Dunno - but is it the 7th day yet... I hope he'll let me rest on the 7th day too... :)

I look at the creation story more along the lines of a prolog - or "These are the events that lead up to our story". Our story has nothing to do with creation - it has everything to do with God, Man and the relationship between the two. I once saw a cartoon of a Moses like Character presenting a stack of books each labeled Creation Vol (1, 2, 3.... 50) to a beam of light in the sky (God) and God said something along the lines of "That's great for Creation, but maybe you should summarize it down to two chapters..." There is no doubt that there was a Creation. I think we can reasonably doubt that there was a man named Adam and a woman named Eve. However the "garden of Eden" is more a tale of mankind prior to agriculture, prior to towns cities and civilization a time when man did live off the land as a hunter gatherer. When the Genesis creation story was first told, humanity was not too far removed from the "good old days" to where hunting gathering was still part of our collective memory, not some dusty factoid long forgotten in the past. Adam (who's name means Man) and Eve (Mother of all) were most likely characters used to convey earlier man to more civilized people who had started the 6000 year road toward our civilization. The whole story of Adam and Even in light of the time it is supposed to take place takes on new meaning when we consider that the biblical time closely matches the time humans went from living of the land to agriculture. The loss of Eden may reflect the loss of "simpler times" when men roamed the world eating what they gathered and hunted. Around the biblical time of Noah sea basins were filling with water - places like the Persian Gulf, the Red sea used to be large fertile valleys until around the same time: http://www.geosociety.org/docs/absindex/annual/2000/51194.htm These human involved events had an impact on the bible, they were mostly carried from generation to generation by mouth - the easiest way to pass on spoken information is in the form of poetry or prose where the rhythm and rhyme of words allows one to recall more information. Of course the stories grew and took on supernatural tendencies - the data skewed as each retelling tried to pass on the data, but the human mind is faulty and most often fills in half remembered gaps with "made up" sort of on the money information. Under all of these conditions IF the actual story of creation (as is being uncovered by science today) was known in such depth and detail, then it was simply lost to time and retelling. I seriously doubt that information was truly known, and instead the author the tellers were trying to convey to the listener/reader the power of God in as few short words as possible.

It was as it said, six days. Why else does the scripture describe it so, complete with "morning and evening" for each day? If not, then we must wonder if every phrase with the words "on the xxx day" anywhere in the Old Testament was really some indefinite and vague period of time -- for it is the exact same grammatical usage in Hebrew. If Moses (author of Genesis) wanted to convey some other meaning besides an ordinary day, he had plenty of other Hebrew words to use. As just one example, a few books later, in Numbers chapter 7, the Bible describes how on each of 12 successive days a representative from the tribe of Israel brought forth their offering. (See Numbers 7:12, for instance.) Hmm, does this really mean that Nahshon of the tribe of Judah actually did all this in just one short, 24 hour day, eh? The seventh day finished (past tense-- Exodus 20:11 --For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day). Hebrews clearly states this; the book of Hebrews never says that the seventh day of Creation Week is continuing to the present, it merely says that God’s rest is continuing. If I tell you on Monday that I rested on Saturday, and that I am still resting, does that mean that Saturday lasted until Monday, or that today is really still Saturday?

The story line is faulty.. you see, s/he doesn't create the sun/moon/stars until mid-week, however, you get a day by the rotation of earth around the sun. If the sun wasn't created until the 4th day, you can't possibly have days 1 2 or 3. Secondly, if god is this omnipresent all powerful creature that s/he is, you would think that god is not bound by time as us mere mortals are. So s/he should have been able to do the whole thing in one instant to a human observer.

He didnt!

It depends on your idea and what the time frame of six days are.

Exactly 6 days. There is no grammatical reasoning in the Hebrew text or in the English text to believe differently. I take God at His Word, He was there. :)

6,000 years.

I think it COULD have been millenia.

Just a guess, but I would surmise that each day was an age. Some ancient cultures define an age as thousands of years, some millions. So time is not defined the same way as it is today, of course. The only thing that sticks in my mind about religous study from grade school where the bible was mentioned quite a bit was the Tower of Bable. I see this symbol every time people start discussing religion. Many ideas and no one understands what the other is talking about. Its personal.

