Gee… thanks for the moral support.
Since you have already figured it all out, what is an example of a Biblical text where Mike holds a more flexible interpretation than would a Strict Inerrantist?
I’m sure many would benefit from your insights…
We know he’s a strict inerrantist. That’s why there’s no point discussing the issue. We already know his position.
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These thoughts of yours are helpful to me. Thanks for posting them.
What makes this post so helpful is that you lay out clearly, and in some detail, how you are thinking about the matter. As for this line of thinking, its validity seems to rest on the validity of the very first step taken, which is:
If this statement is true, then indeed all that follows is reasonable. Even the conclusion:
But is that first statement true? Is it really fair to say that God makes science claims in the Bible - whether good ones or bad ones? Alas, the answer probably turns on how one defines “science” - which, as you know, takes me way out of my comfort zone. So, knowing that what I’m about to say about may be all wrong from a scientist’s point of view, let me at least tell you how I use that term when I say something like “The Bible doesn’t make scientific claims but does make historical claims.”
To me, the essense of the issue is frame of reference. The Bible speaks of physical things in terms visible to the naked human eye. Science, by contrast, through telescopes and microscopes, gives us visibility into physical dimensions invisible to the naked human eye. It strikes me, therefore, as anachronistic to say that the Bible speaks “scientifically” or “scientifically badly” (as you are saying) or “scientifically goodly” (as Hugh Ross might say, though in other words, of course). Since the Bible was written in the language of men, it cannot be expected to use a language not yet invented at the time of its writing.
One other point: the frame of reference used by the Bible (and by other texts of its age) is not made obsolete by the scientific age, for we today continue talking about sunrises and sunsets even though we are now able to talk about such phenomena in scientific language. These two frames of reference coexist, and we go back and forth between them without so much as a moment to justify the switch. The meteorologist does this every day in a weather forecast, and even talk of the upcoming solar eclipse is peppered with expressions like “America will fall under the path of a total solar eclipse,” as if the sun were traversing across a motionless earth.
Therefore, it seems very unnatural to me to say something like “God did make a science claim” or the Bible “speaks scientifically badly.” It’s imputing a frame of reference to the Bible that it did not have, and could not have had. As has been rightly said in this forum, though perhaps not in this particular thread, “The Bible was written for us, not to us.” All that said, I acknowledge that you do not see the matter this way. I am just giving you the perspective of someone on the other side of the divide - a reciprocation of your post.
To finish off, I do not think it is anachronistic at all to that the Bible speaks historically. You don’t need telescopes and microscopes - that is, you don’t need the scientific frame of reference - to speak history. You just need a witness.
But most of science is based on what we see with the naked eye. The size of the earth, the shape of the earth, the fact that the earth moves, all of this was determined by simple observations with the unaided eye. The distinction you’re trying to make isn’t valid.
The Bible speaks of the universe phenomenalistically, that is, simply the way it appears to be with a single visual frame of reference. This is exactly how other cultures of the Hebrew era spoke about the universe. So God was clearly accommodating His audience. The result is that the Bible makes statements which are phenomenalistic but which aren’t literally true, when though people thought they were literally true.
Very good! This has been my conclusion ever since he posted that he was not a Strict Inerrantist.
P.S. I wouldn’t mention this to @Christy … at least not until a badger emoticon becomes generally available!
Greetings from my side of the river.
Except the geologists that first determined the earth was very old used nothing but what was visible to the naked human eye. Science at it’s most basic is simply the process of making a statement which can be tested to determine if it is true or false. The earth is flat is such a statement that can be tested. The statement that God exists can not be tested so it is not considered to be science.
Which doesn’t preclude the Bible from making statements that can be scientifically tested. The language used doesn’t matter.
You are arguing using the personal incredulity fallacy. Just because it doesn’t seem natural to you doesn’t mean the Bible didn’t do it. And it is not a frame of reference. When someone says, “That is scientific.” what they really mean is that is a claim that has been tested and found to be true. At it’s heart that is what science means. Scientific facts are those that have been tested and verified.
