It's amazing how far science has come toward confirming the Bible. Forty-fifty years ago the world conventional wisdom adopted the Greek world view that the cosmos existed always. Edwin Hubble and Albert Einstein collaboration affirms, nope, the cosmos has origin; it came into existence about 14 billion years ago.
The Genesis account of creation is in broad strokes. However, its PRESCIENCE thousands of years ahead of scientific discovery is one of the things that separate the Hebrew narrative from the entire range of religious and secular writings.
It's special!
Yom (day)
Above is a correlation update of the Biblical creation account with science. We know the Bible does not support a young Earth 24-hour day creation model. Inspection of the text leads to this conclusion:
1) Phrase "evening and morning" in Genesis 1:5 refers to light (photons) separating out of the cosmic plasma "Dark Ages" cannot refer to normal solar days because visible sun and moon, day or night clocks, don't' become visible in the sky until the fourth day. Gen 1:14-15
Idiom "evening and morning" has a poetic nuance (typical Hebrew). The sense of creation periods is they are phased from "evening" (0% complete) steadily to "morning" (100% complete) with a finale "very good" stamp--e.g. the seventh day does not have this "evening and morning" summary with a "very good" stamp.
We live in this 6 th day still in process, waiting for a "very good" stamp, now thousands of years downstream; first 24-hours are long past.
2) Genesis 2:4 refers to the ENTIRE six creative days as "the day" (one day), signaling something special, extraordinary.
Gn 2:4 "These are births of the heavens and of the earth in their being prepared, in the DAY of Jehovah God's making earth and heavens." YLT
So, the "six days" = the "earth and heavens" day, clearly not 24-hours.
3) Genesis 1:3-5 speaks of "light" arriving in the entire universe for the first time.
Gn 1:3 "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. AV 4 And seeing is the Elohim the light, that it is good. And separating is the Elohim between the light and the darkness." CLV
This "light" permeating the cosmos is the reason WMAP and COBE probes can see back in time as far as CMB event, cosmic opaqueness ("Dark Ages") became translucent.
Opaqueness is bc very hot matter was crammed together into a smaller universe. Cosmos expansion (still working today) allows it loosen up and cool. This allows the quark-gluon plasma to form into protons. At this point the universe consists mostly of electrons, protons, and also photons (light and other radiation).
Once the quarks and gluons form together into protons, charged electrons and protons bind to form electrically neutral hydrogen atoms (this process is called "Recombination"). Then, a process called photon decoupling took place. PHOTONS now are able to travel through the universe uninhibited without being continually absorbed by free-roaming electrons and protons bc they're now bound to hydrogen atoms. "Let there be light: and there was light."
This process of freeing up photons to roam the universe freely is what leaves the residual cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation that scientists have observed today, which is one of the strongest pieces of observational evidence for the Big Bang theory.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAnXai1r4qI