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If I understand correctly, scientists such as Natan Aviezer and Gerald Schroeder have readings of Genesis Chapter 1 that fit with the current scientific understanding of how the universe/planet/life developed.

How do they read the fourth day? ("Sun, moon, and stars" come after "dry land and vegetation", but before aquatic life?)

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    Surprised this question got a downvote. You can't make everyone happy all the time, I guess ...
    – Shalom
    Oct 5, 2010 at 15:45

3 Answers 3

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Aviezer doesn't concern himself with creation except where the shoresh "bara" appears. The rest are the "big events" that brought the earth to its current state. So acc. to Aviezer-

Day 3= The Permian Ice Age where the waters of the flooded earth glaciated in the South Pole causing the oceans to recede. Later during this period was the proliferation of modern plant life.

Day 4= The point at which the Earth's eccentricity, axial obliquity and season of perihelion (in relation to the sun) aligned to allow a 24 hour day, 365+ day year and today's seasons (about 10,000 years before present, which is what also ended the most recent ice age). These changes are caused by the moons gravitational "pull".

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    Fascinating. "Let there be illuminators fixed in the sky such that they separate between day and night, demarcating set times, days, and years." Didn't happen until they were fixed as they currently are.
    – Shalom
    Dec 6, 2010 at 13:22
  • How does he explain day 5 being after day 4? Though that's a really nice explanation, and fits the pshat rather nicely. And a much better reading than the one I'm about to post.
    – avi
    Jan 19, 2012 at 16:45
  • @avi, I think the point is that since "day" is not a day, but an event, the chronology is not important. Why that order? I don't know!
    – YDK
    Jan 23, 2012 at 21:29
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I'm not certain if the source is Gerald Schroeder or just someone similar to him, but I read many years ago the idea that day 4 corresponds to the clouds of carbon and other early elements parting, and allowing actual visible light to be seen from earth. I believe this corresponds to the time right before "sea soup" allowed for larger multicellular organism in the ocean.

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Moon wouldn't be a problem, one of the major cosmological theory contenders for the creation of the Moon is that the Moon is coalesced debris from Earth.

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