Excellent example of picking and choosing what to take literally! You pluck out one verse from a section of poetry filled with metaphor.
The t’hom is not the inner part of the earth. Stop trying to change the meanings of words!
The t’hom is all there was before God carved out a space in the midst of it using a solid sky-dome.
Strong’s is in error: בְּלִימָה does not appear in Job 26:7; what appears is not a word but a hyphenated construct, עַל־בְּלִי־מָֽה׃, “upon what lacks”.
The verse is poetic metaphor: “He stretches out God’s abode over tohu; He hangs the earth on what is not.” The structure here echoes Genesis 1, so as in many places in the OT “the north” indicates God’s abode, paralleling “the earth” in the next clause, while “tohu” parallels בְּלִי־מָֽה which in effect stands in for בֹ֔הוּ.
If you read Job as intending to talk science, sure. But the Great Deep is darkness and chaos, which to an ancient Hebrew counted as “nothing”, especially when the language is poetic as it is in Job.
Metaphor or not, it is Job that was inspired to say that the earth stands upon nothing. A metaphor that turns out to be true or… what else is it a metaphor for? What else is he trying to say? God inspired Job to say that the earth stands upon nothing, but for Job it remained as something abstract, a concept that he could not test or prove, but stood on faith.
No need to go over what we already have again. I am not changing the meanings of words, but using the same meanings as I’ve used before. When we are open to a different meaning, we can then see and interpret it in other parts of scripture, providing additional support for that meaning.
Job is constructing new words. A new concept… I imagine Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar are all looking at each other as Job speaks, thinking, ‘What is this nothing he speaks of?’
Except ‘hangs the earth’ upon ‘what is not’ is not part of the structure in Genesis. The earth (firmament, Heaven, God’s abode) is standing upon, covering over the waters below, the deep… not hanging on nothing. Job could have used bohu (922. בֹּהוּ - emptiness, waste) if he wanted to be consistent with Genesis, but used this hyphenated construct for ‘nothing’ instead.
So, while “He stretcheth out the north over the empty place,” may echo Genesis, Job is then giving us a more zoomed out view with “hanging the earth upon nothing.”
A quick response. Here is what we know about the flood. First there is no evidence that the flood reported in Genesiis occurred in the location and was of the magnitude and duration mentioned nor was it world wide. However, there was a flood, the Black Sea Deluge 3000 years earlier that mactched the Genesis description and many lives lost among the Black Sea shore settlements. Interestingly the Black Sea borders the mountains of Ararat to te southeast. Secondly, we have to consider that the Genesis flood narrative was written around 1500 BCE by Moses and 900 and 500 BCE by the Yahwists and Priestly writers. The writers placed the Genesis flood at about the same time that the first Mesopotamia epic regarding a flood was written. This was the Eridu flood epic. All around 2300 BCE. It might be a stretch but it apears that oral traditiion may have played a part even though it was over 3000 years which evidence shows is not unusual for oral tradition.
It appears that the Genesis writers may have adopted the Deluge account to counter the Eridu account which involved their polytheistic god where the Genesis writers wanted to atribute a motive to their God to pass judgement on evil doers at the time.
As for worldwide, in those days a major flood may have appeared to have been world wide given that locals stayed close to happen. The Deluge would have really appeared world wide given the expanse of the Black Sea but there is no evidence that any flood has been world wide.
It probably was hyperbole but not meant to deceive but to emphasize the critical aspects noted above…
We should never jump to the conclusion that the Bible is wrong. It reflects what people knew at the time and understood without the benefit of modern evidence and they wrote under the inspiration of God.
The flood and newer evidence concerning the heliocentricity of the earth all fall into the same category.
Be careful in your accusations about the Bible being wrong less you cast doubt on the rest of the Bible, most importantly God’s plan of salvation for which there is substantial evidence.
I think that the Persian Gulf flood and not the Black Sea flood is the flood of Noah. Genesis 1-11 takes place in the fertile crescent, Mesopotamia area, and the location of Eden is shown to be where the Persian Gulf is today, the Persian Gulf Oasis.
Well it was wrong if you take it literally. Which is what I have said a billion times…. Which would also be a lie if you took that statement literally and not hyperbolically. As for the rest…. I think almost everyone here is aware of how oral traditions work, of what hyperbole and mythicized history is, of how the Bible has redactors. I think we all know about biblical Seams of various traditions stitched together and edited and so on. That there is a possibility that it belongs to a much older ancient oral tradition that inspired works like the epic of Gilgamesh, Noah’s flood and so on.