I just looked back to your OP and noticed that you did not include your assumption that all of the historical statements in the Bible are true. You have certainly indicated this in your previous posts including such statements as it is easier to get history correct than it is science. This is one of your key assumptions that should be listed in the OP just so everyone is clear.
Historical claims can likewise be subjected to verification. Sometimes science is used (think medical examiner) and sometimes the historical method is used (think new versions of previously accepted history). The claim of history that the earth is 6,000 years old can certainly be tested by science. It is not history vs SGH it is just history being verified or falsified by science.
So I say the Bible makes some statements that science has shown to be incorrect. Those statements include such things as the earth is flat and the earth is 6,000 years old.
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Mike, what you are missing is that all of these are VALID ways to communicate. Without getting into the technicalities of distinguishing specific linguistic features by their academic labels, the general public calls them all “figures of speech”. And in a very real and figurative sense, Martin Luther DID “nail the 95 theses to the door of the Church”. A set of words does not have to be understood literally to communicate valid meanings which people understand. In this case the details of HOW Luther went about launching his objection to various practices in the church is not the purpose of the clause.
I know that I’m repeating what many other people have explained to you, but it really is important that you allow the language and the culture to establish the meanings of groups of words. You clearly are impassioned about how you WANT the rules of communication to operate—but it doesn’t work that way! Yes, it can be a radical concept to grasp and even feel deeply and dangerously “wrong”. But as the old saying goes “It is what it is.” Reality is reality.
Suppose that some professional meteorologist comes into work and dashes from his car into the entrance to his office and exclaims to the staff, “Wow! It’s raining cats and dogs out there!” Hopefully nobody will say, “You are a very irresponsible meteorologist! You should know better than to be so sloppy in describing a real event.” (Of course, it would be even worse if somebody on the staff said, “How dare you lie about what is happening! You are scientifically trained. You should be telling the truth about the rain.”)
Does everyone in that office understand that “raining cats and dogs” is idiomatic? Yes. Does every speaker of American English understand the meaning? The vast majority probably do. How about a visiting New Zealander or South African? Perhaps. Or perhaps not. And a Chinese exchange student learning English in America may completely miss the meaning and imagine domestic animals falling from the sky. Was the professional meteorologist “sloppy”? Not really.
Now, if anybody thinks that the Bible avoids literary structures, idioms, and vocabulary that are extremely difficult for people from other languages and cultures to understand, I hate to share the stark reality but it is what teachers do. I’ve had many Young Earth Creationists tell me “The perspicuity of the scriptures disagrees with you. The meaning of the Bible is available to everyone young and old. God wouldn’t obscure the meanings of the text!” Of course, in the first place, that is a misunderstanding of the concept of perspicuity. Secondly, that was a doctrine promoted during the Reformation that is not easy to support in the scriptures without a lot of very careful and cautious qualifications of what it does and doesn’t claim. Thirdly, obscuring the meaning of his teaching was a major component of Jesus’ ministry and that is why his disciples complained about Jesus saying things which were very hard to understand. Some of the people who major on perspicuity are arguing with Jesus. (Yes, that was meant to sound a little snarky to make a good-humored point.)
Wow! Your choice of words (likewise a little bit of good-humored snarky-ness) reminds me of a student who is trying to convince me to give him at least partial credit for an answer on a test. (Yes, I’m responding in kind—just for a little fun!) I do understand that these things are difficult for our western minds to accept. But, again, we don’t get to make the rules that govern the language and culture of an ancient people. This reminds me a bit of a student who was very outraged at hearing that some statements recorded in the Bible are basically paraphrased and not the exact words of the speaker. Other people have insisted that because the Pentateuch was called “the Books of Moses”, then Moses wrote every word—except Joshua added the Moses death addendum. There’s really not much I can do to convince them otherwise if that is their decision. Tradition is a very strong force.
