The universe was created in 6 days.
True or False?


False. The original Hebrew Bible, science and common sense are all in agreement that it took more than a week to create the universe, the earth and all its life forms!

Those people who insist on a six 24-hour day Creation usually refer to the King James Bible of 1611 as the source of their certainty. As they rightly point out, God does not tell lies. The Book of Genesis, which describes the Creation, was inspired by God and written down by Moses in the Ancient Hebrew language.

For example, the Six Day Creationists quote Genesis chapter 2, verse 2 which I’ve shown in the original Hebrew and in its original 1611 spelling :-

Way And khal ended ’Elohīm God bay on the yom day/era hashabīy seventh malakhtow work His ’asher which ‘asah He had done way and yishboth He rested bay on the yom day/era hashabīy seventh mi from kal all malakhtow work His ’asher which ‘asah He had done.
Genesis 2,2 in Hebrew


And on the seuenth day God ended his worke, which hee had made: And he rested on the seuenth day from all his worke, which he had made.
Genesis 2,2 in its 1611 spelling

The seventeenth century team of experts who translated the Bible from the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek into English did a splendid job, but they didn’t know as much about those ancient languages as we do today.

The Hebrew word yom mostly meant “day”. In Moses’ day the Israelites all knew that the word yom had several other meanings, including “an undefined period of time”, like the third word of this sentence. When Moses wrote that the universe had been created in six “yoms”, he meant that God had done it over six eras, six stages. No problem.

It was only when Christianity arrived many centuries later and Christians began carrying out Jesus’ instruction to tell the world, that the need to translate the Bible into other languages arose. Unfortunately, the inaccurate translation of yom as “day” has led to many passionate, and sometimes bitter, arguments between ardent scientists and fundamentalist Christians.

Some scientists have tried to use the debate to undermine the whole Christian religion. They assert that because fossils in rocks have been proved to be many millions of years old and because some Christians are convinced the creation of the universe took less than a week, the religion is discredited.

However, now that it is increasingly understood that the fierce debate was based on a misunderstanding, hopefully scientists and Christians can put their differences behind them and work together to discover how God’s stars, planets and this wonderful world actually work.

If scientists and Christians united, imagine the wonderful things they could achieve and discover. Scientists could focus on climate change, starvation and disease and religion could enlighten people on how to become selfless, kind and caring human beings.