Interesting serious starting on PT

[grmorton]

Hey Glenn! You perhaps thought you'd never have to read posts by that goofball Augustine2004 again. A reason for your return. Heh! Or maybe he wasn't that bad but you simply forgot him. Oh, well.


Actually we all are fideist, though we can be at least in theory be ranked from most rigid to least in terms of refusal to abandon one's beliefs in light of evidence that seem to go against them. Each of us has a working philosophy, a set of beliefs about the universe that one uses in making decisions about what action to undertake. Initially the beliefs are quite fideist, but may change depending on what one decides to do with evidence that he sees (so to speak). I don't think that anyone can be sure he knows the truth. Oh, one could be sure that he is alive, he eats, sleeps, is typing a post, etc. But in general, "facts" that he thinks he knows are subject to change and doubt. For one thing, sometimes appearances can be deceiving. One ought to watch good magic shows once in a while.

Lest anyone draw a wrong conclusion from the above, I side with Glenn much more than with Jorge, though I question whether science can be successfully applied to any event or series of events in which God plays a role as reported in the Bible. Let me explain.

I hold a book in the air and say, "See, I am breaking the Law of Gravitation. Therefore, science is wrong!" Scientists would rightly ignore or scorn me as a nut. Science is supposed to be about the workings of Nature, when humans are not present (excepting the workings of their bodies, of course). Now that I have attempted to make a point with the book, I would add, "And when God is not apparently present also."

Glenn's efforts and Jorge's to find scientific accounts of Genesis are ultimately fruitless IMO because we cannot know the precise details of God's involvement or actions. For example, we cannot know for sure if the Days of Planning and Design are temporal or not.

I remember Augustine well and fondly. Yeah we disagreed sometimes, but doesn't everyone here do that?

Of course we can't know those precise details anymore than we will ever know the actual path by which life arose. Logically the best we can do is provide a possible pathway. But to give up on the effort seems a bit weird to me. As I said earlier, if there is zero way that the account can be interpreted within the confines of modern science, then the right and logical thing to do is proclaim it all hocum. Problem is no one seems to want to risk what I risked in my 30 year long project of searching for that possible path that God might have taken.

[grmorton]

And we're not "all fideists" either. That's a bastardization of the term, like using "slavery" in a minimum wage argument.

K54

Klaus, I think I like your noticing the messing up of a term. I want to discuss what faith is and what it is not. It is one of the reasons, sadly, I don't have loads of respect for some views. I am going to do an analogy with a period in my career.

Back in the 1990s I worked for Oryx Energy, one of the meanest companies in the business. My title varied from Manager of Geophysics for the Western US, to Manager of Geop. for the western Gulf of Mexico (GOM) when we sold of California, to Mgr of GOM when we put the entire GOM under me, then back to western GOM when we split it up again about 1997. At this point the guy who was the exploration director for the eastern GOM would contract for drill rigs to go drill what they thought were good prospects. We in the West did the same thing. But when it got close to when the rig would show up for the East, the Exploration Director would grow cold feet and proclaim his prospect not ready to drill. His bosses would come to us asking if we had a place to put the rig to use. We always did. Over and over this guy would sign a contract but then get cold feet and throw the rig to us, forcing us to scramble to find a place for the $500,000/day rig (the cost at that time, today they are well over a million per day).

Now I am going to make an analogy between belief and faith. Both terms are misused and your comment above made me think of this. The Exploration director of the East believed his prospects were good, but he didnt have enough faith to drill them. He might be proven wrong. So in order to avoid being proven wrong, he refused to drill his prospects. When Kerr-McGee bought us, he was let go, the geological manager and geophysical manager who worked for him were demoted. I and the geological manager of GOM West were put in charge of all the Gulf for the new company.

We had had faith in our prospects that enough of them would produce that we always drilled, even when an extra rig was thrown our way. We found loads of oil. GOM EAST didn't find much oil because their manager didn't have faith in their prospects.

Belief is an idea; faith is an action.

Now, this is going to make loads of people mad at me, but they will have to stand in a long long line. I think what Tipler says is absolutely true. People don't want to risk the Bible being proven wrong, so they set up the system so it can never ever be proven wrong. Here is what Tipler said.

"Of course, the real reason modern theologians want to keep science divorced from religion is to retain some intellectual territory forever protected from the advance of science. This can only be done if the possibility of scientific investigation of the subject matter is ruled out a priori. Theologians were badly burned in the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions. Such a strategy seriously underestimates the power of science, which is continually solving problems philosophers and theologians have decreed forever beyond the ability of science to solve." ~ Frank J. Tipler, The Physics of Immortality, (New York: Doubleday, 1994), p. 7

To me, this shows that like the East Exploration manager, the modern theologians, who make sure that Genesis can't be disproven by turning it into just another literary interpretive exercise, have belief, but not faith. They won't risk being shown that they are wrong. They are not willing to do what I did in my life, risk my very faith (and almost lost it) in order in an attempt to see if there was some way to make Genesis fit within modern science. It cost me loads, but I would not change what I learned from those struggles for anything on earth. Faith is not taking the easy path; the path that can't be disproven. Faith is sitting on the airplane not standing on the tarmac believing that the plane will fly. Faith is risking things; belief is thinking things. That is a very big difference.

[klaus54]

I am a chess player. I always try to anticipate what the other guy is going to respond with. One guy that worked for me told another fellow that "Glenn's questions would seem off the wall but that he was about 10 steps down the road and he would be laying traps for you." That guy captured me well.




Jim, agreeing that pomegranates and tomatos are fruit is not very relevant when discussing trucks. Who cares about agreement on an irrelevant topic? My problem with your approach is that you are going to be the one to tell me what type of literature Genesis 1 is. I have no freedom to decide that for myself. There is no crucial experiment which can decide between our two views and that is a HUGE problem with literary analysis. There simply is no way we can ascertain the truth unless it is stated in the literature itself. And I think Genesis 2:1 and 2:4 clearly state what the text is about. But you ignore it.

