Creation story in Genesis: verses that fit ANE worldview but not modern worldview

[EDC1]

indeed. Agree with you.

[heymike3]

@knor

Genesis 1:2 - what do we have in the beginning?

I don’t know if this was pointed out before in the thread, but Genesis 1:1 describes what happened in the beginning. An OEC reading, which I am still partial to, sees Genesis 1:2 as a description of a watery primordial Earth lacking a translucent atmosphere.

[adamjedgar (adam james edgar)]

@knor

Genesis 1:2 - what do we have in the beginning?
“And the earth was formless and desolate emptiness, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.”

At this point, there is clearly something. The verse speaks of a formless/desolate earth and especially about waters. From the viewpoint of modern worldview, this cannot be the beginning of creation because there is already important stuff. However, from the viewpoint of ANE worldview, this is the beginning of creation.

YEC agree entirely with a normal reading of Genesis 1:2.

Please explain where you find any menion of millions of years of time in that verse?

You have a huge problem because note what the very next verses say…

3And God said, “Let there be light,”a and there was light. 4And God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. 5God called the light “day,” and the darkness He called “night.”

And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.b

[adamjedgar (adam james edgar)]

@knor

Genesis 1:6-7 - the expanse.
“God made the expanse, and separated the waters that were below from the waters that were above the expanse; and it was so” (verse 7).

ANE people, and other ancient cultures, believed that there was a solid dome above the earth. Some cultures believed the ‘expanse’ was made of metal, others that it was made from blue stone. The ‘expanse’ separated the reality to two compartments. Above the ‘expanse’ was a sea and the heavens, the places were heavenly creatures and God lived. Below the ‘expanse’ was the earth, the atmosphere above the earth (although the people did not speak of atmosphere), clouds and the animals and humans.

This is all basic ANE worldview. It needs a lot of mental and verbal twisting to try to get this part to agree with the modern worldview. Genesis 1 describes the world according to the ANE worldview. If we want to be faithful to the text, we should accept what the text tells and interpret it through the ANE worldview.

eh?

What has this got to do with an old age earth? You are referring to mythical cultures believing a metal dome above the earth? Where in the bible do you find that exactly?

If you want to be faithful to the text, then a normal reading of language would be a great place to start…if i wrote to you, im going to make a table out of cedar, wouldnt you expect from a normal reading of language that i was planning on doing exactly that?

I will post here the actual reading of Genesis 1:6-8 (because you intentionally did not quote the full text…and that is wilfully misleading)

The Second Day

6And God said, “Let there be an expansec between the waters, to separate the waters from the waters.” 7So God made the expanse and separated the waters beneath it from the waters above. And it was so. 8God called the expanse “sky.”*

And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.

Now if St Roymond wishes to bang on about not understanding ancient language…ill gladly also post images of the interlinear text?

[adamjedgar (adam james edgar)]

@ivar

Even without looking at other stories, you can see a pattern that is clearly literary in structure because of its symmetry.

no form → form	empty → full
day 1: darkness and light	day 4: sun, moon and stars
day 2: waters and heavens	day 5: sea and flying animals
day 3: land and plants	day 6: land animals and humans

This pattern doesn’t fit with evolution at all. Some examples:

1. Animals existed long before the first tree appeared.
2. Whales (belonging to the “great sea creatures”) evolved from land animals.
3. Birds evolved from dinosaurs.

This is where things are starting to get cuckoo.

The bible clearly says, animals were created after day 4 (after the land, vegetation, and sun+moon).

The Fifth Day
**> **
> 20And God said, “Let the waters teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the sky.” 21So God created the great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters teemed according to their kinds, and every bird of flight after its kind. And God saw that it was good.

22Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters of the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”

I do not see how anyone can glean out of the bible something different to what it actually says?

@St.Roymond

It’s been a quarter century since I read it, but I recall that Henri Blocher in his book In the Beginning‡. He emphasizes that if we want to understand the Creation accounts then our primary task is to learn what those originally meant to their original audience(s). Really this is just common sense; in a discussion of the book I remember someone making the comparison to reading about battles in ancient Greece and interpreting a cavalry charge as being composed of Leopard tanks – an analogy that seems ridiculous but actually makes a good comparison in how different the worldviews and word meanings are between the ancient Hebrew writings and modern Western worldviews.

we already know the answer to that…

Luke 17
26Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man: 27People were eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.

