How long was a Bible day in Genesis?

Answer 1

To echo the expert answer above, the Genesis stories of Creation are allegorical and not historical. Not even the Jewish nation regarded Genesis as fact, but as a Hebrew poem where, reading between the lines, we hear of human nature and its relationship (whether broken or not) with God and within itself. To the ancient Jew, Adam was a real concept, as confirmed in Paul, but even the name 'Adam' means 'humanity' rather than a normal, personal name. Creationists insist on the factual, historical nature of Genesis but are in grave error. It was never designed to be factual, but poetic containing truth wrapped up in literature. Moreover, the only references, outside Genesis, in the Old Testament, refer again to this allegorical father of humanity rather than a real person. Even in the New Testament, the only real references to Adam come from Paul. Reading in context (and not quoting individual verses) Paul upholds this allegorical yet true nature of humanity's fall, and never refers to Adam as a 'real' person. The only reference is in the genealogies of Christ. Matthew omits Adam entirely, whilst Luke, whose genealogy is inconsistent with Matthew, calls Adam 'the son of God' (!)... hence these both need to be taken with a health warning.

The number of times Jesus himself mentions the Genesis story as fact - and the number of times he mentions Adam - is precisely zero.

Therefore to speak of the length of a 'day' in Genesis is meaningless. But, even if taken literally, the words of Genesis point to an unspecified period of time for Creation rather than the six 24-hour days of the Creationist.

Contrary to the above, the word for 'day' used in Genesis does not mean a 24-hour period. The Hebrew word 'yom' has three meanings. First - a period of 12 hours - as we would use the word 'day' as in 'daylight hours'. Secondly, 'yom' means a literal 'Day' - 24 hours. But thirdly, it has the meaning of an 'indefinite period of time' as the older generation would say 'well, in our day, this is what would have happened....' or, more simply 'in olden days'. The actual meaning in Genesis is most probably the latter one as the 12-hour and 24-hour days do not fit in with either Genesis itself nor scientific thinking. As an example, Gen 1:5 states that there was 'day and night' in one 'day' - which rules out the 12-hour day. Similarly Gen 1:11 and 12 confirm that in one 'day' plants grew, trees formed and bore seeds. Clearly, if a 'day;' was literally 24 hours, this would be absurd. To state that a day in scripture is always a 24-hour period is not only misleading but suggests a certainty for which the real evidence from scripture does not support, but instead is the result of a presupposition that Genesis is a literal historical account - which it is not.

So, even if one took Genesis literally, common sense would confirm that these 'days' are periods of time of unspecified length.

Answer: The Hebrew word for day in the Genesis account, "yom," is always used for a 24 hour period in the Scriptures. Besides this, the reckoning in the Genesis account of Creation represents the first and subsequent days as "the evening and the morning were the first day," etc. Note that it doesn't say "the morning and the evening." This was a standard representation for a Jewish reckoning of a 24 hour day.

Answer 2

In the first creation account of Genesis (Genesis 1:1-2:4a), it is made very clear that one day was the same as we know as one day. And the Hebrew word for 'day' was used, not one of the many Hebrew words that did in fact exist to describe long periods of time. In spite of this, some creationists have sought to minimise the problem that this account is contradicted by science, by attempting to identify each day as a very long period of time.

Even if the problem of the duration of creation in the first creation account could be resolved, this would achieve little because of the second creation account, in Genesis 2:4b-2:25. Although it is clearly a different and in many ways contradictory account, without the restriction of seven days, many Christians look on it as merely a summary of the first account. But if Adam was the first of creation (Genesis 2:7), expanding the meaning of one day to mean thousands or even millions of years, would simply mean that Adam was millions of years old before Eve was created (Genesis 2:22). And it would still only be six thousand years from the time Eve was created to the present day.

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