However, my statements are about taking it literally and not being worried about accomondationism.
There was never a flat earth, never a winged talking snake, never giants being born to angelic sex with humans and was never a giant ark where all local wildlife fled to and if there was, there is nothing beyond literary stories to point towards it.
You would have to highlight the exact thing in was saying for me to know what I was saying and etc. I’ve had this conversation hundreds of time, not hyperbolic and so I don’t remember what comment you’re specifically cautioning me about.
Although the Black Sea flooding has been significantly promoted as a plausible original for Noah’s flood, there is not in fact good evidence that it ever was anything more notable than “hmm, maybe I need to move to higher ground this year”. Even Ryan and Pitman have backed off of the claims.
The Persian Gulf might have flooded more catastrophically, but the available data are rather limited. Besides certain practical difficulties in wandering around in or near Iran, regional geologic study is heavily focused on finding oil and thus is focused on much older and deeper layers than possibly relevant floods. Also, much of the data is oil company secrets rather than readily available for study. There are ancient traditions that would fit well with the Persian Gulf flooding, and it works as a match for the geography of Genesis 2.
A regional flood across Mesopotamia would also be a good match for the Genesis account of Noah. Just the right combination of weather events could bring in heavy rains and stall them over the region, which is extremely flat and easy to flood.
Certainly a possibility except the Persian Gulf fills slowly over thousand of years and it is a long way from the Mountains of Ararat. Also not sure where the tiber and pitch could come from to built the ark. In eastern Anatolia it was much more available.
I used to like this connection but the latest figures indicate that the water level didn’t rise all that rapidly even at first, that people could have fled since the water was only rising at the rate of meters per day, perhaps tens of meters at worst. It would have started slowly, then increased as parts of the channel were torn away, but geologists now are saying that once the channel reached bedrock it remained at about the same size, so that as the surface of the sea increased in area the rate of increasing depth would have abated.
There’s a team currently engaged in trying to map settlements abandoned due to this flood in terms of possessions left behind plus if there actually was anyone drowned; their expectation is that thousands of people fled and scattered the tale of a rapidly-rising sea level inundating everything in its path. Their thinking is that this event was drastic enough that it survived in oral memory and was later linked with a more sudden and inescapable flood event.
Eridu, often considered the first city, is an interesting figure; it is tied to the first Flood account and is likely to have been the location for the Tower of Babel story (it fits all the details thought not necessarily in order).
It puzzles me some that many people think that if this was the case then it means the story is not true. That fails on several levels, starting with the erroneous assumption that if it was adapted from a different account then the event never happened, which is sort of like saying that because a journalist used the UP feed for his story about a train crash then the train crash didn’t happen. It also fails to recognize that the “derivative” account may have started independently then later edited in a way to “correct” the other account. Given how the Genesis Ark story shows signs of editing, the most likely version of the matter is that both stories arose from a single event, then later details were imported from one into the other, and either at the same time or later the story was shaped into the chiastic form with numerological symbolism that we now have.
And whereas short-sighted readers today would interpret that as “lying”, to an ancient reader it would have made the account “more true” by showing the depth of meaning behind it. This is common to many ancient stories and is found in the OT frequently, with an account not being an objective report but a telling aimed at answering the question “Why would/did God do this?” [Just as many students of the NT in Greek today don’t see the variant readings as errors but instead acknowledge that God is sovereign and thus ask why He allowed those variations.]
Returning to the involvement of Eridu, there have been several floods that that would have wiped out the kingdom, at least one of which was large enough that to survivors there would have been nothing visible except water, and depending on where the winds and currents carried any survivors, the first land reappearing to them would have been the mountains of Urartu, i.e. Ararat in Hebrew.
Especially when that involves imposing one’s own standards to judge the scriptures, which is 99.99% of the time what happens! The proper approach is to be humble enough to ask, “Would the original audience have regarded this as ‘wrong’? and if not, why not?”
A: “I’v said that a bajillion times!”
B: “How many is a ‘bajillion’?”
A: “As many times as I’ve said it!”
The terrain was such that conditions could work – all it would take would be
massive snowfall in the mountains that feed the Tigris and Euphrates
a monsoon-like storm that dumped huge amount of warm rain in those mountains, melting the snow
a second big storm causing a storm surge that backed up the runoff from the above
I’ve experienced such a combination (on a smaller scale) three times in my life, and the conditions at the Persian Gulf make it possible there.