Seriously, these concepts are not easy ones! Indeed, it took me many years of experience with both ancient and modern languages as well as working with much smarter linguistics professors and exegetes than I will ever be before I was at all willing to accept these ideas. So I entirely empathize with where you are coming from. (I used to vehemently argue against some of these ideas in public debates, and I am totally embarrassed to admit that that was despite having a lot of my linguistics training already under my belt at the time.)
It is also worth mentioning that one of the factors that challenged my traditional thinking was working with SIL/Wycliffe translators who were describing the kinds of translation problems they faced in cultures and languages. (They often absolutely blew my mind.) I’ll bet Christy could share similar anecdotes from personal experience. I am still sometimes tempted to think that some cultures communicate “wrongly” and surely “very inaccurately”. One of my favorites is when you visit a village and the leader tells you he is 40 but you see him again two years later and he tells you he is 50. In his culture, he is telling the truth, but one has to interpret the incongruities on their terms, not ours. His numeric age is a reflection of his status and the size and significance of his family tree, not just the tally of his birthdays. (I give such examples when I shock people with my analysis of the genealogies of the Patriarchs in Genesis. No, I don’t consider the 900+ years to be actual literal lifespans. Yet, within their cultures, those genealogies would be considered legitimate and truthful.)
Mike, based on your negative reaction to the church historian using the expression referring to the nailing of the 95 theses merely to establish context, I want to know how you react to this analog: Suppose there is a European village which is the traditional site where some Nordic or Saxon legend claims the god Woden was born. Let’s suppose the people who live there have always called their village “Wodenborn”. Does a professional historian commit malpractice when he refers to the village of Wodenborn while lecturing on some ancient Runic document he discovered in that town? And when future readers from another culture read his peer-reviewed journal article about Codex Wodenborn, a label he himself coined, will they be shocked that he would lend legitimacy to a “historical claim” that a real deity by the name of Woden was born in that village? After all, the ancient codex could be real while Woden never was. (Of course, if Woden existed in mythical respects and was widely venerated, we have to consider what we would mean by “real”. After all, Zeus is a “real” subject of legends. And some might say that Zeus is just a “corruption” in name and concept with Deus/Theos, one of the many names for God. So, by that standard, Zeus is real in a very general way because Zeus is a kind of synonym for Theos, God.)
So, Mike is any historian who speaks of Wodenborn guilty of “sloppy” professional standards? The place name Wodenborn establishes a geographical context just as “When Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door…” establishes a chronological and cultural context. Neither a reference to Woden’s birth nor to Luther defiantly nailing theses has to have happened for real for these choices in wording to be valid. After all, both Woden’s birth and Luther’s nailing a document to a church door are events which never literally happened! Should historians never make such references when establishing context with an audience?
And yes, whether we happen to like it or not, the Bible contains many similar phenomena. And yes, if I could take a time machine back to a much younger me as a dogmatic (even downright cocky) young Assistant Professor and explain my interpretations of Genesis 1, my younger self would certainly call me a “liberal”. He would say that I’m guilty of “laughably complex excuses” and loads of special pleading logical fallacies, surely meant to diminish the absolute authority of the scriptures! My objections would probably be similar to many of yours.
I have often asked myself how I could convince my younger self of all sorts of things. Frankly, I doubt that shortcuts are possible. I think it was inevitable that I had to spend many arduous years learning about unfamiliar cultures—and their strange ways of looking at the world and expressing those perspectives in their complex languages—before I could change from that 26 year old know-it-all to my present self who realizes that I know a lot less than I used to.
