Are the Genesis Creation Days 24 Hours or Long Periods of Time? â Program 1

By: Dr. Walter Kaiser Jr., Dr. Hugh Ross; Š2005 |
What are the different viewpoints about the age of the earth and when it was created? What does âcreatedâ mean? Was it a one-time event, or a series of events over long periods of time? |
What Information Has God Given about When He Created?
Introduction
Today on The John Ankerberg Show, does the Bible teach that the Genesis creation days are six literal 24 hour days or six long periods of time? Inside the Christian Church this debate is raging. Some say that unless a Christian believes God created in six literal 24-hour days, they will not allow that person to be a member of their Church or assume a leadership position.
Outside of the Church, many non-Christians are certain that all Christians believe God created everything 6,000 years ago, including the universe, the Earth, plants and animals and Adam and Eve. They are shocked to find out that is not true today, nor has it been the case down through Church history.
Christians who read the first two chapters of Genesis and believe that Moses used the word day â yom â to mean a long period of time, are they distorting the biblical text, denying the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible, and affirming some kind of evolution? What does the biblical text actually say?
My guests today are: Dr. Walter Kaiser, President of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He is thought by many to be one of the worldâs most knowledgeable and esteemed evangelical authorities on the Old Testament and Hebrew language. My second guest is astrophysicist and astronomer Dr. Hugh Ross. He received his Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Toronto and did post-doctoral research at Caltech on quasars.
We invite you to join us.
- Dr. John Ankerberg: Welcome. Weâve got a great program for you today; two spectacular guests. Iâm really glad youâve joined us.
- Today our topic is the biblical account of creation: What information has God given us about how and when He created? Thatâs something you want to know, right? My guests are Dr. Walter Kaiser, President of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, MA. Also weâve got Dr. Hugh Ross. Heâs an astrophysicist and astronomer. He has also recently been a part of a written debate, The Genesis Debate, between the Twenty-Four-Hour View, the Day-Age View, and the Framework View. Weâll be talking about that as we go along.
- But Dr. Kaiser, weâve asked our audience to give us questions, and I have a pastor who has written a question for you right off the bat. And he says, âWhen the Bible says, âIn the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,â [Gen. 1:1] does this, then, allow for billions of years? Or does the word âcreatedâ imply a once-for-all activity when it comes to the physical universe?
- Dr. Walter Kaiser: Thanks, John. It really does talk about an absolute beginning, and the text says, âIn the beginning.â Itâs very, very crucial that all who believe in the inerrancy of Scripture understand this is where it all started. And the rest of the phrase, âheavens and earth,â really is the biblical word for âuniverse.â Itâs what we call hen dia dis: hen â one; dia â through; dis â two. So we have one idea through two words; âuniverseâ expressed by âheaven and earth.â So, the whole shebang was from âin the beginning.â And who did it? God. God created. The word bara is used forty-five times exclusively with God as the subject. No other. There are other words for âmakeâ or âformâ or things like that. But never does a human use the word bara, and never does it have any material used as agency along with it.
- So I think our commitment ought to be to an absolute beginning, and that it was initiated by God, and that it covers the whole universe. And then itâs going to go on in verse 2 to talk about the earth. But like Genesis does, always takes the big subject first â the universe. Now, meanwhile, back down on earth. And now weâre going to focus on the topic of earth.
- So, no matter how far you go back, itâs âin the beginning,â and thereâs where Christians ought to put their foot down and say, âYep! In the beginning.â And thatâs the biblical date.
- Ankerberg: All right, before we go on, Hugh, from science, does that make sense that there was a beginning point?
- Dr. Hugh Ross: Yes, it does. And I think thereâs a second biblical point you can make out of that: bara â âto create something brand new that didnât exist before.â This is a transcendent creation act. Itâs where God, by His creative, miraculous intervention, brings into existence, for the first time, matter, energy, and the space-time dimensions that are associated with matter and energy. Which leaves room for God to manipulate or manufacture or reshape through other miracles that matter, energy, space and time to prepare a wonderful place for us to live. And isnât that the context of Genesis 1?
- Kaiser: Yes. Now thatâs an important point, then, the whole idea that it is de nova, just sort of âbrand new,ââŚ
- Ross: Right. Right.
- Kaiser: âŚand God originating everything right from the very start.
- Ross: Thatâs also distinctive to the Christian faith. I mean, you go into other religions, that is, you know, God or gods creating within space and time that always exists.
- Kaiser: Yeah.
