It is important to make a clean break with the false idea the Bible predicted for the last days, the notion that all things remain the same. Thus, the calculation that clocks may all be accelerating (local and cosmic) is not a proof. It is merely an Okham’s razor, an reductio ad absurdum. To believe in a magical universe, to preserve the notion that clocks measure time is ridiculous. In the visible history of the cosmos, the atomic clocks and the orbits accelerate together as galaxies grew out of the unformed matter God created first.
Earth history evidence does not depend on measuring invisible things like time. Ephesian 5:13 tells us the light reveals the truth and exposes error. Why? Everything that is visible is light, phos estin. Notice Paul does not see that light merely exposes things. Every substance contains light. Matter itself is a relation with light (see day one). Light is the standard of truth, not empirical, mathematical science. Everything physical is constructed with light (phos estin).
Telescopes reveal the truth about creation, not mathematical calculations. Billions of galaxies spread out, grew out, shine bluer as billions of galaxies become spreading things (raqiya) exactly as we read in the creation text. It is science that fails, not God’s word.
I believe we should use the ancient worldview to understand the Bible. I do not have to convert time into change or even imagine any time.
When I was a child, my teachers taught me the Latin version of creation. The Latin uses perfect verbs instead of the Hebrew imperfects and participles. 2/3rd of the creation verbs are imperfects and participles. These show continuing actions, not like our verbs. The Latin tries to understand creation with the medieval concept of time. Moses could not imagine time, since his language had no verb tenses or words for time. All ancient languages were aspectual. They monitored nature’s changes. They used these to explain when and to understand earth history. (Read Hesiod’s Works and Days).
We live in a society where everything focuses on time. This is unlike any ancient society. Have a nice day.
@Christy and I thoroughly lectured you last time about the intellectual bankruptcy of the strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. I don’t have time to pull up those posts, but it shouldn’t be too hard — it was at the very beginning of your BioLogos Forum engagement. That you continue to trumpet these easily-debunked misunderstandings of tense, aspect and mode marking in the verbal systems of the world’s languages shows that you’re not really open (or, at least, historically have not been open) to interacting with mainstream scholarship to make your theories better model reality.
I don’t mean to discourage you, but rather to encourage you to engage with some quality scholarship and make your theories better. Please let us know when you’ve done so and we can have some more interesting discussions!
@godsriddle
I would like to remind you of our guideline that states:
If you continue to repeat, ad nauseum that change and time are opposite worldviews, that’s a violation of the guidelines. Either contribute meaningfully to the discussion at hand - pagan imagery in the OT-or find a different place to hang out. We have humored your off the wall ideas for long enough here.
Okay, we still have imperfects and participles in English. Is it possible to give an example of how the text should be translated in English imperfects and participles to demonstrate that contrast?
On day four, Elohim continues (imperfect) to speak to the sky luminaries. He tells them to become spreading things (noun raqiya). The spreading luminaries, Sun, Moon and stars are to shine on the Earth. They are to serve as markers for days and years.
This has powerful support in the visible history of the universe. Early galaxies are often surrounded by equally globs, each packed with stars. These spread out, often following each other out in lanes as billions of galaxies become spreading things (raqiya). Often they spread out into local growth spirals, like the Milky Way. Concurrently, galactic spectral colors keep shifting towards the blue.
Then on day seven, he completes (imperfect verb) the making of the plural heavens. How can you complete something with imperfect verbs? Imperfect verbs show continuing actions. He continues to finish, yet the intensity of making the plural heavens ends.
We confirm these imperfect intense and causal verbs. At some point in cosmic history, star globs stop emerging and spreading out from galactic cores. Yet he continues to spread out each galaxy. He continues to finish. Thus only local galaxies shoot out dust jets into dust bars. Ancient galaxies shot out star globs. Yet all galaxies continue to spread out. Over and over again, especially in Isaiah, God says he continues to call out the hosts of stars, yet none go missing. He continues to spread out the plural heavens, which we confirm with telescopes. Thus we actually have a visible marker for the duration of day four to day six.
None of what is visible makes sense when we use verb tenses. However, it has visible support if we interpret this in the ancient changing worldview.
Imperfective aspect does not equal “eternally progressive.” Your understanding of tense/aspect systems is woefully lacking, as has been pointed out numerous times. When telic verbs are expressed as imperfectives it doesn’t entail the action was never completed, just that the endpoint is not in focus. Your theories are based on errors that are super basic.
“I was making bread yesterday when my mom called.”
That does not mean I am continuing to making bread and will be continuing to make bread for all eternity. My use of an imperfective aspect here does not mean it is impossible to imagine that I finished making the bread.
