Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Michael Hildenbrand <hildenbr AT Haas.Berkeley.EDU>]

Stephen,
        The use of the term "24 hour"is to translate into more technical
(and thus more clear) English terminology in this discussion.  If I were
to use the term "day" everyone on this list would be wondering "does he
mean a *real* day, or a day of 1000 years or a day of a billion years."  
This is not because the English word "day" is insufficient in
communication generally, really that in this context where people have
re-defined the term.  The word "day" can also mean the daylight part of a
day.  Lest I appear to *not* reflect the biblical text, I use the term
"24-hour day."  If you have a better term, I am very much open to it.  
The phrase "24 hour" does not reflect how I feel the ancients perceived
time.

Michael

 On Tue, 29 Aug 2000, Stephen C. Carlson wrote:

> At 05:58 AM 8/29/00 +0200, Ian Hutchesson wrote:
> >Going back to the text of Genesis 1, what is there in the particular text
> >which suggests that the writer was dealing with anything other than a 24
> >hour day?
> 
> It appears that use of the term "24 hour day" is in danger of improperly
> importing modernistic conceptions of time into an ancient text.  I note
> that, despite the poster's emphasis on the text, there is no mention of
> an "hour" much less twenty four of them in Genesis 1.
> 
> Is there any evidence that the writers of the Hebrew Bible measured
> days in terms of hours, rather than measuring hours in terms of a day
> (i.e. as a fraction).  In fact, is there any evidence that they even
> divided the day into 24 hours, rather into watches or the like? 
> 
> Stephen Carlson
> 
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> Stephen C. Carlson                        mailto:scarlson AT mindspring.com
> Synoptic Problem Home Page   http://www.mindspring.com/~scarlson/synopt/
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