There are two different but connected errors that seriously plague modern Christianity. The first is the common error throughout segments of Christianity, including among Latter-day Saints, that the Earth was created in seven days. The second common error is that the world approximately 7,000 years old. Both are based on fundamental misunderstandings of the scriptures and have damaged the faith of thousands of believers. Both have also been refuted by modern revelation starting with the Prophet Joseph Smith. In order to treat both of these issues with the seriousness they deserve I have decided to write an article dedicated to each. This article will address the erroneous belief that the Earth (or even the entire Universe) was created in six days by God. In doing so I will combine a proper understanding of scriptural context with modern revelation to establish what it is about the Creation of the Earth that the scriptures do teach so that we Latter-day Saints will not continue to fall into the error that other Christians have.
Interpreting Genesis Symbolically
Most of us probably assume that all ancient Christians and Jews thought the world was created in six literal days as Genesis chapters 1 and 2 in the Bible seem to indicate and many today believe, but this would be false. When you study the history of theological thought you discover men like Rabbi Isaac of Akko (Akko is the Hebrew form of Acre, a city in northern Palestine.) Writing in the later 13th century AD, Rabbi Isaac of Akko used statements in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) to conclude that the Universe was 15,340,500,000 years old (pg. 9), a number tantalizingly close to the current scientific consensus that thinks the Universe is about 13.8 billion years old. The rabbi calculated his number based on the idea that many of the references to years and days of creation as laid out in scripture were symbolic and not literal. You see a similar history of thought when you study the writings of the early post-biblical Christian leaders. Many of the most important ones, such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Origen, declare that the Creation account is symbolic and that it did not occur in a literal six days. Clement of Alexandria’s teaching on this sounds very much like what is taught in latter-day scripture:
That, then, we may be taught that the world was originated, and not suppose that God made it in time, prophecy adds: “This is the book of the generation: also of the things in them, when they were created in the day that God made heaven and earth.” [Genesis 2:4] For the expression “when they were created” intimates an indefinite and dateless production. But the expression “in the day that God made,” that is, in and by which God made “all things,” and “without which not even one thing was made,” points out the activity exerted by the Son. As David says, “This is the day which the Lord hath made; let us be glad and rejoice in it; ” that is, in consequence of the knowledge imparted by Him, let us celebrate the divine festival; for the Word that throws light on things hidden, and by whom each created thing came into life and being, is called day.
Miscellanies Chapter 6 in the subsection titled “The Fourth Commandment”
Compare Clement’s assertions here that Creation was “an indefinite and dateless production” with Abraham 4 and 5 which very specifically say that the creation took place in indefinite periods of “time” and not days. For example:
And the Gods said among themselves: On the seventh time we will end our work, which we have counseled; and we will rest on the seventh time from all our work which we have counseled.
And the Gods concluded upon the seventh time, because that on the seventh time they would rest from all their works which they (the Gods) counseled among themselves to form; and sanctified it. And thus were their decisions at the time that they counseled among themselves to form the heavens and the earth.
Abraham 5:2-3
We will return to Abraham 4 and 5 soon, but here it is enough to establish that among ancient Christians, even in the throes of apostasy as they were by the start of the second century AD, and later, the truth that the Genesis account did not teach that the Earth had been created in six literal days but in six indefinite periods of time had endured. This is important to understand in order to refute the many erroneous teachers in Christianity today who assert as a fundamental doctrine that the world was created in six days. This is false. The intellectual history of Christianity proves these people are wrong and revealing this to modern Christians will help them to escape the prison of false doctrines built up by these erroneous preachers. Further, when we examine the textual evidence frim the Bible it becomes clear that in addition to not being a Christian teaching it isn’t even a scriptural one.
Examining The Biblical Text
The textual evidence for asserting that the biblical account (and therefore neither the Moses account which is supposed to be a restoration of the fulness of the original biblical account) doesn’t mean six literal days either is very strong. The Hebrew word yom [yahw-m] is used in Genesis one whenever it says first day, second day, etc. For example in Genesis 1:5 it reads:
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
Both times the word day is used here it is the Hebrew word yom that is translated into English as day. The same is the case for the rest of Genesis 1 and 2. But yom has multiple meanings beyond simply connoting the 24-hour period we define as a “day” in the modern sense:
It can denote: 1. the period of light (as contrasted with the period of darkness), 2. the period of twenty-four hours, 3. a general vague “time,” 4. a point of time, 5. a year (in the plural; I Sam 27:7; Ex 13:10, etc.).
The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, pg. 851
Yom:
From an unused root meaning to be hot; a day (as the warm hours), whether literal (from sunrise to sunset, or from one sunset to the next), or figuratively (a space of time defined by an associated term), [often used adv.]:–age, + always, + chronicles, continually (-ance), daily, ([birth-], each, to) day, (now a, two) days (agone), + elder, end, evening, (for)ever(lasting), ever(more), full, life, as long as (…live), even now, old, outlived, perpetually, presently, remaineth, required, season, since, space, then, (process of) time, as at other times, in trouble, weather (as) when, (a, the, within a) while (that), whole (age), (full) year (-ly), younger
Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (symbols omitted)
As we see from these two Hebrew dictionaries, the Hebrew word yom can mean anything from a 24-hour day to an undefined length of time. This alone would seem to drive a nail into the coffin of those who would argue that the Bible definitively teaches the world was created in six literal days. No such thing is evident. Yom is repeatedly used throughout the Hebrew Bible to mean a wide variety of time periods. Sixty-seven different occasions it is used to mean an indefinite measure of time. Four times it is used to mean year or years. Eight times it is used to mean age. Four times it is used to mean always. Three times it is used to mean season. Nineteen times it is used to mean ever, as in, “I will dwell in the House of the Lord for ever.” (Psalm 23:6) On one occasion it is used to mean ago, as in “three days ago.” (1 Sam. 9:20) The word is even used two different ways in Genesis 1:5 as quoted above where the first occurrence of the word means 12-hour period and the second occurrence means period of Creation.
