Sin death and beyond
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SIN, DEATH AND BEYOND: M.M.NINAN<br />
• The word yom however does not mean in itself a day, leave alone 24 hours. It has to be<br />
inferred based on the circumstances.<br />
• The word yôm is accompanied by sequential numerical denotation <strong>and</strong> the language of<br />
‘evening <strong>and</strong> morning’ gives a prima facie case that regular 24-hour days are in view.<br />
However what I have found in all cases of argument is the assumption that these days –<br />
literal days – refer to the period of creation by God. How can evening to morning refer<br />
to a whole day which should be from evening to evening?<br />
Leviticus 23:32 defines the Sabbath day as follows:<br />
“It is a day of sabbath rest for you, <strong>and</strong> you must deny yourselves. From the evening of the<br />
ninth day of the month until the following evening you are to observe your sabbath."<br />
This I feel is a problem of hermeneutics.<br />
The book of Genesis is written by Moses where he was writing about creation of which he has<br />
never seen. How did he know these details. Unless you believe the JEPD traditions which<br />
Moses collected together, the only other alternative is that he heard it from God while he was<br />
with God forty days. What else was he doing up there. Moses probably wrote all those in a<br />
diary. Did God show him a movie of creation every night? Probably. It makes sense to say,<br />
“this is what I saw on Day 1 from evening to morning” “it was evening <strong>and</strong> morning, day one”<br />
The reckoning of day probably has no connection with the historical creation process. After all<br />
without the sun <strong>and</strong> the solar system, which came later the 24 hour day has no meaning. The<br />
concept of hour itself came from there.<br />
“Nature in the New Creation: New Testament Eschatology <strong>and</strong> the Environment,” Doug<br />
Moo published in Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 49 (2006) 449-88:<br />
This does not necessarily mean, however, that physical <strong>death</strong> itself was first introduced into<br />
the created world at the Fall. On the contrary, the necessary continuity between the world that<br />
God created (Genesis 1-2) <strong>and</strong> the world that we now observe suggests that physical decay<br />
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