Seven Days



A plain reading of the Genesis creation account coupled with the Genesis genealogy suggests the earth was created in seven literal days some six thousand years ago. So why does objective evidence past doubting tell such a different story?

Perhaps transmission errors passed down over millennia corrupted the once divine original? Transmission errors include dittography errors where letters are incorrectly repeated; fission errors where words are improperly divided; fusion errors where words are improperly fused; haplography errors where repeated letters are omitted; homophony errors where words with the same sound are substituted and metathesis errors in which letter orders are improperly switched.

The Old Testament contains thirty nine books written over the period 1400-400BCE. The best evidence for the reliability of these books is the discovery of more than 800 Dead Sea scrolls that contain fragments from every book except Esther that date from 250BCE to 50CE. Amongst the fragments is a full manuscript of Isaiah dated to around 75BCE.
 
When compared to the earliest Masoretic texts (1000CE) that we  posses there is a 95% agreement; and the 5% disagreement consist of omitted letters or spelling mistakes - not wholesale changes that might impact theological details. So not only do we have fragments that reach to within several centuries of the originals but by comparing those fragments to the much later Masoretic texts we find that over a millennia not even one substantial error was introduced. 
 
This demonstrable stability in Israel's copying process when coupled with the many redundancies found across the different writings gives scholars confidence that much of the original material has been sufficiently preserved.
 
If not transmission error then perhaps misunderstood cultural idioms are to blame? For example the idiom ‘the car flew down the road’ would likely be mistranslated many millennia from now unless future archaeologist first discovered that cars do not literally fly. Critical to the process of identifying and translating these idioms then, is the discovery of artefacts, paintings, and architecture that can help ground the narrative in its natural cultural context;
 
