@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
@krissmith777:

You wrote:

Then I have question for you: In Daniel 8:14, the tern “evenings and mornings” are also used for the 2,300 days, that is in the literal Hebrew wording since the Hebrew words “boqer” and “ereb” are used; the very same words used in Genesis. Are the 2,300 evenings and mornings in that particular verse therefore literal days?

I realize you may want to make the claim that in prophesy, a “day” is equal to a “year.” But then we will run into an inconsistency that the “day” with “evening and morning” only means one thing verses another only when it fits into someone’s theology.

Daniel is largely a prophetic book and the passage you reference is clearly a prophetic passage. Prophecies clearly use symbolic language throughout the Bible. Both Daniel and Revelation are filled with symbols that are clearly not intended to be taken literally. Jesus himself often used obvious symbols and parables in this teaching of the people.

In contrast, Genesis is not a book of prophecy and is not written in a style that obviously lends itself to be taken in a non-literal, allegorical, or parabolic manner. It is written in the style of a historical narrative and the same style is used throughout Genesis. If you claim that the first chapters are obviously non-literal, you have to say that the rest of the book, to include the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph were intended to be non-literal parables as well…

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


SDA Darwinians compromise key church doctrines
@wesley kime:

You’re too kind šŸ˜‰


SDA Darwinians compromise key church doctrines
@krissmith777:

You wrote:

He [Professor James Barr] makes it clear he thinks that the literal reading is accurate, but he also makes it clear that that is just an opinion, not a fact! He also adds that most experts in the field would not take sides on this topic.

James Barr made it quite clear that this “opinion”, as you call it, was just a bit more one man’s mere personal opinion since it was an opinion shared by all, or nearly all, world-class Hebrew scholars of which he was aware.

He wrote:

“The apologetic arguments which suppose the ‘days’ of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know…

You might find one or two people who would take the contrary point of view and are competent in the languages, in Assyriology, and so on: it’s really not so much a matter of technical linguistic competence, as of appreciation of
the sort of text that Genesis is.”

http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/barrlett.html

I dare say that such near universal agreement on the intent of the author of Genesis, by the significant majority of “world-class” Hebrew scholars (secular scholars to be sure), is based on more than a vague hunch or personal opinion… wouldn’t you say?

A significant part of interpreting the intended meaning of a given text is the ability to “appreciate the sort of text” that is before you. Is the text poetic in style or intentionally allegorical in form? Or is there a seeming effort on the part of the author to relay a literal historical narrative? The significant majority of Hebrew scholars, according to Barr, have taken this second point of view.

The vast majority of Hebrew scholars today have recognized that the book of Genesis is historical narrative. There are sub-genres, verses that are poetic, but most of it is straightforward historical narrative. If you say that Genesis 1 is poetic, allegorical or metaphorical or some kind of parable, you have to say the same about the stories of Abraham and Joseph; because there is no break in genre within the Genesis narrative.

Or do you need a poll? šŸ˜‰

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


Recent Comments by Sean Pitman

Science and Methodological Naturalism
Very interesting passage. After all, if scientists are honest with themselves, scientific methodologies are well-able to detect the existence of intelligent design behind various artifacts found in nature. It’s just the personal philosophy of scientists that makes them put living things and the origin of the fine-tuned universe “out of bounds” when it comes to the detection of intelligent design. This conclusion simply isn’t dictated by science itself, but by a philosophical position, a type of religion actually, that strives to block the Divine Foot from getting into the door…


Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Ron:

Why is it that creationists are afraid to acknowledge the validity of Darwinism in these settings? I don’t see that these threaten a belief in God in any way whatsoever.

The threat is when you see no limitations to natural mindless mechanisms – where you attribute everything to the creative power of nature instead of to the God of nature.

God has created natural laws that can do some pretty amazing things. However, these natural laws are not infinite in creative potential. Their abilities are finite while only God is truly infinite.

The detection of these limitations allows us to recognize the need for the input of higher-level intelligence and creative power that goes well beyond what nature alone can achieve. It is here that the Signature of God is detectable.

For those who only hold a naturalistic view of the universe, everything is attributed to the mindless laws of nature… so that the Signature of God is obscured. Nothing is left that tells them, “Only God or some God-like intelligent mind could have done this.”

That’s the problem when you do not recognize any specific limitations to the tools that God has created – when you do not recognize the limits of nature and what natural laws can achieve all by themselves.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Bill Sorensen:

Since the fall of Adam, Sean, all babies are born in sin and they are sinners. God created them. Even if it was by way of cooperation of natural law as human beings also participated in the creation process.

God did not create the broken condition of any human baby – neither the physical or moral brokenness of any human being. God is responsible for every good thing, to include the spark or breath of life within each one of us. However, He did not and does not create those things within us that are broken or bad.

“The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’ ‘An enemy did this,’ he replied. “The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?'” Matthew 13:27-28

Of course, all humans are indeed born broken and are in a natural state of rebellion against God. However, God is not the one who created this condition nor is God responsible for any baby being born with any kind of defect in character, personality, moral tendency, or physical or genetic abnormality. God did not create anyone with such brokenness. Such were the natural result of rebellion against God and heading the temptations of the “enemy”… the natural result of a separation from God with the inevitable decay in physical, mental, and moral strength.

Of course, the ones who are born broken are not responsible for their broken condition either. However, all of us are morally responsible for choosing to reject the gift of Divine Grace once it is appreciated… and for choosing to go against what we all have been given to know, internally, of moral truth. In other words, we are responsible for rebelling against the Royal Law written on the hearts of all mankind.

This is because God has maintained in us the power to be truly free moral agents in that we maintain the Power to choose, as a gift of God (Genesis 3:15). We can choose to accept or reject the call of the Royal Law, as the Holy Spirit speaks to all of our hearts…

Remember the statement by Mrs. White that God is in no wise responsible for sin in anyone at any time. God is working to fix our broken condition. He did not and does not create our broken condition. Just as He does not cause Babies to be born with painful and lethal genetic defects, such as those that result in childhood leukemia, He does not cause Babies to be born with defects of moral character either. God is only directly responsible for the good, never the evil, of this life.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Ron:

Again, your all-or-nothing approach to the claims of scientists isn’t very scientific. Even the best and most famous of scientists has had numerous hair-brained ideas that were completely off base. This fact does not undermine the good discoveries and inventions that were produced.

Scientific credibility isn’t based on the person making the argument, but upon the merits of the argument itself – the ability of the hypothesis to gain predictive value when tested. That’s it.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


Gary Gilbert, Spectrum, and Pseudogenes
Don’t be so obtuse here. We’re not talking about publishing just anything in mainstream journals. I’ve published several articles myself. We’re talking about publishing the conclusion that intelligent design was clearly involved with the origin of various artifactual features of living things on this planet. Try getting a paper that mentions such a conclusion published…

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com