Define literal vs non-literal.

It comes down to the meaning of the original word and the context of the passageIn the case of 'God created the earth' its a literal statment about a physical thing. But the '6 days' aspect is dependent on the original meaning of the word 'day'...in hebrew the word used can mean any length of time so it shouldnt be taken as a literal 24 hour day as we know it. We have to consider it in the context of the original word.Also the context of the passage should be taken into account. Is the writer claiming to have seen a vision or to have witnessed an actual event or to be prophecying a future event?If you look at the book of Revelation, right at the outset the Apostle John says "I saw a vision of things presented in signs" These 'signs' are symbols of something literal, but the sign he saw itself was not literal. EG he saw the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse. Those men on horses were not literal but they were symbols that represented something literal.So context and original word meanings is what determine literalness. Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

the hebrew word YOM is used in a variety of ways even within the one passage.Gen 1:5 says And God began calling the light Day, but the darkness he called NightSo even in genesis we see that Yom (day) does not mean a literal 24 hours....the 'light' was called day...the light being 12hours duration.Then in Gen 2:4 we see the entire period of creation, each of the six creative days including the creation of the universe/heavens, is called 1 day
4This is a history of the heavens and the earth in the time of their being created, in the day that God made the heaven AND earth'This should show every YEC that genesis does not attempt the describe the earth as being created in a literal 6 days. We have to understand it in the context of the hebrew language, not our own english.the hebrews didnt recon time according to hours anyway. They began their 'day' at sunset and there is no indication that the Hebrews used hours in dividing up the 'day' until after the Babylonian exile. The word hour found in the King James Version is translated from the Aramaic word 'sha`ah′, which, literally, means a look and is correctly translated as a moment.This is what i mean when i say that the context, hebrew language and even their customs has to be taken into consideration before arriving at any conclusions as to the literalness of any given text. Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

the proof is in the hebrew language itself. Remember, the bible was written in ancient hebrew, not english. We have to know the meaning behind the hebrew language and we know that Yom can mean any length of time according to the ancient hebrews. They did not have days of the week like we do, they did not count the hours. They measured time by seasons so its impossible that they had in mind a 24hour time frame.Wilson’s Old Testament Word Studies says about the hebrew word Yom:
A day; it is frequently put for time in general, or for a long time; a whole period under consideration ... Day is also put for a particular season or time when any extraordinary event happens.There are many examples of the same word Yom being used in such ways. for example it is used when refering to the passing of seasons at Zechariah 14:8. Also a 7 day fesitval is called The 'day' of harvest
At Psalm 90:4 a thousand years are likened to one day. So in harmony with how the hebrews understood the word Yom, its only reasonable that we apply the same meaning to the book of genesis.we have to understand the scriptures in harmony with how the hebrews understood it. Zechariah 14:8"And it must occur in that day (YOM) [that] living waters will go forth from Jerusalem...In summer and in winter it will occur."Genesis 30:14Now Reu′ben went walking in the days (YOM) of the wheat harvestPsalm 25:13 Just like the coolness of snow in the day (YOM) of harvestYom is also used with reference to a particular person, as for example, the days of Noah and the days of Lot.Lu 17:26-30; Isa 1:1.The understanding of the hebrew word has been applied to genesis for a very long time. In 'A Religious Encyclopaedia' of 1894 in volume 1 on page 613 it reads : The days of creation were creative days, stages in the process, but not days of twenty-four hours each.

