Since we don’t have anyone here from the ancient near east to query, that will have to remain an open question – though given the way you mangle the text of Genesis I’d have to lean in the direction that they were more capable in science.
But the big question is why you associate the ancient near east with science! ANE studies are about language and culture, and are a major force behind even being able to read the Old Testament scriptures.
I don’t see any theology here from you, so the question is moot. I see abuse of the text by changing the meaning of words and then trying to force it to talk modern science, but no theology at all.
Indeed the main result of the YEC view of Genesis is to throw theology in the trash. Nothing in what YEC does to the text points to Jesus, and if you’re not pointing to Jesus then you’re not doing theology, just engaging in mental masturbation. Read as what it actually is, the opening chapter of Genesis is a trumpet solo telling us about Jesus, but read the YEC way it’s just a memo saying God made stuff.
Oh i think it definately does mean exactly that…and probably a lot more. There are no particular reasons why volcanic activity could not also be associated with it. However, generally the theolgical belief is it was referring to underground water aquifers…which still exist today btw
Moving on…
Chaos doesnt describe the life of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Seth stuff like that. The story up until the flood gives us the ages of the individuals in the narrative…ie time is specific and linear. We know for example that Methuselah died the year of the flood at the age of 969 years, that Noah was 600 years old when he went into the Ark…these do not support mythical chaos claims.
Your claim is, “man cant live 969 years”, so the story must mean something else. Ill challenge that by saying Christ walking on water, floating up into the sky, and raising himself from the dead, taking people into outer space at the second coming…these are all scientific nonsense too and yet you believe that apparently. You havent turned any of that into allegorical theological fiction yet it seems.
Time is not chaotic nor does the existence of time in providing us with the exact ages of individuals prior to and also after the flood, this does not support your view there.
Chaos theory relies on time, however, in the context of the biblical account, its the “arrow of time”…one direction. Creation was finished by the time of the birth of Cain and Abel and long established by the time of Noah.
You have a problem with that. Using the principle of biblical cross referencing I notice the “the deep” is also used in Genesis 1:2. So either “the deep” refers to an ocean that existed before creation or “the deep” refers to primordial chaos that existed before creation. Which do you pick?
You never do St aRoymond, you never do…and that is because rarely do you ever quote the bible to support your outragous claims…you almost always cite a writer outside of its pages…a writer chosen from a specific list of only those who support your errant views…whom funnily enough also dont reference the bible properly…they also cite other writers outside of the bible and round and round you go.
If yourtheology was right, you would easily overwhelm me with a huge array of supporting texts from across the bible…in both Old and New testaments…where are these texts?
From time to time you pull out individual words from the ancient text then attempt to apply no context meanings to said words…considering you apparently have some training in Hebrew, it surprises me that in continuing to do that, you demonstrate that you have no idea that Hebrew, a language with so few words and relies heavily on context and referencing, isnt translated or interpreted that way…and yet you continue to do that, teaching fundamental translational error to everyone who reads that tripe in what you post.
I cross reference with other bible texts (in their context) so widely so i dont make that fundamental error…that exactly why i do it! It doesnt mean zero mistakes, but its inherantly a darn cite better than the traversty of what you are doing there.
Its fine to remain consistent i suppose, but given your world view claims to be Christian, one should at least ensure its consistent with the fundamental writings of Christianity. For example, you claim the early bible accounts are simply a copy of another culture’s myths yes…that alone is a problem given its the very first part of the Christian narrative and you dont even believe it to be real. The very foundation of the bible isnt real in your view…that leaves us with the conclusion that in your mind, its some kind of morality lesson. God introduced morality into the evolution of man. Sorry but
science says morality came from Darwinian Evolutionary Social Experimentation…no God there, so any inference to moarilty is contrary to the accepted model.
If it was true, then Christs death om the cross is pointless…early man cant be condemned prior to the ten commandments at Sinai…more than 3000 years after Adam and Eve. A lot of people lived between Adam and Moses.
Sacrifices were clearly being offered to God long before Moses and mt Sinai and the rejection of Cains offering is significant in that it tells us, those sacrifices were very important…more than just idle worship of a deity from the fruits of our labours. It was clearly sin offerings.
Show me where it says that in the context provided in Chapters 6-9?
Id suggest whilst you are contemplating that, you read a little about “arrow of time” in chaos theory.
The dilemma for you backtracking there is thst the arrow of time means that once “the earth was void and without form and darkness was over the face of the deep” is replaced by the creation of light, land separating the waters, plants, animals etc…the chaos is replaced with order.
I dont agree that you may backtrack there …scientifically, the arrow of time doesnt allow for that without an unnatural input…which funnily enough is the flood of Noah. However science apperently doesnt allow for God to go outside of its constraints…but miracles arent science
So whilst “arrow of time” dissagrees with you, if we add Gods supernatural powers into the narrative, we have our global flood. He upset the natural order of things to create a catastrophic global event that change the face of the earth exactly as the bible claims. Interestingly, the book of Revelation (chapter 21) illustrates He will do it again.