So what do I actually see the data and the culture and the language and the structure saying about what type of literature Genesis?



Pardon me Jim, you may have mis-written but these two sentences seem quite contradictory (you are going to get mad at me before this is all over). First you look for concepts apart from what the text says. If you do that, then why all the hullabaloo about what kind of text it is?




But the root word for Raqia is not something hard. Brown-Driver-Briggs says this about Raqa--to beat, stamp, beat out, spread out, stretch. Space stretches. That is the expansion of space.

As to Seely, he was the proximate cause for the deepest phase of my crisis of faith. His book is the best argument for atheism I have ever read.



Ezekiel what? I am clearly going to have to re-install Logos on my computer. I have been away from this area for 4 years



Really? What a logical jump. We talk about the North and South Poles, the setting of the sun, even in technical literature. This just seems to me to apply a different standard to them than we apply to ourselves.




No, it is not foolish the way the YECs treat the scripture. It is foolish that they tie it to a false science. Frankly, I think the YECs treat the creation with great respect, but then make it all wrong by saying stupid stuff scientifically speaking. The thing that makes what they say false is not the genre of the literature but the falseness of their statements about nature.




Lots of authorities think it was Babylonian Gods, not Egyptian gods being mentioned:

“There has been an increasing disinclination to interpret the concepts contained in v.2 in terms of the mythological conceptions of neighbouring religions. The Hebrew word for ‘primeval flood’ (tehom) probably has linguistic affinity with Tiamat, , the Babylonian dragon of chaos. A more direct connection, amounting to a ‘borrowing,’ cannot be assumed. Nor can it be assumed that the Hebrew bohu goes back to the Phoenician mother-goddess Baau. Bohu is a noun (always connected with tohu) which means emptiness, desolation.” Gerhard Von Rad, Genesis, (Philadelphia, The Westminster Press, 1972), p. 50

“Smith was struck by the uncanny similarity between the opening lines of the
Babylonian creation myth and the initial two verses of the first chapter of Genesis, which he had memorized in boyhood:


In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form and void; and the darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

“The cuneiform glyphs on the tablet he had just dusted off and was now reading spoke with an identical idiom:

When above, were not raised the heavens:
and below on earth a plant had not grown up;
the abyss also had not broken open their boundaries
The chaos (or water) Tiamat (the sea) was the producing mother of the whole of them.

“Smith could barely trust his own decipherment. Both narratives not only shared a story line, but also incorporated the identical word, chaos (a primitive sea monster), to connote the watery deep Tehom or Tehomot in Hebrew and Tiamat in Akkadian. In Smith’s translation of the Babylonian creation account, the sea monster Tiamat is slain and her body is cut in two with one half placed in the firmament to prevent her waters from ever flooding the earth. The saltwater terror is kept in abeyance for perpetuity. The exact same image, a bolt shot across a gate; is found in the Book of Job.
“Other intriguing literary comparisons also became evident. The ‘Tree of Life’ in the Garden of Eden was almost certainly the sacred grove of Anu (the ancient Mesopotamian sky god who was the prime mover in creation, and the distant, supreme leader of the gods), which the Nineveh tablet described as ‘guarded by a sword turning to all the four points of the compass’. The divine tree was often embossed on the sculptures of the palaces at Nimrud and Nineveh as well as on cylinders used to make royal seals for temple documents. In pictorial representation the sacred tree was invariably accompanied by a serpent.
“The Babylonian tablets thus raised for Smith and his peers, schooled in the Scripture, a team of challenging questions: How could the texts from Mesopotamia have such striking parallels with Scripture, including the essence of their shared myth, the use of vocabulary with nearly the same pronunciation, and phrases worded almost identically? Was the Bible no longer the original historical source of human creation?” ~ William Ryan and Walter Pitman, Noah’s Flood, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998), p. 50-51


Abraham came out of Babylon, not Egypt and it should be him carrying the creation account to the Hebrews. There are other Babylonian connections in early Genesis:

“As we have learnt, Enki (‘Lord of the Earth’) was called Ea in Akkadian (East Semitic)—that is to say the Babylonian tradition. Scholars have determined that Ea was vocalized as ‘Eya’. So, when Moses stood before the burning bush and asked the name of the god of the mountain, did he really reply ‘I am who I am’ (Heb. Eyah asher eyah)? This puzzling phrase has long perplexed theologians but now there is a simple explanation. The voice of God simply replied ‘Eyah asher Eyah’—‘I am (the one who is called Eyah’—the name of Ea in its West Semitic (I.e. Hebrew) form. Scholars have simply failed to recognise that this is another of those characteristic puns in which the Old Testament abounds. ‘I am (Eyah) he who is called (asher) Ea (Eyah)’ is a classic biblical play on words. It also explains God’s apparently nonsensical instruction: ‘This is what you are to say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you’. God’s words should really be translated as ‘Eyah has sent me to you.’
“’Eyah’ or simply ‘Ya’ is the hypocoristic form of the name Yahweh found as an element of so many Old Testament names.’” David Rohl, Legend: The Genesis of Civilization, (London: Arrow Books, 1998), p. 196-197

Jim, quite simply, if these guys are right, your anti-Egyptian polemic goes right out the window. Prove them wrong!



I would doubt that it is an epic of any kind. It is too short.




What I think is that you have assumed the consequence. You think it must be an anti-egyptian polemic. But you have not even begun to deal with all the other interpretations people have made of this, based on the idea that it isn't any form of history.



Well are the following interpretations compatible with the two above?

