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RE: Were the seven days of creation in Genesis seven twenty four hour periods? - Where do these notions originate?

in #religion7 years ago

There were lots of different translations (from latin) of the bible in the middle ages, look it up. The objections of the Catholic church was not translations per se, but rather the hugely different versions written by people not fluent in latin or simply that the native language wasn't sufficiently developed to encompass the nuances and full meanings of the latin version (Biblia vulgata).

See for example Cambridge History of the Bible: "the vernacular appeared simply and totally inadequate. Its use, it would seem, could end only in a complete enfeeblement of meaning and a general abasement of values. Not until a vernacular is seen to possess relevance and resources, and, above all, has acquired a significant cultural prestige, can we look for acceptable and successful translation."

Also, the notion of the medieval period as a backward and simpleminded period has been thoroughly revised by historians. It is quite ironic that for example the "burning century" (witchhunts) was between 1550-1650, and that witches and magic was deemed as superstition during most of the middle ages.

I would also point out that the Catholic church interprets Genesis symbolically and not literally. The view that the earth was created in 7 days is held solely by (some) protestants.

Lastly I must mention that the notion of "medieval notions of planetary [...] origins was not developed by the church, but was based on aristotelic theories from the classical period, which ironically, was the period the so-called age of enlightenment defined itself a continuation of a.k.a. the Renaissance.

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This is not a Catholicism bash, in case anybody interprets it as that, Catholicism was simply a monopoly for a long time and that has lasting impacts still visible today in various forms.

As you point out Catholicism has move on while other protestants have not:

“God is not a demiurge or a magician, but the Creator who gives being to all entities,” he said. Catholics have long accepted that the creation story as written in the book of Genesis in the Bible can stand along the scientific theory of evolution and that the two are not mutually exclusive.

https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/10/28/pope-francis-comments-on-evolution-and-the-catholic-church

FromWikipedia

Early reaction to Charles Darwin's theories
Catholic concern about evolution has always been very largely concerned with the implications of evolutionary theory for the origin of the human species; even by 1859, a literal reading of the Book of Genesis had long been undermined by developments in geology and other fields. No high-level Church pronouncement has ever attacked head-on the theory of evolution as applied to non-human species.
Even before the development of modern scientific method, Catholic theology had allowed for biblical text to be read as allegorical, rather than literal, where it appeared to contradict that which could be established by science or reason. Thus Catholicism has been able to refine its understanding of scripture in light of scientific discovery. Among the early Church Fathers there was debate over whether God created the world in six days, as Clement of Alexandria taught, or in a single moment as held by Augustine, and a literal interpretation of Genesis was normally taken for granted in the Middle Ages and later, until it was rejected in favour of uniformitarianism (entailing far greater timeframes) by a majority of geologists in the 19th century. However modern literal creationism has had little support among the higher levels of the Church.