28It was the same in the days of Lot: People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. 29But on the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all.

2 Peter 2

1Now there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. 2Many will follow in their depravity, and because of them the way of truth will be defamed. 3In their greed, these false teachers will exploit you with deceptive words. The longstanding verdict against them remains in force, and their destruction does not sleep.

4For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them deep into hell,a placing them in chains of darkness to be held for judgment; 5if He did not spare the ancient world when He brought the flood on its ungodly people, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, among the eight; 6if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction,b reducing them to ashes as an example of what is coming on the ungodly;c 7and if He rescued Lot, a righteous man distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless

again…if you want to discuss the interlinear…we can go down this pathway…it will only make your argument seem more isolated though because Luke and Peter agree with the normal reading of Genesis even in the interlinear.

[St.Roymond]

@heymike3

An OEC reading, which I am still partial to, sees Genesis 1:2 as a description of a watery primordial Earth lacking a translucent atmosphere.

If you’re going to try to make Genesis talk science, the best bet is to hearken to the scholars who back in the eighth and (IIRC) eleventh centuries analyze the opening of the first Creation account and ended up with what reads like a layman’s description of the Big Bang. I say that because they weren’t trying to fit the science they knew to the text, they were drawing out of the text what they saw there. That was pretty amazing since the prevailing science of the day still held that everything is made of the four elements air, earth, fire, and water.

[St.Roymond]

@adamjedgar

Please explain where you find any menion of millions of years of time in that verse?

Why does that even matter? The best translation of י֥וֹם אֶחָֽד is “day one”; it can also be rendered “one day”, or even “a day” – the last is not likely, but possible since the Hebrew word for “one” is also used where we would use an indefinite article, and that does fit with the rest of the numbers, which say “a second day”, “a third day”, etc. The grammar doesn’t even require that the days are consecutive; there could be any number of days between them or even before them. Finally, there is a more accurate way that Hebrew can say “first day”; this isn’t it.

Could that add up to millions of years? The actual answer here is “It doesn’t matter”, because the first Creation story isn’t telling us about a series of events on a calendar.

@adamjedgar

You are referring to mythical cultures believing a metal dome above the earth? Where in the bible do you find that exactly?

In the word רָקִ֖יעַ – raqiyah, pronounced “rah-KEE-yah”. The KJV has “firmament”, the key to which is the first syllable “firm”. It comes from a verb that means "to beat or hammer out (metal).

Given that when this was first set down the Israelites had just come out of Egypt, though, the relevant culture is the Egyptian, and their view was that it was transparent, obviously with water above it: water in the daytime looks blue, and water at night time looks black, so plainly it was water up there!

@adamjedgar

then a normal reading of language would be a great place to start

A normal reading of language in Hebrew – not in English.

@adamjedgar

And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.

This is a bad translation, however traditional it might be. For starters, the period from evening to morning is not day, it is night; second, the Hebrew does not say “the second day”, it says “a second day”.

You’re basing theology on your uninformed understanding of an English translation, which is always a bad idea.

@adamjedgar

Now if St Roymond wishes to bang on about not understanding ancient language…ill gladly also post images of the interlinear text?

There isn’t an interlinear in existence that doesn’t have heavy theological bias. Let’s just go with the Hebrew:

וַיִּקְרָא אֱלֹהִים לָרָקִיעַ, שָׁמָיִם; וַיְהִי-עֶרֶב וַיְהִי-בֹקֶר, יוֹם שֵׁנִי

“And God called to the raqiyah, ‘heaven’. And there was evening, and there was morning, a second day.”

[St.Roymond]

@adamjedgar

The bible clearly says, animals were created after day 4 (after the land, vegetation, and sun+moon).

The problem is that the text does not teach what it says, because it’s not that kind of literature. The teaching is found in the original context, which means the language, the culture, the literary type, and the worldview – those are what the Holy Spirit chose for His message, and it is disrespectful to read it any other way.