it shows that Yom can be any length of time...it could be a thousand years or it could be 3 months or it could be one persons lifetime.this is exactly why Yom CAN be compared to one thousand years. there is no reason why it shouldnt. An evening is generally the end of the day and the morning is the beginning of a new day, so in terms of a period of creation, there is going to be an evening and morning. It's not literal in the sense of calling a 'Day' a 24hour period of time.Its very similar to saying 'ages' in english. 'It took him ages to come out'we know 'ages' here could mean 1 hour or 5 hours or 10 hours...its describing a length of time but not giving an exact figure. Do you mean, whats the proof it is meant to be taken literally in Genesis?Well, we know that it is in harmony with science to believe that each creative period lasted for a very long time, so there is no problem in the literalness of the account of creation in that sense.I personally believe the account to be literal as did other bible writers including Jesus Christ who spoke of Adam and Eve along with other historical figures such as Moses and king David. there is one line of evidence I could use to show that the bible presents the 7th day as still progressing. Genesis states that each of the six 'creative days' came to an end and it says the 7th day began and God proceeded to rest on that day and called it a sabbath. Ge 2:1-3. But unlike the preceeding 6 days, it says nowhere that 'there came to be evening and there came to be morning a seventh day'Then more than 4,000 years afterward, Paul indicated that Sabbath day was still in progress. At Hebrews 4:1-11 in speaking about Gods Sabbath he quotes Genesis 2:2 and said: Let us therefore do our utmost to enter into that rest. So basically the apostle believed that Gods rest day had not ended in his time. This is strong proof that the diciples did not view genesis as a fable but rather as a literal account of Gods creation. Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

I agree that science has its proper place in society, but it is not an infallible guiding light whereas the Bible provides us with knowledge of God and his purposes that cannot be gleaned from any other source.so when they dig up a human bone and put a date of 200,000 years on it, i am very sceptical just as you are of the bibles claim that humans have been around for 6,036 years. And yes, i believe the bible over such science because there is more evidence that the bible is a true source of information then the few areas where it touches on scientific matters.dont get me wrong, its not simply because i choose to believe the bible over science, its because there is evidence to the contrary.
Besides this, dating methods are not infallible....there are many variables that could give such an old reading. IOW what im saying is when the science contradicts the bible, it doesnt ruffle my feathers lol. Edited by Peg, : No reason given.Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

What changed was our understanding of the hebrew language. It was a hidden language for a very long time because it stopped being used...even modern jews dont read ancient hebrew. But as archeological evidence came to light on the hebrew language, the meaning of these words became clearer. Just because some people interpret it to be 6 literal days does not mean the bible was wrong. from the time Adam was created, the Bible gives a year-by-year count of time that links up with reliable secular history. These records were incorporated in the early books of the Bible and preserved as a record of time. This history tells us that mankind has been here for 6,036 years.on the other hand we have the geological clocks that run too slow to provide anything absolute, or the radiocarbon clock, which works fairly well for the first few thousand years, but starts going a bit wirey beyond that. And if you are discerning, you will question why the majority of radiocarbon measurements on human finds fall within the bibles 6,000-year range.a nuclear physicist named W.F. Libby, a pioneer in radiocarbon dating, stated in the journal Science in 1961: No. I trust the account of human existence as found in the timeline of the bible because when we look at human history we know that human language is within the 6,000 's, We know that that majority of human artifacts found and dated fall within that range. We know civilisations emerged in the 6000 year range and that the farming revolution appeared within the 6,000 year range so with all that evidence, why should I beleive that humans existed a million years ago when the only evidence they present is their word that a bone we found was dated to be that old???Are you telling me that i should disregard all that physical evidence for the 6,000 years of human habitation for the a piece of bone that has been given a date based on a suspect dating method??? Is that reasonable? Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

i think your nit picking.a very long time is a fairly broad way to describe what scientists call billions of years... are billions of years a very long time? thats right, there are very few absolutes in terms of radiocarbon dating becaues there are many variables.ie, cosmic rays are never steady, they could have been stronger or weaker in the past , solar flares change the level of radiocarbon and these occur from time to time, the earth’s magnetic field moves as it's doing right now and my guess is that this would affect radiocarbon levels....even the changing volume and temperature of the ocean can affect it and the climate is always changing. These reasons should be enough to make anyone think twice before accepting radiocarbon dating.Besides these reasons, i think the most significant reason to doubt evolutions theory that mankind have been here longer then 6,000 years is the fact that of all the dates found for samples associated with man’s presence, the vast majority have turned out to be less than 6,000 years ago.So tell my why you believe the dating of anything by the radio carbon method is absolute??

