RE: Were the seven days of creation in Genesis seven twenty four hour periods? - Some conclusions

The Truth Shall Set You Free

The first account of Creation (Genesis 1:1-2:31) was composed at Jerusalem soon after the return from the Babylonian Exile (500 BC). God is here named "Elohim". The second account (Genesis 2:4-22) is also Judaean, possibly of Edomite origin, and pre-Exilic (600 BC). Here God was originally named "Yahweh", but the priestly editor has changed this to "Yahweh from Elohim" (usually translated as "the Lord God"), thus identifying the God of Genesis 1 with that of Genesis 2, and giving the versions an appearance of uniformity. He did not, however, eliminate certain contradictory details in the order of creation.

Out of these sources (Genesis through Numbers) they formed what is called the "Priestly History." The motive for the formation of this history was Israel's own situation. The community had been destroyed and the people scattered. How should they plan for the future? The priests turned to the past for their guidelines . . . i.e., they composed the "Books of Moses" (None written by Moses) from oral tradition and the myths of the other nations of the ancient near east. And so their Priestly History became the foundation document by which the exiles from Babylonian slavery sought to organize themselves.

The heart of this history is the story in Exodus 1-15 of the deliverance by God of Israel from Egypt. This key event, by which the exiled priests interpreted the meaning of history, was the central event to which Israel had looked for centuries . . . The narratives in the book of Genesis seem to have been added as a preface to the history of God's salvation described in Exodus through Numbers . . . the creation stories in the Bible do not give us a scientific description, but a symbolic one. They were trying to present the theological meaning of creation . . . The writers of the Old Testament, however, borrowed motifs and allusions from the myths of Mesopotamia and Canaan as means of describing the significance of God's acts in the world. They never borrowed the mythological materials unchanged, but always transformed them into ways of describing the actions of the one God of the world . . . So we do not read this creation story for accurate information about the process of creation.

It is very important to keep in mind that we are still reading picturesque literature. In answer to the question "Did it happen exactly this way?"' - We must answer "No!" This is parabolic literature, not historical literature.

Text Credit: http://davelivingston.com/creationstories.htm

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