Why can’t you let the scripture be what it is instead of trying to force it to be something else?

@adamjedgar

I do not see how anyone can glean out of the bible something different to what it actually says?

You’re dong a good job of it, and the method is simple: ignoring that the Holy Spirit chose to have His message written by an ancient writer in an ancient language in an ancient context. That didn’t happen by accident, He chose that time and place and culture and the rest of that context, so we should honor Him by reading it the way He chose to have it written.

@adamjedgar

we already know the answer to that…

No, we know your made-up answer that rests on failing to actually study the scriptures. See, accurately handling the word of truth isn’t something you can do by just picking up a Bible and expecting God to have written it so it would be easy for you to understand, it requires studying what the Holy Spirit actually inspired. The moment you expect the text to use your worldview you guarantee that you will get things wrong.

[heymike3]

@St.Roymond

If you’re going to try to make Genesis talk science

Or make Genesis 1:1 not say in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth… besides I wouldn’t make Genesis 1:2 fit with the science today, I would just note that it could be describing the same thing even if the human author didn’t intend it.

[St.Roymond]

@heymike3

Or make Genesis 1:1 not say in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth

It still intrigues me that it was ever translate that way from the Masoretic text because the vowel pointing is wrong for there being a definite article, and I’m sure they knew how the pointings worked! As they stand it’s a temporal, which is where some modern translations get “When God began…” Though that’s not quite right, either, but English can’t actually say what the Hebrew does.

[heymike3]

Please provide a source that favors your view, as I am sure there should be a wide range of scholarly discussion about this.

[heymike3]

Btw, I just now read Robert Alter’s translation of Genesis 1 and it is quite beautiful. While I am drawn to the OEC reading, I am not fixated upon it. The only thing I would point out is that God created all of it either way. When God began to create or in the beginning God created is small in comparison to positing an eternal creation.

[ivar]

@adamjedgar

This is where things are starting to get cuckoo.

The bible clearly says, animals were created after day 4 (after the land, vegetation, and sun+moon).

Yes. My point was that you can’t square a literal / historical reading of Genesis 1 with evolution, as suggested by another member in an earlier post.

[heymike3]

@ivar

Animals existed long before the first tree appeared.

I did a little digging this afternoon as it has been awhile since I looked at the OEC reading of day 3. Hugh Ross calls the Hebrew terms for “seeds,” “trees,” and “fruits" generic. Either way it’s cool to note vegatative life on land preceded animal life and a transparent atmosphere.

I also saw this on wikipedia, which put land vegatation 250 million years before the beginning of animal evolution

First non-marine eukaryotes move onto land. They were photosynthetic and multicellular, indicating that plants evolved much earlier than originally thought.

Earth's earliest non-marine eukaryotes

[St.Roymond]

@heymike3

Please provide a source that favors your view, as I am sure there should be a wide range of scholarly discussion about this.

This is the first thing I could find, though he doesn’t get into the details of the word structure:

Have we Translated Genesis 1 Wrong All this Time?!

[ivar]

@heymike3

I did a little digging this afternoon as it has been awhile since I looked at the OEC reading of day 3. Hugh Ross calls the Hebrew terms for “seeds,” “trees,” and “fruits" generic. Either way it’s cool to note vegatative life on land preceded animal life and a transparent atmosphere.

I also saw this on wikipedia, which put land vegatation 250 million years before the beginning of animal evolution

I see your point. What makes it difficult for me is that v. 12 clearly differentiates between “grass” (or it must be translated as “vegetation”, i.e. the combination of the the two that follow), “plants bearing seed” and “trees bearing fruit with seed”.

The first tree appeared in the Devonian (Wattieza - Wikipedia), long after the Cambrian explosion. Apparently the first fruit trees appeared in the Jurassic:

When did the first fruits appear? The ‘fruit grade’ of plant evolution was apparently attained by multiple lineages (Caytoniales, angiosperm ancestors) simultaneously in the earliest Jurassic at a time of profound global cooling in the wake of a major mass extinction.

First Fruits | SpringerLink