On Fri, 9 Feb 2001, Vernon Jenkins wrote:
> gordon brown wrote:
>
> > ...I want to know how you manage to interpret both of the words `day'
> > and `die' literally in Gen. 2:17 ...
>
> Gordon,
>
> Clearly, since Eve did not literally 'give up the ghost' following the
> eating of the fruit on that fateful day (Gen.3:6), we infer that the
> word 'die' has to refer to deadness of a different kind - as, for
> example, the loss of feeling in the hand that might be caused by poor
> circulation of blood in the arm. Thus, with the broad sweep of
> scriptural truth in mind, 'die' in this context has to mean 'separation
> from God'; in other words, the fellowship with God that Adam and Eve had
> hitherto enjoyed ceased at that point.
>
> I think we can agree that the remainder of the Bible is all about the
> rebuilding of that relationship.
>
> Vernon
>
>
Vernon,
Then obviously you don't take this word literally in this verse since the
author obviously didn't intend it to be so taken. But this is the very
reason that many Christians don't take the word `day' in Genesis 1 in what
many would consider to be its most literal sense. In Hebrew thinking a day
began and ended at sunset. Can anyone really believe that the Lord began
to create the universe at sunset on Saturday? Did solar days exist without
the existence of the sun? This is the sort of consideration that led
Augustine to say in The City of God that he thought it might be impossible
for humans to even conceive of what kind of days the creative days of
Genesis 1 were. He was not compromising with modern science when he wrote
this.
Gordon Brown
Department of Mathematics
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0395
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Feb 10 2001 - 17:34:23 EST