When Was Day One?
An Exegetical Answer to the Key Issue with Young Earth Creationism
In this new article in God and Nature, I show how Genesis 1 does not teach that the earth is only about 6,000 to 10,000 years old, as Young Earth Creationism teaches.
Read: “When Was Day One? An Exegetical Answer to the Key Issue with Young Earth Creationism” (< click on link to the God and Nature article.)
I sought to challenge Young Creationism’s Biblical basis because despite some claiming it is the “clear teaching of scripture,” it actually isn’t taught in scripture at all. So, on the side of my usual pastoral duties, I studied Genesis 1, read books on creationism and inquired of some of the best professors, especially one who had been my own professor. In 2021, my work was published in a peer-reviewed theological journal (The Journal of Biblical and Theological Studies). Now I’ve condensed it to less than 2,000 words and rewritten it so it can be published in a new Christian scientific journal, God and Nature.
To see what Genesis 1 really says about when the earth was created click on link at the top.
Writing my own academic article was daunting task because, while I have a Ph.D., I’m not an Old Testament specialist. I had to reprise my Hebrew. But I had the advantage of having one of the best Hebrew scholars in the world as one of my former professors: Dr. Leslie Allen of Fuller Theological Seminary. In the crafting of my article, I inquired with him about points of Hebrew grammar. He was helpful.
My original full-length academic article, “The Beginning of Days”, shows that the Bible does not teach Young Earth Creationism because it doesn't establish a dateable chain of events back to the original creation. YECists claim that we can date the age of the earth by tracing the genealogies back to Adam and then adding 6 days for when Adam was created, assuming that the earth was created on day one. But I show that each day of Genesis 1 begins with “and God said.”
So day one begins in Genesis 1:3, not the very first verse. The original creation and the Spirit of God hovering over the water in 1:1-2 is before day one. The Bible doesn’t tell us how long prior to day one that the earth was created. That’s left up to science.
Now that same argument is made in under 2,000 words in the article linked at the top.
On November 11, 2021, Hugh Ross, head of Reasons to Believe, tweeted “I highly recommend this article.”
If you’d prefer to watch (an illustrated version) or listen of the original academic article on YouTube:
If you’d like to see what Genesis 1 really teaches about when the earth was created, click on the link to the article linked at the top.
John B. Carpenter, Ph.D., is pastor of Covenant Reformed Baptist Church, in Danville, VA. and the author of Seven Pillars of a Biblical Church (Wipf and Stock, 2022).