It is difficult to write about these topics without sounding like a condescending academic. And that is probably because we have a long tradition within the American evangelical and fundamentalist community (a tradition with roots in the Reformation itself) of giving the impression that everyone’s personal interpretation of the Bible is equally (or almost sorta kinda equally) valid. How many of us grew up in Sunday School and home Bible studies where everyone in turn read the next verse of a passage and explained “this is what it means to me” or even “When I read this, God revealed to me that…” How dare any smug Bible scholar—and probably a Bible-denying liberal at that— declare some of those interpretations valid and others invalid! Yet, in linguistics as well as in many aspects of hermeneutics, some opinions are correct and others are incorrect, just as applies to a biology exam or a music theory test. And some people’s positions remain incorrect not necessarily because the Bible student is defiantly misinformed but because there is a mass of fundamental concepts and volumes of evidence unknown to them. It is the Kruger-Dunning Effect that tends to plague us all at some point in our lives. While accepting that only well-trained engineers should design our bridges and only intensively trained physicians should remove our diseased spleens, we nevertheless pull out a Strong’s Concordance and defy the professional Bible translators by declaring (even preaching from pulpits and on the radio!) “Listen closely as I tell you how your Bibles should have translated this passage.” Even PhD professors who should have known better can fall into this trap, as far too many of the leaders of the anti-gender-inclusive Bible movement illustrated when they casually but confidently drafted “procedures for properly preserving gender distinctions in Bible translations.” (It got absolutely crazy and almost silly. I saw eye-rolling and face-palms from almost every linguist and missionary Bible translator I knew.)
Nobody learns quantum physics in an afternoon. And nobody can bridge cross-cultural hermeneutical and exegetical obstacles in a few paragraphs. Most of all we have to put aside our western assumptions of how an ancient people must go about expressing themselves.
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As you’ve noted, the issue is that Mike is afraid of the consequences of any of his assumptions being untrue. For him, if Moses isn’t the writer of the Pentateuch then the Pentateuch can’t be relied on. That’s why his posts are full of language describing what he sees as the dangerous and fearful implications of views other than his own.
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Chris, thanks for reading the OP and for constructing your post using its terms. It’s been helpful to my thinking. Here are my responses to your proposed “assumptions” one by one.
I don’t hold this assumption because I don’t believe the Bible has scientific content. On the contrary, I believe it would be anachronistic of us, and - if can borrow a concept from you and Walton - culturally insensitive, to suggest that it does.
As for the issue of science, I deal with it in the first “Stipulation” of the OP:
Therefore, because I don’t hold this assumption and because the essential point you’re wanting to make - especially in your bullets - is already addressed in the OP, I’ll leave it as is.
Your definition of “accommodation” is based on your view that the Bible speaks a deficient form of science. You are not accepting these ancient Scriptures on their own terms. You are imposing modern Western intellectual paradigms on pre-modern writers. As has been rightly said, “The Scriptures were written for us, not to us.” To assume that it’s trying - however feebly - to address the scientific concerns we have is to be anachronistic. I don’t think this way about the Scriptures and therefore don’t carry the assumption here that you are proposing.
I think here you have indeed hit on something that would be useful to add to “Assumptions” of Mosaic Creation in the OP. I’ve already inserted it as assumption “2.a.” I did, however, need to modify the wording as it didn’t accurately describe me the form you originally proposed it.
Thanks again for your helpful post.
A great discussion of how even amongst the cream of the cream of Church History and Theology - - Strict Inerrantism is virtually impossible to adhere to in academic discussions - - let alone general discussions about academic topics!
(Another Keeper! << I’m using the tag “Keeper” as a way for me to find again texts that I thought made particularly good points, or contributed a “particularly good point discussed particularly well” !
In fact, I’ll go one more step: GB:Keeper. That should help keep avoid “spillover” from posts that use the word “keeper” as God intended! 
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From Mike’s comments: “I don’t hold this assumption because I don’t believe the Bible has scientific content. On the contrary, I believe it would be anachronistic of us, and - if can borrow a concept from you and Walton - culturally insensitive, to suggest that it does.”
As you can see, Mike is hoping to use the phrase “culturally insensitive” to defend his insensitive position. Ironic, yes?
