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Origins Worksheet Analysis

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Origins Worksheet
Question 1: What does each approach (more plain/literal vs. more poetic/figural) think is the author's intention in writing Genesis 1 and 2?
The way in which one perceives the first two chapters of Genesis is extremely important because it dictates whether the creation story was an actual event, or rather, a symbolic anecdote. One who believes that the writing in Genesis is a literal account of the creation story would believe that Genesis is the account of how God brought about order from a lack of order, and explains mankind’s functional origins (Larsen, 2012). This means that the first few chapters of Genesis explain the institution of God’s temple in the cosmos, and therefore explain its origin. However, readers need to be careful to assess …show more content…

In order to evaluate the validity of each argument, it is important to evaluate the original Hebrew text. A strength for the literal translation of Genesis can be found when one interprets the Hebrew meaning of the word “yom”, which means day. Many people argue that when the “days” are mentioned in the creation account, they are referring to long ages. However, when studied in context, in the 357 times that the word “yom” is used outside of the book of Genesis in the Old Testament, it is used to mean a literal 24-hour day (Stambaugh, 1988). This would be irrational, then, to assume that Moses would use the same word to describe two drastically different scenarios. If Moses desired to indicate that each day of creation was a specific age of time, He could have easily chosen another word to use within the Genesis account of creation. Understanding the length of the days in creation is incredibly important, because if God did indeed create the world in six 24-hour periods, there is little room for figurative interpretation of

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To respond to Kayden and Braden’s ideas the first thing I would point out is that they continue to state that the biblical account of creation is unique. I would have to disagree because the pattern of creation (victory, rest, temple/cult, and kingship) that the Bible follows is followed by most ancient near eastern creation myths. This is not a unique aspect to the bible’s myth. For example, Enuma Elish is an ancient near eastern creation myth that begins with life from water and features the victory of Marduk over Tiamat and Marduk’s rise to kingship. Marduk then creates humanity.

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Most modern biblical scholars believe that there are clearly two versions of the creation story in the chapters of Genesis 1 through 3 in the Old Testament. These versions appear to come from three different groups of authors called the Jahwist Source, the Priestly Source and the Redactor Source. The first version, from Genesis 1:1-31 to 2:1-3 by the Priestly Source, followed by the second version, from Genesis 2:4-25 by the Jahwist Source and Redactor Source. According to the Documentary Hypothesis the younger Priestly Sources put their version of the Creation in front of the older Jahwist Source version and notice the differences, in Genesis 1 by the Priestly Source, where the focus is on the entire universe and, in Genesis 2 by the Jahwist

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You interpret that the first day recorded in the Book of Genesis could be of indeterminate length. BRADY (Wriggling): I mean to state that the day referred to is not necessarily a twenty-four-hour day. DRUMMOND: It could have been thirty hours! Or a month of a week!

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24-hour: According to to the 24-Hour viewpoint, the 7 days referred to in Genesis 1 are normal days on the calendar. They argue that it’s clear/obvious that God meant normal, 24 hour, days because the days written in the first chapter are numbered. Also, using the fourth commandment, people who are for the 24-hour viewpoint would argue that since Moses refers to the 7th day, also known as the Sabbath, as a normal day must mean that in Genesis 1, Moses is referring the days as normal. Although these beliefs may seem simple and straightforward, I don’t believe that the specific time spent on each stage of creation is important to know. In my opinion, this viewpoint is taking God’s passage in a scientific way.

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The “gap” or reconstruction theory states that there is a narrative “gap” between “Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. The Geological era theory, which became popular in the nineteenth century, argues that the six “days” of Genesis 1 are actually six “eras” of undefined length. The literal or “twenty-four-hour-day” theory is the most long-lived theory and has the idea that the world was created in six twenty-four hour days, with each day representing one linear phase in the chronology of the creation. The framework theory argues that the seven-day structure of Genesis 1 was a literal week being used as a literary device. I think the literal “twenty-four-hour-day” theory is the best interpretation of Genesis 1-3 because this is what the Bible says.

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In speaking of the “first day,” Basil explains that “it is as though the scripture is saying: twenty-four hours measure the space of a day, or that, in reality a day is the time that the heavens starting from one point take to return there. ”26 Ambrose, also commenting on the first day, asserts that “Scripture established a law that twenty-four hours, including both day and night, should be given the name of day only, as if one were to say the length of one day is twenty-four hours in extent. ”27John Damascene describes a day’ s length in terrific detail, comparing the solar solstice to the solar equinox, and the period of the moon to the sun, when he ponders the sun’ s being created on the fourth day.28So Basil, Ambrose, and Damascene also teach that the universe was created instantaneously or before time. These forefathers of the church seem to believe the account of Genesis chapter 1 as historical fact even alluding to the six days

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In the Christian religion, the book of Genesis is the tellings of the creation of the earth, and the fall of humanity. The creator, God, takes the nothingness that was in place of the earth and made it into Earth and everything in it (“Genesis” 44). The creation of Earth was a process that was said to take place over six days. Light and darkness were created on day one, water and sky on day two (“Genesis” 44), land and vegetation on day three, the sun, moon and stars on day four, birds and sea creatures were created on the fifth day, and the rest of the land creatures were created on the sixth day (“Genesis” 45). God needed somebody who could take care of the land and all that was on it, so he took dust from the earth and formed it into man.

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Henry Morris states, “The Scriptures are not hard to understand-just hard to believe, and even harder to obey,” as many people focus too much on interpretation and not enough on the application of the text in their lives. Christians should look to be doers of the word, not purely hearers of it. This shows itself in a multitude of ways, one of which is how they look at the six “days” of creation. If someone uses the young earth exegesis to look at the grammatical historical context of the creation account, this will lead him or her to understand a literal six-day creation. This will lead them to interpret other key passages in a similar manner, like a literal virgin birth, a literal resurrection, and a literal belief in Jesus Christ as one’s savior.

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The verses continue on to reveal the account of creation, explaining the truth behind God’s plans and efforts to bring forth the world and all things surrounding it. By the time we reach verse three of Genesis, the author transitions into describing the first day of creation. Genesis 1:3 starts out with the phrase “God said…” This phrase is repeated constantly during Genesis, chapter one. It is important to note that we read each day of creation assuming that it is a 24 hour day.

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Then, the earth was shaped into a mold. Although still covered with water, on the second day God created the sky. Wanting to separate the seas, God created land that could produce plants and fruits on the fourth day. God made the waters teem with creatures, and created birds for the skies on the fifth day. Finally, on the sixth day, God gave the fertile lands life and created mankind to rule over it all (Genesis 1).

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