Ok,
THE BIG POST 
Let's look at this
Sabbatical Interpretation K has offered us. First off, I'll say that I am highly impressed by the reasoning you've offered, K. I don't think you'd be surprised to find that there are some places I'm not totally sold on and some details I think need to be ironed out. But while I'll talk about those below, I want to say up front that I think, on the whole, "I can sign that contract" as my uncle would put it. So definitely far more agreement than disagreement. I guess it remains to be seen how substantive and substantial the disagreements turn out to be. I know you offered a high level presentation, so maybe as we get down to the nuts and bolts we'll find out that we're on the same page after all. Maybe not. I don't know! That's part of the excitement.
Anyway, for reasons of both manners as well as good logic, I want to establish a few things I find highly commendable and that I very much agree with. Obviously, I'm happy to see that you've stuck with the HGM, even the narrower version that I'm promoting. As I said to ACB above, the real issue in all of this to me is hermeneutical, and it would feel sort of anti-climactic to go through all of this work and find out that the real reason we disagree is because we have a different method of reading the Bible. Regarding the method, I do think it is worth highlighting a couple of things that I was a little confused on that perhaps are no disagreement at all.
One such point was when you said that you “believe it is more reasonable to think that God communicated a fuller understanding of the creation events to Moses.” As I noted above, I don’t see that this is much of a problem between us. The question is, and only is, what did Moses intend his words to mean? I have no problem with the idea that he and God talked about things, that he received special revelation, and that he wrote down those ideas. With respect to the
yomim, that would either mean that Moses knew that God created in six long, undefined periods of time and chose to use the word
yom in that particular capacity (as that is within the words semantic range), or else either God did not create the world in six long, undefined periods of time or God did and Moses didn’t know
that and he therefore chose to use the word
yom in apparent ignorance of the historical facts.
So to direct my fire at the traditional DA approach for a moment, it seems to me that we either have to claim that Moses knew God created the world in six long, undefined periods of time and chose
yom to signify that truth—in which case, we ought to translate the word as “age” rather than “day”—or else Moses’ cosmology is mistaken strictly speaking. At best, we have to redefine the doctrine of inerrancy here, and at worst, we have to be willing to claim that at least Genesis 1-3, if not 1-11 and possibly all the rest of the Bible, is mythical.
Your idea is intriguing because it gets past most of the blunt force of what I said just above. Your six-one pattern is, I think, fundamentally correct. Moses depicts God creating in six days and resting on the seventh. The question is whether or not that actually happened in real history. Did God actually create in six days and rest on the seventh, or did He not do so and we’re misreading the text?
I think you are trying to affirm the latter. You claim that “it is more the case that Moses would have understood the full implications of ‘day’ in Genesis 1 as something akin to a ‘phases’ or ‘periods’.” This is the part I think you need to focus on more. Let me revisit
what I said earlier about the idea of fuller implications:
There is a critical distinction to be made here between interpretation and application. Psalm 22 is applied to different people differently. David could never have known all of those applications (although God certainly did). In particular, he didn’t know how it would apply to the Messiah, only that it would (for it applies to all people: that was his point!). So let me say this clearly: there is one meaning or interpretation; there are many implications or applications.
I want to get a little more technical here and flesh out this distinction.
Interpretation deals with finding the referent of a word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, etc. If I say, “that tree is huge,” the referent of the word “tree” is the particular tree in reality I am talking about—or, to be tautological, the tree to which I am
referring. Now, I contend that except in cases of figurative language such as double entendres (a biblical example being John 3:3, “born
again/from above”), there is always and only a
single referent. Once we discover the referent, we may say we have discovered the “meaning.” As such, I contend that, with exception to certain figures of speech, whatever text we are dealing with has only a single meaning/interpretation. If we claim it means something other than what it refers to, we have made an error in discovering the meaning of the text (and so, of the author).