That’s the real problem with the Persian Gulf possibility.
But the same combination as above could have happened in the central plain of the Tigris and Euphrates, where after the storms subsided only two things would have been visible: water, and the Urartu/Ararat mountains.
That assumes it involved much timber. A recent analysis of the Hebrews suggests:
Make for yourself a box of gopher trees;
you will make the box of reeds,
and you will pitch it inside and out with pitch.
This would mean that it was framed with “gopher” timbers but the hull would have been of reeds (which happens to make a more seaworthy craft than all timber), a method not very different from how large watercraft were actually built in the region.
BTW, this uses “box” because the term traditionally rendered as “ark” just meant a box with the proportions of a coffin (which happen to match the stated proportions of 330/50/30).
Reeds were abundant and the Mesopotamian plain was a savanna back then, so timber wouldn’t have been a major problem, especially if pitch was applied as a preservative – note that “pitch” includes bitumen, of which there were seeps, and the ‘light’ variety was actually used as a waterproof coating for wood.
Taken together, this all matches what a survivor of such a Mesopotamian flood would have observed, and would have experienced if warned ahead of time – and that fits the mythologized history genre that the Ark story uses: a real event, as seen by witnesses, with “behind the scenes” information explaining what was really happening.
And that to me makes the Genesis account even more impactful; it is a story passed down with an explanation of the event woven in. It fits a scenario of someone asking, “Why would god do this?!” and someone responding, “Right – God did this, and here’s what it means”.
I’ve seen the image at 2:45 as a map but the source wasn’t given – this is interesting!
Nice to know that monsoons could actually have hit there; the storms are thus no aberration.
Very important, from Walton & Longman:
We need not concern ourselves with whether the Israelite authors have access to copies of the Mesopotamian accounts."
The argument against Hebrew borrowing from Babylonian accounts is weak, though; borrowing but changing was a way writers back then would say, “Yeah, it happened, but your gods didn’t do it”.
Ha! I argued in grad school that the Genesis account was not derivative but stemmed from a common source of an actual event. I got scorned and even laughed at back then; nice to see scholarship has finally caught up!
Didn’t realize that the names indicate an origin for the Hebrew version in the second millennium B.C. – I wonder if that’s new since I graduated.
I think that Genesis 1-11 is a theological polemic against Babylonian and other Mesopotamian myths, but it’s also a historical polemic. It’s taking the same local history, and saying, “here’s what really happened.” The myths being referenced are as much historical reference points as they are theological ones. It’s interesting to see that parallels to Adam, Abel, Enoch, and Noah are all found as kings in the Sumerian king’s list and other stories.
your location for the ark landing is consistent with Jewish tradition. I just do not see the geological record supporting a lower or central Mesopotamia flood that was anywhere near what genesis deccribes. In terestin discussion. Love the map
Interesting reply along with the others. Just wonder if there was enough wood etc in southern Mesopotamia to make an ark compared to th eastern anatolia region/
The physics of catastrophic snow melt combined with a monsoon show that a flood somewhere between the minimum and maximum on that map is possible. Those calculations were done with just a ten-day monsoon or a pair of those; if indeed monsoons back then could last substantially longer then the maximum shown is plausible.
One question is what kind of evidence such a flood would leave: In most of the area covered, rather than deposition stripping of surface material should be expected, with deposition occurring only in the shallow edge portions. That could make finding evidence difficult!
When I learned that the area would have been savanna back then it was an “Aha!” moment because a savanna would have provided enough lumber to frame a reed vessel, which is what more and more scholars are agreeing is what the text actually states. With a timber frame and reed hull, a structure the size stated in Genesis becomes no longer unreasonable.
An Ark totally of timber doesn’t work either structurally or in there being enough trees around; a wood-framed reed vessel fits both.
not a good analogy…a chefs recipe for fine dining is not a philosophical position upon which ones very existence hinges…we can simply ask the chef to make a custom dish of our own design!
The bible makes no room for custom dishes… “other god’s recipes”!
So there most definitely is a logical connection…
“thou have no other gods before me”!! (Exodus 20:3)
If Jesus is God, as the Trinitarian view claims well supported by New Testament writers who claim to be his disciples/apostles, and if its proven he didn’t exist…? Surely you understand the catastrophic philosophical implications there, do i really need to go further??
