But it seems to us that a readiness to be just to historical criticism and impartial exegesis has hindered
theologians occupying this standpoint from being just also to the religious element, in its full meaning, in reference to a very important part of the Mosaic account of creation, in which the author of it shows quite a decided religious interest. We mean the six days of creation, together with the seventh day, the divine Sabbath. Theologians became too quickly satisfied with the exegetical perception of these seven days, as creative, earthly days, of twenty-four hours; and this hindered them from assigning to the religious meaning the full importance which these days have in that record. That the idea and the number of the days in that account have a high religious meaning to the author, is clear from the following: The account in Genesis I, 1-24, belongs to that series of parts of the Pentateuch which we call the original, and which has the Sinaitical Law as the centre of its belief. The division of the days into weeks, each having six working days and one day of rest, which possibly existed before, but which received obligatory importance to Israel first by the Sinaitical legislation, so far controls that account of the creation of the world that, next to the sublime perception of the dignity and position of man, it forms its very quintessence. The account makes that divine week of creation, with its six working days and its divine day of rest, the divine prototype and model for the human division of time; and the Decalogue also, in the conception which it has in Exodus XX, directly bases the commandment of the Sabbath on the divine week of creation. Now, if we suppose that the author took these days as earthly days of twenty-four hours, we are first of all obliged to reject as a child-like error the idea on which from religious
reasons—not from reasons of a mystical idea of God, but from direct practical religious reasons—he puts great importance; an idea with which he establishes an institution of human life which has been preserved through many thousands of years and is still preserved as the exceedingly blissful basis of all social life. For that the creation of the world, from the beginning of things up to the appearance of man, demanded more than six times twenty-four hours, is beyond any doubt. Moreover, we should be obliged to reject the arguments of such a central religious custom as Sabbath-rest in a record in which we have to assign an absolute and lasting religious value to all other religious elements of it, as to the ideas of the unity, omnipotence, and wisdom of God, of his creation through the creative word, of the perfection of his works, of man bearing the image of God. We should even see that idea of God which presents itself to us out of all other characteristics of that record in such spotless purity and sublime magnitude, sink down to a decided insignificance through the identification of the divine days of creation with our earthly days of twenty-four hours. All this certainly brings near to us the question: do we make a correct exegesis, do we correctly read that record, when we think that the author, because he speaks of days, must necessarily have understood earthly days, such as we know now?
We readily perceive how interpreters have arrived at this view. The divine sections of creation in the Mosaic account show themselves too decidedly as days to make possible any other interpretation than to take them as days. Now from experience we do not know of any other days than of earthly days of twenty-four hours;
and therefore the conclusion naturally follows, that the author also took the divine days of creation as such earthly days of twenty-four hours. A simple reference of the same to periods, so that we should again think of fixed periods of the earth or of the world, would especially pervert the literal sense—would entirely remove from the account the idea of "day" which is so essential to the author of the record, and thereby render obscure the archetype of the divine week of creation for the human divisions of time; and the looked-for harmony between the Biblical days and the geological periods of the earth would by no means be established by such an identification of the days of creation with the periods of the world: for the geological or even the cosmic and astronomical periods are nowhere in congruity with the Biblical days of creation.
But the question, however, is: are there not evidences in the Biblical account itself which show that the author did not take these days as creative earthly days of twenty-four hours? We have to answer this question decidedly in the affirmative.
In the first place, it is an established fact that these days of the week of creation were also, according to the meaning of the author, days of God. Now that such days of God, even with the most childish and simple worldly knowledge of that early period of mankind, so soon as such a pure idea of God, as appears from the whole account, is at the bottom of the conception, can no longer be identical with the days of the creature, is to be inferred beforehand with the greatest probability from the purity of that idea of God, and is even expressly
confirmed by special evidences in the record itself. We have to mention no less than four of them.
The days of creation present themselves as days of God, which as such differ from the creative days of earth by the fact that with them the day and the work of the day are absolutely identical. In the creative days, the day and the work of the day are always different from one another; the days come and go as temporal frames which include everything that happens during these days, whether we know it or not. Now we may turn our attention to and mention ever so many works of an earthly day: there always happen innumerable other things which also belong within the frame of that day and which are only not observed by us. It is quite another thing with those Biblical days of creation: here the day begins with the beginning of the day's work; it exists and passes on single and alone in the course of the work of the day, and it comes to an end when the day's work is completed, and the work of the following day begins: it comes to an end with "evening and morning."
We also lay some stress, though not very much, upon the fact that, in the account, that which makes and regulates the earthly day is created not before the fourth day of creation, Genesis I, 14: "And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years." We admit that if we were obliged for other reasons to suppose that the author of the account took the days of creation as common earthly days of twenty-four hours, we must and should find it possible that the author had been able to