Christianity

Originally posted on Substack

You know the first verse of the Bible, right?

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Gen 1:1 NET

The word for God here is Elohim. There are some interesting tidbits about this:

The noun is in its plural form. Singular would be Eloah. While this seems really controversial, in most of the usages, it’s paired with a singular verb. AKA “created” up there is masculine singular. So it’s often interpreted as a majestic plural.

Originally posted on Substack

I’ve often encountered Christians that believe the world was created in 7 24-hour days, because “that’s what the Bible says” in Genesis 1 and they won’t believe otherwise.

There are a ton of arguments against this “fact,” but I think the most compelling one is the linguistic ambiguity for the word “day” (yom) used in the creation account. First, let’s take a look at an English translation for one of the days of creation: