Biblical Creation in its Ancient Near Eastern Context: An Introduction

It is because they are in covenant with God as His redeemed people, whom He rescued from slavery in Egypt, that they must work and rest according to the pattern that God followed in making the world—thereby they declare their special covenantal relationship to the Maker of heaven and earth.  Because they are His special people, they have a special obligation to keep that day that God blessed and sanctified as a sign of eschatological rest.  So God said substantially to the Israelites everything found in these two chapters; although I suspect that the tablets themselves contained nothing but the commandments themselves in brief form.  We do not have to have God’s ‘ippissima verba’ to be assured that both Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 taken together give us an accurate, complete summary of what God said to Israel in an audible voice.

Hi Martin,

Your explanation focused on the “spoke all these words” part, which is not the problem. You did not address the “and he added no more.”

If you want to claim that the substance of Exodus 20:11 and Deuteronomy 5:15 is the same, then I have no idea why you require (half of) the days to be literal. If God creating in six days and resting on the seventh is the same substance as talking about the exodus, you’ve gone well beyond making the days non-literal.

Further, the description of the exodus in Deuteronomy 5:15 is plainly not literal: it wasn’t really about God carrying the Israelites in his literal hand. So, in two passages that (according to you) are substantially the same, we have clear evidence of non-literal language.

I’d suggest a far simplier interpretation. God’s rest is real (see Hebrews 3-4), but it transcends any single day or human tiredness. The template of the seventh day preceded by six days of work is for our benefit, just like the account of God being refreshed (Exodus 31:17). Taking that imagery literally is as wrong-headed as focusing on how big God’s hand must be to hold all the Israelites.

Marshall,  I’m not saying that God’s resting on the seventh day and His bringing the Israelites out of Egypt are the same divine act. Obviously, they are not; the former has reference to God’s work of creation; the latter has reference to God’s work of redemption.  But as REASON why Israel should keep the Sabbath, the two ideas are connected.  You see, elsewhere the Sabbath is referred to as a covenant sign, like the sign of circumcision and the sign of the rainbow (Exodus 31:12-18).  It was a sign between God and the children of Israel to let them know, “that I am the Lord who sanctifies you.”  In other words, God wanted His covenant people whom He had redeemed out of bondage to remember that they were not in covenant with some local or provincial deity, but with “the Lord,” that is, the Almighty Maker of Heaven and Earth.  How would the Sabbath help them to remember that?  Well, by working six days and resting the seventh, they would remember that they doing the same thing God did when He made the world.  They would be declaring that, through deliverance from slavery, they now belonged to the same God who made the world in six days and rested on the seventh (continued)

As far as Moses’ statement that “God added no more,” surely He is not denying that God spoke what is attributed to Him in Exodus 20, but is omitted in Deuteronomy 5; He is emphasizing the integrity of the Decalogue itself as a complete ‘summary document’ of the covenant God made with Israel at Sinai.  In other words,  God didn’t given them twelve commandments, or fifteen or twenty-one; He gave them ten and only ten commandments which summarize the duties of the covenant He made with them at Mt. Sinai.  Although God afterward gave them extensive legislation in the book of the Law, the Decalogue is a document with its own integrity to which God ‘added no more.’  The relationship between the Decalogue and the other laws God appended to it is the difference between a constitution and its by-laws.  The sign of the covenant is the Sabbath, in which Israel is to work for six ‘natural’ days and rest one, as God worked for six ‘natural’ days and rested one.  And, of course, God uses figurative language at times!  Those who believe in literal interpretation are not dunces who know nothing about metaphors, similes, and other figures of speech.

Martin, if you showed the same openness to less wooden interpretations of “in six days” as you allow for “and he added no more”, you’d have no reason to fight an old earth.

The sign of the Sabbath works equally well if God’s creation work is still going on today (as Psalm 104 describes) and God’s rest is likewise still going on today (as Hebrews 3-4 describes), yet it is condescended to human terms through a semi-poetic framework of seven days. Note how God does all his work during the day, then from evening to morning there’s no activity. God is described as a human labourer—even as needing refreshment in Exodus 31:17—for Israel’s and our benefit. It’s a picture of creation we can relate to and structure our week around. There’s no need for the days to be literal for it to serve this purpose (as you’ve noted yourself with the first three days).

I wonder if you also insist that the bowls God’s wrath is poured out of in Revelation 16 must be literal (or at least four of them)? This form of framework isn’t unique to the seven days of Genesis; there are also the seven seals, trumpets, and bowls of Revelation. Once again, many see symbolism and literary technique in those days, seals, trumpets and bowls.