And still (to bring it back on topic), the texts may have used the language of neighbors in a polemic way, but the Jews were expected not to “imitate the ways” of the pagans (see, e.g., Leviticus 18:30, 2 Kings 17:8), and struggled with this nationally, not least in the second temple period (note specifically the tensions that led to the revolt against Antiochus Epiphanes).
On the other hand, we’re not Jewish, but gentile Christians…
To get back on topic, here is a list of correspondences I’ve found with Biblical and Ugaritic literature:
Turning to dust upon death.
Stars producing rain/hydration (as in Judges 5:20).
Water from above being paired with waters below.
God riding on the clouds.
Ltn/Leviathan.
Tannin as a dragon representing chaos. The creation of the Tannin in Genesis 1 (which is very unusual in historical context) conveys the message that chaos cannot harm Israel, as it is under the control of God.
Malakhim being used to refer to divine messengers.
Sheol as a place for the dead.
Deber and Resheph, Canaanite gods who were in Yahweh’s retinue.
God’s council being known as the Bene Elim in Psalm 89.
Sorry Christy. Talking about elementary assumptions is by nature offensive. I do not mean to demean anyone.
The book: “Word order and Time in Biblical Hebrew Narrative” by Tal Goldfajn documents the various theories of verb time in the Bible. She shows that each theory contradicts the others. Thus they cannot all be correct. What we do know is that the waw points to narrative sequence. For example, each day in the creation account begins with the waw symbol. She claims that the qatal interrupts / discontinues the narrative, the wayyiqtol continues the narrative. This is not like a verb tense. The narrative context is the key to what it means.
People still speak aspectual languages today. Mandarin is the most spoken language and it is aspectual. In such a language you can explain duration and when with context. For example, in Philippine languages you can say kain na - eat now, eat tonight, eat tomorrow, eat at night, eat in the morning. Common people speak about eating without tenses by adding some event marker. The context explains when. In the ancient worldview, when / duration are explained with changes in the context, not time.
Today’s telescopes image the creation era by accumulating ancient light in relatively dark spots. (See images of the HUDF and XUDF) These fields take up only a few square minutes. Yet, more than ten thousand ancient galaxies show up. By blacking out the visible galaxies in the field, they can statistically examine the infrared background wallpaper of more ancient galaxies. The statistics suggest a minimum of 5 trillion galaxies. (The James Web should increase the depth of these fields). Morphological and spectral changes continue throughout visible cosmic history.
Does Elohim mean for the luminaries: Sun, Moon and stars to continue to become spreading things: raqiya? He tells us these luminaries are to serve as markers for days and years. Spreading orbits cannot be linear.
Early spiral galaxies eject strings of equally spaced star globs from their compact cores. At many ranges, these spread out, accelerate out, become dusty and grow in volume. The star globs followed each other out in spiral lanes. Nearby spirals have logarithmically spaced spreading arms with dust bars emerging from their cores. Early spirals have distinct globs spreading out, without continuous arms. Solar planets also have logarithmic spacings, if we take the shattered remains of a planet (asteroids) as one point. All multiple exoplanets also have logarithmically increasing distance from their star. (You can easily check this by graphing the logarithm of the orbital distance versus sequence. This produces an ~ straight line on a graph.) Logarithms show incremental change. Evidently orbits continue to become raqiya,. The optical parallax to the Sun and planets continues to decrease over the last 200 years. The optical parallax continues to decrease (distance to the Sun increases) even since astronomers defined the AU as fixed with clocks and radar.
What we see is continuing changes. Visibly, the atoms increase their clock rates as the orbits spiral out as matter increases in volume. He made a universe where everything changes in an orderly, together manner. (See the two orderly submission and together verbs Paul uses to describe how the universe changes - phthora in Romans 8:19-22).
When I was younger, I struggled with the age of the universe versus the creation text. I no longer struggle because I see changes instead of time.
Thank you. This was all in the explanation that we painstakingly put together for Victor last time, which, to my unsurprised disappointment, he has completely ignored. So I didn’t have the heart to explain it all over again. But exactly!
Mandarin uses grammatical markers (not merely context), to differentiate between present tense, past tense, perfect, and imperfect. What you are saying does not make sense. I suspect you do not speak Mandarin.
I know. I’m a linguist. I study a mesoamerican language that has an aspect system, not a tense system.
The last sentence is ridiculous. The context always explains “when” WITH A TEMPORAL ADVERBIAL!!! You cannot explain “when” without reference to time.
I’m not interested in arguing the finer points of this. I don’t think you have any idea what you are talking about. I have stopped reading the bulk of your posts because I find them completely nonsensical.