The case is different when we consider application. There can be as many applications of a text as there are people who read it. I may be able to apply the fact that the true is huge (the one meaning) and say that I can build my daughter a tree house. Unfortunately, our language gets a little sloppy here and we often confuse “meaning” with “application.” Consider these applications of the tree’s size in terms of meaning: That three is huge . . .
- . . . That means that it would make a great treehouse!
. . . so it wouldn’t be a good idea to try to cut it down.
. . . so I ought to have enough firewood this year.
. . . I’m going to enjoy its shade this year.
. . . I bet that’s why my grass isn’t growing very well back there
So in all of these examples, what is happening is we are basically drawing a logical inference or deduction of what we can or can’t, ought or ought not, do
given the tree’s side.
A good homiletician recognizes this distinction and uses it in sermon/lesson preparation. To illustrate, I’m going to steal an example from
Tony Guthrie’s book Crossing the Homiletical Bridge. He looks at Mark 1:1-8 and breaks it down this way:
- Main Idea of the Text : Mark was letting his readers see the impact of the ministry of a God-called and appointed servant in order to demonstrate his (John’s) effectiveness in ministry.
Thesis: Modern Christians should recognize that God desires to use each of us in effective ways for His purposes as He used John the Baptist.
Proposition: I want my listeners to understand that modern Christians should recognize God’s desire to use each of us in effective ways for His purposes as He used John the Baptist
So the main idea, the single meaning, the interpretation of Mark 1-8 is that John the Baptist, who was a common man (notice he never did any miracles!) was the frontrunner of Christ and used greatly for His glory. We start to shift towards application when we note that (per the thesis) we common people can be used greatly for his glory. And application virtually makes itself when you ask how we can be used greatly. Sticking with the text, Mark 1:1-5 reveals that John’s ministry was connected to the power of God and Mark 1:6-8 reveals that John’s ministry was complimented with humility: our own ministries ought to be connected with the awesome power of God and complimented with a heart-felt humility. And how
that plays out—how it applies—in your life is certainly going to be different how it (that is, how this one truth) plays out or applies in my life.
Having said all that, I go back to the “days” of Genesis 1. You’re agreeing (at least for the sake of argument) that Moses makes use of six “ordinary days” to set up this six-one pattern. The applications for that are many. The seventh year sabbatical, the year of Jubilee, and of course the Sabbath itself are all applications of this principle. Tie this in with the greater principle of Genesis 1—namely, that God is a God of order, and that creation is as much about establishing order (which is His very nature) as it is about creation
ex nihilo—and we can see that rest and worship are both part of the very intended order of things. How fitting, then, to take this day of rest and use it to honor the God who gave us both work and rest!
So there’s some great theology here. I’m just a bit fuzzy on how we can use the idea of application/greater implications of an ordinary day to see greater periods of time. Let me give you another example that will either clarify my objection and/or give you some tools to further refine your position here. Consider John 11:50, “You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.” This is a great, biblical example of someone speaking better than they knew. The meaning is clear. Better Jesus die than all of Israel be destroyed by Rome. Granted Caiaphas’ motivation for hoping for the death of Jesus was different than God’s—that is, he made a different application than John did—but the basic point is the same regardless. But in what sense would we say that Moses was speaking “better than he knew”? It isn’t on the level of intentionality. Caiaphas knew what he meant, and what he meant is exactly what happened. What he was wrong about it
why it was better for Jesus to die. Or further, while he was right
as far as he thought that Jesus’ death would be better than the whole nation’s destruction, he either failed to consider or was wrong in denying that Jesus’ death would actually bring blessing to the nation of Israel (a blessing which, I would add, is still future on my own eschatology!). But if Moses is depicting creation is six ordinary days, how do we “apply” this to say that it really “means” a very long period of time?
A possible way forward might be in your claim that Genesis 1 is prophecy of a sort. You say,
- The fuller implications being that yom also carries a greater implication than an ordinary day. One that "foreshadows", only casts a shadow backward over, the actual creation event (when God actually created) wherein the fuller implications are realised. This is in essence a “reverse prophecy.”
