and dare I say duplicity. Here is a debate between Hugh Ross & Eric Hovind on the Age of the Earth. Here is the article on Eric Hovind’s website on The Hebrew Yom: Taking One Day at a Time.
Go ahead and watch that debate but my post here is focused on Hovind’s own article.
Day in Context
The Hebrew yom occurs 2,282 times outside Genesis 1. It occurs 359 times with a number outside Genesis 1. Some of these occurrences use cardinal numbers (one, two, three, etc.) and some use ordinal numbers (first, second, third, etc.). However, in all 359 cases, the context clearly shows that a 24-hour day is being referenced.
Yom occurs 19 times outside Genesis 1, together with either the word “morning” or “evening.” In all 19 cases, a 24-hour day is clearly intended.
The words “morning” and “evening” occur together, without “day” 38 times outside Genesis 1. Each of these occurrences refers to a literal 24-hour day.
The context he is referring to is the use of the word and number combination. He wants to make the case of the importance of this combination for the context of interpreting the word yom. And in this context, it always mean a 24-hour day. He is wrong Hosea 6:1-2 Zechariah 14:7 are examples that his claims are false. First I think it is more important to put any literature in the context its genre. However, the word yom as used in Genesis 1-2 is unique in that it has no parallel in the rest of the Bible. It alone gives insight into God’s acts of creation. It is not a science cookbook. It is not a journal, poetry or any other forms like the rest of the Bible. It is a unique creation narrative beyond human history. The rest of the Bible are literature that describes the interactions between God and his creation. If we are to consider the context of a text shouldn’t that be taken into account?
e.g. I have a hundred books on accounting and when it uses the number 10 it always means ten. But I have one book on computer science in assembly language. When I see the number 10, more than likely it means two and not ten. I think the context of what type of book we are reading is more important than how a word is used everywhere else.
Finally,
About the Author: Eric Hovind
Eric Hovind, according to his own testimony starts with noble goal that the Bible is supreme over all other forms of knowledge. That is why he begins by reading the Bible seeing what it says and use that to interpret everything else including science. But everyone else other than the YEC subjugates the Bible under the interpretation of science. This is a salacious attack on OEC like myself and elevate himself to the level of sole pontificator of the Bible. Even if I would put the YEC ego aside, just think about what they are doing. They are say just by reading the text of a book that was written by Moses who lived around 3300 years ago, they are able to just know exactly what a few words and key phrases is suppose to mean. Because their minds and reasoning ability are not affected by modern knowledge and concepts, they are able to transcend the linguistic and literary changes that has occurred in the past 3300 years, let alone the unique creation genre of Genesis. They can divine the actual intended meaning of a few words. That is farcical. First I doubt Eric is reading the original Hebrew and even for those reading the original Hebrew. It was probably not their native language. If it was their native language they still would have had to learn it as an ancient near east form. I am not saying it is not possible to know what the book of genesis is trying to tell us. On the contrary, I most certain think we can. But to say that I can just sit down and open up an English Bible of Genesis and using my own preconceived knowledge and vocabulary and say that it is plain and simple to understand the word yom means a 24-hour day. This is just naive at best. But based on this farcical naivete to insist that they are the sole guardian of an incorrupt interpretation of the Bible is the height of arrogance and stupidity.
P.S. In the video Hovind claims that Genesis was written after Exodus. Isn’t that based on liberal scholarship? That’s not what is plainly shown when I open the Bible. And in other YEC sources they don’t even think Moses wrote the book of Genesis. Moses was only a collector of written records by the people before him like Adam and Noah. Hovind makes this point presumably to say that the Israelite understood the creation days as 24-hour day. This only compound their inane just so stories. There is absolutely no evidence of Adam recording his own history. How did it survive the flood? Did the Bible mentioned anything about Noah preserving any form of writing? Was a written language even invented at the time of Noah let alone Adam?