- Ross: The Bible stands alone in saying there really is an actual beginning to space and time, God is responsible for it. And the wonderful thing about the advance of astrophysics, since 1970 weâve been able to prove that through Einsteinâs theory of general relativity.
- Ankerberg: Letâs stop right there because I remember back in the 70âs that Ted Koppel had some of the scientists on. They actually quoted Genesis 1. And the scientists quoted verse 1, and Ted Koppel went on and did verse 2. And Iâm saying that that was pretty astounding. Now, they said it was the discovery of the century for the scientists. Why so? Because it does go back to Einstein. He had postulated that something ought to happen out of his mathematics; he didnât even want to accept it himself. But they proved it via the sciences. What did they find?
- Ross: Well, from the 70âs right up to the present moment there has been these space-time theorems of general relativity. And what they basically state is that if the universe contains mass â and I would suggest that skeptics find a bathroom scale; but the second condition: âDo the equations of general relativity reliably describe the dynamics of the universe?â And the past five years, general relativity has vaulted to the most exhaustively-tested principle in physics; the best proven principle in physics. Both conditions are now beyond doubt. The conclusion of that theorem is that there must be this simultaneous beginning to matter, energy, space and time. More than that, thereâs a corollary to the theorem: there must exist a causal agent that brings into existence space and time independent, beyond, or outside of space and time. You know, Stephen Hawking, one of the authors of the first space-time theorem of general relativity, boasted that we proved that time has a beginning. But the Bible said that thousands of years ago, that when God created, He created time. There is an actual beginning of time that coincides with the beginning of the universe.
- Ankerberg: Not only that, but scientists have gone back and theyâve actually started putting numbers to when they think time started.
- Ross: Right.
- Ankerberg: Whatâs the accepted theory right now?
- Ross: Well, you can use the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the Two-Degree Deep Sky Survey, and the WMAP [Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe], which is the most accurate map of the radiation left over from the creation event. Those three methods give you a date at 13.7 billion years ago as to when the universe came into existence. Thatâs also the only moment in cosmic history when human beings can actually look back and photograph or image the beginning of the universe. It takes light time to reach us from the beginning: 13.7 billion years is the first moment in cosmic history when human observers can actually witness or photo-image that point of beginning.
- Ankerberg: Which brings us to the second point, Dr. Kaiser, and all the folks say, âOkay, if the science tells us that, now weâve got to get to the next part, after God created, and that is, What is the meaning, the literal meaning, of the word day in Genesis 1 and 2?â Because theyâre saying, âHey, we know what the word day means! I mean, thatâs twenty-four hours.â So Hugh is talking here 13.7 billion! Can we reconcile these two? And weâre talking about a literal interpretation of the Bible. Okay?
- Kaiser: Right.
- Ankerberg: Can we do that?
- Kaiser: Yes. I like what Hugh has said, but itâs also wonderful that God put the cookies on the bottom shelf, too, for everyone so that they could say, âWell, that must have been âin the beginning,â what youâre talking about.â And it was. By the way, some of the Bibles will translate it, âWhen God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was without form and void. Then God said,â verse 3. They put in a âwhen/thenâ construction, because in the Babylonian stories itâs supposed to be in a when/then construction.
- But actually you canât do that with the Hebrew grammar here. Thatâs a no-no, because it does not have a preposition in front of it; that is, a prepositional phrase of the sort that is wanted here for a when/then kind of construction. That does occur, say, like in Hosea 6:1, 2. Thatâs exactly what they want there, and a dozen places in the Bible, but not this place. This one is very clear and it is an absolute beginning. And thatâs why when we come to look at the rest of the text, even like the word day, weâve got to pay attention to the uses of the word in the text. We canât put our definition on it.
- âLiteralâ in the Bible is what the Bible meant, the person who stood in the counsel of God and heard God speak. So he has first rights to speak, then we can come along. And the word day there is used in three different ways: 1) day is daylight as opposed to nighttime, so itâs twelve hours; 2) day is twenty-four hours at verse 5 for âdaytimeâ; verse 14 is God put the greater light and the lesser light â He didnât say âsunâ and âmoon.â He didnât want them to worship that â greater light and lesser light; for days and for seasons and years, thatâs twenty-four hours. Then in 2:4 he summarizes the whole thing: 3) âIn the day that the Lord God created the heaven and the earth.â Thatâs like âin the day of Abraham Lincoln,â âin the day of the phonograph,â in the day of whatever.