"Some have gone further and claimed the geographical
allusion is to a fantasy. For Cassuto, 'The Garden of Eden
according to the Torah was not situated in our world.'
Skinner claimed: 'it is obvious that a real locality
answering the description of Eden exists and has existed
nowhere on the face of the earth...(T)he whole
representation (is) outside the sphere of real geographic
knowledge. In (Genesis 2) 10-14, in short, we have...a
semi-mythical geography.' For Ryle, 'The account...is
irreconcilable with scientific geography.' Radday believed
that Eden is nowhere because of its deliberately tongue-in-
cheek fantastic geography. McKenzie asserted that 'the
geography of Eden is altogether unreal; it is a Never-never
land.' Amit held the garden story to be literary utopiansim,
that the Garden was 'never-known,' with no real location.
Burns' similar view is that the rivers were the entryway
into the numinous world. An unusual mixture of views was
maintained by Wallace, who held that the inclusion of the
Tigris and Euphrates indicated an 'earthly geographic
situation,' but saw the Eden narrative as constructed from a
garden dwelling-of-God motif (with rivers nourishing the
earth) combined with a creation motif, both drawing richly
from those motifs as found in Ancient Near East mythological
literature. The variety in these recent proposals is more
than matched by the variety put forward during the Christian
era prior to the middle of the nineteenth century; W. Wright
covered this history in detail in 1860.
"If actualism in Eden's geography is considered
doubtful, then the story may be interpreted as a homiletic
exposition built on primeval residue, or as a late
sociological commentary. It might be a 'picture of
paradisal beatitude,' the idyllic goal of life in obedience
to the Torah. One interpreter saw it as a faint
recollection of the conflict involved in the transition from
hunter-gatherer to farmers. Another found from its
Sumerian/Akkadian parallels an allusion to the royalty of
gardener-kings: man is not a servant of the gods but has
been made a king himself. Other interpreters found in it a
political allegory dealing with conflict between the
Judahite royal social and economic elite and the peasant
class, or a sexual allegory, or a polemic against Canaanite
religion, or a parable of the deposition and deportation of
a king to Mesopotamia (hence the inclusion of 2:10-14)/
Differences from the Sumerian paradise myth and the
Gilgamesh epic led Bledstein to perceive the Eden story as
intended to reduce men 'from heroic, godlike beings to
earthlings.' and to separate females from the extremes of
goddess or 'slavish menials of men.' In Genesis both '(m)an
and woman are equally human...' and their creation lacks the
usual Middle Eastern fertility cult overtones." ~ John C.
Munday, Jr., "Eden's Geography Erodes Flood Geology,"
Westminster Theological Journal, 58(1996), pp. 123-154,p.
128-130

Which one should I believe, you or one of the ones listed above?



Don't you think what the Genesis account says of itself is in any way important? It describes itself as an account of creation, not an anti-anything polemic.

In math or philosophy or symbolic logic, truth values only apply to things that can be demonstrated. It is kosher to say it was true that Washington was a General. It is not kosher to say it is true that the only true interpretation of Faulkner's light in August, is a Freudian one. You are trying to say that the only true interpretation of Genesis is as a anti-Egyptian polemic

And above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone: and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it.

Ra'qia in Genesis 1:6 separates waters above and below. How the heck does an "expansion of space" do that?

That interpretation of ra'qia is a "stretch" (as it were!!) LOL

The rabbis who translated the LXX rendered ra'qia as "stereoma" (something solid).

Do you think you have more spiritual discernment and knowledge of the ambient culture than learned Jews who were 2,200 years closer to the events than you?

How about St. Jerome who in the Vulgate rendered ra'qia as "firmamentum"?

You're banging your head against lots of history in order to force an interpretation that fits your faith and modern evangelicalism.

Why do you think your scientific knowledge should trump the understanding of the people to whom the stories were written? If someone proposed to a rabbi 3000 years ago what you've proposed you be branded a nutcase and a heretic and one who distorts scripture.

As far as the purpose of the stories, well, YOU don't know the purpose either!

Why are you such a generationalist? It smacks of snobbishness to me.

Sorry to hear your faith is so weak that Seely's accurate interpretation pushed you to the brink of atheism. What if his interpretation is correct? Are you going to lose your faith?

I'm glad your interpretation works for you. It makes little sense to me. Your insistence on YOUR interpretation (if possible) would be more likely to push me to atheism.

I read about your bullish debate skills. There's no way I can take you on in a combat of wills.

I'll stay with my preferred interpretation, you stay with yours.

This is not a salvific issue. At least I hope you don't make it so.

K54

[klaus54]

Klaus, I think I like your noticing the messing up of a term. I want to discuss what faith is and what it is not. It is one of the reasons, sadly, I don't have loads of respect for some views. I am going to do an analogy with a period in my career.

Back in the 1990s I worked for Oryx Energy, one of the meanest companies in the business. My title varied from Manager of Geophysics for the Western US, to Manager of Geop. for the western Gulf of Mexico (GOM) when we sold of California, to Mgr of GOM when we put the entire GOM under me, then back to western GOM when we split it up again about 1997. At this point the guy who was the exploration director for the eastern GOM would contract for drill rigs to go drill what they thought were good prospects. We in the West did the same thing. But when it got close to when the rig would show up for the East, the Exploration Director would grow cold feet and proclaim his prospect not ready to drill. His bosses would come to us asking if we had a place to put the rig to use. We always did. Over and over this guy would sign a contract but then get cold feet and throw the rig to us, forcing us to scramble to find a place for the $500,000/day rig (the cost at that time, today they are well over a million per day).

Now I am going to make an analogy between belief and faith. Both terms are misused and your comment above made me think of this. The Exploration director of the East believed his prospects were good, but he didnt have enough faith to drill them. He might be proven wrong. So in order to avoid being proven wrong, he refused to drill his prospects. When Kerr-McGee bought us, he was let go, the geological manager and geophysical manager who worked for him were demoted. I and the geological manager of GOM West were put in charge of all the Gulf for the new company.

