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To: pby
I believe that Adam was created on the sixth day, and that he lived 930 years.
I do not believe that the word day is representative of a 24 hour period. I do believe that the original word Yom, translated to day, refers to a lengthy period of time.BR> I think God is the creator of time, but time does not apply to Him.

My reasons:

Psalm 90:4
For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night

2 Peter 3:8
But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.

Revelation 1:8
"I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, "who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty."

The phrase, "In the day" is frequently used throughout the Bible as an expression of time. Here are some examples.

Psalm 95:8
Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness
(the Israelites were in the wilderness for 40 years.

Philippians 2:16
Holding forth the word of life; that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain.
(in the day of Christ. Salvation now comes through Christ instead of the law. We are still in the day of Christ.)

Ezekiel 30:9
9In that day shall messengers go forth from me in ships to make the careless Ethiopians afraid, and great pain shall come upon them, as in the day of Egypt: for, lo, it cometh. (The plagues lasted more than 24 hours.)


5And say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; In the day when I chose Israel, and lifted up mine hand unto the seed of the house of Jacob, and made myself known unto them in the land of Egypt, when I lifted up mine hand unto them, saying, I am the LORD your God;
(There's a lot going on here. There is God's choosing of Jacob as the the father of the Twelve tribes. This can even be taken back to when the Lord made his covenant with Abraham. There is the oppression in Egypt, and the Exodus. This was not on the same day)

In the day can also be somewhat ambiguous concerning time.

Nahum 1:7
The LORD is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust in him

Psalm 110:3
3Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth.

It is also used in reference to the creation of man.

Gen 5:1 This is the book of the genealogy of Adam. In the day that God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. 2 He created them male and female, and blessed them and called them Mankind in the day they were created.

This is some other interesting information about day as it relates to the original text of the Bible before translation. This came from a previous thread.

The Age of the Universe
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1576941/posts

The creation of time.
Each day of creation is numbered. Yet there is discontinuity in the way the days are numbered. The verse says: "There is evening and morning, Day One." But the second day doesn't say "evening and morning, Day Two." Rather, it says "evening and morning, a second day." And the Torah continues with this pattern: "Evening and morning, a third day... a fourth day... a fifth day... the sixth day." Only on the first day does the text use a different form: not "first day," but "Day One" ("Yom Echad"). Many English translations make the mistake of writing "a first day." That's because editors want things to be nice and consistent. But they throw out the cosmic message in the text! Because there is a qualitative difference, as Nachmanides says, between "one" and "first." One is absolute; first is comparative.
Nachmanides explains that on Day One, time was created. That's a phenomenal insight. Time was created. You can't grab time. You don't even see it. You can see space, you can see matter, you can feel energy, you can see light energy. I understand a creation there. But the creation of time? Eight hundred years ago, Nachmanides attained this insight from the Torah's use of the phrase, "Day One." And that's exactly what Einstein taught us in the Laws of Relativity: that there was a creation, not just of space and matter, but of time itself.

Here is somemore interesting stuff.

The Talmud (Chagiga, ch. 2), in trying to understand the subtleties of Torah, analyzes the word "choshech." When the word "choshech" appears in Genesis 1:2, the Talmud explains that it means black fire, black energy, a kind of energy that is so powerful you can't even see it. Two verses later, in Genesis 1:4, the Talmud explains that the same word -- "choshech" -- means darkness, i.e. the absence of light.
Other words as well are not to be understood by their common definitions. For example, "mayim" typically means water. But Maimonides says that in the original statements of creation, the word "mayim" may also mean the building blocks of the universe.
Another example is Genesis 1:5, which says, "There is evening and morning, Day One." That is the first time that a day is quantified: evening and morning. Nachmanides discusses the meaning of evening and morning. Does it mean sunset and sunrise? It would certainly seem to.
But Nachmanides points out a problem with that. The text says "there was evening and morning Day One... evening and morning a second day... evening and morning a third day." Then on the fourth day, the sun is mentioned. Nachmanides says that any intelligent reader can see an obvious problem. How do we have a concept of evening and morning for the first three days if the sun is only mentioned on Day Four? There is a purpose for the sun appearing only on Day Four, so that as time goes by and people understand more about the universe, you can dig deeper into the text.
Nachmanides says the text uses the words "Vayehi Erev" -- but it doesn't mean "there was evening." He explains that the Hebrew letters Ayin, Resh, Bet -- the root of "erev" -- is chaos. Mixture, disorder. That's why evening is called "erev", because when the sun goes down, vision becomes blurry. The literal meaning is "there was disorder." The Torah's word for "morning" -- "boker" -- is the absolute opposite. When the sun rises, the world becomes "bikoret", orderly, able to be discerned. That's why the sun needn't be mentioned until Day Four. Because from erev to boker is a flow from disorder to order, from chaos to cosmos. That's something any scientist will testify never happens in an unguided system. Order never arises from disorder spontaneously and remains orderly. Order always degrades to chaos unless the environment recognizes the order and locks it in to preserve it. There must be a guide to the system. That's an unequivocal statement.

Now, imagine Moses seeing creation of this magnitude through a vision, or dream. How does one begin to put it into words!

Yes, Genesis is inspired by God. It's origin is not from man. Regarding your verse about prophecy,keep in mind also, the story of creation is not prophecy. I see no place that Moses interpreted it wrong. He worded it according to our understanding.

According to the Bible, man was not created until God gave us a living spirit. Animals are alive, as told to us in Genesis, but there is no mention of a living spirit. This is only in reference to man.
660 posted on 04/28/2006 11:21:53 AM PDT by Conservative Texan Mom (Some people say I'm stubborn, when it's usually just that I'm right.)
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To: Conservative Texan Mom
How do your referenced verses have any direct relationship to the creation account (talk about liberties with context)?

If Adam was created on the sixth day, and the sixth day was an unknown, long period of time, then how was Adam 930 years old at the time of his death?

If the word "day" means a long period of time, then what does "evening" and "morning" mean?

672 posted on 04/28/2006 11:46:46 AM PDT by pby
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