- So, we ought to be warned, the text itself uses the word in three different ways. And one more, John, and that is, in a Psalm written by Moses, Psalm 90, the same writer that wrote this material. He says âa day with the Lord is as a thousand years.â Now, Iâve got to pay attention to that because when the same writer uses the word with that amount of what some would call âelasticity,â then I had better pay attention to his meaning, because thatâs what the literal meaning is: the one who stood in the counsel of God and heard the word from on high.
- Ankerberg: Alright weâre going to take a break and when we come back, weâre going to talk more about this and weâre going to take the questions of our audience where they say, âWhat about the use of âevening and morningâ? I mean, how do you get that into a long period of time? I mean, isnât that book-ending a day?â And we want to talk about what the language means. Weâre going to come back and weâll talk about it in a moment.
BREAK
- Ankerberg: Alright weâre back. Weâre talking with Dr. Walter Kaiser and Dr. Hugh Ross about the biblical account of creation: what information has God given us about how and when He created?
- Walter, we were talking about Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. And some folks have criticized the use of Genesis 2:4 as being an exception to a literal twenty-four-hour day. They object to Moses, apparently, using that. But this is how they put it, okay? They say, ââŚthis ignores the completely different grammatical contextsâ that we have in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. So theyâre saying Genesis 1, Genesis 2, the context is different: ââŚthere is a singular, absolute noun âdayâ in Genesis 1, but a singular, construct noun âdayâ in Genesis 2:4. In Genesis 2:4⌠yom is prefixed by⌠be, thus, be yom â this is often an idiomatic⌠expression for âwhen.ââ âThe context of yom in Genesis 2:4 is totally different from Genesis 1, where there are no prepositionsâŚâ. And then they quote the NIV [New International Version], which they think correctly translates this passage, Genesis 2:4: âWhen the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.â
- I donât think they knew that you [Dr. Kaiser] were one of the folks that helped give information for the footnotes of the Study Bible for the NIV, and you were one of the experts mentioned in the index in the front as contributing concerning Exodus. So I assume that you can answer this question on the grammar for NIV. Whatâs going on? Do we have different contexts that outlaw the exception of yom being âa long period of time,â namely, the six created days? Genesis 1 is different from Genesis 2?
- Kaiser: Well, John, I hope I donât disappoint you, but with all that build up, Iâm dying to hear what I have to say! I think, no doubt about it, the translation âin the day thatâ or âin the dayâ is equal to âwhen.â It can be translated either way. The point is, itâs still the same yom. Weâve got, from all of the text in Genesis 1, we have the same kind of word, Hebrew word, used. Itâs the identical word here. Whether it has the preposition in front of it, and itâs in a construct or an absolute state, that only has to do with the syntax. But that doesnât change the lexicography of the word itself. So the word stands.
- And furthermore, it goes on to put within the account that follows â Genesis 2:4 â it has the Sabbath day; one of the seven days is already located within it.
- So I think nice try, but it doesnât pull away from the point. I think the point is still there; weâre still talking about the same âdayâ and weâre still trying to establish how did the writer use that word day? And does it have a single meaning, that is, it must be like our twenty-four-hour day in every case? And if thatâs so, why, then, do you have in 1:5, itâs twelve hours; in 1:14, itâs twenty-four; and now here, he takes âwhen,â the whole time, and the when here refers to at least six of those days. Thatâs still the point that still has to be made here.
- Ankerberg: Yeah, folks, when I asked Walter to come on the program, you need to recognize that, for his Ph.D. work, he was made to learn seven languages to compare with the Hebrew in the text so he could compare all the words backwards and forwards. I got to thinking about that. You know your Hebrew so well and you know these other languages so well, that if God wanted to, He could have whispered this revelation to you and you could have picked out the Hebrew words. Now, He didnât, but the fact is, you have an idea why MosesâŚ
- Kaiser: You should be glad he didnât, too!
- Ankerberg: Yeah. You have an idea why Moses chose these words. And thatâs what I want to get to; because hereâs another objection to saying that itâs not just a straight twenty-four-hour day: the use of numbered series with the word yom in the Old Testament. Theyâll say that when the numbers are used in a series â 1, 2, 3 â in connection with the word yom in the Old Testament, they say, it always refers to twenty-four hour days. Therefore, the absence of any exception to this in the Old Testament is evidence that Genesis 1, must, it must, it must, be referring to twenty-four-hour days.
