Exalting Yahweh using Pagan imagery

Faith & Science Conversation
142

@godsriddle,

I have to conclude that you don’t know how to read Hebrew well.

Here we have multiple versions of the Isaiah 42:5 text … and not one of them translates as you wish it were translated:

Translations for Isa 42:5
KJV
Thus saith God the LORD, he that created the heavens, and stretched them out;
he that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it; he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein:

NKJV
Thus says God the LORD,
Who created the heavens and stretched them out,
Who spread forth the earth and that which comes from it,
Who gives breath to the people on it,
And spirit to those who walk on it:

NLT
God, the LORD, created the heavens and stretched them out.
He created the earth and everything in it.
He gives breath to everyone,
life to everyone who walks the earth.
And it is he who says,

NIV
This is what God the LORD says— the Creator of the heavens, who stretches them out, who spreads out the earth with all that springs from it, who gives breath to its people, and life to those who walk on it:

NASB
Thus says God the LORD,
Who created the heavens and stretched them out,
Who spread out the earth and its [fn]offspring,
Who gives breath to the people on it
And spirit to those who walk in it,

RSV
Thus says God, the LORD, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread forth the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it:

ASV
Thus saith God Jehovah, he that created the heavens, and stretched them forth; he that spread abroad the earth and that which cometh out of it; he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein:

NET
This is what the true God, the LORD, says - the one who created the sky and stretched it out, the one who fashioned the earth and everything that lives on it, the one who gives breath to the people on it, and life to those who live on it:

HNV
Thus says God the LORD, he who created the heavens, and stretched them forth; he who spread abroad the eretz and that which comes out of it; he who gives breath to the people on it, and spirit to those who walk therein:

143

I think he meant to say Isaiah 44:24:

"This is what the LORD says-- your Redeemer, who formed you in the womb: I am the LORD, the Maker of all things, who stretches out the heavens, who spreads out the earth by myself,

144

@Reggie_O_Donoghue

Thank you for volunteering the clarification. But I don’t really think this ultimately changes the discussion, right? You don’t think the @godsriddle is right about Earth constantly expanding, do you?

King James uses “maketh” and “stretcheth”… which can seem inscrutable to some.

Translations for Isa 44:24
KJV
“… I am the LORD that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself…”

The New King James offers the clarification by saying the Lord “makes” all things and “spreads abroad the earth”:

“…I am the LORD, who makes all things, Who stretches out the heavens all alone, Who spreads abroad the earth by Myself…"

By putting it in the present tense, does it mean he’s still making the Sun and the Moon?.. That he is still “spreading the earth”? Or is the meaning more accurately one of “sustaining” the sky and the earth in its “spreadout” existence?

We can’t even get consistent translations on Isaiah 44:24. The RSV puts everything in past tense!:

Revised Standard Version:
"… I am the LORD, who made all things, who stretched out the heavens alone, who spread out the earth . . .

And so does the N.E.T. Bible -

New English Translation:
"This is what the LORD, your protector, says, the one who formed you in the womb: "I am the LORD,
who made everything, who alone stretched out the sky, who fashioned the earth all by myself,

Translating a foreign language is not something for the faint of heart! In a 2012 linguistics paper by
Borna Baradic (Dept. of Linguistics, Ghent University), called “Color Verbs in Croatian” we find a rather good example of how verbal phrases can have different “tenses”, but still mean the same thing:

First, the concept of “Prefixation” is introduced: "Prefixation is a means of producing aspectual verb pairs,
i.e. pairs of imperfective and perfective verbs. Consider the verbs crveniti and zacrveniti in the following sentences:

Crvenila je usne ružem = ʻShe was reddening the lips with a lipstickʼ

and

Zacrvenila je usne ružem = ʻShe reddened the lips with a lipstickʼ.

In English, this is a rather odd distinction. But in Croatian, they are both past-tense, not present tense.

Another example: Table 4
Crvenila je haljinu = ʻShe was dying the dress red (*reddening).ʼ
vs.
Sa svakim komplimentom, sve je više crvenjela. = ‘With every compliment, she blushed more
and more (*reddened).’