‘Though we cannot expect to be able to think like they thought, or read their minds, or penetrate very deeply into so much that is opaque to us in their culture we can begin to see that there are other ways of thinking besides our own and begin to identify some of the ways in which we have been presumptuously ethnocentric[4].’
For example, the Hebrew word reshit rendered beginning (Genesis 1:1) is found elsewhere in scripture. Often when scripture describes the reign of kings reshit describes the part of the king’s reign before his official reign begins. This undefined period is usually marked complete upon coronation (usually in the month of Nisan). In Jeremiah 28:1, for example, the reshit of Zedekiah’s kingship included events that stretch over a four year period. Thus reshit does not necessarily describe an opening moment or a starting point (as is always the case in our culture) but rather reshit gives the wider sense of an undisclosed period (which might amount to a moment) prior to the particular period that is being recounted.
In this way the creation account does not necessarily say God created (bara – Genesis 1:1) the universe in a starting moment because reshit could equally describe a universe that existed over an undisclosed period of time prior to the period that was to be recounted; in our case the seven days of Genesis 1:3-2:4.
Another pivotal Hebrew word is erets which is rendered earth in the creation text; but could equally have been rendered as land or ground. Abraham was universal in his proclamation that God was the judge of all the erets (Genesis 18:25) while in Genesis 15:18 erets refers to the stretch of land that God promised Abraham. So for the most part erets simply refers to a stretch of land in a local geographical or political sense.
More specifically a nuanced analysis of the Pentateuch bears out that erets not only usually means a stretch of land but that it more specifically describes the stretch of land God promised Abraham (Genesis 15:18). Sailhammer gives several reasons for this;
First ‘He drove out the man [in an easterly direction]; and placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life (Genesis 3:24)’. So too the people who later dwelt in the land (Genesis 11:2) moved eastward and found a valley in the land of Shinar. There they dwelt in Babylon. Priests could only enter the tabernacle from the east while both Jacob (Genesis 32:1-2) and Joshua (Joshua 5:13-15) were met by angels on their return to the Promised Land. These early narratives all saw the land as central and any movement away as tantamount to moving from God’s presence towards godless Babylon (and toward self-sufficiency).
Since one of the central concerns of the creation text is to ground the later story of how God would return the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 1:8) to its forefathers it is clear that the creation account,  which introduces that story, should be equally concerned about that same land;
‘A reader familiar with the theme and purpose of the Pentateuch would naturally see the land in Genesis 1 as the promised land. Unfortunately, by not rendering eretz in Genesis 1:1-2 as land, our English translations have blurred the connection of these early versus of Genesis to the central theme of the land in the Pentateuch[5]’.
We see this also in Jeremiah's warning that only makes sense if God gives their land, and not the entire planet, to Nebuchadnezzar (Jeremiah 27:5 see also Isaiah 51:3, Ezekiel 36:35, Joel 2:3) Because these images connect the Garden of Eden to the Promised Land it follows the erets of creation was one and the same as the Promised Land. 
Often associated with erets is the Hebrew word shamayim which is rendered heaven in the King James tradition. But many scholars argue sky is more comprehensive because shamayim includes both the place celestial bodies dwell and the place birds fly (Genesis 1:20).
As with most languages Hebrew phrases transform the meaning of constituent words. Of particular interest to our discussion is the phrase heavens (shamayim) and earth (erets) which according to Sailhammer[6]combine to form a figure of speech called a merism. A merism combines two words to express a single idea. A merism expresses totality by combining two contrasts or two extremes’.
So by contrasting the local sky with the local land the author of Genesis means to transcend the descriptions of the local land and local sky to include the place the moon, planets and stars dwell.
Such totality is evident in Genesis 1:1 where the Hebrew phrase bereshit rendered ‘in the beginning of’ is linked through the verb bara which pertains to the act of divinely creating to the merism ‘heavens and earth’. Of foremost concern in this construction is the affirmation that everything owes its existence to God for before bereshit nothing existed (Psalms 33:6, John 1:3, and Hebrews 11:3).
But as already discussed bereshit does not necessarily imply a beginning moment for the sense of the word can equally mean an undisclosed period prior to the period that is being recounted. If that is the case then bereshit could represent days, years, or even an undated era that stood as the existence of the material universe before God put right (asah rather than bara) the Promised Land through the acts that are now to be recounted through the seven days[7].
But young earth creationists reject this interpretation, pointing out that Exodus 20:11 makes it clear that God made (asah) the earth in six days not before the six days. But here Sailhammer[8] points out that Exodus does not say God created (bara see Genesis 1:1) the universe in six days but rather God made (asah) erets in six days. Unlike the divine act of creating (bara) the Hebrew verb asah finds more diverse use in describing the cutting of fingernails (Deuteronomy 21:12), the washing of feet (2 Samuel 19:25) and the trimming of one’s beard (2 Samuel 19:24). In each case the word is associated with returning something to a state of order; whether that something be toenails, dirty feet, overgrown beards and here creation. Thus Exodus 20:11 better reads that God put right the land through the seven days - not that God created the universe ex nihilo through the seven days.

 
Critical to the transition from material pre-creation (bara) described in Genesis 1:1 to the putting right (asah) of the garden of Eden (Genesis 1:3-2.4) through the seven days then is the transitional phrase ‘the earth was without shape (tohu) and empty (bohu) (Genesis 1:2)’.
The rendering of this phrase was traditionally distorted by Greco-Roman cosmology which supposes God shaped an otherwise formless and empty chaos into our material universe. But Tsumura[9] argues that a nuanced analysis of tohu and bohu instead brings out the sense of non-function, without purpose; unproductive.
When considered in conjunction with Sailhammer’s hypothesis in which Genesis 1:1 exhausts material creation this phrase then finds its natural rendering as non-inhabitable, non-productive but otherwise a materially complete wilderness which God chose to put right; and it is this task that the authors of Genesis will recount through the following seven days.
In this view the natural history of the world, including starlight that took millennia to travel across the cosmos, spent radioactive isotopes, and the explosion of biological diversity recorded both in genomes and the fossil record stained in blood and claw are all exhausted by this one cosmic declaration - that God created. This material ‘pre-period’ then sets the stage for God, evidently billions of years later (according to the physical evidence for the biblical narrative makes no mention of it), to put right the unproductive material wilderness.