Marshall,  I have never said that I don’t believe that all six days of creation were literal days.  You are either putting words in my mouth or misinterpreting what I have written.  I said that duration is not the defining feature of a literal day.  If we took a rocket ship to Mars or Mercury,  we would experience literal, solar days, as the light of the sun faded giving place to darkness, and as the sun came up again at daybreak.  The days on those two planets are as literal as days on earth—but they are not of 24 hours duration.  So duration is not the defining feature of a literal day.  A literal day is synonomous to a natural day—a day determined by the cycle of daylight and darkness that occurs in the natural world.  Now, I believe that God’s days in making the world were all natural days in that sense—that is what the text says, literally interpreted—but I do not believe the text says anything about their duration.  Our days happen to last twenty-four hours because that is the time it takes for the earth to turn once on its axis in relation to the sun; but the light of the first three days did not come from the sun or from any light beacon in the sky, so there is no reason they HAD to be twenty-four hours.

Marshall,
Of course I believe the apocalyptic images of judgment in the Book of Revelation are symbolic.  John was given a ‘vision’ of the future that was highly symbolic in nature, like the visions that Daniel saw.  That is clear from the very beginning of the book, where even the vision of Christ with a sword coming from His mouth, symbolizes His glory as the Son of God who speaks the very Word of God (the sword).  LIteral interpretation means interpreting things in their natural sense according to context, literary genre, etc.—and the genre of Revelation is apocalyptic vision.

Hi Martin,

Marshall,  I have never said that I don’t believe that all six days of creation were literal days. [...] I said that duration is not the defining feature of a literal day.

So they’re literal days, but days don’t measure time? I don’t think the author was trying to convey what a solar day would be like in a rocket ship out of earth orbit. I think you have so much invested in claiming to read it literally that you’re willing to make “literal” unrecognizably flexible.

John was given a ‘vision’ of the future that was highly symbolic in nature, like the visions that Daniel saw.

Indeed, and Genesis 1 was divinely revealed somehow too. There weren’t any human eyewitnesses—Moses certainly didn’t see it. It’s not God’s perspective either (there’s God’s first-person creation account in Job 38-39, but it’s even more poetic). And, like you noted, when God reveals something no eye has seen, it tends to be highly symbolic.

Marshall,
How can a day measure time, when there are no other units of time in existence to measure a day by?  Keeps in mind that other units of time were not yet in existence.  How then could you tell if a day was ‘long’ or ‘short,’ relative to other units of time, if no other units of time existed?  if day had not yet faded to night, and if no other measures of time such as weeks (7 cycles of day/night), months, and years were yet in existence, how could ever think of a day ‘lasting longer’ than a day?  If the whole world were blue, how could you tell that it was blue, with no other colors to contrast blue with?  If there were no other measures of time in existence at first but that of a day (a light/dark cycle), how could you tell if a day were long or short, relative to other measures of time?  You couldn’t.  At that point in history, ‘long’ or ‘short’ days would be a meaningless concept.  Keep in mind that, in eternity, there is a sense in which time shall be no more.  The sun will never set, for eternity will be one perpetual day.  Does that mean there will be no duration to our existence?

There will be duration, but in a sense, there will be no time, for measured time as we experience it, will be rendered meaningless.  Now, I am suggesting that the same thing may have been true with regard to the days of creation, before God appointed the sun to rule the day, thereby establishing the type of days we now experience.  I am hypothesizing that it is at least a possibility, in which case both the ‘old’ and ‘young’ earth creationist could be right!  The YEC would be right in his literal reading of Scripture that God made the universe in six natural days of light and darkness, and the OEC would be right that, in terms of the ‘duration of time’ in which the universe has been ‘sitting here,’ that could of any length whatsoever.  From the perspective of the only Witness to those days—God, who inhabits eternity—differences in duration are obviously meaningless, for a thousand years in his sight are like a single day.  Now, this theory of mine is just that—a theory.  If it is silly and absurd, I will gladly abandon it.  I have no desire to cling to unworkable theories out of habit, but to believe the straightforward meaning of texts, without ‘twisting’ them.

Marshall wrote:  “And, like you noted, when God reveals something no eye has seen, it tends to be highly symbolic.”

That’s well-put, Marshall.  Since that is so, Martin, how might it help us understand Genesis 1 better?

“The Cosmology of the Bible” chapter in The Christian Delusion is also worth reading for a discussion of other ways that the ANE and Hebrew story in Genesis 1 overlap.