In a recent tweet I had said the following:
Young-earth creationists don't interpret the creation account in Genesis literally, for they deal only with modern English translations. But Genesis wasn't written in the 20th-century for an English-speaking Western audience.
I further clarified, in response to someone, that young-earth creationists have never “presented a responsible historico-grammatical exegesis of the text in its original language and context”—with the proviso that “this does mean a lot more than merely the word yom,” the Hebrew word for “day.”
This had generated a fair amount of feedback (at least for a small Twitter account like mine), but there was one response in particular that I wanted to address in a short blog post because I cannot provide a proper critical review in 280 characters or less. In response to my assertion, @ApoloJedi_ provided four articles which were probably intended as a falsification of my claim:
- Russell Grigg, “How Long Were the Days of Genesis 1?” Creation.com, October 28, 2008 (accessed April 5, 2020).
- Jonathan Sarfati, “Hebrew Scholar Affirms That Genesis Means What It Says!” Creation.com, October 22, 2005 (accessed April 5, 2020). Interview with Ting Wang.
- Jonathan Sarfati, “Theologian: Genesis Means What It Says!” Creation.com, August 17, 2011 (accessed April 5, 2020). Interview with Robert McCabe.
- Duane Caldwell, “Creation, Craig, and the Myth of a ‘Mytho-Historical’ Genesis,” Rational Faith (blog), November 18, 2019 (accessed April 5, 2020).
Again, young-earth creationists have spilled several gallons of ink in defending the Hebrew word yom as meaning a typical 24-hour day. It really should be obvious that just about anyone, myself included, is at once both aware of and familiar with this line of argumentation. My point is that this seems to be where their exegesis begins and ends, exploring only this single word.
So I shall assert once more that young-earth creationists have never “presented a responsible historico-grammatical exegesis of the text in its original language and context,” understanding that “this does mean a lot more than merely the word yom.”
Having said that, let’s have a look at these four articles.
1. The first one by Russell Grigg is arguing for the word yom, so that one can be dismissed as failing to address the challenge my claim presented.
2. The second one by Sarfati, from an interview with Ting Wang, does not falsify my claim at all. Wang’s argument for the word yom can be dismissed for the same reason given above. The only other word from the original language he deals with is tobh (“good”), and there he does not present any historico-grammatical exegesis. He simply asserts that the word is used “seven times in Genesis 1, [and] indicates that there was no sin or death or pain.” That’s it. Just this assertion. There is not the slightest recognition or acknowledgement from either Wang or Sarfati that the word tobh has an extensive semantic range, much less any responsible argument for a specific usage in the context of Genesis 1.
3. The third article by Sarfati, from an interview with Robert McCabe, likewise doesn’t falsify my claim. As with Grigg and Wang, here McCabe makes a strong argument for the word yom which, again, can be dismissed as failing to address the challenge presented by my claim. The remainder of the article does not exegete the text of Genesis 1 at all; it addresses things like the Framework Hypothesis, and evolution, and Adam, and so on.
4. The fourth article by Caldwell is a critical response to a position held by William Lane Craig and does not contain any historico-grammatical exegesis of Genesis 1. His argument seems to be that Genesis should be taken as historical, an argument I do not dispute.
Therefore, the challenge which my claim presented remains unrefuted. If young-earth creationists engage in any responsible exegesis at all, it deals only with the word yom. Apart from this, they do not present a responsible historico-grammatical exegesis of the text in its original language and context, as I said.
John M. Bauer
@JohnMBauer1
Approx. 600 words