A Modern Example
Even the idea that all modern General Authorities believe that the world was created in six literal days is false. No less a luminary than Apostle Bruce R. McConkie taught that the “days” in Genesis 1 should be understood symbolically and not literally:
But first, what is a day? It is a specified time period; it is an age, an eon, a division of eternity; it is the time between two identifiable events. And each day, of whatever length, has the duration needed for its purposes.
…There is no revealed recitation specifying that each of the “six days” involved in the Creation was of the same duration. Our three accounts of the Creation are the Mosaic, the Abrahamic, and the one presented in the temples. Each of these stems back to the Prophet Joseph Smith. The Mosaic and Abrahamic accounts place the creative events on the same successive days. We shall follow these scriptural recitations in our analysis. The temple account, for reasons that are apparent to those familiar with its teachings, has a different division of events. It seems clear that the “six days” are one continuing period and that there is no one place where the dividing lines between the successive events must of necessity be placed.
Christ and the Creation
Here we see clearly that Elder McConkie taught that not only were the six “days” not literally six 24-hour time periods, he teaches there is no reason to assign any specific period of time to each, assume that all of the six periods were of equal length, or even that the series of events for each day should be listed in the same sequence. He concludes that far from being six “days” they were actually just a single creative period of time. Not only has Elder McConkie, long considered one of the more “extremely conservative” theologians in recent church history, in agreement with everything said thus far here, he actually takes it farther than I do and says the entire thing is symbolic! And it was published in the Church’s official magazine, the Ensign, no less!
All of this makes one thing perfectly evident: To say that yom means day, as in 24-hour periods, is simply and obviously false. Therefore, to declare that the Bible absolutely teaches that the world was created in six literal days is completely and absolutely false. What is true is that the Bible says that the world was created in six periods of time and that none of these periods has a specific amount of hours, days, or years attached to it. You cannot say that the first creative period was 50 hours or 50 million hours. We can say that it definitely was not a 24-hour period though. Why? Because according to the events of Genesis 1 and 2 the Sun and Moon aren’t created until the fourth time period. It is hard to have a 24-hour solar day before the creation of the Sun itself. That so many Christians believe otherwise is evidence of two things: A) they do not understand the scriptures and B) they are in a state of apostasy. That latter-day scripture, such as the aforementioned Abraham 4 and 5 align with these biblical truths lost to the majority of Christianity is just evidence of the origins of the Restoration, that it is of God and not man. For a greater refutation of many other Six-Day/Young Earth Creationist errors, I suggest reading this essay which goes through and refutes many of them from the perspective of both a Christian and a scientist.
If I may be allowed a moment of speculation, I would say that if anything the presence of Light and Darkness before the creation of the Sun and the Moon suggests that the events of Genesis 1 and 2 may start out on a much larger cosmic scale than we normally assume and apply to more than simply the formal creation of the Earth. Genesis 1 tells us that the Spirit of the Lord moved across the surface of the deep. The deep here mean the depths of the oceans, a potent symbol of chaos as water was a traditional symbol of chaos in Hebrew and other Middle Eastern societies. (pg. 2) The ancient Hebrew root word from which the word for water developed was the Hebrew word for chaos. So in Genesis 1, God’s spirit is moving across the cosmic ocean of chaos – matter unorganized one might say – and He decides to organize it, to create. The first thing He does in His act of Creation is to declare, “Let there be light!” Thus our Heavenly Father, the Source of All Light, who were are repeatedly are told in scripture exudes light and literally glows, enters into the dark chaos of the ocean and brings forth existence and everything along with it – Time, Light, Beginnings, Change, etc. If it is meant to mean anything literal at all (which is not a given by any means) the light of Genesis 1:1-5 on the first day of Creation is the very light of God Himself entering the darkness of the eternal chaos and His first step into transforming that chaos into Creation and Order.
Final Thoughts
President Brigham Young is reported to have taught:
It was observed here just now that we differ from the Christian world in our religious faith and belief; and so we do very materially. I am not astonished that infidelity prevails to a great extent among the inhabitants of the earth, for the religious teachers of the people advance many ideas and notions for truth which are in opposition to and contradict facts demonstrated by science, and which are generally understood. …In these respects we differ from the Christian world, for our religion will not clash with or contradict the facts of science in any particular.
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT BRIGHAM YOUNG DELIVERED IN THE TABERNACLE, SALT LAKE CITY, MAY 14, 1871, pgs. 116-117
The purpose of the scriptures are not to serve as a textbook, either scientific or philosophical. Rather they are guidebooks that direct us down the path of righteousness by showing us all the truths and errors of our predecessors and helping us to gain the wisdom and knowledge we need to build a direct relationship with God so that He can direct our futures. In the past many Christians have made incorrect assumptions about the nature of Creation because they misunderstood both the meaning of the biblical text and the context in which it was written. Many of these errors have been perpetuated among Latter-day Saints because so many of us have been converts from the apostate Christianities of history. Even our leaders have been wrong on this subject of Creation and the Age of the Earth, having absorbed these false ideas themselves. But as President Young taught it is no offense to our religion or our faith to correct these errors.
When the teachings of the Lord (as opposed to the interpolations of men) are properly understood we discover that there is no conflict between scientific fact and the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. Scientific discovery explores how the Lord works His will in history and the Gospel tells us why He does so. Together these two sources of knowledge light our path, helping us better understand the world our Father has created for us and to help us return back to Him and be exalted in HIs presence forever.