Interpreting Genesis One

Yesterday’s post about the Death Star Theory (my name for it) raised a number of questions about the interpretation of Genesis 1 and its famous six days. In a series of posts today, I’ll give some thoughts on that. First, let me tell you what my conclusions will be.

There are a truckload of different interpretations of Genesis 1 that have been offered, and I can’t consider them all today. I can consider more (like Gerald Schroeder’s relativistic interpretation) later on. Here’s a list of the five interpretations I will consider today, ranked in order from what I consider the most plausible to the least plausible, along with notes on how plausible I think them to be:

  1. The Framework Interpretation (most plausible from a careful reading of the text)
  2. The Ordinary Day Interpretation (most plausible from a casual reading of the text)
  3. The Gap Interpretation (almost completely without foundation)
  4. The Revelatory Day Interpretation (virtually demonstrably false)
  5. The Day-Age Interpretation (demonstrably false)

Please note in how I treat these interpretations that I am coming at them here from a purely literary perspective. The question I’m asking is: "Given what the text says, how likely is it that this is the correct interpretation of the text?"

I’m trying to arrive at the correct interpretation by considering the question of textual interpretation first, not rushing to square the text with the findings of modern science. My interest is in figuring out what the text most likely means taken on its own terms, not trying to harmonize it with modern science.

In this discussion, I’ll only present one significant point of a scientific nature, and it isn’t a point of modern science. It is something that the ancients knew and commented on, making it fair to include in a discussion of what the author of Genesis 1 meant by what he wrote.

(I will also include an additional few notes based on modern science, but these will be in parentheses as they are not part of my main argument. My main concern is just what the text would be read to mean on its own, without considering modern science.)

Having said that, let’s look at these interpretations, starting with the least plausible.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

2 thoughts on “Interpreting Genesis One”

  1. A promising beginning, Jimmy!
    On one level, of course, the “day-age” theory and the “framework” theory are much closer to one another than either is to the “ordinary day” theory. In that sense, if you’re looking at scientific evidence, the “day-age” theory and the “framework” theory both have a prima facie plausibility that the “ordinary day” theory lacks.
    OTOH, in terms of explaining the text, it’s always seemed to me the “day-age” theory is bogus, and that either the “framework” theory or the “ordinary day” theory makes far better sense of the text.
    Why the “framework” theory actually works better on a literary level than the “ordinary day” theory (as opposed to merely being more compatible with scientific evidence) is perhaps the most interesting piece of the puzzle. Looking forward to the ensuing posts!

  2. Didn’t St. Augustine interpret the first day of the separation of light and dark as the separation of the good angels from the bad angels and the casting out of heaven of those bad angels?

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