Day for a year

by startingover 17 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  startingover

  Last night I was reading from the old orange "Paradise" book. In my quest to understand how ideas got into my head, I decided to go back and look at the book that was used by my parents to study with me 40 some years ago.

  I came upon the part dealing with the "original lie" from Gen. 3:4,5.

  At this the serpent said to the woman: "You positively will not die. For God knows that in the very day of your eating it your eyes are bound to be opened and you are bound to be like God, knowing good and bad".

  I found it interesting after making Satan out to be a terrible bad guy for telling such an awful lie, they totally left out any mention of verse 22, which plainly makes part of the "original lie" not a lie at all but the truth, directly from the mouth of Jah.

  "And Jehovah God went on to say: "Here the man has become like one of us knowing good and bad..."

  Now the other part of verse 5, about dieing that "very day", we all know how the word "day" is interpreted by the WTS to make it a lie, using the "bible rule" that a day is a year to Jah, so Adam dieing in 930 years again makes Satan a great big liar.

  It struck me that I should look to see how that word "day" is used and understood in the surrounding chapters. In Gen 1:5 it is first used.

  And God began calling the light day, but the darkness he called night. And there came to be evening and there came to be morning, a first day.

  Now "a first day" referred to is a creative day, which is 7000 years long according to WTS. What about the first usage of day, referring to day and night. If that "first day" was 7000 years long, was the first day and night also 7000 years long. If so, when did it get changed into the 24 hr day he have now and that apparently existed since Adam's time?

  Then I came upon Gen 1:14.

  And God went on to say, "Let luminaries come to be in the expanse of the heavens to make a division between day and night, and they must serve as signs and for seasons and for days and years. "

  Now this use of day definitely refers to the 24 hr day, especially since it also refers to years in the same sentence.

  Although I am not a Hebrew scholar, but it seems to me that the same word "day", all within the first few chapters of the Bible have been understood by the WTS to mean 3 different things. We have 7000 year days, 1000 year days and 24 hour days.

  I continue to find it hard to understand why verse 22 is ignored as it is. I guess if you have to believe in God, you just can't have him being a liar.
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  heathen

  Then there's the part where a day is equal to just one year . pretty confusing stuff . I don't think that happens until jacob tho. Of course one could argue since adam and eve didn't understand the concept of good and bad to begin with how could they obey a law that forbade the eating from the tree ? By interfereing I think satan was the bad guy tho .Since a day was a thousand years to immortals adam died before he was a thousand years old .
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  AlmostAtheist

  That "day for a year" crap was another loaded-language thing the Wantpower pulled on us. How often did they use the phrase "using the Bible rule 'a day for a year', we can see..."

  "Bible rule?"

  When did this get established as a rule? And how do we know when it applies? Oh yes, the F&DS tells us when it applies, just like they tell us to whom the F&DS scripture applies. Yes, I see it now.
• 

  Terry

  The Bible is rubber.

  Religion uses words made of elastic.

  "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."

  Watchty Towerty rule of thumb as well!

  T.
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  M.J.

  The day for a year thing comes from William Miller and the Adventist offshoots.

  http://www.answers.com/topic/millerites

  It's pretty well refuted in "The Gentile Times Reconsidered".

  As for verse 22, most say that death is synonymous with separation from God, which makes more sense in the context of the situation than physical death.

  This is said to be reversed by Christ: John 5:24: "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life."
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  tijkmo

  jws are no longer taught that the creative days are 7000 years long ...since there is scientific evidence to dispute this...this from the creation book

  How

  Long Is a Genesis "Day"?

  4

  Many consider the word "day" used in Genesis chapter 1 to mean 24 hours. However, in Genesis 1:5 God himself is said to divide day into a smaller period of time, calling just the light portion "day." In Genesis 2:4 all the creative periods are called one "day": "This is a history of the heavens and the earth in the time of their being created, in the day [all six creative periods] that Jehovah God made earth and heaven."

  5

  The Hebrew word yohm, translated "day," can mean different lengths of time. Among the meanings possible, William Wilson?s Old Testament Word Studies includes the following: "A day; it is frequently put for time in general, or for a long time; a whole period under consideration . . . Day is also put for a particular season or time when any extraordinary event happens." 1 This last sentence appears to fit the creative "days," for certainly they were periods when extraordinary events were described as happening. It also allows for periods much longer than 24 hours.

  6

  Genesis chapter 1 uses the expressions "evening" and "morning" relative to the creative periods. Does this not indicate that they were 24 hours long? Not necessarily. In some places people often refer to a man?s lifetime as his "day." They speak of "my father?s day" or "in Shakespeare?s day." They may divide up that lifetime "day," saying "in the morning [or dawn] of his life" or "in the evening [or twilight] of his life." So ?evening and morning? in Genesis chapter 1 does not limit the meaning to a literal 24 hours.

