Genesis and science, revisited.

[Johnny Marseilles]

I agree its one of the better ones, but its still not the original, if you don't understand Hebrew yourself why not just go for one translated into English by real Hebrew experts
yanno, Jews

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Publication_Society_of_America_Version
I use this version, from 1917
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/e/et/et0.htm
most often for comparisons with the KJV,
theres also an online a 1985 version
http://www.taggedtanakh.org/Home/About
click on books, top left

Well, its interesting that you should bring that up, because my next post in this thread deals with on of the difficulties presented by the slavish adherence to the Waw Conservative, (Waw Conversive, Waw Consecutive). The Hebrew scholars ain't perfect by any means. Not that anyone is but I see no need to give them special attention as such. I was going to use the Jewish Publication Society in a reference today in another post I was doing on the soul, but I got lazy.

 

[joedonjj]

There are a few things that skeptics often overlook.

1. The Hebrew day went from evening to evening.

2. The 24 hour period of 12 hours each didn't exist for the Hebrew until the Babylonian exile.

3. The term day (Hebrew yohm) can mean any given amount of time from a few hours to time indefinite.

4. The term day is applied 3 different ways in the creation account, only one of them as a 24 hour period.

5. Morning and evening are figurative and even if taken literally wouldn't constitute a solar 24 hour day.

6. The creation is said to be both 6 days and 1 day. Meaning there were 6 "days or periods" in one "day or period."

7. The seventh creative day of rest continues in David's day and later in Paul's day and continues today. It hasn't ended.

8. The term day is used today pretty much the same as it was in the ancient Hebrew. It doesn't always mean 24 hours.

This is taken from a fundamentalist website: What does 'day' mean?

The Hebrew word for day in Genesis chapter 1 is the word yom. It is important to understand that almost any word can have two or more meanings, depending on context. We need to understand the context of the usage of this word in Genesis chapter 1.*
Respected Hebrew dictionaries, like the Brown, Driver, Briggs lexicon, give a number of meanings for the word yom depending upon context. One of the passages they give for yom's meaning an ordinary day happens to be Genesis chapter 1. The reason is obvious. Every time the word yom is used with a number, or with the phrase 'evening and morning', anywhere in the Old Testament, it always means an ordinary day. In Genesis chapter 1, for each of the six days of creation, the Hebrew word yom is used with a number and the phrase, 'evening and morning'. There is no doubt that the writer is being emphatic that these are ordinary day

I think Christians often try to make what is plain and simple more difficult than it really is. Do you really think if you asked a first century Christian ( or a Jew around the time the scriptures were written) how old the world was they would go into some deep rambling about how a day can be a thousand years and we can't take it literally? C'mon you know they thought the world was young ( a couple of thousand years old). These rationalizations are all due to the fact that Science disputes nearly everything in the Genesis tradition. I mean do you think that Moses really wrote the Torah? What about all of the stories in Genesis with parallels in Babylonian mythology? Do you believe in the Epic Of Gilgamesh? it predated the Torah by a thousand years and has stories which are nearly identical in Genesis.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v18/i1/sixdays.asp

 

[Marduk]

Well, its interesting that you should bring that up, because my next post in this thread deals with on of the difficulties presented by the slavish adherence to the Waw Conservative, (Waw Conversive, Waw Consecutive). The Hebrew scholars ain't perfect by any means. Not that anyone is but I see no need to give them special attention as such. I was going to use the Jewish Publication Society in a reference today in another post I was doing on the soul, but I got lazy.

TBH, I don't think it really matters in the long run as its just a book of mythology and folk stories anyway, would we be arguing over who does the best translation of Plato's Timaeus. Its really only any good as a tool to show how far from reality monotheistic belief is

 

[tsig]

Conversely he may have had a perfectly good reason for letting it go down the way it did. A good teacher doesn't spoon feed the student, but leads them to the answers. Man by his very nature is intensely curious creature, and discovering the unknown has been a driving passion since we first walked the Earth



But you will agree thats the providence of those arrogant enough to claim to know God's mind. Clearly if God is anything like we might imagine, that is an impossiblity

God has his reasons (to teach) but it'd be arrogant to claim to know gods' mind?