I have no problem with the temporal issue. And I’ve actually thought for some time now that Genesis 1 might be best understood as more related to prophecy than, say, the strict historical narrative of the Chronicles. Again, while I want to emphasize we might be on the right path, this stuck out to me like a sore thumb:
- To state another way, it’s just our human knowledge that needs to catch up in order to realise the fuller implications that God intended in the text.
I’m afraid the underlined part unintentionally gets us back into two intentions—a separation of the divine and human intention—that I’ve long rejected for reasons I’ve already outlined. To use prophecy as an example, it may be true that a prophecy is applied in a surprising and even unexpected way. What’s not and never is surprising is that the prophecy is fulfilled as it is written. Those later, unexpected fulfillments do not change the meaning of the original prophecy. So if Moses prophesied that the world was created in six ordinary days, how can we later say that the world was
literally created in six very long periods of time? It seems we are back to using the
yomim as a literary device, such that there is no literal, extra-biblical referent for the word “day.”
That view doesn’t necessarily have to say that the Bible is wrong or errant. It would only be wrong if Moses not only intended the “days” to refer to “ordinary days”
and to teach that God literally and historically created in such a manner. If you want to say that Moses knew that the ordinary days he spoke of were literary devices, then there is no necessary contradiction with reality. I wonder if this might be what’s in your mind, even if only in seed form, when you say,
- Clearly the pattern being followed is akin to that set in Genesis. And yet, at the time that Moses wrote Genesis it seems to me that Israel would have been fully practicing observing the Sabbath.
Here is an important point to grasp — just because Genesis is read and written chronologically from earlier to later, doesn’t mean that Moses and the audience at the time were not fully aware to the Law and social practices like keeping the Sabbath. If we assume Moses as the author, then Genesis would have likely been written at a time when Israel were settled.
Perhaps you are thinking that Moses took an existing structure—the seven day week with the Sabbath as a time of holy rest—and tailored the creation narrative around that idea. In other words, we have a question: do we have a seven day week with a rest on the seventh (that is, do we have a six-one pattern) because God so created the world; or is God depicted as so creating the world because we have this six-one pattern? Which is the original, and which is the copy?
I would insist that we don’t answer this question based on our preexisting theologies. We need to answer it on exegetical grounds. And if we decide that the
yomim are mere literary devices, such that creation is patterned after the six-one pattern so common in Israel life, what about Adam, Eve, the Tree of Knowedge, of Life, etc.? And what is the evidence for the answers we provide to these questions?
On a final note, you say,
- To conclude, I want to stress this was just an exercise. I believe God could have, and did, communicate the full creation to Moses. Moses may have had this via dream and flow of time showing that the periods were greater than a 24-hour day, or God and Moses may have simply had several direct exchanges. Why not?
I want to emphasize, again, that I don’t have any problem with God communicating his full intentions to Moses. Again, that is my very idea of inspiration. If Moses intended the
yomim to mean long periods of time, then I claim that the referent for the word was not an ordinary day but rather a long period of time. Therefore, we ought to translate the word “age.” If he intended it to refer to ordinary days but if he knew it actually referred to long periods of time, we have to show within the text that Moses is intending to use them as a mere literary device (akin the Framework hypothesis’ conception).
And just to further clarify, my problem isn’t with
yom itself being able to be understood a longer periods of time on the level of application rather than meaning/interpretation. But given the fact that I don’t think an application can ever change the original meaning, the problem I’m having trouble getting past is how Moses could have intended ordinary days and actually thought that the historical days answered to real things in history and then the claim that later Scripture adds this new meaning of long periods of time. It seems to me that if the long periods of time are there in the word, then we have to show either that Moses originally intended the long periods (which would require a translation of “age”) or else Moses originally intended the ordinary days to be literary devices that he knew did not answer to anything in history proper. You've done a good bit of that foundational work by noting and making central the six-one pattern. I think the parallels to Egyptian cosmology are probably in your favor, too. But it does seem that you have some more work to do here.
Oh dear, I'm [em]bracing myself now for support.