As an aside, pivotal to this reading is the treatment of the seemingly incoherent construction of the seven creation days; 1) God speaks, 2) God’s command is completed by the phrase ‘it was so’ 3) and then God takes action. This recurring phrasing has led many scholars to believe that there is systematic duplication in the text (compare 1:11 to 1:12, 1:14 to 1:16, 1:24 to 1:25) but for Sailhammer the explanation more likely lies in the nature of narrative texts.
By his reading the author of the account is committed to recount each event in detail but he must also guide his readers into a fuller appreciation of the meaning of the text. We see this in Genesis 2:24. First the author recounts the women’s creation then interrupts the flow of his recounting to add the remark; ‘for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife’. 

So by adding remarks the author is trying to manage how his readers will respond to his recounting. As a point of distinction I will underline what are believed to be the author’s remarks as we move through the seven days;

‘Now the earth [land] was without shape and empty [an unproductive wilderness], and darkness was over the surface of the watery deep, but the spirit of God was moving over the surface of the water. God said ‘let there be light.’ And there was light. God saw that the light was good, so God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness night. There was evening, and there was morning, marking the first day (Genesis 1:2-5).’ 
There was darkness over the face of the watery deep because the author of Genesis was moving from the material pre-cosmos of Genesis 1:1 to the dawn of that first day. The image of darkness over the watery deep is intentional; stirring up fears of leviathan and other dark cosmic forces that lurked in the unproductive and dangerous waters that surrounded Israel's proto-land. It is precisely this unproductive wilderness that retreats with God’s triumphant entry on that first morning - ‘let there be light.’
In Hebrew thought ‘let there be light’ simply means ‘let the sun rise’ (see Exodus 10:23, Nehemiah 8:3, Genesis 44:3). Just as there were rainbows before Noah so too the existence of cosmological bodies from the beginning assures us there had been sun rises before this morning. But this sun rise was special, for it was the morning that God chose to put right the unproductive wilderness (Isaiah 40:3, Mark 1:4 and Revelation 12:6, 14). Later we see this same image mark the commencement of the messianic kingdom (Isaiah 8:22-9:2, Matthew 4:13-17, John 1:5, 8-9).

Moreover, since the celebration of the first day gives way to the rhythm of days and night (which in the ancient world represented time) the phrase 'let there be light' not only marked God's intention to put right the wilderness but celebrates the basis of time that is established in God's kingdom.
‘God said, ‘Let there be an expanse [raqi] in the midst of the waters and let it separate water from water’. So God made [asah] the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. It was so. God called the expanse sky. There was evening, and there was morning, a second day (Genesis 1:6-8).’
The plainest interpretation of raqi suggests there was a solid dome (Psalms 19:2, 150:1, Daniel 12:3) that separated the cosmic sea above from the seas below. The flood account, for example refers to the ‘windows in the sky’ which once opened poured out rain (Genesis 7:11-12 see also 2 Kings 7:2, Psalms 104:3).
No material rendering can preserve the literal rendering of raqi without contradicting modern science. But in our developing functional ontology God on day two establishes a divine boundary that forever separates the evil leviathan of the cosmic seas from the promised land. 
 
‘God said, ‘Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place and let dry ground appear.’ It was so. God called the dry ground land and the gathered waters he called seas. God saw that it was good. God said, ‘Let the land produce vegetation; plants yielding seeds according to their kinds, and trees bearing fruits with seed in it according to their fruits.’ It was so. The land produced vegetation – the plants yielding seeds according to their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kind. God saw it was good. There was an evening, there was morning, a third day (Genesis 1:9-13)’.
The first thing to note is that nothing material gets created on the third day. Instead day three focusses on God’s transforming the terrestrial wilderness into a productive land. Firstly God gathers the waters into one place. To the Hebrews ‘seas’ described anything from pools of water to oceans; but the water being gathered into one place gives the impression that these particular bodies of water were not likely global in dimension.
Second, God commands the land to produce vegetation. The absence of the Hebrew verb bara suggests God was not commanding the fauna to come into existence but rather the Promised Land should become fertile; productive. This is evident in the author’s remark (1:12) which focusses upon fruit and seed yielding plants that would provide food (1:30).
Day one celebrated God’s intervention in time. Day two celebrates God's protection of the kingdom from the evil that lurked in the cosmic sea while day three celebrates the transformation of the land from an unproductive terrestrial wilderness into a fertile and productive land. These then are the three functional elements ancient creation myths often identify as the three essential ingredients needed to build a kingdom.
 
