[asa] Re: "day" and "yom"

From: Jim Armstrong <jarmstro@qwest.net>
Date: Wed Jun 11 2008 - 23:45:23 EDT

Re: "To the Hebrews a day was the time between one sunset and the next (not normally exactly 24 hours)"

I'm not a Hebrew scholar, but I've certainly heard and read the opinions of some, and unless my memory has gone the way of the emu, even the Hebrew word itself in the time -- "yom" -- had virtually the same range of meanings as our English useage of "day", i.e., daylight, 24 hour period, a vague time (back in the day), a particular time period (...in the day of King...), a particular year identified by an event, for example (on the day of the Twin Towers disaster). [I'm not sure the examples are perfect!] The arguments go on and on based on the interpretation of the context and other considerations, and of course, everyone is quite certain of their interpretation. But the bottom line is that the word itself does not convey which of the meanings is intended. That is not surprising in a language with relatively small vocabulary (some 8,700 words, I read - compared with perhaps a half million in our own). My wife has been studying Biblical Hebrew for about 4 years now, and even with the context, the meanings can be insufficiently specific to narrow the translation to a single meaning. Besides, single meanings are not the Torah way - layers of meaning are, and the principal message seldom lies in the direct reading. [This according to a friend and teacher who is a product of the demanding Yeshiva in Jerusalem, as well as a scribe for several years.]

JimA [Friend of ASA]

----- Original Message ----
From: gordon brown <Gordon.Brown@Colorado.EDU>
To: asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2008 8:28:59 PM
Subject: RE: [asa] Saving Darwin: What theological changes are required?

On Wed, 11 Jun 2008, Jon Tandy wrote:

> Moses is *clearly* stating that actual creation
> took place in actual 24-hour days.

Jon,

I am not sure whether you are quoting the YECs or that you really believe
that this is clear. If the latter, then you seem to have been convinced by
the YECs. If this were clear, then Christians should have believed it
before there was any scientific input on the age of the earth or universe.
Yet we find in the writings of the early church fathers that they puzzled
over the meaning of days in Genesis 1. To the Hebrews a day was the time
between one sunset and the next (not normally exactly 24 hours) rather
than a fixed unit of time. Thus solar days could not have existed until
the sun was created.

I also question whether the length of the creation period would qualify as
being accommodation since I think that the ancients could have understood
any of many possible lengths.

Gordon Brown (ASA member)


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To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message. Received on Wed Jun 11 23:45:36 2008