I sent that to my friend JIm for assessment, and to give another point of view. He pulls these things off the top of his head, amazing.
In any case, for your consideration:
Jim says:
Dr. Jason Lyle’s arguments in that video are a collection of “possibilities” that seem to serve to allow him to support his preferred interpretations/translations.
I would ask him about psalm 19 for one thing. “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech: night after night they display knowledge.” What is it about stellar “time zones” or Einsteinian relativity that is “displayed knowledge?” How would a few thousand years of believers read psalm 19? "Maybe there are time zones in space?” Are 21st century (and therefore “exotic”) ideas necessary to understand the Bible? “Perhaps.” “Maybe.” “What if.” Dr. Lyle posits that God may have used “supernatural means.” to allow light to travel in practically no “time” at all. How does that translate to our being able to trust what we see, “displayed knowledge,” in the heavens in that verse?
Dr. Lyle seems to believe the heavens were created on the fourth “day” (yom). Why are creation verbs not used there? What rule of Hebrew semantics require a “Yom” be 24 hrs? Why, then, is an “evening and a morning” not a mere 12 hrs?
He suggests that the Big Bang is an “alternative” to Biblical creation. I suggest it is identical to it. As, apparently, do these secular scientists;
Sir Frederick Hoyle- “The big bang theory theory requires a recent origin of the Universe that openly invites the concept of creation.”
George Smoot, director of the COBE background radiation project- “The question of ‘the beginning’ is as inescapable for cosmologists as it is for theologians.”
Robert Jastrow- “The essential element in the astronomical and Biblical accounts of Genesis is the same; the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply, at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy.”
I suggest that any English speakers interested in these things get an interlinear Bible, A Hebrew lexicon with Strong’s numbers, and make a list of the many english translation possibilities from the Hebrew words, and then decide which of these possibilities are the best explanations. And unless you cannot definitely refute a possibility, why wouldn’t you have to leave it in as a possibility? And try not to inject preconceived or favorite notions, so that we can be fair to the remaining possibilities. Is everyone who disagrees with you incompetent? After all, I can suggest Christian PH.d astronomers who disagree with Dr. Lyle. Maybe Jeff Zweerinck?
Also ask some questions…, such as- Was there really a practice to skip over many personages in Hebrew genealogies? Would that explain why Biblical genealogies are not identical? How many generations are missing?
Why does God, speaking thousands of years ago, call the hills “ancient” in more than one place?
Why does not the Hebrew ”shemayim eretz” in Gen 1:1.not mean “the entire physical universe.” Gleason Archer, the renowned Hebrew scholar, says it can. Could that explain why “Bara” the creation verb used in verse 1 is not used in “Yom” 4? Why is the “dark” localized in verse 2?
Why is the radical creation verb “bara” used in psalm 104: 29-30. Where God causes the death of creatures- “when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust." And then- “When you send your Spirit, they are created (“Bara”) and you renew the face of the earth. “The face of the earth?..,” what scope! Which 24 hour period contained these actions? Here perhaps I should take my own advice & point out that the Hebrew translated here “earth” can also be translated “ground” which could be said to be smaller in “scope,” but it doesn’t have to be, and all I have to do is suspend my penchant for dogma. Yet I still have to ask,…, why is God killing creatures not included in the Genesis one account, at say, 2:30 in the afternoon on the 5th “day"? Why is this not a perfectly good question? Why and how is Psalm 104 not an explicit teaching of “day=age progressive creation?” And why exactly would one reject it without explanation? Or at least providing a better one.
Speaking of possibilities…, the Hebrew lexicon for “Shemayim” (“heaven’s, plural) used in the flood account contains the Hebrew convention of a perspective view of “from horizon to horizon.” Another opportunity for honest assessment of possibilities, is it not?