The Jewish sense of time was different. It was unilinear rather than cyclical. Even the repeated lapses of Israel into idolatry did not dispel belief in God’s overall control and direction of events. Had he not led his people to the promised land, and saved them repeatedly? The Jewish God expressed himself in time. Nothing would ever be the same as before. That was the nature of time. Is it fanciful to trace this sense back to the experiences of a nomadic people in the desert, aware that wind blowing across the sand transformed their landscape from one day to the next?The critical idea for my purpose is in bold: The Jewish God expressed himself in time.
Today we are immersed in the Jewish concept of time and it is very difficult to step outside it and feel what a contrast it would be to pagan concepts, so we miss the importance of the chronology markers in Genesis 1: these are profoundly significant for the sense of Genesis 1 and for its implications for our understanding of creation as God's acts in time to found his relationship with his creation.
To defer to other time-concepts, or to radically set them aside with the pretence that they merge with pagan concepts is to turn one's back on the Biblical conception of time (that is, how time really works) and with it the Biblical information about creation. Creation founds worldview, another concept of 'creation' founds another world view.
Today the worldview of choice is metaphysical physicalism (even though physicalism itself cannot give rise to a metaphysic, meaning tha the metaphysic produced falls victim to post-modern accusations of (mere) narrative).
