From: Donna.D'Iorio@f7022.n124.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Donna D'Iorio)
Newsgroups: alt.messianic
Subject: Genesis
Date: 1 Oct 92 17:01:06 GMT
Organization: FidoNet node 1:124/7022 - MAXUS World H, Dallas TX


    In Response to Paul Hudson Jr:
PH>From: hudson@athena.cs.uga.edu (Paul Hudson Jr)
PH>Date: 28 Sep 92 21:05:08 GMT

PH>I heard Ross on TBN.  What he said was very interesting.  THe problem I
PH>with it was that IMHO, "and there was morning and there was evening, the
PH>whatever (first through sixth) "day" was not properly explained.  These
PH>verses too seem to support literal day/night days (though you cannot pro
PH>that they were 24 hours.  Maybe the earth moved more slowly and the morn
PH>and evening each lasted for millenia.)   Does the Hebrew allow for a non
PH>literal morning and evening in these verses?

    His book "Fingerprint of God" does go into detail on this point.
Although there is much more than I can give you here, the following is a
nutshell from "Fingerprint" on your final question:
    "A long period of time is clearly acceptable with the definitions of
yowm, 'ereb and boger.  The Hebrew word yowm, translated day, may be
used (and is) within the Bible, as it is in English, to indicate any of
four time periods: a) from sunrise to sunset; b) from sunset to sunset;
c) a segment of time with reference to solar days (usually years); and
d) an age or epoch.
    "The Hebrew word 'ereb, translated evening also means "sunset,"
"night," or "ending of the day."  And the word boger, translated
morning, also means "sunrise," "coming of light," "beginning of day," or
"dawining," with possible metaphoric useage (See Brown, Driver, and
Briggs, "A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old TEstament, Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1980, also Harris, Archer, and Waltke, "Theological
Wordbook of the Old TEstament," Chicago: Moody Press, 1980)."

    Several months before I discovered Hugh Ross on TBN, I did a word by
word study of Genesis 1-3 and found a lot of amazing things that I had
certainly never seen before....which is why hearing what Ross proposed
grabbed my attention...so much of what he had to say confirmed the
things I saw.
    In a nutshell, what I found was that the  book of Genesis could just
as easily have been named "Distinctions," because it is bursting with
the distinctions and separations God was instituting with every act of
physical creation.  God was not just making the sun, the moon, the stars
and the planet.  He was literally ordering the physical universe every
step of the way.
    So that when we come to the naming of light "Day" and the naming of
darkness "Night," "and the evening and the morning were the first day,"
the most outstanding thing I observed is that this naming constituted
the institution of the first increment of Time. (Because eternity is
Time-less).  By simply naming the light and the darkness, God is also
establishing order: a system of measuring "Time" necessarily creates
"time-limits."  There are not time-limits on Eternity, but the very
essence of "Time" fixes limitation on duration. Eternity cannot pass
away, but Time continually does.
    The outstanding information communicated in Genesis 1-2 are often
the least perceived, because we see, for instance that God separated the
darkness by the introduction of light but we fail to grasp the
significance of that division which put limitations on the existing
darkness.  It is the ordering of creation that we usually miss.

    Anyway, this is really off-topic for this newsgroup and I have no
way to e-mail you further info, nor access to the origins newsgroup...
so I would say your best bet is to send for "Fingerprint of God". It
will certainly provide you with much food for thought!
    Donna D'Iorio

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