Hi Apothecus without knowing exactly what their reasoning is...or how they explain it...i am left a little confused.Cardinal numbers have a full value, but ordinal numbers hold partial values.with ordinal numbers, such as 1st, 2nd 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th, it would be necessary to subtract one to obtain the full number.... so how can they subtract 1 from the 1st day???if they subtract 1 from the 2nd day, it would really be the first day and so forth which would imply a non literal interpretation anyway.

because from 6pm - 6am (evening to morning or morning to evening) the number of hours are only 12.For some reason you are still counting them as 24. How do you get 24???If the genesis account says 'and their came to be evening and morning a 1st/2nd/3rd day' then what happened to the other 12 hours of each of these days? They've gone missing becaues the text doesnt say there came to be 'evening and evening' which would be 24 hours...it says 'evening & morning' which is only 12 hours.IOW, the 'day' in genesis is not a literal 24 hours as you keep trying to assert. the Yom does not have to mean 24 hours though. Genesis itself shows this. you said that my question about eve being created on the same day as adam was moot, but in fact it is not.The story implies that Adam lived for a length of time before eve was created...yet she was also created on the 6th day. So how can this be? If he lived alone for long enough to name all the animals and begin to feel lonely, surely this was longer then a few hours. This must have been several years at least.but it was still on the 6th day. Obviously the story implies that the 6th day was much longer then 24hours. you have taken Jesus out of context here. The beginning of creation was the universe, the planets and stars ,also the only begotten son and the angels... not adam and eve. So you've simply misread this verse. Jesus is not saying that the very first thing God created was Adam and Eve...even the genesis account does not say this, so you are contradicting genesis which means you've got the wrong interpretation of Jesus words. Really he is just refering to the human creation here, nothing more.You could read it like this
"From the beginning of mankinds creation, he made them male and female"

Can you please count these numbers and tell me how many numbers you see? (i've made it easy and numbered each of the hours for you)0. 6pm - beginning of evening/darkness
1. 7pm
2. 8pm
3. 9pm
4. 10pm
5. 11pm
6. 12am
7. 1am
8. 2am
9. 3am
10. 4am
11. 5am
12. 6am - morning - beginning of lightnotice its 12 and not 24? You are saying that 'evening to morning' always means 24 hours. As you can see, it doesnt mean 24 hours at all. It simply means the darkness to the light, which is actually only 12.this is why i keep repeating that the Yom is not a literal 24 hours in length. And i do not claim that the Yom is billions of years either....i keep saying that it is an 'unspecified' length of time. It could be billions of years, or it could be millions of years or it could be thousands of years or hundreds of years....its UNSPECIFIED. It could be any of those....it could be 24 hours...or it could not be 12 hours or it could be 500 hours.One thing we can be confident of is that the the evidence within the book of Genesis does not point to 24 hours because as you can see, there are only 12 hours between the dark and the light. Yom simply means a 'time' an 'age' ....it doesnt mean a day as we know it.Further internal evidence to show that it cannot be 12 hours is from the fact that Adam lived for some time before Eve, he lived long enough to name all of the animals in the garden and to become lonely....this must have been longer then 12 hours of life for him.More internal evidence that it cannot be 1 single day as we know it comes from the fact that the 7th day did not come to an end....its still going. Ahhhh you see , this is where you have to open your eyes a little more.In jesus great prophecy about the 'great tribulation' he was warning his followers of the turmoil PEOPLE of the world would experience. The people up to that time had experienced many troubles, but the great tribulation that was to come in the 'last days' would be unprecedented in all human history.The beginning of the creation is refering to mankinds creation...not the earths. Before people existed, they experienced no tribulation because they did not exist....but from Adams creation (the beginning of the creation) onward, humans have experienced tribulation.Its human history Jesus is refering to. Yes, the beginning of MANKINDS creation...not the earths. He is refering to human activiity again... the first murdered man was Abel...but he wasnt murdered by his brother on the same day Adam and Eve were created. If it takes 9 months for a child to be born...and Able was a grown man when he was killed. How many days do you think he lived before he died? Yes, it says the earth was created in 6 YOM's.... As Jesus told us to listen to Moses that is exactly what we should do. And as Moses wrote in the Hebrew tongue, we should understand what a Yom can mean.and how long is a YOM?No one knows because in Hebrew it means an 'unspecified length of time'. It is unclear absolutely. But in the grand scheme of things, we dont NEED to know exactly how long each of the creative days were.Time keeping is only important from mans creation onward....this is why the bible chronology shows Adam to have been created in the year 4026BCE making the beginnig of human history 6,036 years ago. That is all we need to know.

