Creation Revealed By Vision

The six days of Genesis I have been debated hotly throughout the history of Jewish and Christian interpretation of the passage. It is typically agreed that the six days refer to the amount of time taken by God to carry out all the creative acts described in Genesis 1. However, there is a very wide range of interpretation concerning exactly what those acts were, what was created by them, how long the days themselves are, and whether the creative acts of the six days encompass the entire universe, and whether they involve actually creating the universe or simply restoring an existing planet.

A range of literal and non-literal interpretations have been advanced, most of them with little regard to how the text would have been understood by the original audience. In virtually every case, interpretations of the days (whether literal or non-literal), introduce tensions and contradictions with the rest of the chapter. In most cases, the text is interpreted in a manner which would never have occurred to the original audience, and was invented by much later commentators in order to make the text conform to their expectations, or to harmonize it with their scientific (or pre-scientific), understanding of the universe.

No humans were present at the beginning of creation, so the only way for a human to be an observer of God’s creative work is for God to have revealed it to them in a vision. The vision was revealed to an inspired writer over a sequence of seven consecutive literal 24 hour days.

To continue reading this Bible article, click here.

Author: Jonathan Burke

Keywords: Creation, Creationism, Six days of creation, 6 days of creation, Age of the earth, Young earth, Old earth, Genesis 1 to be taken literally, Genesis 1 literal, Genesis One Literal, Literal six days, Literal 6 days, Created heaven and earth, Created heaven and earth in six days, Created heaven and earth in 6 days, geology, geologist, void, void and without form, creationist

Bible reference(s): Genesis 1

Source: Jonathan Burke.

Page indexed by: inWORD Bible Software.