Since the pattern of presenting creation in the form of a weeklong period has cultural precedent it is difficult to ignore the pattern as it also emerges here.
According to this reading of the Genesis text the first three days list the functions necessary to establish the promised land, the next three days list the complementary functionaries, and the seventh day stands as a symbol of completion.
If such a pattern was intended in the Genesis text then we should expect to move from function to functionaries as we move from the third to fourth day.
And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens [sky] to separate the day from the night, and let them be signs to indicate seasons and days and years, and let them serve as lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth’. It was so. God made two great lights – the greater light to rule over the day and the lesser light to rule over the night. He made the stars also. God placed the lights in the expanse of the sky to shine on the earth, to preside over the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. God saw that it was good. There was an evening, and there was morning, a fourth day (Genesis 1: 14-19)’.
The traditional rendering of day four is problematic because it describes the sun, moon and stars being created after the plant life of the third day and light of the first day.

But according to Sailhammer[11]in the Hebrew text of verse 14, God does not say ‘let there be lights in the expanse to separate the day and night’ as if there were no lights before His command and afterward they came into being. Rather, according to the Hebrew text, God said, ‘let the lights in the expanse be for separating the days and night….’ God’s command, in other words, assumes that the lights already exist in the expanse. To be sure there was no mention of these lights earlier in Genesis 1, but their existence is assumed in the expression heavens and earth in Genesis 1:1’.
After God’s command of verse 15 was completed by the phrase ‘it was so’ the narrator in verse 16 then affirms that God created the sun to rule the day and moon to rule the night before adding that God also made the stars. To be consistent with the logic of the text this all happened in the beginning - in Genesis 1:1.

According to this reading of the text, the forth day describes the inauguration of the celestial bodies as functionaries for the purpose of setting seasons and years. This complements God’s functional inauguration of the time basis inaugurated on the first day - ‘let there be light’.
‘And God said ‘Let the water swarm with swarms of living creatures and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky.’ God created [bara] the great sea creatures and every living and moving thing with which the water swarmed, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. God saw it was good. God blessed them and said ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth.’ There was evening, and there was morning, a fifth day (Genesis 1:20-23).’
For the first time since Genesis 1:1 the author chooses to use the Hebrew word bara. Its next notable appearance describes the creation of mankind on the sixth day (Genesis 1:27, 2:3). Why then is bara, which was missing from the first four days used to describe the great sea monsters, flying creatures and animals that teemed the waters?  

Although not obvious for the phrase ‘it was so’ is missing from this stanza, the style of the text still suggests verse 21 is a remark responding to verse 20. According to this view the author was not saying that God had created creatures on the fifth day but rather by adopting the verb bara the author’s commentary affirms with Genesis 1:1 that God had created all the non-terrestrial animals, even the great sea monsters that were thought outside God’s kingdom, in the beginning - (Genesis 1:1).
This line of reasoning may at first seem convenient; but it is not without justification -  for God’s command of Genesis 1:20 uses the same literal construction that describes God filling the Nile with frogs (Exodus 8:3). On Moses’ command the frogs came up and covered the land (Exodus 8:6). The text is not clear where the frogs came from but it does not explicitly state that God created them for the purpose of filling the Nile.