wow great pointTY.

which is exactly how the bible describes the earth before God began to work on itGenesis 1:2 Now the earth proved to be formless and waste and there was darkness upon the surface of the watery deep"It describes a planet that existed without form, in darkness, a wasteland....just like any of the other planets. there is an alternative explanation for this which I think is quite reasaonable.On day 1, the expression Let light come to be was used. The Hebrew word for light is ’ohr, which is light in a general sense. But on the 4th day, the word changes to ma‧’ohr′, which means the 'source' of light. IOW the sun was already existing... it wasnt 'created' on the 4th day.Rather, on the 1st day, the light that would have been seen by an earthly observer was diffused light coming thru the atmosphere, but because the atmosphere was thick with cloud cover, the source of light could not be seen. Just as today on a cloudy overcast day we still have light but cannot see the sun.But on the 4th day a change occurs in the atmosphere that diminishes the amount of atmospheric cover so that the sun and moon can be seen from an earthly perspective. Edited by Peg, : No reason given.Edited by Peg, : No reason given.

hang on a tick. firstly genesis doesnt say there was no sun.
It says there was light but the 'source' of that light was not able to be seen. Just as sometimes we cannot see the sun thru the clouds.Problem 1 is not a problem at all. God caused the light to penetrate the layers of atmosphere that were blocking it out. In vs 3 he makes the light break thru the atmospher, and vs 4 he causes the earth to begin rotating thus creating a period of darkness and a period of light.Problem 2 is not a problem. On day 3 he creates vegetation yes, we know there is already light hitting the earth at this stage for vs 3 tells us, so this light would have been sufficient for the process of photosynthesis to occur. And because the atmosphere was initially rich in carbon dioxide the climate would have been very hot but the growth of vegetation during the 3rd day would have absorb some of this heat and released oxygen thus making the animal life that was to be created in the 5th day possible.then during the 4th day, the sky clears up so that from an earthly perspective, the sun, moon and stars (which were already existing becasue vs 3 tells us that their light came to be on the earth) would become clearly visible as they are today.Vs 16 doesnt say God 'CREATED' the luminaries. The hebrew word there is not bara, which is the word for 'create'. The word used in vs 16 is wai‧ya. So it doesnt say he 'created' (bara) the illuminaries. But rather he 'made' them to do something. This is in the same sense that we say "i'll make you laugh" for instance.Gen 1:16"And God proceeded to make the two great luminaries... " So rather them create them, he simply made them do something. The rest of the verse says"the greater luminary for dominating the day and the lesser luminary for dominating the night, and also the stars"Vs 14 shows the purpose of these luminaries
"and they must serve as signs and for seasons and for days and years" The word used in vs 16 is wai‧ya. So it doesnt say he 'created' (bara) the illuminaries. But rather he 'made' them to do something. Not really. Vs 6 says that God divided the waters beneath and the waters above.... what were the waters above if they were not some thick cover of cloud or some other sort of vapor? I never said it was dark for the first 3 days. Genesis says that the light was hitting the earth in the first day.The darkness that covered the earth prior to this had nothign to do with the first creative day.