". . . [in Table 4] the verb formed with the suffix –je– denotes an intransitive process, while the verb formed with the suffix –i– denotes a transitive process. In other words:

[1] the meaning of the –je– variety is “to become” of a certain color“ (inchoative),
while
[2] the meaning of the –i– variety is “to make to become” of a certain color“ (causative)."

“The “–i–” / “–je–” opposition is characteristic of a wider range of adjectival verbs and not only
color verbs, with examples such as
[a] hladniti/hladnjeti ʻto make/become coldʼ,
[b] slijepiti/slijepjeti ʻto make/become blindʼ,
[c] slabiti/slabjeti ʻto make/become weakʼ, etc.”

"Nevertheless, the opposition between the causative and inchoative paradigm is not consistent
throughout the verbal system. . . . The presented ambiguities, combined with other factors, make
this system an unstable one and prone to changes, which have already taken place in the
everyday language. "

If GodsRiddle wants to avoid circularity, he is going to need to show that the Earth has expanded over time… not merely assume that it has “Because Hebrew Grammar”. Let him prove that the Earth has done so, then the grammar will be demonstrated, not the other way around.

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145

Sorry for the delay in responding. In the Western tradition I might give the excuse of not having enough time. Redeeming the time, kairos, meant redeeming the opportunities. (See Hesiod’s use of kairos for an opportune way to live life by monitoring nature’s changes). Other activities kept me busy elsewhere.

This is one of a dozen verses that speak of the continuity of the active spreading - here qal active particle - of the earth and plural heavens. (By the way, plural shamayim, does not fit with the singular spacetime that allegedly is invisibly spreading the space between galaxies).

I agree. The biblical spreading heavens and spreading earth demonstrate the continuing verbs found in the creation narratives.

The Earth cannot be spreading out because of our mathematical measuring, says the scientist. We use GPS and lasers bouncing off corner reflecting satellites to measure the distance between objects on Earth. Thus we know the Earth stays the same size. Yet even the GPS bird’s cesium clocks are adjusted to fit the notion that the clocks measure fixed periods. Even the orbit calculations and timing of reflecting lasers presume the Western metaphysic. The notion that matter (and clocks) are not constantly changing relationally is the basis for Western natural histories.

Yet the continents stand on thick deposits of granite, lighter and more granular than the dense abyssal basalt. Why does the Earth have two radically different crusts? Why do the contents snuggle together without the modern younger seas, on a tiny globe? Why, if we take away the volcanic mare on the Moon, the highlands fit together on a small globe? Why, do the southern highlands on Mars also come together on a tiny planet, if we take away the volcanic plains? Here is a utube presentation from Dr S.W Carey’s growing Earth theory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Othb0xsvZb4

sea floor relative ages from NOAA

Please notice that the eastern Mediterranean existed before any modern oceans. Job used the dried Mediterranean (Hebrew west) for a lifetime marker, back when people grew Neanderthal brows from vast ages (See Job 14). Indeed, it did dry leaving thick layers of rock salt and gypsum sandwiched between deep sea oozes.

Peter mentions two areas of natural history that the people of the last days reject because they believe all things remain the same. One involves our watery geology, that earth’s waters used to stand with the land. Then those same waters destroyed during the cataclysm. The first is that the plural heavens came out long ago - ouranoi ek (came out) palai. This alone should prove the nature of biblical grammars, both aspectual Greek and aspectual Hebrew.

With telescopes we see to the creation era. At many ranges, we observe how globs of stars emerged and spread out, often growing into local growth spirals, like the Milky Way. Hebrews 11:3 says by faith we understand that the plural eons passively formed by the command of God as lights appeared from things not seen. This fits the visible history of the galaxies. Trillions of star globs emerged and spread out, as billions of galaxies became spreading things (noun raqiya). What did they spread out from? The formless things God created first. How did substances receive form. (Imperfect verbs and participles), Elohim’s wind vibrates above the dark surface of the primordial waters. He continues to speak for light to be light. Indeed, light vibrates around within and around all substance giving them extension and other properties to this very day.