Similarly in Genesis 1:20 the text does not explicitly state that the non-terrestrial animals where created on day five - so it can be argued what the author had in mind was to describe how the non-terrestrial space established on the second day was filled on this, the complementing fifth day with every type of non-terrestrial animal (functionary)[12].
‘God said, ‘Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds; cattle, creeping things, and wild animals, each according to its kind’. It was so. God made [asah] the wild animals according to their kinds, the cattle according to their kinds, and all the creatures that creep along the ground according to their kinds. God saw it was good. Then God said ‘Let us make [asah] humankind in our image, after our likeness, so they may rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the cattle, and over all the creatures that move on the earth land’. God created [bara] humankind in His own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth land and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every creature that moves along the ground. Then God said, ‘I now give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the entire earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to the animals of the earth land, and to every bird of the air, and to all the creatures that move along the ground – everything that has the breath of life in it – I give everything green plant for food.’ It was so. God saw all that He had made – and it was very good. There was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day (Genesis 1:24-31)’.
Following the pattern of the fifth day, God on the sixth day commands the terrestrial land inaugurated on the complementing third day to be filled with terrestrial animals (cattle, wild animals and animals that move along the ground). The author again pauses after God’s command with the phrase ‘it was so’ to affirm that all this was God’s doing.
Finally man was created (bara) to reflect imago Dei over all creation. Here again the text uses the Hebrew word bara which means to divinely create. I will not go into the implications of this command here but if you are interested please click here.
‘The heavens and the earth were completed with everything that was in them. By the seventh day God finished the work that He had been doing, and He ceased on the seventh day all the work that He had been doing. God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it He ceased all the work that He had been doing in creation. (Genesis 2:1-3)’.
Ancient readers would recognise the Genesis text as a temple text simply because on the seventh day God rested. In the ancient world divine rest did not mean disengagement without responsibility but rather it was understood that because royalty were in residence they could get on with the business of running their kingdom. Thus the seventh day to the ancient mind-set describes God taking up His rest as He rises in, and ruled over His newly established land.
That antiquity understood the Genesis text as a temple text should temper how we approach it. While we moderns always consider creation as material, it is not the only way humanity has though about it. For example we could say God created the universe but we could also say we create havoc, we create work and so forth. Thus we can think in either material terms or we can think in functional terms. 

According to Walton in the ancient world something did not exist unless it served a purpose; unless it fulfilled a role. For example, deserts and seas which were believed to serve no functional purpose were often described as non-existent.

This then is what we see in the transition through the seven days - the land was unproductive, it did not serve a purpose - in effect it did not functionally exist (even though by this stage it most certainly materially existed).

By inaugurating functions and roles through the seven days the text celebrates how God transformed the non-productive, and therefore functionally non-existent wilderness into a functioning land - the land of the Pentateuch

Genesis 1 reads like a functional kingdom account; and if that is true then it was never intended to be a material cosmic account (except for verse 1:1) - as such the text make no material claims. It does not state the material age of the earth, it does not describe how life diversified, or how geology may have shaped the continents - for these are all material (not functional) questions.

Instead the genesis text is interested in God's relationship with mankind - and how that relationship played out through the history of a particular land; the promised land of the Pentateuch.    
  




[4] The Lost World of Genesis 1 Walton J 2009 IVP Academic
[5] ibid
[6] ibid
[7] In support a number of passages teach that the earth is very old. Hab 3:6 refers to eternal mountains and everlasting hills; Mic 6:2 refers to enduring foundations while in Prov 8:22-23 the author exalts God’s wisdom which is even older than a presumably old earth (otherwise it’s not a great boast).
[8] Genesis Unbound Sailhammer J 2nd Edition 2011 Dawson Media
[9] Creation and Destruction Tsumura D 2005 Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns
[10] The Lost World of Genesis 1 Walton J 2009 IVP Academic
[11] Genesis Unbound Sailhammer J 2nd Edition 2011 Dawson Media
 
[12] Scholars have long wondered why the great sea monsters merited a special comment in this text. To the ancient world the dark cosmic sea was outside the realm of the gods. These cosmic seas were believed to be populated by dark creatures such as the leviathan who worked against God’s order. Perhaps by including these cosmic monsters the author was affirming with Genesis 1:1 that God had created all the animals in the beginning and that His cosmic kingdom even included the dark cosmic seas that lay beyond the safe boundaries of God’s Promised Land.

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