We had had faith in our prospects that enough of them would produce that we always drilled, even when an extra rig was thrown our way. We found loads of oil. GOM EAST didn't find much oil because their manager didn't have faith in their prospects.

Belief is an idea; faith is an action.

Now, this is going to make loads of people mad at me, but they will have to stand in a long long line. I think what Tipler says is absolutely true. People don't want to risk the Bible being proven wrong, so they set up the system so it can never ever be proven wrong. Here is what Tipler said.

"Of course, the real reason modern theologians want to keep science divorced from religion is to retain some intellectual territory forever protected from the advance of science. This can only be done if the possibility of scientific investigation of the subject matter is ruled out a priori. Theologians were badly burned in the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions. Such a strategy seriously underestimates the power of science, which is continually solving problems philosophers and theologians have decreed forever beyond the ability of science to solve." ~ Frank J. Tipler, The Physics of Immortality, (New York: Doubleday, 1994), p. 7

To me, this shows that like the East Exploration manager, the modern theologians, who make sure that Genesis can't be disproven by turning it into just another literary interpretive exercise, have belief, but not faith. They won't risk being shown that they are wrong. They are not willing to do what I did in my life, risk my very faith (and almost lost it) in order in an attempt to see if there was some way to make Genesis fit within modern science. It cost me loads, but I would not change what I learned from those struggles for anything on earth. Faith is not taking the easy path; the path that can't be disproven. Faith is sitting on the airplane not standing on the tarmac believing that the plane will fly. Faith is risking things; belief is thinking things. That is a very big difference.

Nice story. You've certainly had an "interesting" life to say the least. I'm both jealous of your experiences in oil exploration and glad I didn't have to go through them!

Just a quick note: God's existence can never be proved empirically -- at least in a repeatable manner. Sure, there are miracles in Scripture, the "eucatastrophe" being the Resurrection. But since they can't be repeated, one can simply dismiss them as not true.

My point is the existence of the supernatural cannot be proven correct or incorrect.

Similarly, without a understanding of the purposes of the compilation we call Scripture, we cannot determine which interpretation are correct. But we CAN determine ones that are incorrect (modulo Omphalos) -- namely YEC and its Flood Geology.

Other than that, and some archaeological correlations, we are dead in the water when it comes to proof.

K54

P.S. BTW, I don't view faith as a "risk". If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. Big deal...

[Omniskeptical]

Disagree. I pointed out that you fit the definition of fideist to a "T".

K54

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fideism/

Do you mean fundy or funnies instead?

Edit: Nevermind. Fideist, I am not.

[oxmixmudd]

I am a chess player. I always try to anticipate what the other guy is going to respond with. One guy that worked for me told another fellow that "Glenn's questions would seem off the wall but that he was about 10 steps down the road and he would be laying traps for you." That guy captured me well.

Yes, I recognize that the goal from your perspective is to 'win'. That is not my goal. My goal is to understand and get to the correct conclusion. If that means I 'lose' so be it. I'm interested in what is true, not being 'right'. If I come to understand the truth even if it means the other guy had the right idea, then I have 'won'. It's as simple as that.

Jim, agreeing that pomegranates and tomatos are fruit is not very relevant when discussing trucks. Who cares about agreement on an irrelevant topic? My problem with your approach is that you are going to be the one to tell me what type of literature Genesis 1 is. I have no freedom to decide that for myself. There is no crucial experiment which can decide between our two views and that is a HUGE problem with literary analysis. There simply is no way we can ascertain the truth unless it is stated in the literature itself. And I think Genesis 2:1 and 2:4 clearly state what the text is about. But you ignore it.

What type of literature Genesis is is not irrelevant Glenn, it is critical. And I'm not trying to tell you what type of literature it is, as if it is arbitrary. I'm trying to lay out the evidence that supports my conclusion about what type of literature it is. But you seem to have already decided one can't know what kind of literature it is. And this may be one of the fundamental axioms you and I have that are different. I believe the type of literature is both important and discoverable.

Pardon me Jim, you may have mis-written but these two sentences seem quite contradictory (you are going to get mad at me before this is all over). First you look for concepts apart from what the text says. If you do that, then why all the hullabaloo about what kind of text it is?

You need to look at the entire paragraph to understand the sentence Glenn. Here it is:

I sought several ways to concordantly deal with the text. Gap, day/age, Hugh Ross's view, even though of what you have accepted, some sort of pre-temporal 'plan' as opposed to an actual historical description of the events of creation. None set very well primarily because of the eisegesis/exegesis problem. I'm looking for concepts I can overlay on the text to 'make it fit' what I know rather than going to the text to understand it what it says about itself and how it functions in its cultural context.

What I am saying is that is what I did, not what I am doing. I'm explaining the mistake of my approach so I can follow it up with an explanation of how I resolved it.

But the root word for Raqia is not something hard. Brown-Driver-Briggs says this about Raqa--to beat, stamp, beat out, spread out, stretch. Space stretches. That is the expansion of space.

No, it is not. Raqia is NOT Raqa. They are two different but related words. Raqa is the beat out and its most immidiate application is to metal work. Pounding out metal to form it into an object. Raqia is a beaten out thing, strong, hard. As in Ezekial, crystaline. Job's friends refer to the sky as made of cast metal. It supports the waters above, and it has sluices to let the water through. The culture of the time, the word as used, and as used again in ezekiel. There is really no reason to be averse to this translation unless you know the sky is not a hard dome. Then we go looking for something else it might mean.

As to Seely, he was the proximate cause for the deepest phase of my crisis of faith. His book is the best argument for atheism I have ever read.

I'm sorry you had that reaction to him. I think he takes accommodation too far myself. But his research on this issue I believe is sound, and enlightening.

Ezekiel what? I am clearly going to have to re-install Logos on my computer. I have been away from this area for 4 years

Ezekiel 1:22-26, 10:1.