Matter is observed to shift its visible properties as the light clocks keep shifting towards the blue as billions of galaxies grew out from cores of unformed primordial matter.

Thus we can confirm the way Hebrew grammar worked in the visible history of how God created the universe.

Victor

146

I contend that the ancients were not philosophers, like us. They marked duration, not with time, but with visible change markers. The context in each narrative explains when with references to what changed, not time. Their earth histories also fit their notion of change rather than time.

Imagine that we were children growing up in Babylon. Lists of kings formed their calendars. The third year of king x was their reference marker for when something happened. However, this year was not a marker for time, but for how everything changes. Sumerian and Babylonians scribes wrote down their king lists. The first kings reigned for tens of thousands of years. Each generation of kings reigned for fewer years. How could this be?

The ancients looked back on the patriarchs as those who lived for eons. The earliest people lived endlessly. In the silver generations, children played at their mother’s knee for a hundred years. After maturing, they soon died. The iron generation never stop laboring by day and dying by night. Like Jacob, they saw the degeneration of lifetimes in subsequent generations (Genesis 47:9).

All ancient histories focused on how radically things have changed. Velikovsky did not invent close planet passages. He read ancient accounts. His theories may be wrong but the ancient accounts clearly do mention a planet crushing and close passages. The Bible also records similar events, using some of the same imagery. Indeed, if a watery planet did shatter in a collision, it probably would look like a multi-headed sea serpent as each major peace was followed by a vapor tail. The biblical references are not using pagan imagery to support Yahweh. They say a real event happened, the crushing of a watery planet. It was God who cleared the skies and saved the Earth during this cataclysm.

Victor

things in all ancient nations.

147

Well for something that is so broken it worked quite well to get us to the moon and back again. Or was that just a big hoax?

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148

Isn’t that “potato, pot-ah-to” (whatever a “pot-ah-to” is…)? After all, our marking of “time” is merely the recognition of “visible change markers,” be that the moon, the sun, the swinging of a pendulum, the ticking of a watch hand…

149

Of course it works. The entire structure was contrived on the twin assumptions that matter is not changing itself, and time (clocks and orbits) are not changing together. even the measuring definitions and mathematics presumes these assumptions.

a. landing or orbiting a planet is a continuing process that continues even as you land. You adjust with correction burns. Yet we have a landing anomaly, similar to the flyby and Pioneer anomalies. Every landing on Mars has been long, even after the herculean efforts to stick the landing with the MSL rover.

b. Evidently our information of the orbit of the planet is not precise. It is constructed with radar and clocks, that presume that clocks measure linear time. Yet the optical parallax to the planets continues to decrease even after they used radar to define a fixed AU. The optical parallax to Mars was 7% larger 300 years ago when measured with with different parallax methods angles by Cassini and Flamsteed. Mars was then stopped next to bright stars. A similar conjunction 15 years ago, showed an AU larger than the canonical size. If the solar system is growing, like galaxies grow, we need to examine our assumptions. Peter predicted the wrong idea of the last days as all things remain the same.

Yet we can see the visible history of how the galaxies formed. The atoms increase their clock rates as the star streams spiral out as matter’s volume continues to increase. Billions of galaxies become spreading things, raqiya, in Hebrew. Even the continents fits together on a minuscule planet as God continues to lay the foundation of the Earth Zech 12:1. Only the creation account fits the visible creation of the universe.

Victor

150

But if it works doesn’t the demonstrate that the assumptions were correct?

Of course you do. Problem is you indicate that entire basis of the process is wrong. If the orbital calculations are good enough that only very minor corrections are needed that indicates the calculations were correct. Where is this change of which you keep referring to? It must be extremely small as in non-existent.

Long by how much? Again, after the distance traveled just getting to the planet is a feat. Which should be impossible given your take on physics.

You are comparing measurements made in the 1800’s with measurements made today? I am not surprised that they would differ.

Edit to add: I knew we have gone over this before and sure enough I found this.