I actually said he "may have"

Yes you did and when one uses the phrase 'may have' followed by a verb such as 'teach' the usual meaning is that there was an intention being expressed so if you know gods' intention then you know gods' mind.

Yes removing the context for the win.

There's the posts could you point out the context I removed?

 

[Al Fresco]

I was responding to the claim that God's supposed omnipotence "isn't Biblically supported."

How can one read Jer. 32:17 and Luke 1:37 and conclude that God's supposed all-powerfull nature is not supported by the biblical scripture?

 

[MG1962]

There's the posts could you point out the context I removed?

Because "may have" was not followed with a verb such as teach. It was followed by another clause. A fullstop then I commented on teaching methods.

Which was in relation to Dinwar's thoughts on God as a teacher.

I have no real investment in Genesis beyond wondering from an anthropological point what were the writers really talking about. And as a sideline pondering if God did really grab one of them...show them the story so far; how that poor individual would attempt to create a frame of reference for eveyone else to understand.

Genesis has been considered by most Christians to be allergorical far longer than any attempts at Biblical literalism to justify its message

 

[MRC_Hans]

I'm in a bit of a hurry just now, but I will, of course, go through the lengthy posts and reply where appropriate. However much of this debate really seems to support my point: Genesis is not in any way a bona fide (if simplified for peasants) description of facts about how Earth and life started. It is a collection of myths that may be interpreted in various ways, depending on how you choose to understand the archaic languages.

Hans

 

[MRC_Hans]

I have no real investment in Genesis beyond wondering from an anthropological point what were the writers really talking about.

Isn't it rather clear that they were trying to provide an explanation for something about which they had no actual facts?

And as a sideline pondering if God did really grab one of them...show them the story so far; how that poor individual would attempt to create a frame of reference for eveyone else to understand.

Can we not assume, quite apart from the question of omnipotence or not, that a creator of the universe would somehow possess the ability to make a mere human understand enough to provide a coherent account?

Surely such a power would not just show some poor peasant a fast-forward show from the BB to the Mesozoic, and drop him back on earth to fill in the blanks for himself?

Genesis has been considered by most Christians to be allergorical far longer than any attempts at Biblical literalism to justify its message

Quite, and I have no beef with that. It is the other guys I'm debating (with).

Hans

 

[MRC_Hans]

Quote:
"Oh, and the omnipotent deity is a fabrication of the dark ages. It isn't Biblically supported."

Really?

Rev. 19:6 – “… for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.”
Jer. 32:17 – “… and there is nothing too hard for thee [Lord God].”
Jer. 32:27 – “… is there anything too hard for me [the Lord]?”
Luke 1:37 – “For God nothing shall be impossible.”
Luke 18:27 – “… the things that are impossible with men are possible with God.”

I really think the omnipotence discussion has a taste of nitpicking. "Can God create a rock he cannot lift" and other semantic paradoxes ....

I'm a pragmatist, and to a mortal peasant like myself, any being who can create the sun, stars, earth, and the life upon it is welcome to the title of 'Omnipotent', even if one might conceive of some feat it could not do.

Hans

 

[MRC_Hans]

A solar day is established by a complete rotation of earth on its asix. From the time when the sun leaves a meridian, attains the highest point at midday and then returns to the meridian. The solar, or civil day is currently divided into two periods consisting of 12 hours each. The forenoon is the a.m. from the Latin ante meridiem and the afternoon is the p.m., from the Latin post meridiem.

In Bible times, however, there were various other methods of dividing the day. The Hebrew day began in the evening, after sunset and ended the next day at sunset. (Leviticus 23:32) This came from the model of the creative "days" in the creation account. (Genesis 1:5)

However, we are obviously still talking about solar days, as metered out by the effects of earth's rotation. From whence one chooses to set the beginning of a day is irrelevant; the fact remains that the next day will start exactly 24 hours later.

