Saint Augustine took the Bible literally, and noted that the time between Daniel’s prophesied Messiah and Christ’s coming didn’t jibe. But wisely and with God-given discernment, he didn’t doubt. A retired Scotland Yard detective solved the mystery by having the Greenwich Observatory back-engineer a Jewish calendar, and counting the time by the shorter Jewish canonical year. The time matched that of Christ’s coming.

Augustine also noted discrepancies in the timetable of Noah’s time. This was wonderfully resolved by explorer David Fasold in his book, [u:24g9lzjl]The Ark of Noah[/u:24g9lzjl] in the chapter titled “The Shem Shuffle.” It’s O.K. to have questions. They will be answered if you keep “asking, seeking, knocking” as Christ counseled. It’s not wise to doubt.

So with Genesis. The real problem with modern translations of Genesis is that they aren’t technical enough. The language of creation is exacting, possibly even referring to the Van Allen Belt, yet it is morphed into a kind of overall gloss.

Nothing could be more scientific than God’s creating Adam from the stuff of the Earth; putting him to sleep under anesthesia of some kind; cloning the Woman from his tissue; and possibly gene-tweaking or refining the Woman as the language suggests. What faith those of old must have had to believe that could possibly be true. Modern scientific mtDNA permutation studies show we came from one common mother, nicknamed “Eve.” Good science is good religion.

By your reckoning we have two accounts of all published technical papers, including legal and medical papers. There is the synopsis, and the expository body of the piece. The ancient Suzereinty Treaties were also in this dual format. The Suzereinty Treaties underly the format further developed in the whole of Genesis. There is one Genesis creation account in two parts.

Preterists want to make Bible prophecy so limited and abstract that it would make the warnings of John’s Apocalypse, which closely parallel the grave tidings of the Book of Daniel, meaningless. There is multiple fulfillment in the Bible which points to the ultimate fulfillment, just as types of Christ point to the Messiah. Our Lady of the Rosary’s appearance at Fatima, Portugal, in 1917 literally fulfills Apocalypse 12, with the Woman clothed with the Sun appearing in the sky. Know the signs of the time and keep the faith as did Augustine. “Look up, your redemption draws nigh.”

“Seven Years of Starlight and Time” is a great net essay on Creation Physics, showing the principle of [b:3ucjgqw4]time dilation[/b:3ucjgqw4]. The seven days were literally seven days, but in a unique way, like a pie slice that is wide at one end being the billion years side of the “day” and the “day” we perceive at the other.

The literalist adherence to a twenty-four hour day is strange, as the Jewish canonical year of 350 days and other so-called “short count” calendars, like the Mayan, show the Earth’s rotation was markedly different in the past.

It’s absurd to claim the “day” was literally twenty-four hours as that’s not biblical. See? You’re right in that instance. But check out the physics in “Seven Years of Starlight and Time.” And in any event, a day with the Lord is like a thousand years; and a thousand years is like a day with God. Time dilation is correct, and clockwatcher days of twenty-four hours simply isn’t biblical.