Bad hermenuetic. EVERY time in the OT, when a number is used in conjunction with the word day, it refers to a 24 hour period. On top of that, God described "Evening and morning" as being a day. Taken together, it is obvious that the intention is a 24 hour day. It was NEVER suggested to mean anything different, until people started trying to compromise scripture with the false assumptions of evolution.Consider:
And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day
And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.
And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day
and so on...
BTW: the stages of the creation as described in Genesis map very nicely to what an observer on the surface of the earth would see in fast forward as the earth formed according to the current theories of science.
If one reads the sequence recorded in Genesis 1, the scripture has the sequence of events completely opposite the evolution sequence. Scripture has Earth before sun & stars, water before land, light before the sun, plants before the sun, birds before land animals.
Finally, if it is symbolic, then the earth had vegetation aons before the Sun was created. The two theories are completely incompatable!!!
“EVERY time in the OT, when a number is used in conjunction with the word day, it refers to a 24 hour period. On top of that, God described “Evening and morning” as being a day. Taken together, it is obvious that the intention is a 24 hour day”
Indicating an order by specifying first, second etc. in no way forces the meaning to be litteral, likewise for the use of morning and evening etc. When we talk of the dawn of the Roman Empire, we are not talking of a literal morning on one specific day. Interpreting Genesis’s use of day to indicate a stage of unknown length in the creation of the earth is perfectly valid.
“It was NEVER suggested to mean anything different, until people started trying to compromise scripture with the false assumptions of evolution.”
The theory of evolution has NOTHING to do with explaining the process of the earth’s creation. Astrophysics does that, and it does so mathematically with the hydrostatic equation which is derived from Newtonian physics and validated in several contexts.
“If one reads the sequence recorded in Genesis 1, the scripture has the sequence of events completely opposite the evolution sequence. Scripture has Earth before sun & stars, water before land, light before the sun, plants before the sun, birds before land animals.”
You did not read carefully what I said, it maps well to what an OBSERVER on the surface of the earth would see (in fast forward). The earth, as a proto-planet, would exist in it’s orbit around the proto-sun long before the sun actually reached the point of igniting. Before that point it would also start to glow a dull red from the heat generated as it collapsed (blackbody radiation), and that red light would be diffused through the solar nebula the the whole system would be clouded in. An observer on the earth at this point would see some light, but probably not be able to spot a specific source of light. Later when the sun ignited the solar winds it generated began to push the solar nebula back, first making the sun and moon visible, and later clearing things up enough that the stars would become visible.
I don’t have time to go through the whole mapping, but I do recall the sudden realization in my astrophysics course in university that what the professor was describing fit so well with the Biblical account if you assume that Moses is recounting personal observations from the surface of the earth. The professor was not trying to make that point either, as far as I knew he was a non-religious as any other prof. I believe that God showed Moses what happened and Moses recorded his observations to the best of his ability given the language of the day didn’t give him the words to be as clear and specific as a scientist today could be.