Use of Hebrew Word "yom" in Genesis

The word yom was and is still the ordinary Hebrew word for a day (Harrison 48). For example, Yom Kippur, the ôday of atonement,ö is the holiest day in the Jewish year; it is referred to colloquially as Yom Tov, the ôGood Dayö (Schauss 125). In the period after the return of part of the Jewish community from Babylon to Judah, when the book of Genesis was given its final form, yom almost certainly must have meant a 24-hour day, since the Jews had adopted much of Babylonian culture, as long as it did not interfere with their own beliefs. What they adopted included the seven-day week, which is, of course, reflected in the seven days of creation in Genesis 1.

Six times in Genesis 1 (verses 5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31) it is stated that there was an evening and a morning, and thus another day. This reflects the Jewish practice, still observed today,

. . .
order to correlate with the Babylonian week.) It is perhaps shocking to realize that Genesis 1-2:3 incorporates what is now considered the occult science of astrology, but when the Priestly author was writing, this cosmic scheme represented the best scientific thought then available (it was also implicit in the Enuma elish; Speiser 8-13). His problem was to adapt that scheme in a way that strengthened rather than conflicted with Jewish monotheistic beliefs. He accomplished this by creating a unified creation story, in which the Babylonian associations of things and days are retained, but now for a different theological reason: now because those things were created on those days by the one and only true God. (See McKenzie 29; Pfeiffer 192-6 discusses whether he was rewriting an earlier document.) The Priestly author probably did not have a negative attitude toward the Babylonian concepts--if he had, why would he have used them at all?--but he perhaps thought they simply did not go on to their logical conclusions. His attitude might have been similar to that of Einstein toward Newton: Newton was not wrong, but his work became a special case in a more general scheme. The post-Exilic Jewish attitude toward the gods of other peop
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Chaldean Babylonian, American Muslims, Law God, Holy Scriptures, Jewish Babylonian, Babylon Judah, , Roman Catholic, Beginning AsimovÆs, Babylonians Childs, day ruled, genesis 1-23, priestly author, planet call, creation stories, genesis 1, day ruled planet, enuma elish, ruled planet, hebrew scriptures, stories genesis, ruled planet call, creation stories genesis, people--men women children--are, bible philadelphia westminster,
Approximate Word count = 3230
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)

More Essays on Use of Hebrew Word "yom" in Genesis