- Kaiser: Well, John, thatâs a very common objection you hear frequently, but there is no rule in the Hebrew grammar. I mean, you have to invent that rule for just this situation. The other thing is, yes, there does occur a case in which you have yom used along with an ordinal or even a cardinal number: one. One, itâs the same word for both the cardinal and the ordinal. The difference between cardinal and ordinals is, between one, two, three, four, and first, second, third, fourth. So, Zechariah 14:7 has a yom echad. Itâs âone day.â And there itâs talking, again, about the yom Yahweh, âthe day of the Lord,â which is a future day covering all of the eschatological events. So I donât think you can make that rule. I appreciate what theyâre trying to do, but I donât think itâll work.
- Ankerberg: Letâs jump to another one, guys, and a lot of folks will relate to this. Theyâll say, you know, âDoesnât the text say that these days happen and theyâre bookended by the use of âevening and morningâ?â Now, you find it interesting that he starts with âeveningâ and not âmorning.â Tell us why.
- But let me just show you one of the objections. People will say, âWhenever yom is used with âevening and morning,â it can mean only an ordinary day, never a long period of time.â Now, what do you think?
- Kaiser: Well, âevening and morning.â To start on the first one with âevening,â is sort of interesting. Where did that first âeveningâ come from? It must come from a day that wasnât already. So thereâs something wrong with it the way you start it. And then, âevening and morningâ doesnât make up a whole twenty-four hours. And anyway, we have three of these evening and mornings â day one, day two, day three â before, on the fourth day, God makes days. So, weâre in trouble here.
- And then, the seventh day is lasting all the way to the present. Hebrews 4 says that God rested from His creative work and He calls it, in Hebrews 4, a sabbatismos, âa Sabbath.â Thatâs the Greek word. Itâs our word Sabbath, when God stopped and He put a conclusion. Another Greek word there is katapausis. He said, âStop.â
- And there are three times in the biblical text God âstoppedâ: at creation, marking between creation and providence; God stopped on the cross and said, âIt is finished. It is doneâ; and then in the book of Revelation one more time God says, âIt is doneâ and it marks the end between His work in providence and His work in history and all of eternity. Three great âstop daysâ and this one is still going on: âSo let us enter,â says Hebrews 4, âinto this rest.â And the interesting thing is, there is no citation of âevening and morningâ with the seventh day, also.
- So on at least four or five grounds I find to say that this is really [as] an argument for a twenty-four-hour day to be weak.
- Ross: Let me give you a fifth one. This is bad statistics. I hear in their books where theyâll say, âWell, 38 times we see âevening and morningâ used outside of Genesis 1 always in reference to a twenty-four-hour day.â But those sentences, when you look [them] up, the word day isnât even in the text. Itâll mention âeveningâ or âmorning,â but you will not find the word day. And thereâs only one place in those 38 references where you see âeveningâ and âmorningâ together. Itâs Psalm 55:17 where King David says, âI will pray to the Lord God in evening and morning and noontime.â So what we see here in Genesis 1 is unique. You donât see âevening and morningâ refer to a day except there in the Genesis chapter.
- Ankerberg: Walter, weâve got one minute left. Letâs put a wrapper on this thing, a conclusion for the people. What have we told them and what does this mean? And Iâd like you to frame it with the fact of, weâre talking a literal interpretation of the words of Scripture. Weâre not messing around. We havenât pulled science in to get this. You got this out of the text of Scripture. Youâre trying to grapple with it. When he [Dr. Ross], from science, came to the belief there was a God and then he started reading the Bible and he thought, âThese words kind of bring me back to the God that I believe created the whole thing; these are special words.â Okay? Some people accuse him of bringing science in first. But you didnât start that way. You started with the text and youâre saying, âFrom the textâŚ,â what?
- Kaiser: âI believe in God the Father, Maker of heaven and earth,â who started in an absolute beginning, âin the beginning,â created the whole shebang â the universe â and created it out of nothing â brand new â and brought it into existence. He is the Creator of all things. And this text is saying thatâs what we celebrate. We celebrate that He is the Maker of heaven and earth.
- Ankerberg: Alright, next week weâre going to continue with this discussion of âWhat does the word day mean?â, because weâre not done with some of the objections. One of the biggest ones is Exodus 20:9, where we find that in the Ten Commandments there, youâre supposed to work for these six days and rest on the seventh. And it doesnât sound like weâre supposed to rest for a billion years or work for a billion years each. And youâve got to help us out because thatâs also the book that you were the advisor on for the NIV.
- Kaiser: Canât wait to get into it!
- Ankerberg: So weâve got to hear that. Okay, join us next week.
[âŚ] Are the Genesis Creation Days 24 Hours or Long Periods of Time? â Program 1 By: Dr. Walter Kaiser Jr., Dr. Hugh Ross [âŚ]