Mike has been making hay about whether it is reasonable for the Bible to use terms about the Earth not moving - - and focusing on the fact audiences (modern or ancient) casually use language that is archaic, but plainly understandable (like the idea that it is the sun going up or down, rather than the Earth rotating daily on its axis.
But when it comes to the scriptures on the earth not moving, I tend to be moved by the general idea that the writer had no inkling that there was even another way of writing such things.
I have been proposing that these ancient statements were no intended cosmologically … but were firmly linked to the idea that the ground the scribe and his readers stand on does not move - - except, perhaps, at the whim of Yahweh when it is part of wrath (selective or general).
So, if we set aside the idea that all the verses about the Earth not moving is actually a genuine reference (vs. a slang reference) to the scribe’s belief the earth (i.e., the ground) was immoveable. In fact, if we reject this third category out of hand, it remains to be clarified what exactly the scribe or scribes is actually writing about! After all, what’s left to consider?!?!?
So from the frying pan into the fire. To clarify: non-upper case ‘earth’ = the ground, not upper case Earth = all the regions of the mortal realm, including the oceans.
For now we are facing a biblical contradiction with a very new scientific discovery - - the constant movement of the continental plates.
@Mike_Gantt may insist that the Bible isn’t presenting science (which most of us have actually posted in general agreement at least once in the last year) - - but the Bible is certainly presenting observations of the natural world which are general misconceptions or errors - - not addressed or corrected by Divine Inspiration.
Full Stop.
End of Story - End of History.
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You and others seem to view me as a monochromatic version of your former, and less mature, selves. Perhaps you are right. Time, not a debate about it, will tell. Therefore, I’ll leave it aside.
As for the OP, I think we could make more progress on it if we’d focus on the three key passages identified there as opposed to talking so much in generalities.
I detect two distinct criticisms of Mosaic Creationism in this thread:
- The three passages don’t say what I think they do.
- Even if the three passages say what I think they do, it’s moot because modern science speaks more reliably about the matter than does the Bible.
To which do you hold? And if you say “both,” then my question to you is (as it was to @Chris_Falter here), “If the second is true, why waste time discussing the first?”
No, Chris has not done this. On the contrary, he is pointing out that since the Bible speaks within the phenomenalistic culture of its era, it makes statements about the physical universe which we know are in contradiction to science. He is not saying they are science. He is using “scientific content” to describe “content which can be tested by science”.
Ironically you are the one being anachronistic, because you are the one claiming that when the Bible speaks of a solid firmament it doesn’t really mean a solid firmament, and when the Bible speaks of the sun moving it doesn’t really mean the sun was moving. You think that the early Hebrews really did understand these statements with the correct scientific frame of reference, when very clearly they did not.
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[quote=“Mike_Gantt, post:141, topic:36410”]
I detect two distinct criticisms of Mosaic Creationism in this thread:
The three passages don’t say what I think they do.[/quote]
Yes. This is where you need to focus.
[quote=“Mike_Gantt, post:141, topic:36410”]
Even if the three passages say what I think they do, it’s moot because modern science speaks more reliably about the matter than does the Bible.[/quote]
I don’t see that anyone has said this.
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And that’s why I appreciate that Mike started these threads: he is expressing viewpoints which are shared by many millions of Christians. And so many Christians like me spent many years and a lot of effort finding our paths out of those deeply cherished positions. I truly don’t want to sound smug or condescending. (Indeed, over the course of my lifetime I would say that I was overly hesitant and far too slow-witted in letting the great masses of evidence change my mind on these topics.)
Mike, you’ve asked a lot of good questions and I could easily write three or four weighty tomes just answering the specific questions you’ve addressed to me. But you may see me pulling back a little from now on, not out of exasperation but because I feel like you need time to reread a lot of the answers that people have already posted, investigate various scholars including various Biologos articles, and letting all of it sink in. It’s hard stuff.