i've already explained this but i'll do it again. In vs 3 Let LIGHT come to be the hebrew word used for light is ’ohr,whereas on the 4th day, the hebrew word changes to ma‧’ohr′, and is translated as Luminary... because ma.ohr means 'source of light' as opposed to the light mentioned in vs 3.So if the first day had light (ohr) but no source of light (mahor) then we can say that the source was there, but it wasnt visible.....just like on a cloudy day. The sun which is the source of light (mahor) is still in the sky, its just not visible. Tell my how a source of light, such as the sun, can be blocked out?Havent you ever looked at the sky on a cloudy day? You can see the light from the sun even though the sky is covered in a layer of cloud. You keep asking how day 1 could have light, but the sun not be created until day 4... Im showing you that it doesnt have to mean that at all.The light from the sun can light up the earth without the sun being visible in the sky. That is a fact.
. I already explained that the hebrew word used in Day 4 is not the hebrew word for create.The word is one that means 'made to do' as opposed to 'create'So in mentioning the luminaries in day 4, genesis is simply saying that God made them do something new....he made them appear in the sky...he made them to be visible. This indicates a major change in the atmosphere for now the sky was clear enough to actually see the sun and moon and stars. who said the sun stopped shining? You sound very confused. the hebrew word for create is 'bara' - it is mentioned in Gen 1:1
the hebrew word for made is 'asah' - it is used in Vs 16 about the sun, moon and stars.asah does not mean create....it means 'made to do'On the 4th day he made the luminaries occupy a new relationship toward earth. When it is said, God put them in the expanse of the heavens to shine upon the earth, this would indicate that they now became discernible from the surface of the earth, as though they were in the expanse. They also now had a new purpose which was to 'serve as signs and for seasons and for days and years' exactly, and have you never looked up at the sky on a cloudy day? Is the sun, the source of light, visible in the sky? The hebrew word used for 'light' does not describe the sun.The hebrew word used here is ’ohr, it means general light, not the source of light.,The sun would be the source of light, right?
The hebrew word in vs 14 about the sun is maohr, Its means light 'source'.They are different. The light that comes from the sun is not the physical sun. Its a byproduct of the sun. Genesis says that light came thru... so yes at one stage it was blocked out when there was 'darkness upon the surface of the watery deep'but God caused the light to shine thru to the earth...'and there came to be light'This happened way back on the 1st day...vegetation came on the 3rd day so by this stage there was enough light for vegetation to grow. no thanks.
im not a YEC so i dont need any of their information.I am consistent, i dont think you are though lol .

i've studied a little hebrew and i can assure you that as soon as you add any consonants to a root word, the meaning changes. This is how the hebrew language is structured. Its structured on root words (which are always 3 letters) then additional letters change the meaning of the root.also, I doubt your concordance is using the spelling of the ancient hebrew language, its most likely using modern hebrew. I am using ancient hebrew which spelling. No its not. Take a basic biblical hebrew course and you'll see that you are wrong. i've already done that twice. 'ohr' is light in the general sense. It is what is mentioned in vs 3 on day 1. Light in general was made to hit the earth.In verse 14-16, the source of that light (ma'ohr) was made to be seen in the expanse.Rotherham's Emphasised Bible has a footnote on Luminaries. It says In ver. 3, ’r [’ohr], light diffused while the Hebrew word ma‧’ohr′ in verse 14 means something affording light. What would cause the light to be diffused? Cloud cover. The light still gets to the earth, but it is diffused by the layers of cloud... just as it is today. your reasoning has flatlined here.why did God bother making oxygen if humans werent going to use it immediately, why did God bother making vegetation for them to eat if they werent going to use it immediately?? Why did he bother making dry land appear on earth if humans werent going to need immediately????seriously. Debate if you want to debate, but stupid arguments are a waste of webspace. who mentioned anything about an eclipse. ???Im talking about cloud cover, water vapor... get it??? I dont think you get it. You still cant honestly answer my simple question about weather we can see the sun in the sky on an overcast day. you've flatlined again.Night time is the absence of the sun.Yes, he called the 'light' day. So why did the sun need a name other then 'sun' if he called it 'day'??? show me in the bible where it says that the universe was in darkness because there was no sun?There are many suns in the universe. Ours is just one. So are you saying that God made all other suns at the same time he made our sun??? LOL. and you say i have the scritpures confused.The darkness was covering the water deep way back on the first day. God began his creative works on the earth and made light to appear on earth. Go back to verse 2. i dont use their information.