Really? What a logical jump. We talk about the North and South Poles, the setting of the sun, even in technical literature. This just seems to me to apply a different standard to them than we apply to ourselves.

I don't think so at all. If the description of the structure falls into some non-technical category then there is no reason to declare the remainder IS technical. Indeed, the door is wide open now. Any portion of it may or may not be technical. And how do we figure out which is which? Well, given there is NO other text to go on other than this text for these issues, we must rely on that most basic element for differentiating metaphor from literal truth: our knowledge of reality itself. If I say what a pretty sunset, I don't mean the sun is literally setting. And you know that because you know and I know the earth is rotating. Likewise the raqia. Likewise the days. We know certain things about the world. And they tell us enough to know this text isn't literal history.

No, it is not foolish the way the YECs treat the scripture. It is foolish that they tie it to a false science.

I tend to agree. We are expressing a similar thing. The reason I say scripture is that by adopting a reading of the text that forces the use of false science, they do violence to it. But their motivations are very similar to yours: they can't accept Genesis as a metaphor and also as inspired or true.

Frankly, I think the YECs treat the creation with great respect, but then make it all wrong by saying stupid stuff scientifically speaking. The thing that makes what they say false is not the genre of the literature but the falseness of their statements about nature.

Nah - it's that they just don't understand the text is not about giving a literal history of the creative act. And one way we can know that because if we try to read it that way, it isn't right. But the best way is to just look at how the text relates to its own time and culture.

Lots of authorities think it was Babylonian Gods, not Egyptian gods being mentioned:

“There has been an increasing disinclination to interpret the concepts contained in v.2 in terms of the mythological conceptions of neighbouring religions. The Hebrew word for ‘primeval flood’ (tehom) probably has linguistic affinity with Tiamat, , the Babylonian dragon of chaos. A more direct connection, amounting to a ‘borrowing,’ cannot be assumed. Nor can it be assumed that the Hebrew bohu goes back to the Phoenician mother-goddess Baau. Bohu is a noun (always connected with tohu) which means emptiness, desolation.” Gerhard Von Rad, Genesis, (Philadelphia, The Westminster Press, 1972), p. 50

“Smith was struck by the uncanny similarity between the opening lines of the
Babylonian creation myth and the initial two verses of the first chapter of Genesis, which he had memorized in boyhood:


In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form and void; and the darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

“The cuneiform glyphs on the tablet he had just dusted off and was now reading spoke with an identical idiom:

When above, were not raised the heavens:
and below on earth a plant had not grown up;
the abyss also had not broken open their boundaries
The chaos (or water) Tiamat (the sea) was the producing mother of the whole of them.

“Smith could barely trust his own decipherment. Both narratives not only shared a story line, but also incorporated the identical word, chaos (a primitive sea monster), to connote the watery deep Tehom or Tehomot in Hebrew and Tiamat in Akkadian. In Smith’s translation of the Babylonian creation account, the sea monster Tiamat is slain and her body is cut in two with one half placed in the firmament to prevent her waters from ever flooding the earth. The saltwater terror is kept in abeyance for perpetuity. The exact same image, a bolt shot across a gate; is found in the Book of Job.
“Other intriguing literary comparisons also became evident. The ‘Tree of Life’ in the Garden of Eden was almost certainly the sacred grove of Anu (the ancient Mesopotamian sky god who was the prime mover in creation, and the distant, supreme leader of the gods), which the Nineveh tablet described as ‘guarded by a sword turning to all the four points of the compass’. The divine tree was often embossed on the sculptures of the palaces at Nimrud and Nineveh as well as on cylinders used to make royal seals for temple documents. In pictorial representation the sacred tree was invariably accompanied by a serpent.
“The Babylonian tablets thus raised for Smith and his peers, schooled in the Scripture, a team of challenging questions: How could the texts from Mesopotamia have such striking parallels with Scripture, including the essence of their shared myth, the use of vocabulary with nearly the same pronunciation, and phrases worded almost identically? Was the Bible no longer the original historical source of human creation?” ~ William Ryan and Walter Pitman, Noah’s Flood, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998), p. 50-51


Abraham came out of Babylon, not Egypt and it should be him carrying the creation account to the Hebrews. There are other Babylonian connections in early Genesis:

“As we have learnt, Enki (‘Lord of the Earth’) was called Ea in Akkadian (East Semitic)—that is to say the Babylonian tradition. Scholars have determined that Ea was vocalized as ‘Eya’. So, when Moses stood before the burning bush and asked the name of the god of the mountain, did he really reply ‘I am who I am’ (Heb. Eyah asher eyah)? This puzzling phrase has long perplexed theologians but now there is a simple explanation. The voice of God simply replied ‘Eyah asher Eyah’—‘I am (the one who is called Eyah’—the name of Ea in its West Semitic (I.e. Hebrew) form. Scholars have simply failed to recognise that this is another of those characteristic puns in which the Old Testament abounds. ‘I am (Eyah) he who is called (asher) Ea (Eyah)’ is a classic biblical play on words. It also explains God’s apparently nonsensical instruction: ‘This is what you are to say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you’. God’s words should really be translated as ‘Eyah has sent me to you.’
“’Eyah’ or simply ‘Ya’ is the hypocoristic form of the name Yahweh found as an element of so many Old Testament names.’” David Rohl, Legend: The Genesis of Civilization, (London: Arrow Books, 1998), p. 196-197

Jim, quite simply, if these guys are right, your anti-Egyptian polemic goes right out the window. Prove them wrong!

Yes, I understand many think its a polemic against the Babylonian Pantheon rather than the Egyptian Pantheon. I tend to side towards it being Egyptian in origin. But the text was not written down until during the Exile, so I would not be surprised if it does not contain elements of both. To prove them wrong I must show it is only one and not the other. But that is likely not the case. Now You may get all upset about me not being hard edged on this, but an oral tradition is going to have a source and a history and I don't see any reason to presume it must be one and not also the other.

