A Multidisciplinary Contextualized Analysis of Select Passages From Genesis: The measure of a “Yom” (יום‎)

[This is an excerpt from a longer personal study of the book of Genesis which can be found here. The purpose of this exercise is to compare a naive reading of the text to our current understanding of language, paleontology, and the physical sciences. Constructive discussion on the elements presented is always encouraged!]

Few people read the Bible in its original languages making the content of our native language versions subject to the interpretation of a translator.  As word-for-word translation between languages does not always provide a readable result, interpretive paraphrasing is common in Bible translation.  Certainly this is done by committee with the utmost care to retain the integrity of the content, but there is inevitably interpretive license and preconceived ideas of how the verses should be understood.

To compound this concern is the occasional lack of equivalent vocabulary between the source and target languages. For example, there are seven Greek words for “love” that each require several words in English to describe or place into an accurate context.  If the translator doesn’t account for that explicit level of detail and simply uses a catch-all term, there could be lost meaning or context.

Hebrew seems to be the opposite case where there is a more limited vocabulary with a multitude of context-dependent definitions.  Words often have implied meanings, for instance whether an amount is considered a fixed or flexible quantity, which go back to antiquity.  This requires the reader to understand the context of and maybe even the historic use of the statement to determine the explicit meaning of the word.

In particular, the Hebrew word “Yom” (יום‎) is typically considered the term for “day”, but it can be used loosely for any finite period of time. A “Yom” could be billions of years or the time it takes to tie your shoes. It is the word used for a calendar day, but also for referring to an era.  And even if describing multiple “Yom” in sequence, those “Yom” do not need to be of equal length.  Each one in the sequence could be a different period of time.

In fact, nothing precludes one “Yom” from containing several “Yom” within it. Genesis 2:4a states “...in the [Yom] that Yahweh God made the earth and the heavens.”  So the seven “yom” of creation from the first chapter are contained within the one “yom” in this verse, reinforcing the flexible application of the term.

Henceforth, I will be using the term “Era” as opposed to the more generic translation “Day” in all cases where “Yom” (יום‎) is mentioned in the Genesis creation story.  It is my assertion that “Era” best expresses the meaning of “Yom” in this context.

Having spent so much time on a single term, one might find that choosing the intended meaning of a Hebrew word can already be problematic.  And with such a linguistic tradition one needs to consider if words with compound definitions may be used to embed deeper context. Categorical use of language might allow a memorable and simplified phrase to contain a more complicated image or with the intent of evoking multiple definitions as opposed to only one.

This practice of adding new definitions to the existing vocabulary continues today.  The Academy of the Hebrew Language in Jerusalem assigns existing Hebrew words to thousands of modern terms that emerge from other languages every year.  Although this is done in an attempt to prevent dilution of the language due to adoption of foreign terminology and grammar, as time goes on the popular use of many words will likely drift further from their use historically.  Without an intimate understanding of the timeline of such changes, this may serve to complicate translation from ancient Hebrew going forward.

More to follow…