Source: “Cassini, Flamsteed, and Halley on the Dimensions of the Solar System” by A. van Helden, Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society

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151

A worldview is basic to how its people think and communicate.

The historical first worldview assumed that everything changes.

The second took off after the philosophy that matter is not changing itself.

The first: the ancients saw changes and used these to regulate life and record history. Even their languages told narratives by referring to what changes. They gold standard for evidence was something visible. For example, the Babylonians observed planets moving through the background stars. They imagined omens based on what the visible planets (their gods) might do. The ancients also recorded major catastrophes: a planet crushing and planets passing near earth. This is not just Velikovsky. They wrote these stories down in many languages. They also looked back on the first generations as those who lived to watch geological changes during a lifetime. (The biblical authors belonged to that ancient worldview see Job 14). Thus they use visible things for evidence (see Ephesians 5:13)

The second system looks for precision measuring and mathematics. Most of these depend on the notion that matter is not changing itself. The system works locally and in nearby spaces because it is consistent with its basic assumption.

However, scientific cosmologies focus on things never detected anywhere (e.g. space time, invisible matter, invisible dark energy etc) They even admit that their universe is 99% undetected with light.

When we compare the morphology and spectra of countless galaxies at many ranges, we observe (with light) that galaxies grew out from cores of unformed matter. This only fits the biblical text. Even the scientific measuring system suggests ongoing changes. Local planets and exoplanet exhibit sequential logarithmically increasing distances to their star. We also see logarithmic arms in all spirals galaxies. Logarithmic changes come from continuing changes.

Throughout history, the parallax has been getting smaller. Lets exclude the Greek measurements and just focus on the era that used micrometer eye pieces. Flamsteed used diurnal parallax to measure the distance to Mars. Cassini used the parallax taken from two points on Earth. Cassini and his assistant measured the angle to background stars from two widely separated point on the same night. Cassini and Flamsteed came up with almost the same distance to the Sun. (By the way, angular measurements do not presume that matter has fixed properties. They predate the age of the philosophers.) Flamsteed repeated his angular measurements on subsequent oppositions of Mars. He was not a lightweight, involved in the building of the Greenwich observatory.

Here is a man who made the same measurements in this century.

http://www.mccarthyobservatory.org/pdfs/pm020102.pdf

Of course he cannot accept that the AU is larger than the radar value but cannot find any errors.

Visibly, the atoms in billions of galaxies keep increasing their clock frequencies throughout cosmic history. Even local atomic clocks appear to accelerate in the same manner. Trillions of star globs emerged from those ancient cores and spread out. Often they spread out into local growth spirals like the Milky Way. Only the grammatical creation text and related passages fit the visible history of the universe.

We can’t have both ways. Either science is valid, because its basic assumption is true. In that case the universe is crammed full of magic to prevent matter from shifting its properties.

Or the Bible should be accepted grammatically (in the context of the ancient worldview). If that is so, then we confirm the text with optics. Please notice that the visible history of how the universe formed has no need of the philosophy of time. It only depends on the changes that light reveals. Change and time are opposite ways of ordering nature.

Victor

152

No they aren’t

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153

You keep ignoring it but the Egyptians divided the day into 24 hours. Something that is not visible until you add uniform divisions to a sun dial. So you are basically wrong about change. Change is just another way to refer to time.

The comment I used was based on Edmond Halley’s assessment of Cassini and Flamsteed’s work. Likewise a heavyweight in astronomy. Forgive me if I accept his judgment over yours.

Strange when this is in the article you provided.

I certainly wouldn’t place a lot of faith in their initial measurements which would be more than 20% in error.

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154

@godsriddle

That’s your refutation? Using your definition, 6 days could easily represent 13 billion years. Because you don’t know what “changes” are considered important to God, and which ones do not.

Certainly the human definition of a “day” is being foiled… because humans use the sun to define the interval of a day.