So you agree “the deep” means chaos. So why do you switch to the normal ocean later?
So chaos was before creation and then when God was destroying creation He used chaos. Sort of the ying and yang. So in both cases “the deep” means chaos.
And here we go with the “when all else fails just invoke a undocumented and unnecessary miracle” to rescue your preferred interpretation from the myriad of problems generated.
No, it isn’t. If all of the igneous rocks found above fossils were to have very low to undetectable levels of daughter isotopes then we would falsify an old Earth. This is just one example. There are many, many potential observations that could falsify an old Earth.
There is no equivalence here. Modern geology is falsifiable. YEC is not. You will make up supernatural events to cover any evidence that seems to falsify YEC. So why keep arguing for it by pretending to be scientific?
Yes, there are, the primary one being that there is nothing about volcanic activity in the meaning of “springs of the t’hom”. So you’re not just adding to the text, you’re changing the meaning of words.
First, that’s not a theological belief, it’s science speculation; and second, no, it isn’t “generally the belief”. The general belief – which is closer to being theological because it is based on the text – is that all the existing springs in the world suddenly started putting out volumes of water equivalent to rivers rather than little trickles.
BTW, the phrase “waters beneath the earth’s surface” in that AI summary doesn’t mean underground aquifers, it means the “waters below” of the great deep – the t’hom – of Genesis 1, which are the still-existing fluid of chaos and darkness that the earth sits on.
You did. It’s not what the word means.
“Springs” is what מַעְיָן (mah-yan) means; “fountains” is a secondary meaning that is only appropriate when the text strongly requires it.
Sorry, but your AI information is not relevant – it is imposing a MSWV onto the text. Springs flow through established channels, and the seismic activity resulting from one suddenly massively increasing in flow is going to be on the order of (being generous) a 2.5 on the Richter scale – something many people wouldn’t even notice.
I ignored the usual “blah-blah-blah” irrelevant material.
Exactly. It is the very same word. It appears about two dozen times in the OT, and in only three can it be argued that it means something besides that “primordial chaos that existed before creation” (once it is used as an adjective!)
I don’t consider all your science fiction, additions to the text, and changing word meanings to be theology.
So? You totally ignore the foundational material I’m trying to inform you of.
Do you think that the Hebrew scholars at the Institute at Tubingen use cross-referencing to analyze the meaning of obscure OT words? Do you think that the professors at the Jerusalem Center for Biblical Studies use cross-referencing to understand the details of Hebrew grammar? Do you think that the folks at Dallas School of Theology use cross-referencing to find out which women regularly wore jewelry in public in ancient Greece?
They don’t! They use primary sources to learn the historical context, the use of language, the meanings of words!
You have this notion that everything that can be known has to be found in the Bible, but then you constantly reference science to make your points, and you refuse to actually do the study needed to have a clue what you’re reading anyway.
False. You should know by now what I’ve actually said.
Of course I believe it;s real – I believe it’s really what it was written to be, not what a modern worldview wants it to be.
Nope – that’s a fantasy in your mind. “Morality lesson” is an intellectually lazy label that allows you to leave aside the effort to pay attention to what others have said, and to avoid doing the homework to find out what the Bible actually is in its various parts.
You resort to science so often I’m finding it hard to avoid calling it a form of idolatry.
I don’t care what scientific material you think is applicable to Genesis or any other part of scripture. I don’t care what you think Darwin said or what you think it implies. I care what the text says.
This is not Christian theology. You make an idol of Genesis as though without it Christ is nothing! The entire Pentateuch could be pure fiction, but Christ would remain.
Why? This only works if your god is a set of instructions given to a particular Bronze-age people in a particular place at a particular time. Unfortunately for your proposal, Yahweh didn’t go off somewhere, He was still around, and as long as He was around people could be either loyal or disloyal – and all it takes for condemnation from a king is disloyalty to that king.
That’s not in the text.
You go to great lengths to force a legalistic framework onto the scriptures. Try reading the text for what it says for once.
How about the context in Genesis through Malachi?
The word appears over twenty times and refers to the “great deep”, the chaos realm of watery darkness that lies beneath the earth. Even when it doesn’t directly refer to that (three times out of two dozen) its meaning is tied to that.
You claim to do cross-referencing but quite handily ignore the results in order to get away with changing the meaning of a word so it fits your schema.
Back to your science idolatry. The fact that the meaning of t’hom remains consistent throughout the OT is sufficient to throw your attempts at confusing things with scientific ideas pointless. The “waters of the great deep” remain, unchanged; God didn’t do away with them, He just pushed them aside.
And in two dozen others across the OT writings.
Definitely. In geology lab when we dated a set of rock samples part of the exercise was to try to come up with any possible reason the dating was wrong. But the physical evidence said they were hundreds of thousands of years old at a very minimum, and the only way around that was if the laws of physics were wrong – in other words, if God changed the rules on a whim.
