How Long are the Days of Genesis 1?

Did the author of Genesis 1 intend to communicate that God created everything in six 24-hour days, or are the days meant to be understood in some other way?

The question of how to interpret the “days” in Genesis 1 has been debated for hundreds of years within the Christian church. The early chapters of Genesis  were explored for their theological message (and not for scientific claims) by many notable Christian thinkers long before scientific evidence for the great age of the universe began to accumulate. The diversity and sophistication of pre-modern views of Genesis reminds us that the best interpretation is not obviously six 24-hour days.

Despite disagreements, all Christians believe Genesis 1 teaches that the one true God created all things and called his creation good. BioLogos affirms that Genesis, like the rest of the Bible, is the inspired and authoritative word of God. Based on a close examination of the biblical text and the cultural context in which Genesis was written, we favor a literary view over a calendar day or day-age view: the seven-day pattern is a literary device that serves the theological purposes of the author, rather than revealing information about the chronology of natural history.

Contrasting views of Genesis 1

Most Christians today interpret the first creation account in the Bible, Genesis 1-2:3, in one of three ways:

1. According to the calendar day view, Genesis 1 is a straightforward historical narrative, in the modern journalistic sense. The repeating formula “there was evening, and there was morning—the first day,” and so on for six days (see 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, and 31)—refers to six 24-hour periods. This conclusion, combined with a summation of years given in biblical genealogies, lead most advocates of this view to believe that God created the material universe in one ordinary week between six and ten thousand years ago. Those who hold this view are known as young-earth creationists.
2. By contrast, those who hold to the day-age view argue that each “day” in Genesis 1 represents an extended period of time. The days of Genesis 1 may be millions of years long and even overlap with one another. Advocates of this view tend to accept the scientific evidence for the great age of the universe; they are called old-earth or progressive creationists.
3. Others prefer a literary view (not to be confused with “literal,” though that word, in its technical sense, is the origin of “literary”). Literary views prioritize the literary features, theological themes, and cultural context of the creation account.

According to one literary approach, the framework view, the author of Genesis 1 uses the regular week—six days of work and then a Sabbath rest—as a framework to describe God’s work of creation.  The first three days describe the creation of realms of habitation, while the second three creation days describe the inhabitants of those realms. For example, darkness and light are separated on the first day, but the sun, moon and stars are not created until the fourth day.  As the foundation for days 4-6 is laid on days 1-3, we see God’s design of the cosmos (see Table).

Credit: Conrad Hyers/PSCF. Used by permission.

The analogical day view is another literary approach. As “analogical” implies, the author is using the regular work week as an analogy to the creation week and is not intending to teach that God actually created everything in a six day period.

In another literary approach, the cosmic temple view, the seven days of Genesis 1 point back to the ancient practice of temple dedication. In the ancient Near East (ANE), temples were typically dedicated in a seven-day ceremony with the god coming to “rest” in his temple once it was complete and his image was installed. Not only are sevens pervasively associated with the tabernacle and temple in the Old Testament, but humans are the authorized image in God’s temple-cosmos. God’s rest on the seventh day could  refer to his royal dwelling in, and rule over, the world he made, especially through human beings, to whom he delegated authority over the earth (Gen 1:26-28).

Literary approaches to the days of Genesis 1 are preferred by evolutionary creationists—like those in the BioLogos community—as well as some notable scholars who oppose, or are unsure about, evolution.

Many variations of the calendar day, day-age, and literary views exist, and scholars classify them in different ways. Yet all Christians affirm God’s ultimate sovereignty, the goodness of creation, and the honored status of people as his unique image bearers.

Textual clues as to the purpose of Genesis 1

The biblical text itself is the ultimate guide to the best interpretation of Genesis 1. Many of the clues we find in the text point to literary views.

Proponents of the day-age view note that the Hebrew word for day (yom) is sometimes used in Scripture for periods longer than a day. However, the uses that are often cited (e.g., Gen 2:4; Lev 14:2) are actually in a prepositional phrase (beyom; lit. “in the day”), which has the sense of “when,” or in certain fixed expressions like the “day of the Lord.” The presence of “evening and morning” with the first six days also makes it unlikely that the biblical author had in mind long periods of time.