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155

The Egyptians could not have been measuring “time” because they (like the Babylonians) varied the amount of water for a military watch throughout the seasons. Even the graduations on a stick shadow clock could not have been for measuring linear time. The shadow slows down and speeds up throughout the year as the ecliptic arc gets longer and shorter. Clocks and calendars in that era did not “measure time.” They were always dynamic, with the exception of the Egyptian astronomical calendar that used synthetic months and years just for counting days. A year was not time. It varied, which is why the priests had to be astronomers, to decide when we get a 13th month.

Imagine you watched the full moon rise before the sun set. Oh, this should be a 30 day month, but we are not sure because the month begins when we SEE the new moon. If the full moon rose after the sun set, this could be a 29 day month. However, the Roman early calendar sometimes used 20 day months and sometimes 35, according to the historians Plutarch and Livy. A month was not a measurement of time. It was an observation of the changes seen in nature.

One of the reasons the ancients could not imagine time was because of their histories. In their system, the forefathers lived to watch geological changes, such as the ocean drying. All ancient societies looked back on the age of the patriarchs as the golden generations. Job’s statement that the ocean (Hebrew west) dried has support in the Mediterranean drill cores. Scientists estimate that the drying period lasted from 23 million to about 5 million years ago. Job seems to have been a relative of Abraham’s father a few thousand years ago. Two other lifetime markers (Job 14) were water wears away rocks and washes away the dust of the Earth. Indeed, the Nile (and other rivers emptying into the Med), incised deep canyons as they rushed down to the mostly empty basin. The Nile at Cairo was deeper than the Grand Canyon. When the ocean refilled (apparently through Gibraltar), the lower parts of the Nile fjord filled with ocean oozes. Later, dirt from central Africa filled up the canyon and formed a great delta. These geological events do not fit any notion of time. However, they do fit the visible geology and Job’s words.

In the visible history of the universe, the clocks and the orbits accelerate together as billions of galaxies spread out into spreading things (raqiya). All we see is change. Time is merely philosophy.

Victor

156

In Moses system, a day was not time. It was defined by sunsets and sunrises. Mosses used evenings and morning to reference each creation day. He spelled out the definition of a day on day four. It was not a philosophical 24 hour day. He wrote that Elohim commanded the luminaries in the sky to shine on the Earth and serve as markers for days and years. He also ordered the luminaries to continue to become spreading things raqiya).

Indeed, we can see to the creation era with telescopes, the clocks and the orbits accelerate together as billions of galaxies continue to become spreading things (raqiya). In may cases, the star streams spread out into local growth spirals like the Milky Way. There is no such thing as time. All we see are the changes the bible mentions.

The Bible never once mentions time per se. It uses many timing markers such as new moons. It uses eon words for the Old testament, while our opportunities (kairos) are short 1 cor 7:29.

Victor

157

They are? Visibly? How do you know this?

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158

A day was defined by the oscillation of sunsets and sunrises. Just as we use oscillations to measure a day, a minute, a second. So…what’s the difference, except in scale?

159

Ever see an Egyptian sundial? It has twelve divisions on it. Six on either side of noon. And it is funny but every day at local noon the shadow falls exactly on the division on the middle of the dial, no matter the angle of the sun.

Slows down or speeds up relative to what? Surprise but you are talking about time again.

You really need to read up on the equation of time.

All of your examples of change are meaningless.

Lunar calendars change because the moon doesn’t orbit the earth in an exact multiple of solar days.
The earth doesn’t orbit the sun in an exact multiple of lunar orbits. The earth also doesn’t orbit the sun in an exact multiple of solar days. So any calendar based on the moon or solar days is going to change, but not because time does not exist.

160

I think when Victor says “clock frequency” he is referring to spectral lines. Add to that the fact the the Doppler shift of visible light is false, “how could the vacuum of space change light frequency?”. He knows it because the Bible tells him so.

161

@godsriddle

The only time I’m talking about is days… and I don’t even mean 24 hours. The only way to measure the coming and going of a day was with the Sun.

The reference to “light” from the sky prior to the sun is further proof that the Genesis scribe really didn’t understand his world - - regardless of how much inspiration he had. They thought the sun coordinated itself with the light of the sky… or at least this particular scribe thought that.