  7

  "Day" as used in the Bible can include summer and winter, the passing of seasons. (Zechariah 14:8) "The day of harvest" involves many days. (Compare Proverbs 25:13 and Genesis 30:14.) A thousand years are likened to a day. (Psalm 90:4; 2 Peter 3:8, 10) "Judgment Day" covers many years. (Matthew 10:15; 11:22-24) It would seem reasonable that the "days" of Genesis could likewise have embraced long periods of time?millenniums. What, then, took place during those creative eras? Is the Bible?s account of them scientific? Following is a review of these "days" as expressed in Genesis.
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  Leolaia

  The days in Genesis, ch.1 are clearly literal days as you noted and the passage as a whole assumes a Semitic cosmology wholly different than what we know today through science. The concept is definitely not of creating the earth as a globe in the midst of the universe and having it spin on its axis, creating day and night (as it is commonly misread). Most translations also obscure the original conception by rendering 'rts separately as "land" and "earth" (most people think of "land" as a flat surface and "earth" as a spherical globe, but it is the same concept of "land" in both).
  

  The cosmology assumed in the passage is something like this: that originally, the whole cosmos was nothing but primeval chaos consisting of a muddy deep (thwm) with darkness and God's wind/spirit on top of it. That's what the universe originally was. The earth/land was void, i.e. nonexistent. Then God made light appear and placed the darkness into a different temporal abode, so that there would be intervals of light and darkness. This was the first division God created which set in motion the rhythm of day and night and the marking of time. Note that the sun and moon are not created yet as luminaries. The concept is that the periods of day and night preceded the creation of the luminaries and these periods were marked by the presence and absence of light; it may be hard for us to imagine today, but the author clearly believed that there was once a time when day and night was marked by something other than the sun and moon. Next God divided the watery deep into two and created a expanse between the two waters. This expanse was called heaven, and thus we have a watery deep above the heavens (which is the source of rain in Hebrew cosmology) and one below. So far this was what the entire universe is. There is no concept that the creation is happening in only one small corner of the universe, e.g. the creation of the planet earth. This was the whole cosmos, as indicated by the fact that heaven (soon to be populated with the sun, moon, and stars) is described as between the two deeps. The next step was dividing the lower deep into "seas" and "land". This was caused by gathering the water together, leaving the land behind. Note that the word for "land" is the same as "earth"....what this act involves is indeed the creation of the earth, just as the prior act involved the creation of the heavens. Now God populates the different divisions with different entitites. The last division was that of "seas" and "land" and God populates the newly-created land with trees and vegetation. The cosmology assumed in this narrative already posited a universal light that pre-existed any luminaries, so there is no concern expressed about the non-existence of the sun. The first two divisions God created was that between day and night and between heaven and earth. He next populates the heavenly expanse and the two temporal divisions with luminaries designed to govern the division of time and indicate the days, nights, seasons, and years. Note that they govern a division that was already created. Then God populates all three spatial divisions (heaven, seas, land/earth) with living creatures, and finally he creates man to govern the living creatures.

  To fit the above scheme with the actual natural history of the earth as revealed through science, the Society and other creationists distort the original narrative in various different ways. The days are interpreted as not literal days (which destroys the point in the narrative about light and darkness marking day and night) but as eras or epochs. The creation of the "heavens" and "earth" in the second and third creative days are interpreted as only pertaining to "sky" and "land", while the creation of the "heavens" and "earth" in v. 1 is interpreted as "the universe" and "planet earth", even though the same Hebrew words are involved and v. 1 is simply a summary statement of what is described in detail in the rest of the chapter. Most significantly, the concept that land and vegetation preceded the creation of the sun, moon, and stars is entirely contradicted by science (so much for the order of creation in Genesis corresponding to science) and creationists strain the text to only claim that the luminaries became visible on the fourth day but had been existence all along, despite the fact that v. 16 explicitly says that "God made the two great lights .. and the stars" on the fourth day. The Society also adopts a canopy-theory of earth's existence, which construes the early creative acts as applying only to a spherical planet earth and not the entire cosmos as the text claims. Thus the division between the waters is something that occurs only on this isolated place and not throughout the whole universe, and the expanse of "heaven" mentioned in v. 6-8 is only the sky and the "sun, moon, and stars" were created outside of this expanse and were not visible before the fourth day. However, the only heaven assumed by the text is the expanse between the two waters and the luminaries were placed not outside the heavenly waters but "into the expanse of heaven to shine upon the earth" (v. 18). Rather than respecting what the text says, creationists twist it to mean something quite different by reading modern preconceptions of the cosmos into it.
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  blondie

  Didn't some Catholic priest around 1200 AD come up with the day for a year prophetic rule?
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  garybuss

  Which verse says Satan was in Eden? I must have missed that.
  
  
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  Narkissos

  Apparently different things were mixed up here. In the Bible "a day for a year" means

  (1) a year of punishment for a day of spying the Promised Land, Numbers 14:34.

  (2) a day of "prophetic drama" for a year of national guilt, Ezekiel 4:4ff.

  Nothing to do with Genesis. Even in WTBTS interpretation.