I’m feeling a bit like I did when I ignored the wise advise of my departmental colleagues at my first full-time academic appointment. I was determined to be the amiable professor who students could always count on. So I allowed a very enthusiastic and convivial undergrad to take a 400-level course even though he hadn’t completed one of the 300-level prerequisites. He managed to convince me that he would enroll in the prerequisite course concurrently and that he already knew most of the content from a similar course he took in the Eastern European country of his birth—even though the international service which evaluates academic course credit transfers for college transcript purposes rejected that Hungarian (?) course credit. I later regretted my “generosity” and really didn’t do the student any favor. The questions he posed during my lectures were a daily reminder that he was falling further and further behind. He was a hard-working, eager learner. But it was like expecting someone who has mastered algebra to take a differential equations course while still struggling through differentiation and integration calculus problems beyond a textbook’s illustrations. Familiarity is not enough. Sometimes one has to learn the prerequisite material to a level of very confident experience before taking on the next level. (I had physicist friends tell me that they had to pause and spend a lot of time reviewing some obscure areas of mathematics before they could tackle and truly understand how Einstein managed to draft his General Theory of Relativity. Sometimes there just aren’t any shortcuts.)
We live in a society where a lot of things are easy to do without our having to learn much about the processes which make them possible. People cook with microwaves without knowing about magnetrons. People use GPS devices without understanding how Einstein’s theory keeps them accurate. And how many people use computers without knowing NAND gates, VLSI design, and programming? Similarly, most people can easily read Genesis 1 with no idea of the struggles of many centuries of Bible translators who worked hard just to get the English words right. And those translators knew that even their word choice over the tiniest nuance of the text could potentially send the reader off-track into misunderstandings and grossly unwarranted tangents leading to centuries of error-prone traditions. (e.g., rendering Hebrew ERETZ as “earth” instead of the more typical “land”, “country”, or “region” in some of the Genesis 1 to 11 passages.) These issues are virtually impossible to summarize and explain in a footnote at the bottom of a page in a study Bible. And even then, most Christians won’t fully appreciate or even remember that study note. How could they? Millions of monolingual Bible readers have not had opportunity to learn that language from experience that translation is not a one-for-one word substitution process. That brings a story to mind:
Years ago I remember somebody at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association saying that they had been thrilled to hear from a women who was willing to translate all of Billy Graham’s books into Latvian, Lithuanian, and various Slavic languages. She lived close to the BGEA headquarters so one of the executives told her that he would deliver a copy of all of the books on his way home from work. He discovered that the reason she had lots of time to do the translation work for free was because she was on full disability. The executive asked her, “So, did you grow up in a multilingual home in the Baltic area?” She said, “Oh no. I don’t speak any of these languages. I just recently bought the various dictionaries, and looking up all of the words will help pass the time. I get very bored sitting on my couch.”
That story sounds extreme but the vast majority of Christians have a grasp of language translation and cross-culture communication dynamics that are not greatly more sophisticated that that of the well-meaning lady. If I had difficulty explaining to Dr. X [I wish I could freely mention the theologian’s name which you would almost all recognize] why the “rules for gender rendering in Bible translation” which he tried to write in an all-night typing marathon in his motel room were laughably naive, how can we expect the average Christian to quickly grasp the shocking realities of Biblical hermeneutics—and the differences between the literal and the truthful in Genesis?
Therefore, I have a lot of compassion for the Christ-follower who throws up his or her hands and says, “So, if what you are saying is true, we can’t really know anything about anything for certain! Then everything in the Bible can always be explained away!” Of course, that is the wrong conclusion, but the emotional reaction can be respected.
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Kind of. But not exactly.
I am NOT saying that the Bible makes valid scientific claims about planet earth being flat and not moving. I would just remind some participants that when one sees the word earth in an Old Testament passage, it is usually a translation of the Hebrew word ERETZ, which is usually translated as “land”, “nation”, “country”, “region”, or even “wilderness”, such in various as with various place names in the KJV. ERETZ in Hebrew is actually much comparable to the word earth in 1611 English: most speakers at the time of the King James Bible tended to associate earth with the ground they tilled and walked upon, NOT planet earth.
