>> The parallel is drawn from an analogy that as God worked for six of His days, resting on the seventh, so should the children of Israel work on six days and rest on the sabbath....
>And since we know that the days of our week are 24 hours each, then, by analogy, we know the first six days of creation were also 24 hours each. So we agree?
But we also know that seven weeks are 1176 hours, seven years are about 61354 hours, and forty-nine years are about 429476 hours, yet these intervals also commemorate God's rest in Pentecost, the sabbath year, and the year of Jubilee. Likewise, the Exodus took much longer than one week of Passover in which it is commemorated, and most other historic events commemorated by a feast or fast took much longer than the duration of the commemoration (destruction of Jerusalem, rescue from Haman, etc.).
The psalms commemorating creation and other later references do not seem too picky about the sequence, although I have not made an exhaustive check. This would suggest that chronology of creation was not seen as a major issue by the Biblical authors.
Dr. David Campbell
"Old Seashells"
Biology Department
Saint Mary's College of Maryland
18952 E. Fisher Road
St. Mary's City, MD 20686-3001 USA
dcampbell@osprey.smcm.edu, 301 862-0372 Fax: 301 862-0996
"Mollusks murmured 'Morning!'. And salmon chanted 'Evening!'."-Frank Muir, Oh My Word!
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Apr 13 2001 - 17:47:56 EDT