Day-Age Creationism

Some day-age Christians take issue with certain liberties of translation they perceive in English Bibles. Some claim that "day" in the Creation account should have been translated as "age."

The original passages state that the world was created in 6 "yom"s, which most often means "day," but can occasionally refer to an indeterminate period of time (like an age, or eon). But there are two problems with simply retranslating "yom" as "age": First, the ages are out of chronological order according to our scientific observations. Second, the Bible refers to evenings/mornings as delineations between the "yom"s.

I believe the better interpretation here is to translate "yom" as "day" but in the context of an overall apocalyptic allegory. The order of the Creation days are numerologically significant, because they lay foundations that are completed three days later (note where else we see "3-day fulfillment"...):

• Foundation of light, then luminaries 3 days later.


• Foundation of sky and water, then birds and fish 3 days later.


• Foundation of dry land and plants, then land animals (including humans) 3 days later.

Rather than a literal description of events, it more reasonably appears to be an abstract and beautifully poetic description of how God creates, conveyed in a way that perhaps resonated better with the people of the primitive fertile crescent than with the modernist reader.

Early Church fathers like Justin Martyr, Cyprian of Carthage, Lactantius and Irenaeus were fans of the "Creation day = 1000 years" theory, whereas those like Origen, Clement of Alexandria and Augustine of Hippo preferred to think of the Creation account as highly symbolic and mystical. I side with the latter group, so I don't have a problem with "yom" as "day." And neither do I feel it's a bad translation, because "yom" as "day" makes the most sense in the context of the story and its symbolism.

A better example of bad English translation would be the flood account. In most places where "erets" is used, it's translated as "the land" and refers to the covenantal land of God's people. But in the flood account of many English Bibles, it's translated as "the earth." You can imagine the difference in interpretation between "the whole land" and "the whole earth." Consider 2 Samuel 24:8: "So when they had gone about through the whole land [erets], they came to Jerusalem at the end of nine months and twenty days." Imagine if that verse was translated as "the whole earth!"

The word that refers to the whole planet is "tebel." The flood account doesn't use "tebel."

It's a similar story with the word "har," often translated as mountain. The problem is that "har" also means "hill." About a third of the time in the English Old Testament, it's translated as "hill." Where Noah probably lived, the nearest actual mountains were beyond the horizon. 23 feet above the hills is a perfect amount of water to flood the fertile crescent and wipe everyone out. This theory receives further support by looking at the Tower of Babel account; the special materials used indicate it was built to withstand another flood, which makes no sense if the flood was thousands of feet high.