What will twerk you a bit is that to me, as regards this particular topic, it doesn't matter a whole lot if its one, the other, or both. The text is not history in either case, and which case has the most evidence doesn't change that element of how to understand the text. Where it does matter is as it relates to the reality of the Exodus, a different topic. What I see is sufficient correlation to the Egyptian account to ascribe that as its original function.

I would doubt that it is an epic of any kind. It is too short.

Really - you will quibble over stuff like that?

What I think is that you have assumed the consequence. You think it must be an anti-egyptian polemic. But you have not even begun to deal with all the other interpretations people have made of this, based on the idea that it isn't any form of history.

Yes I have Glenn. That statement is nothing but a projection of your own opinion of my knowledge. I would ask how have you reacted in the past when someone has doubted the thoroughness of your own research? And are you then exempt from the Golden Rule?

Well are the following interpretations compatible with the two above?

"Some have gone further and claimed the geographical
allusion is to a fantasy. For Cassuto, 'The Garden of Eden
according to the Torah was not situated in our world.'
Skinner claimed: 'it is obvious that a real locality
answering the description of Eden exists and has existed
nowhere on the face of the earth...(T)he whole
representation (is) outside the sphere of real geographic
knowledge. In (Genesis 2) 10-14, in short, we have...a
semi-mythical geography.' For Ryle, 'The account...is
irreconcilable with scientific geography.' Radday believed
that Eden is nowhere because of its deliberately tongue-in-
cheek fantastic geography. McKenzie asserted that 'the
geography of Eden is altogether unreal; it is a Never-never
land.' Amit held the garden story to be literary utopiansim,
that the Garden was 'never-known,' with no real location.
Burns' similar view is that the rivers were the entryway
into the numinous world. An unusual mixture of views was
maintained by Wallace, who held that the inclusion of the
Tigris and Euphrates indicated an 'earthly geographic
situation,' but saw the Eden narrative as constructed from a
garden dwelling-of-God motif (with rivers nourishing the
earth) combined with a creation motif, both drawing richly
from those motifs as found in Ancient Near East mythological
literature. The variety in these recent proposals is more
than matched by the variety put forward during the Christian
era prior to the middle of the nineteenth century; W. Wright
covered this history in detail in 1860.
"If actualism in Eden's geography is considered
doubtful, then the story may be interpreted as a homiletic
exposition built on primeval residue, or as a late
sociological commentary. It might be a 'picture of
paradisal beatitude,' the idyllic goal of life in obedience
to the Torah. One interpreter saw it as a faint
recollection of the conflict involved in the transition from
hunter-gatherer to farmers. Another found from its
Sumerian/Akkadian parallels an allusion to the royalty of
gardener-kings: man is not a servant of the gods but has
been made a king himself. Other interpreters found in it a
political allegory dealing with conflict between the
Judahite royal social and economic elite and the peasant
class, or a sexual allegory, or a polemic against Canaanite
religion, or a parable of the deposition and deportation of
a king to Mesopotamia (hence the inclusion of 2:10-14)/
Differences from the Sumerian paradise myth and the
Gilgamesh epic led Bledstein to perceive the Eden story as
intended to reduce men 'from heroic, godlike beings to
earthlings.' and to separate females from the extremes of
goddess or 'slavish menials of men.' In Genesis both '(m)an
and woman are equally human...' and their creation lacks the
usual Middle Eastern fertility cult overtones." ~ John C.
Munday, Jr., "Eden's Geography Erodes Flood Geology,"
Westminster Theological Journal, 58(1996), pp. 123-154,p.
128-130

Which one should I believe, you or one of the ones listed above?

as regards what type of literature Genesis 1 is, you should believe what the data implies Glenn.

Don't you think what the Genesis account says of itself is in any way important? It describes itself as an account of creation, not an anti-anything polemic.

You imply there is incongruence when there is none. It is an account of creation. Just not a historical one in the sense you and YEC's seek. The evidence implies it is an account of creation that serves primarily to function according to what an ancient creation account was supposed to be, and not as what we in the 21st century would regard as a necessarily obvious function for such a text. It tells the Jewish reader who he is in relation to who God is and in relation to his obligations to Jewish life and religion. Part of that function involves acting as a polemic against the pagan religions around him. At least, that is what I see the data pointing to.

But we have diverged. We are debating what we think what the text is rather than the axioms on which we evaluate the truth of the text. As I mentioned above, one of those critical axiom differences appears to be that you tend to think the purpose of the text is unknowable. That something like it being a polemic against local polytheism (originally Egyptian) is impossible to know. I disagree. I think the text literally cries out that is in fact what it is. And that to ignore that is to end up in error.

In math or philosophy or symbolic logic, truth values only apply to things that can be demonstrated. It is kosher to say it was true that Washington was a General. It is not kosher to say it is true that the only true interpretation of Faulkner's light in August, is a Freudian one. You are trying to say that the only true interpretation of Genesis is as a anti-Egyptian polemic

No Glenn. You are taking a black and white approach. Yes, I am saying the evidence would indicate the Genesis 1 account IS a polemic against (originally) Egyptian polytheism. But NO, I am not saying that is the ONLY thing it is. I am ALSO saying that the evidence shows Genesis 1 does NOT function well as a historical description, at least not in any scientifically accurate sense. And that is clearly demonstrated by how it describes the structure of cosmos (dome with waters above) and its historical time frame (6 'days'). So what I'm saying is that the evidence sets up certain boundaries, positive and negative, for what Genesis 1 can be. But I am not saying there is one and only one correct view within those boundaries that can be clearly identified by what is currently known.


Jim

[Jorge]

Yes, I recognize that the goal from your perspective is to 'win'. That is not my goal. My goal is to understand and get to the correct conclusion. If that means I 'lose' so be it. I'm interested in what is true, not being 'right'. If I come to understand the truth even if it means the other guy had the right idea, then I have 'won'. It's as simple as that.

