Why are so many creationists fixated on a genesis of seven days?

Question

I've being doing some research into the hebrew old testament, and the word that commomly means 'day' (yowm) can actually mean 'aeon'. Also, I remember some passage in the bible where Jesus is explaining that a day to us is not like a day to the lord, he gives an example..

My main point is that people are taking as literal truth translations of translations, after generations of editing. Hebrew is a notoriously tricky written language to translate. The later versions such as the King James Bible have some glaringly obvious mistranslations and alterations, such as 'poisoner' becoming 'witch'. Whole sections were dropped out of the text. For example; Enoch, that names Gadriel as the seducer of Eve. I just don't get why they take the newest and least accurate versions as being closest to their 'truth'.

I believe (according to Jesus) that the difference in time is that 'a day of god is a thousand years to man', so one of our years is 365000 years to god.

Also, I was using 'aeon' more in the sense of 'really long time' rather than a set number of years.

There's quite a good wiki page pointing out the inconsistancies in Genesis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_according_to_Genesis

Actually slayer, I'm not wrong. Also, a variant of yom/yowm, 'yawm', is used in the Koran to define both a day and 50,000 years. Here's a link to a page with several reliable dictionary references to the word.

http://www.accuracyingenesis.com/day.html#fig3

Answer 1

Because most of them believe in Literal Biblical Truth
if the bible said Jesus could sweat Liquid gold and Elijah could recite Pi to the ten billionth place, they would believe it because the bible cannot lie.

Answer 2

Many people believe that there is a God who has always existed, who created everything else that exists a finite period of time ago. Many of these people do not think that God created everything in 6 literal days - but those people (including me) tend not to have major objections to the majority of modern science relying on longer periods of time. Consequently "we" tend not to draw as much attention to ourselves as "6 day creationists" do.

It appears to me that some "6 day creationists" overestimate the importance of the issue because historically some significant atheists have insisted on doing so. However, the only implication the bible draws from the "length" of the six days is that of people commemorating creation by having a day off every seventh day. Whether God created in 6 literal days is irrelevant to how it is commemorated. So the Bible doesn't make a big deal of whether they are literal days - so it is difficult to tell how it is intended to be taken. We certainly shouldn't be "fixated" on it :)

Lastly, the idea of the Hebrew word for day referring to an aeon is not directly relevant to Genesis 1, because in that context each 'day' has a morning and an evening - and that's what days have - not aeons.

Answer 3

This was my very first line of argument in my Grade 8 debate group, though I personally used the "a day is as a thousand years before God" verse. Unfortunately most Christians are biblical literalists. Those I've come across tend to ignore passages that call that literalism into question. (even if only subconsciously, I suppose)

But yeah, even though I'm no Christian, I've always found a lot of value in the bible as a mythohistoric text. I've found the same value on most other religious texts as well. I think it's very important that we remember these texts were usually only written down after centuries of oral transmission. On top of that they've been subjected to translation, "interpretation", attempts at destruction and everything else, so taking something like that at purely literal face value seems rather silly to me.

Answer 4

Because theyre idiots!

Science, Geology, Archaeology and History all tell us that creationism is utter rubbish.

The creation myth is similar to that of many other cultures around in the near east at the time, and the hebrews were influenced by these!

From a christian point of view, we should look at is only symbolically.

Answer 5

Like to see the passage number of this. Aeon is more likely, and the sequence needs to be altered, as god is said to have created the world before the space to put it in! (unless other later passages are to be re-ordered)

Answer 6

Does it matter really? The point is, the six days of work followed by a day of rest was God setting an example for the Israelites so they would understand the sabbath.
The word 'yom' used for 'day' is always used to mean a literal 24 hour period, so I don't know where you got your info. from.

Answer 7

Quite right - difficult getting this over. Many Christians don't study the Bible properly or in detail. Error is to think that the Bible is a scientific treatise - it's not.

Answer 8

I'm pretty sure that day just meant day, expecting prehistoric Hebrews to know the proper age of the universe might be a bit optimistic.
As to creationist fixations, can only be put down to dogma.

Answer 9

Mathilda, if you look closely at the creation account, it states that God created in six days and rested on the seventh. And then it defines EXACTLY WHAT A DAY IS - ONE EVENING AND ONE MORNING - SIX DIFFERENT TIMES. Now that's a far cry from a million years, right????

Gen 1:5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

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Gen 1:8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

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Gen 1:13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.

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Gen 1:19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

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Gen 1:23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

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Gen 1:31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, [it was] very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Answer 10

evan if you count days as aeon you are sill off by 5 billion years it is a fairy tale not true the is no god