1 | Page Do The Six Days of Creation Have To Be Understood Literally? John R. Roberts SIL International ABSTRACT In this paper I examine the claim that the days of creation in Gen 1.1–2.3 must necessarily be understood as a calendar sequence of seven solar days. Pipa (2005) sets out five exegetical and theological arguments to substantiate this position. I examine each argument in turn and demonstrate that it does not hold. I also present evidence from ANE literature that ancient peoples understood that daylight was not dependent on the sun, but instead the sun was a mere marker of the day. This means that what the ancients believed a day to be was quite different to what we understand today. I also show that the seven-day format is a known literary device in ANE literature for expressing completion/perfection. In the end I come to the same conclusion as Augustine that regarding the days of creation as literal solar days is theologically absurd and ridiculous in practice. 1 Introduction How the six days of creation described in Gen 1.3–31 and the Sabbath day of rest described in Gen 2.1–3 should be understood is contentious, and has been contentious for millennia, as the historical survey by Lewis (1989) shows. The traditional understanding is that yôm ‘day’ in Gen 1.5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31 and in 2.2–3, where the seventh day is mentioned three times, should be understood as denoting a regular solar day and that the days one to seven described should be understood as denoting a consecutive and contiguous sequence of calendar days. 1 This is the “straightforward” reading of the text and is known as the literal interpretation. But some Jewish and Christian scholars have considered the creation account in Genesis as an allegory with a deeper and symbolic sense instead of a straightforward historical description, long before the development of modern science had made the literal interpretation of the Genesis account seemingly untenable. Origen of Alexandria (3rd century CE), in a passage that was later chosen by Gregory of Nazianzus for inclusion in the Philocalia, an anthology of some of his most important texts, made the following very modern-sounding remarks about the days of creation and the garden of Eden: “For who that has understanding will suppose that the first, and second, and third day, and the evening and the morning, existed without a sun, and moon, and stars? And that the first day was, as it were, also without a sky? And who is so foolish as to suppose that God, after the manner of a husbandman, planted a paradise in Eden, towards the east, and placed in it a tree of life, visible and palpable, so that one tasting of the fruit by the bodily teeth obtained life? And again, that one was a partaker of good and evil by masticating what was taken from the tree? And if God is said to walk in the paradise in the evening, and Adam to hide himself under a tree, I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance, and not literally.” (De Principiis IV, 16) Augustine of Hippo (4th century CE), one of the greatest Christian thinkers of his time, argued on theological grounds that everything was created by God in the same instant, and not in six days as a plain account of Genesis would require. He understood the six days to be ages, as below. Augustine was particularly puzzled by how the first three days of creation could be solar days when the sun and the moon were not created until day four. “Concerning which rest Scripture signifies and is not silent, how at the beginning of the world, from the time that God made heaven and earth and all that is in them, He worked for six days, 1 The denotation of a word is the object or concept to which a word refers.