Jim

Please excuse me while I guzzle-down about half-a-dozen Extra-Strength Tylenol.

Do carry on with your delightful discussion ...

Jorge

[Roy]

Yes, I recognize that the goal from your perspective is to 'win'. That is not my goal. My goal is to understand and get to the correct conclusion. If that means I 'lose' so be it. I'm interested in what is true, not being 'right'. If I come to understand the truth even if it means the other guy had the right idea, then I have 'won'. It's as simple as that.

Well said, Jim.

Learning is winning.

Roy

P.S. I think you used "twerk" in the wrong context

[grmorton]

Ra'qia in Genesis 1:6 separates waters above and below. How the heck does an "expansion of space" do that?

That interpretation of ra'qia is a "stretch" (as it were!!) LOL

The rabbis who translated the LXX rendered ra'qia as "stereoma" (something solid).

Yes, I am aware of that. But I bet you weren't aware of the root of the word Raqia. To me it is interesting that that root has the meaning of stretching out.

Do you think you have more spiritual discernment and knowledge of the ambient culture than learned Jews who were 2,200 years closer to the events than you?

No, but I do have more knowledge of the universe than they did. You seem to be asserting that religious knowledge can't advance, can't change. If that is your position, why then to you deny the historicity of the Scripture, because those learned Jews you so lovingly cite believed the earth was only a few thousand years old or so. So to turn your question around, "Do you think you have more spiritual discernment and knowledge of the ambient culture than learned Jews who were 2,200 years closer to the events than you?"

Your question lacks self-reflection.

How about St. Jerome who in the Vulgate rendered ra'qia as "firmamentum"?

It is amazing how often I run into liberals who say that nothing can change from the old understanding, and then proclaim that this horribly flawed document that they present to the world, must be beleived to be the path to salvation. Clearly if you believe that firmament is the only way to view this, then you believe that the God-inspired Bible is scientifically a piece of you know what. How exactly does this enhance your confidence in the validity of the Scriptural message of salvation? Please explain! I know you won't cause you ignore tough questions like this.

You're banging your head against lots of history in order to force an interpretation that fits your faith and modern evangelicalism.

Been banging my head against folk like you for a long time, people who tell us how false the book is, then idiotically tell us that it is to be treasured.

Why do you think your scientific knowledge should trump the understanding of the people to whom the stories were written? If someone proposed to a rabbi 3000 years ago what you've proposed you be branded a nutcase and a heretic and one who distorts scripture.

Because IF God had anything to do with the Bible, and IF God knows ANYTHING about the creation he created, then the old interpretation, if held to simply makes the account false. I won't worship false Gods.

As far as the purpose of the stories, well, YOU don't know the purpose either!

Why are you such a generationalist? It smacks of snobbishness to me.

Wow, there is a terrible ad hominem. Is this the best insult you can give? I am definitely not impressed.

Sorry to hear your faith is so weak that Seely's accurate interpretation pushed you to the brink of atheism. What if his interpretation is correct? Are you going to lose your faith?

First, off, you are not sorry. Don't be condescending. To answer your question, Yes. I won't idiotically believe as true that which I proclaim as false.

I'm glad your interpretation works for you. It makes little sense to me. Your insistence on YOUR interpretation (if possible) would be more likely to push me to atheism.

I read about your bullish debate skills. There's no way I can take you on in a combat of wills.

I'll stay with my preferred interpretation, you stay with yours.

This is not a salvific issue. At least I hope you don't make it so.

K54

The problem with most people who take your position is that they never ever actually think about the wider world of religion. I have lived on 3 continents and seen lots of other religions. Each religion, when faced with factual nonsense, can do what you are doing, proclaim the factual nonsense not to be true, but the theology/philosophy of their religion absolutely true. It is a self-delusional way to live, a heads I win, Tails everyone else loses kind of life--no risk in ever being proven wrong because you can't be proven wrong. It is a well insulated theology you have, but one that I find boring. You have rigged the game to always win.

And in that sense, it does become a salvific. What if Christianity itself isn't the correct religion? By doing what you do, you can't ever test that concept. Again, this is a lack of self reflection.

[grmorton]

Yes, I recognize that the goal from your perspective is to 'win'. That is not my goal. My goal is to understand and get to the correct conclusion. If that means I 'lose' so be it. I'm interested in what is true, not being 'right'. If I come to understand the truth even if it means the other guy had the right idea, then I have 'won'. It's as simple as that.

Even after all these years, you don't know me well. My goal is not to win. It is to find the truth and I defined truth earlier. Because you can't answer some of the questions I ask within your paradigm, you think I am out to win. That is a wee bit silly and sophomoric. Truth is the goal or trying to getas close as we can to it.

I will return to this post maybe tonight

[klaus54]

Yes, I recognize that the goal from your perspective is to 'win'. That is not my goal. My goal is to understand and get to the correct conclusion. If that means I 'lose' so be it. I'm interested in what is true, not being 'right'. If I come to understand the truth even if it means the other guy had the right idea, then I have 'won'. It's as simple as that.
...

Exactly, Jim.

I'm interested in truth, not winning. WHO knows? Glenn's conjecture may be correct. It wouldn't bother me one iota if I were wrong about my preferred Genesis interpretation and Glenn were right.

Heck, I'd be YEC if the consilience of evidence pointed that way. Unfortunately for the Jorgians, it overwhelmingly does not.

K54

[klaus54]

Please excuse me while I guzzle-down about half-a-dozen Extra-Strength Tylenol.

Do carry on with your delightful discussion ...

Jorge

Careful -- that could cause liver failure!

K54

[klaus54]

Yes, I am aware of that. But I bet you weren't aware of the root of the word Raqia. To me it is interesting that that root has the meaning of stretching out.



