Scientific Challenges to Genesis 1 – A Creation Day
There has been considerable debate about the scientific (and historic) accuracy of The Bible. One major source of contention is the Biblical Creation story. From the first words of Genesis 1:1 through Genesis 2:4a, the Bible describes how God created the entire universe, the Earth, and all life residing here in seven days.
One of the major sources of controversy is the length of the Biblical Creation day.The most common understanding of “day” is twenty-four consecutive hours. It is this understanding that most fundamentalist Christians accept when they read the Creation story. Yet, there is nothing particularly special about a 24-hour Earth day to God. The time it takes the spinning Earth to complete one full rotation determines the length of a day. While such a time is meaningful to humans, and even the animals, its importance to God is dubious. Why would God’s day be constrained by the rotation of a planet that remained lifeless until the Fifth Day?
The first time that the word “Young-Earth Creationists cite this particular passage in the Bible, where God names the light “day,” as evidence for 24-hour Creation days.A “day” may also refer to an era. An example of this is found in the expression, “Back in my day…” Finally, a “day” might represent a period of activity. Think of a “work day,” which is seldom twenty-four hours, but more likely eight hours.
Without question, a “day” can represent variable periods of time. From my research of the Bible, I know of no scholar who insists that “yom” must represent twenty-four hours. That belief is certainly not true.
In addition to “day,” many regard the words “evening” and “morning” in the Creation account as conclusive evidence that the Creation days were twenty-four hours.“Day,” “evening,” “morning,” and virtually every word in the English language, possesses more than one definition. We can only determine their true meaning when we understand their context in the sentence.
Despite these examples, we cannot completely rule-out a 24-hour Creation day, since that is also an allowable translation. However, it is more likely that none of the seven days of Creation were twenty-four hours, but rather periods of time that the Lord recognized as one of His days.