There is alot of debate on this amongst Christians. The only thing I have to add is that it says in the Bible that one day with God is as ten thousand years. So could be 60,000 years, or could mean 6 days literally. No way to know for sure.

Six days.

(II Peter.3:8)

1) I don't think that god created the world in 6 days. I don't think that god created the world. I don't think that such a god exists. Some people try to make the Bible harmonize with scientific facts. 2) "The history of the Earth covers approximately 4.5 billion years (4,540,000,000 years), from Earth’s formation out of the solar nebula to the present." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Earth "The formation and evolution of the Solar System is estimated to have begun 4.6 billion years ago with the gravitational collapse of a small part of a giant molecular cloud. Most of the collapsing mass collected in the centre, forming the Sun, while the rest flattened into a protoplanetary disc out of which the planets, moons, asteroids, and other small Solar System bodies formed. This widely accepted model, known as the nebular hypothesis, was first developed in the 18th century by Emanuel Swedenborg, Immanuel Kant, and Pierre-Simon Laplace. Its subsequent development has interwoven a variety of scientific disciplines including astronomy, physics, geology, and planetary science. Since the dawn of the space age in the 1950s and the discovery of extrasolar planets in the 1990s, the models have been both challenged and refined to account for new observations." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_and_evolution_of_the_Solar_System "Extrapolation of the expansion of the universe backwards in time using general relativity yields an infinite density and temperature at a finite time in the past. This singularity signals the breakdown of general relativity. How closely we can extrapolate towards the singularity is debated—certainly not earlier than the Planck epoch. The early hot, dense phase is itself referred to as "the Big Bang", and is considered the "birth" of our universe. Based on measurements of the expansion using Type Ia supernovae, measurements of temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background, and measurements of the correlation function of galaxies, the universe has a calculated age of 13.73 ± 0.12 billion years." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_bang

None, my ship crash landed here : )

I've always considered that 6 days, to us, may be EONs to God. Remember, He inspired the Bible, and if he really said "days", then it may have been HIS days. OR, the word for "days" was misunderstood. I also considered that other times in the Bible may be based on different than what we use. For example: Many people were said to be over 900 years years old. Why couldn't the word "year" actually mean the number of full moons? Divide 910 by 13 (full moons in a year), and you get a more "realistic" age of 70. I'm not saying I'm right and the Bible is wrong. I'm just trying to believe in it in my own way.

in Quran, God say : the angels and the Spirit ascend unto Him in a Day thereof the span is fifty thousand years. 70:4

the translators thought a day was the right word to use...so I will go with their thought. i would guess sixteen hour days.

six billion years

Oooh, several million, give or take

Six days. Adam was made on the sixth day and was still around for the seventh day, so it couldn't represent millions of years.

simple... who knows. man created time.

The same. The bible states that the evening and the morning were the first day. If scientists had encountered Adam or Eve say a day after each one was created the scientists would have of course declared that Adam and Eve had obviously been around for years, since they appear to have been created as adults. Logically, therefore, God could have created the universe to appear to be as old as he wanted it to appear, maybe just to highlight that his word is true no matter what. Best wishes, Eddie Cairns.

only at the time of the end that the secrets of God shall be shown to man. so why do we go about with all this fuss. do you really think man, a few thousand of years ago, could have understood living on a round ball suspended in space? as you do with your children, i.e. Santa, fairies, etc... so it had to be done to you. much more to the story than meets the eye. i don't wory about it, but asuredly i can tell you God did not creat this planet in 6 days and on the last day put the stars in the heavens also. no. did not happen. sorry for all of you who want to think you are sons of adam. he, adam, probably did not even exist. just a story. ture answers look around you. want to know God, then look at the things He made. you can learn more from looking at an artists' painting thousand of years later, than even if you had met him, the artist, in person; so by that token: look at the things God made, and you will know Him. hope this helps you if you are looking for answers. mike.