Genesis 1, the literal text
It's remarkable that people dispute whether the Bible should be understood literally without actually thinking about what it means to read something literally. There's no doubt from how they handled it that Jesus and the apostles read the text literally, because you have to do that in order to know what the words really say. Once you know what's being said, you're better placed to decide other matters, like whether it's true, whether it should be understood figuratively, and so forth. Especially where Genesis is concerned, people are amazingly inclined to move on to such points before settling the minor detail of what the words actually say.
My trade taught me what it means to read literally. No one thinks program listings should be read figuratively, mythologically, poetically, or any such rubbish. We always read a listing literally, don't we?
Well, not exactly. So long as we see no problems, we run our eyes lightly over it, scanning the comments and believing what they say, and moving on to whatever it is we're looking for. When it doesn't work, that's different. Then we go line by line, executing each instruction in our heads or even writing out on paper the changes to the registers and storage. We do everything we can to read what's actually there, rather than what we expect to see, and we find that discipline difficult. But that's what it is to read something literally. In programming, we do that when something doesn't work. We need to do that with the Bible, too, when something doesn't work. Let's do that now with Genesis 1.
Reading Genesis 1 literally, we see no evidence that the sun has anything to do with the first three days. Far from it, because it only appears on the fourth day. Solar days are determined by the sun, just as it is written, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and for years" (Gen. 1:14-15).
On the contrary, the days of creation arise not from the sun but from the
word of God (Gen. 1:4, 6, 9, 14, 20, 24, 2:2-3). Since the utterances of
God are not regulated by the heavenly bodies (Gal. 4:8-11), there is literally
nothing in the text telling us how long these days are. There is no
reason to think they are the same length, as measured by solar days, since they
are determined by when God speaks, and the rhythms moving God to speak are not
regulated by the movement of heavenly bodies. For this reason Peter says
that with Him a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one
day. In fact we see this in John's gospel, where the first day is from
the beginning until John the Baptist (John
Now someone will tell me that John is speaking metaphorically here.
But that's exactly backwards. Going to Genesis 1, we find it explicitly
stated that solar days are metaphorical, "signs" given by
means of the sun. Certainly the word of God is more real than the sun
created by it. Because the sun is a mere image, an icon, so are the days
depending on it. The literal days, the real days, are those proceeding
from God's speech. Jesus is the true light, the sun the sign, the
metaphor. The heavenly bodies are for signs, so the days and
nights proceeding from them are indeed signs, not the
realities themselves, just as the tabernacle and its furnishings were signs of
the heavenly realities. The literal is not what we see, but what we do
not see. What we see is the shadow, the metaphor, the icon (2 Cor.
What does the literal text in Genesis tell us about the lengths of the literal days? We know that the seventh day began in Genesis 2:2, and that it was still in progress when Psalm 95 was written. Hebrews 4:7-9 points out that we know this because we know that Joshua had not given the people rest by bringing them into the land of promise - if he had, Psalm 95 would not have told us long after Joshua that this rest is still to be entered into. A literal reading of the text therefore compels us to agree that the seventh day must be a lot longer than a solar day.
On the sixth day we find that God first made all the animals and Adam, and some time later made Adam a wife. The process incorporated Adam finding that he was alone and that none of the animals, as he named them, would suit. Someone will say that God must have squeezed all this into 24 hours supernaturally, but that's not a literal reading of the text. That's making the text fit into a predetermined idea of how long it was.
Actually, Jesus disposed of the method of inventing miraculous stuff not in
the text to make it say what you want when he was at the synagogue at
He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. We know how He worked with Adam, because we know how He works with us, and He is forever the same. The sixth day was doubtless shorter than the seventh, but it was certainly a while. Finally, by a literal reading the entire act of creating the heavens and the earth takes place on one day (Genesis 2:4). Can that day possibly be less than six solar days, by any reading?
I learned all this from John the apostle, and it happened in this way. For quite some years, I experienced the uncomfortable fact that Jesus was baptized in John 1:29-34, and that "again the next day" Jesus was starting to gather disciples. But I knew that immediately after being baptized Jesus was driven into the wilderness to be tempted forty days by the devil, and He definitely didn't bring any disciples with Him there.
I did manage to blip over this somehow for quite a while, but eventually the Teflon just wore off my blipper, and there I was, stuck. This minor problem was in my face. The value of being stuck like that is you do start to notice things you didn't see before. Forty days were sitting there in the midst of what could by no reading of John 1:29-39 be more than two days.
I tried to rock myself off for some years, but then I noticed the wedding on the third day (John 2:1), and eventually I got to asking God where the other two days were. They could only be in Chapter 1, and, indeed, there they are. Then I became unstuck, although a great deal of my previous "thinking" came unravelled. John the apostle makes the Genesis creation account very clear; I've never heard a better understanding than his.
After the creation account, Genesis 2:4 begins what some carelessly call a second creation account, which supposedly conflicts with the first. And this conflict supposedly went unnoticed until the past few centuries, when really smart people began looking at the Bible and seeing what all those idiots in centuries past had missed. They remind me of how ignorant Mark Twain's father was when Twain was 18 years old, but how three years later he was amazed at what the old man had learned. When will these Bible scholars reach the wisdom of Twain at 21?
Genesis 2:4 introduces the generations of the heavens and the earth, in the day (singular) that God made earth and heaven. "Generations," literally Hebrew "Toledoth," is not "generation," and definitely not "account." That last, especially, is translator's license, and this is an especially bad place to indulge it. What follows is literally a genealogy, not a creation account. Also the perspective is not hovering over the waters, as in the creation account, but a particular spot on the dry land, which had already been formed.
At this spot, there was as yet no "shrub of the field" or "plant of the field" - that is, no domesticated plants like wheat and barley, the reasons given being (1) no rain and (2) no man to till the ground. In that part of the world you don't need rain if you have someone to till the ground, and in particular, to irrigate, as it is to this day. But with neither rain nor man, you have a problem, and this problem is part of the evidence in Genesis 2 that man needs to subdue the earth in order to fill it. This lack sets the stage for man, just as man's loneliness a little later in the story occasions God's creation of the woman.