No, but I do have more knowledge of the universe than they did. You seem to be asserting that religious knowledge can't advance, can't change. If that is your position, why then to you deny the historicity of the Scripture, because those learned Jews you so lovingly cite believed the earth was only a few thousand years old or so. So to turn your question around, "Do you think you have more spiritual discernment and knowledge of the ambient culture than learned Jews who were 2,200 years closer to the events than you?"

Your question lacks self-reflection.



It is amazing how often I run into liberals who say that nothing can change from the old understanding, and then proclaim that this horribly flawed document that they present to the world, must be beleived to be the path to salvation. Clearly if you believe that firmament is the only way to view this, then you believe that the God-inspired Bible is scientifically a piece of you know what. How exactly does this enhance your confidence in the validity of the Scriptural message of salvation? Please explain! I know you won't cause you ignore tough questions like this.



Been banging my head against folk like you for a long time, people who tell us how false the book is, then idiotically tell us that it is to be treasured.



Because IF God had anything to do with the Bible, and IF God knows ANYTHING about the creation he created, then the old interpretation, if held to simply makes the account false. I won't worship false Gods.



Wow, there is a terrible ad hominem. Is this the best insult you can give? I am definitely not impressed.




First, off, you are not sorry. Don't be condescending. To answer your question, Yes. I won't idiotically believe as true that which I proclaim as false.



The problem with most people who take your position is that they never ever actually think about the wider world of religion. I have lived on 3 continents and seen lots of other religions. Each religion, when faced with factual nonsense, can do what you are doing, proclaim the factual nonsense not to be true, but the theology/philosophy of their religion absolutely true. It is a self-delusional way to live, a heads I win, Tails everyone else loses kind of life--no risk in ever being proven wrong because you can't be proven wrong. It is a well insulated theology you have, but one that I find boring. You have rigged the game to always win.

And in that sense, it does become a salvific. What if Christianity itself isn't the correct religion? By doing what you do, you can't ever test that concept. Again, this is a lack of self reflection.

The uniqueness of Christianity does NOT come from an ANE creation story.

Pure and simple.

Like I said before -- if your Genesis interpretation is what YOU need to keep your faith -- God bless, and more power to you.

If you think your Genesis interpretation will help evangelize those who were brainwashed with Morrisanian YEC propaganda -- God bless, and more power to you.

The main point is that no one knows for sure. For me the ANE historical-critical-anti-pagan-polemic interpretation is the most obvious and the most (phenomenologically) "literal".

BTW, as you probably know already from your study of Genesis interpretations, the modern Roman Catholic interpretation is the Documentary Hypothesis, which is basically mine as well.

Blessings in your pursuit,

K54

[oxmixmudd]

Even after all these years, you don't know me well. My goal is not to win. It is to find the truth and I defined truth earlier. Because you can't answer some of the questions I ask within your paradigm, you think I am out to win. That is a wee bit silly and sophomoric. Truth is the goal or trying to getas close as we can to it.

I will return to this post maybe tonight

You used the chess analogy and spoke of laying traps 10 moves ahead. Doesn't sound much like 'just wanting to learn' now does it? As for me not being able to answer you, that my friend is wishful thinking - from an out to win point of view anyway. :)

JIM

[Kbertsche]

It is amazing how often I run into liberals who say that nothing can change from the old understanding, and then proclaim that this horribly flawed document that they present to the world, must be beleived to be the path to salvation. Clearly if you believe that firmament is the only way to view this, then you believe that the God-inspired Bible is scientifically a piece of you know what. How exactly does this enhance your confidence in the validity of the Scriptural message of salvation? Please explain! I know you won't cause you ignore tough questions like this.


Been banging my head against folk like you for a long time, people who tell us how false the book is, then idiotically tell us that it is to be treasured.


Because IF God had anything to do with the Bible, and IF God knows ANYTHING about the creation he created, then the old interpretation, if held to simply makes the account false. I won't worship false Gods.


First, off, you are not sorry. Don't be condescending. To answer your question, Yes. I won't idiotically believe as true that which I proclaim as false.

Glenn, I'm not trying to argue here, but to better understand why the "ancient near eastern cosmology" view that Jim and I like bothers you so much.

As far as I can see, your objection is NOT really that it makes the account non-historical, because your "days of proclamation" view takes the account out of human history as well. From what I understand, your main objection is that if the ancients thought of the raqi'a as a hard dome and described creation in these terms, then Scripture is teaching false science. You don't like the argument that Scripture is just using the ancient erroneous understanding as a vehicle to teach theology, maybe in part because the same argument could be used to argue against Christ's resurrection.

If my understanding of your position is wrong here, please correct it. But if what I say is mostly correct, I have two follow-on questions for you:

1) What about language all throughout the Scripture that uses "intestines" (or "bowels", "viscera", "guts") as the seat of emotions? (e.g. Is 16:11; Jer 4:9; 31:20; Ps. 40:8-9; Job 30:27; Col. 3:12; Phil. 2:1) The ancients actually believed that many emotions originated in the guts, so they spoke this way. We understand now that these things originate in the brain. Do you have problems with the "false science" that Scripture is teaching in these passages?

2) What about the "death" of seeds? The ancients actually believed that seeds actually die and decompose when placed into the ground. We know now that this is false; the seed is living the entire time, germinating, and growing. Their scientific understanding was wrong. But Paul incorporated this wrong understanding and used the "death" of seeds as an argument for our future resurrection (1 Cor 15:35ff). Just as a seed dies and comes back as something better, so after we die we will be raised again with a new "resurrection body". Does this make you doubt the certainty of our future resurrection?

[ABE: as an aside, this verse also shows the falsehood of the common YEC argument that "Scripture never speaks of plants as living or dying". There are at least four places in Scripture where "death" is used of plants, either of seeds (as here) or of trees or tree stumps.]