The Phoenician, Numidian and the Athenian day also went from evening to evening. The Babylonian day consisted of sunrise to sunrise, and the Egyptian and Roman day went from midnight to midnight just as ours does today.

However, each and every of their days was 24 hours.

The Bible divided the day into periods of morning twilight or morning darkness, just before the beginning of daylight as at Psalm 119:147 and 1 Samuel 30:17, the rising of the sun or dawning (Job 3:9), the morning (Genesis 24:54), noon or midday (Deuteronomy 28:29 / 1 Kings 18:27), sunset or the day's close (Genesis 15:12 / Joshua 8:29), and the evening twilight or evening darkness (2 Kings 7:5, 7).

However, each and every of their days was 24 hours.

The Hebrew didn't use hours to divide the day prior to the Babylonian exile. The King James Version uses the word hour at Daniel 3:6, 15; 4:19, 33 and 5:5, but the Aramaic word shaah from which it is translated literally means "a look" and is more accurately translated as a moment. At Isaiah 38:8 and 2 Kings 20:8-11 the term "the shadow of the steps" may be a reference to a sundial method of keeping time.

However, each and every of their days was 24 hours, even if they used some other unit to measure it.

By the time of Jesus the days were commonly divided into two 12 hour periods, the daylight hours generally beginning at 6:00 a.m and ending at 6:00 p.m. (John 11:9) The third hour would be at 9:00 a.m. (Matthew 20:3 / Acts 2:15) and the sixth hour would have been noon. (Matthew 27:45-46 / John 4:6 / Luke 23:44, 46 / Acts 10:9-10)

However, each and every of their days was 24 hours.

The Hebrews didn't use names for the days, except the Sabbath, but days were referred to by their numerical order. The Hebrews often used the term "day and night" to mean only a portion of a solar day, as at 1 Kings 12:5, 12 and Matthew 12:40 (also see Matthew 27:62-66; 28:1-6 / Genesis 42:17-18 / Esther 4:16; 5:1).

However, each and every of their days was 24 hours.

The term day was also used as a measure of distance, such as "a day's journey" (Numbers 11:31) or "a sabbath day's journey." (Acts 1:12)

Which is as long as you could normally travel each 24 hours.

The term "days" could be used to refer to a time contemporaneous with a specific person, such as "the days of Noah" or "the days of Lot." (Luke 17:26-30 / Isaiah 1:1)

Which refers to the days (24 hours) when those persons were alive.

Other terms also applied to periods of time of various length. The day of judgment, for example. (2 Peter 3:7 / Genesis 5:1 / 2 Corinthians 6:2 / Revelation 16:4)

That may be the case. The 'day of judgment' is more like a point in time than a duration, IMHO.

Hans

 

[tsig]

Conversely he may have had a perfectly good reason for letting it go down the way it did. A good teacher doesn't spoon feed the student, but leads them to the answers. Man by his very nature is intensely curious creature, and discovering the unknown has been a driving passion since we first walked the Earth



But you will agree thats the providence of those arrogant enough to claim to know God's mind. Clearly if God is anything like we might imagine, that is an impossiblity

Because "may have" was not followed with a verb such as teach. It was followed by another clause. A fullstop then I commented on teaching methods.

Which was in relation to Dinwar's thoughts on God as a teacher.

I have no real investment in Genesis beyond wondering from an anthropological point what were the writers really talking about. And as a sideline pondering if God did really grab one of them...show them the story so far; how that poor individual would attempt to create a frame of reference for eveyone else to understand.

Genesis has been considered by most Christians to be allergorical far longer than any attempts at Biblical literalism to justify its message

So when you said "he may have a perfectly good reason" you did not mean to imply that that reason was to teach?


In any case you first tell us what gods' reasons are then condemn those who claim to know gods' mind. This seems like an inconsistency to me.