Six or Eight Days of Creation ?

The gist of the mis­sion­ary claim is as follows :

Two days for the cre­ation of the earth, then four days to fill the earth with moun­tains, bless­ings and nour­ish­ment for all its inhab­i­tants, and in the end two more days to cre­ate the sev­en heav­ens and cre­ate the stars in them. This adds up to 2+4+2 = 8 days in con­tra­dic­tion to the 6 days men­tioned in the oth­er verses.

Response

The prob­lem of the mis­sion­ar­ies with their so-called find­ings of ​“con­tra­dic­tions” in the Noble Qur’an is that they fail to note the method­ol­o­gy of how tafsir is per­formed. In response to this alleged ​“con­tra­dic­tion” in the afore­men­tioned vers­es, we would like to cite Harun Yahya’s ​“How Do The Unwise Inter­pret The Qur’an ?” for a refutation.

The Sub­ject of Cre­ation in Six Days

It is stat­ed in var­i­ous parts of the Qur’an that the uni­verse was cre­at­ed in six days. Par­tic­u­lar atten­tion is often drawn to one sec­tion how­ev­er, where the num­ber of days in the sep­a­rate vers­es men­tion­ing the dif­fer­ent stages of cre­ation adds up to 8. Those who are unable to grasp the evi­dent log­ic behind these vers­es assume them to con­flict with all the oth­er Qur’an­ic vers­es, which state the cre­ation to have occurred in six days. These vers­es are as follows :

Say : ​‘Do you reject Him Who cre­at­ed the earth in two days, and make oth­ers equal to Him ? That is the Lord of all the worlds.’ He placed firm­ly embed­ded moun­tains on it, tow­er­ing over it, and blessed it and mea­sured out its nour­ish­ment in it, laid out for those who seek it — all in four days. Then He turned to heav­en when it was smoke and said to it and to the earth, ​‘Come will­ing­ly or unwill­ing­ly.’ They both said, ​‘We come will­ing­ly.’ In two days He deter­mined them as sev­en heav­ens and revealed, in every heav­en, its own man­date. We adorned the low­est heav­en with lamps and guard­ed it. That is the decree of the Almighty, the All-Know­ing. (Surah Fussi­lat : 9 – 12)

If the days men­tioned in the above vers­es are cal­cu­lat­ed, they add up to 8. Where­as it is stat­ed in verse 3 of Surah Yunus and oth­ers that the Earth, the skies and every­thing in between were cre­at­ed in 6 days. This sit­u­a­tion could appear incom­pre­hen­si­ble to a super­fi­cial read­er who refus­es to use his mind and log­ic or to pay close atten­tion. Those who approach the Qur’an to try to dis­cov­er faults and con­tra­dic­tions fre­quent­ly cite the above verse.

Yet, if a per­son con­cen­trates and uses wis­dom he can read­i­ly see that there is absolute­ly no para­dox at all. If we pay atten­tion to the peri­ods of time stat­ed in the vers­es we can reach the fol­low­ing calculations :

- It took four days from the time the uni­verse was start­ed until the sus­te­nance had been made ready, or rather the nec­es­sary envi­ron­ment for liv­ing things was suit­able, along with the cre­ation of plants and animals.

- The begin­ning of this peri­od, name­ly the shap­ing of the Earth along with the uni­verse, or in short the cre­ation of the world, took the ini­tial two of these four days. So, these two days are not a sep­a­rate time frame from those first four days. They are, to be more pre­cise, the first two days of the four days men­tioned in the next verse.

- In the 11th and 12th vers­es state that the sky was formed in 2 days. In con­clu­sion, they add up to 6 days.

In short, the vers­es explain the sep­a­rate time frames for each of the events that take place with­in the six days of creation.

It is imper­a­tive to clar­i­fy the point that the term ​“day” men­tioned in these vers­es is not used to refer to a 24 hour-day but instead to indi­cate the dif­fer­ent peri­ods and phases.

We have used the tra­di­tion­al method of Qur’an­ic exe­ge­sis, i.e., al-Qur’an yufas­siru ba’­duhu ba’­dan (dif­fer­ent parts of the Qur’an explain each oth­er). What is giv­en in a gen­er­al way in one place is dis­cussed in detail in some oth­er place in the Qur’an. What is dealt with briefly at one place is expand­ed in some oth­er place.

And only God knows best !