Is it seven days of creation or seven creation days?

Is it seven days of creation or seven creation days? Is that wordplay? Or is there really a difference between days of creation and seven creation days? The two are not at all the same. And they make a huge difference in whether or not the so-called seven days of creation is a stumbling block to believing in God and the Bible.

Those “days” can be so controversial.

In this day and age, with all that we’ve learned from science, can we still believe the Bible when it says God created the earth in six literal 24-hour days, and then rested on the seventh 24-hour day?

We got a bit into how rest fits in with the “seven days” in part 1 of this series: How does rest influence the seven days of creation?

In part 2, we’ll look ath what those “seven days” are. Yes, our Christian English (and other language( translations use the word day. But, is that really the correct, or the best, translation?

To examine the issue, we’ll look at the Christian Bible, since that’s what we (Christians) read. However, we must remember this is Hebrew scripture and that it was written in Hebrew. That’s of the utmost importance, because the inspired word of God is not our English (or other language) translations. It is the original Hebrew.

We must also remember that the words we read in Genesis are thousands of years old. They were told to people in a very different time. If God tried to give the people knowledge on par with what we “know” today, it would make no sense whatsoever to people in Old Testament times when Genesis was written.

Therefore, we must also remember what Jesus said when asked about the greatest commandment.

The Greatest Commandment – Matthew

^{22:34-40 pp — Mk 12:28-31}

^{Mt 22:34} Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. ³⁵ One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: ³⁶ “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

^{Mt 22:37} Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ ³⁸ This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ⁴⁰ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Given that, we should/must use the brains God gave us to examine all the evidence from the language, culture, knowledge, customs, writing styles, etc. of the people back then and us today. We cannot ignore all those things and just assume everything is literal and completely explained.

We also have to use logic to examine the evidence and determine the reasonableness of conclusions we reach. We’ll see this as we go along.

We aren’t going to go into great detail about what happened on each of the seven “days” today. We’ll see enough to do the things above, and to reach at least a starting point, a hypothesis, on what “day” meant in the creation verses.

Then, as we go through each “day” in detail, we’ll see if the hypotheses hold true or not. Finally, when all the evidence is examined, we’ll check one more time to see if the hypotheses are still valid.

Of course, at any point along the way, we may have to rule out some options, and even change our working hypothesis of which option for “day” is valid.

The possible meanings of “day”

What is meant by day in the Genesis passage on the seven days of creation?

There are four different ways that scholars view the seven days of creation:

1. seven literal 24-hour days
2. a variation of the literal interpretation, but seven epochs, or long periods of time
3. a literary interpretation, where it could be literal on nonliteral
4. no definition, because it’s a myth, in an attempt to explain things we cannot understand

We will get more into these four options in a moment. But first, let’s get a quick high-level view of what the Bible says happened on each of the seven “days”.