a love of or a desire to have a correct understanding.

Because of this, I dare say that it is quite likely that more than a few “atheists” will find themselves in Heaven someday…

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


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