It is not surprising that since 1611 the predominant association with the word earth is planet earth----but we shouldn’t presume that association in older English texts and certainly not in most translations of ancient and even modern Hebrew. Indeed, even today, the nation of Israel calls itself ERETZ YISRAEL (“Land of Israel” or “Nation of Israel”) and nobody would ever translate the phrase as “Planet Israel”!
With that in mind, when the Bible describes the ERETZ as flat, is there anything “wrong” about saying that “the land is flat”? Moreover, the ancients were obviously familiar with lands which were NOT flat and hills/mountains [a single Hebrew word tends to apply to both English concepts]. Likewise, Iowans live in a place derided by travelers as boringly flat, yet nobody doubts that anthills rise up despite the flatness.
Besides, in daily life we are quite correct to think of our experience of planet earth as quite flat. After all, as we Iook towards the horizon, we see a flat earth that deviates from a “perfect flatness” by only about six or seven inches per mile. As a ratio of 1/2 of a foot per 5,280 feet, that is a deviation from absolute flatness of only about 1 in 10,560 feet, about 0.005 %. In that perspective, the working assumption of even a relatively flat planet earth works quite well—just as saying that the sun rises every morning is not really a false statement.
No doubt about it: ancient Hebrew cosmology is not up to modern day standards. Yet on the way to making that point a lot of today’s writers make a lot of casual statements which are nearly as flawed as the ancient Hebrew’s views.
Similarly, does the Bible say that planet earth is immobile? Again, most of the time the text is talking about the ERETZ, the land, and is there any doubt that even in our day we use the land beneath our feet as something we rely upon to be stable and immobile—despite our knowledge of the earth’s rotation and the frequency of earthquakes and micro-earthquakes? The ancient also dealt with earthquakes, so were even they making false claims when describing the ERETZ (land) as “can’t be moved”? No, many of the references to such were making observations similar to our own. Architects and engineers routinely refer (and depend upon) the earth beneath our feet as a reliably immobile foundation on which to build. That makes complete sense, today and in ancient times.
All of this serves to remind us of the dangers of literal assumptions and overwrought inerrancy doctrinal statements. It also makes things difficult for any writer who cares about veracity, precision, and potentially confusing the reader! Meanwhile, we need to always give ancient writers the benefit of the doubt and reasonable leeway of expression which we would wish for ourselves.
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I think it’s implicit in Assumption #2. Nonetheless, I just added a sentence there for your sake.
As for most everything else you’ve said in this post, it appears the river is widening. (However, I wonder if it is actually widening or only appearing to widen.)
I was pondering that question as well. In the end, either the scribes had no interest in any kind of ultimate statement of fact (since, most everyone knew there were sometimes Earthquakes), it seems verifiable that the Yahwists believed that only Yahweh himself could move the Earth.
@Bill_II, I wanted to be sure you saw this post so I’m posting it a second time.
P.S. The formatting is off in this version so please revert back to the original if you choose to respond.
I think the Bible makes general mundane statements just as we do, not focusing on the exceptions but summarizing reality as it is usually observed. Thus, even the ERETZ (land,nation,region) did now and then experience an earthquake or even an occasional mudslide or sinkhole collapse, most of the time one could count on the land beneath one’s feet being reliably stable (i.e., unmoved.) We tend to speak and write in the very same terms. We say things like “The farmer plants seeds in the spring and harvest many more seeds in the fall.” even though farmers also plant winter wheat in the fall and harvest it then next summer. And sometimes a farmer plants a field and then drought, hard rains, insects, or disease result in no harvest at all. Yet, nobody would complain that the original statement about the general cycle of springtime and harvest was a false or misleading statement. Nevertheless, a lot of people—both Christians and anti-Bible people—try to read the Bible in hyper-literal ways which ignore what we consider common sense in our own language and culture.
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