It was good to read Dr Jeff Tallon’s letter (NZ Baptist, March 2010). Anything that will enliven the creation/evolution debate is a good thing. As Christian believers we should not be afraid to be challenged by one another to investigate this and to search out the truth of the matter.

However, I feel Dr Tallon has erred slightly. Firstly, it appears that he does not apply the same rigor to the biblical languages as he does to his chosen field of endeavour. The Hebrew word day, “yom,” appears 2295 times in the Old Testament. Obviously it does not, and cannot, mean exactly the same thing in every occurrence just like the word does in English. However, we must be careful not to apply one meaning of it to any other place just because we feel it should mean that.

Hebrew, like Greek, is highly contextual and a word must be understood within the framework (context) of the passage. Its usage in Genesis 2:16 obviously does not mean a literal 24 hour period, but to impose this upon the word occurrences in Gen 1: 1-31 without including the context is bad exegesis. One must include the phrase, “And the evening and the morning were the [first, second etc.] day.”

This sets the context and the passage must be understood accordingly. This removes any doubt about the duration of the period of the “day.” The linguistic setting and expression of Genesis 1:1-31 obviously does not sit well with our Western thinking. The creation account doesn’t make sense from a timing point of view. For instance, we understand that light ruling the earth does so from the sun and the moon, yet these were not created until the fourth day, and vegetation was created on the third when there was no light to sustain it.

These should be viewed as Hebraisms. A Hebraism is an expression or idiom that makes good sense in Hebrew, but not in the language into which the Hebrew was translated. (Every language has these kinds of idioms.) Dr Tallon’s comment on the “dying” of the man and the woman is partially correct but also must be viewed in the same light.

One of the most common Hebraisms of this kind is the intensifying infinitive absolute. An infinitive is the unconjugated or uninflected form of a verb. The correct rendering of Gen 2:16 should be... “But from the tree of knowing good and evil do not eat, because in the day you eat from it dying you will die.”

Obviously they did not literally die that very day. The man (Hebrew “adam”) finally died at age 930. Was man created immortal? The answer is no! If so, then it would have made God’s comment about them eating of the fruit of the tree of life and living forever redundant.

Can Dr Tallon or others get out of the Creation account the long ages that are espoused by evolutionists? The answer is again no! It appears Dr Tallon is under the impression that science has resolved the issue once and for all and debate is futile.

However evolutionary science is based upon a paradigm of assumptions about the past. This is called historical science as opposed to empirical science, which can be verified by process and observation. Evolution sees the present and interprets the past to suit a particular belief.

– Wayne Robinson
Lower Hutt