"I'm not interpreting it, I'm just reading it!"

[J.E.S (Jonathan)]

@pevaquark

-Why are the creation accounts in Genesis 1 and 2 contradictory?
-How is there light three days before the sun and moon? Is the moon really a lesser light?
-What does it mean that we are to rule over creation? What does it mean that we are created in God’s image?
-What does it mean when God says that it was good on each day? Why does it say that things were ‘good on each day?’
-Why doesn’t the 7th day have evening and morning at the end of it?
-Why does God need to rest after creating things? Is He done creating things or is He always creating things?
-Why does Genesis 1 described a very ordered account patterning the weekly pattern of the Sabbath but Genesis 2 seems to occur in an unknown timescale?
-The order of creation is different, why? One starts with man and the other ends with man.
-What or who was that serpent in the Garden? Was he right since they did not literally die a physical death in one 24 hour period (i.e. a day?)? Would you be wrong to think it means non-physical death? Or did God mean ‘in that day’ to refer to a period longer than 24 hours?
-If the serpent was a spiritual demonic entity, why does it say he will crawl on his belly and then die someday?
-If they were eternal beings at first (which it doesn’t say but many YEC assume this was the case based upon interpretation), why was there a tree of life that could give immortality?
-Who were the sons of God that married the daughters of men before Noah’s flood?
-Etc… so many questions that require interpretation that is not so straightforward.

-On this first one…Is it meant to be a heading of sorts? If not, please list the contradictions, if you will.
-In the beginning, God created light that existed independently from the heavenly bodies.
-I thought “rule over creation” (or whatever your translation says) is pretty clear…
-I suppose God thought that the things that he had created on each day were good…so he said so
-The creation is now complete, so it should by now be pretty obvious that days from this point are literal days (even though “evening and morning” are included in previous days to deter alternate time line interpretations through reinforcing the literalness of the first 6 days)
-The scriptures never say that God needed to rest. He did so in order to set an example for us.
-Mind showing an example?
-?
-Satan (or the snake possessed by Satan). As I have said before: ‘in the day’ = ‘after this is done, then this will happen.’
-(or the snake possessed by Satan)
-Adam and Eve would live forever, for they would always have the tree of life available (if they had not sinned). After the fall, God justly barred them and their offspring from the tree of life, for living forever in a sinful world would hardly be a blessing…
-Angels?
-MOST of these answers are tolerably straightforward (and all of them are more straightforward than EC).

Your thoughts, @pevaquark?

(@gbrooks9, you would enjoy this too)

[J.E.S (Jonathan)]

@benkirk

No, there’s zero misinterpretation in reading, “To be honest, I would put my interpretation forth as the Word of God…because it IS the Word of God,” as anything other than you explicitly claiming that your interpretation IS the Word of God.

Is the word of God plainly read. With minimal or no “interpretation.”

[jammycakes (James McKay)]

@J.E.S

Is the word of God plainly read. With minimal or no “interpretation.”

But Jonathan, you said this:

@J.E.S

How would evening and morning be determined prior to the existence of the sun, moon, and stars (day 4)?
That is a very interesting question, @cwhenderson, one that I have been pondering lately. Interestingly, Genesis 1 implies (as God first created light, and called the light day and the darkness night) that the time span of a day is set by God, and he created the sun and the heavenly bodies to mark it.

This is not “minimal or no ‘interpretation’” by any stretch of the imagination. Then there is this:

@J.E.S

-On this first one…Is it meant to be a heading of sorts? If not, please list the contradictions, if you will.
-In the beginning, God created light that existed independently from the heavenly bodies.
-I thought “rule over creation” (or whatever your translation says) is pretty clear…
-I suppose God thought that the things that he had created on each day were good…so he said so
-The creation is now complete, so it should by now be pretty obvious that days from this point are literal days (even though “evening and morning” are included in previous days to deter alternate time line interpretations through reinforcing the literalness of the first 6 days)
-The scriptures never say that God needed to rest. He did so in order to set an example for us.
-Mind showing an example?
-?
-Satan (or the snake possessed by Satan). As I have said before: ‘in the day’ = ‘after this is done, then this will happen.’
-(or the snake possessed by Satan)
-Adam and Eve would live forever, for they would always have the tree of life available (if they had not sinned). After the fall, God justly barred them and their offspring from the tree of life, for living forever in a sinful world would hardly be a blessing…
-Angels?

These answers are all thick with interpretation as well.

“Minimal or no interpretation” means you would be quoting the text verbatim in response to @pevaquark’s questions. You are not doing that by any stretch of the imagination.

[Bill_II]

@J.E.S

Is the word of God plainly read. With minimal or no “interpretation.”

You are reading it in English which means it was translated from Hebrew. Translation is not a mechanical operation but requires the skill of a translator to determine how to be render what they think the meaning of the Hebrew is into English. You may not have done the interpretation, but when you read Genesis in English there is already interpretation involved. And, btw, translation is a fallible human operation that is not inspired.

[Christy (Christy Hemphill)]

@Bill_II

And, btw, translation is a fallible human operation that is not inspired.

Every act of communication, even in your own language, requires interpretation. We all refer to context, our prior knowledge, our existing mental concepts, our shared experiences with our communication partners, our assumptions about their goals and motivations in order to infer meaning. There really is no such thing as “literal meaning” or “plain meaning” for a given act of communication. There is the intended meaning of the speaker and the inferred meaning of the hearer. Words don’t actually carry and dump content from one person to another, they just trigger inferences dependent on a specific context.

[benkirk (Benjamin Kirk)]

@J.E.S

If not, please list the contradictions, if you will.

The most blatant contradictions are in the temporal order, Jonathan:
Genesis 1: Plants and trees, then fish and birds, then land animals, then men and women.
Genesis 2: Man, then trees, then land animals and birds, then woman.

You can’t reconcile them if you take both literally.

But since you had to ask, have you really read the chapters you claim to take literally?

[benkirk (Benjamin Kirk)]

@J.E.S

Is the word of God plainly read. With minimal or no “interpretation.”

Translation is major interpretation.

Just about everything you wrote in response to James is interpretation.

[quote=“jammycakes, post:66, topic:36573”]
Interestingly, Genesis 1 implies…
[/quote]Leaving aside your conflation of the author’s implication with your inference, you just stated that you are interpreting.

[Bill_II]

If I have properly interpreted your response I would just have to say “well said.”

[beaglelady]

Excellent answer. Our brains have to interpret everything.

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@J.E.S

How would evening and morning be determined prior to the existence of the sun, moon, and stars (day 4)?
That is a very interesting question, @cwhenderson, one that I have been pondering lately. Interestingly, Genesis 1 implies (as God first created light, and called the light day and the darkness night) that the time span of a day is set by God, and he created the sun and the heavenly bodies to mark it.

It was in this very topic (at least, I assume you are still on this track). Enjoy!

(P.S: This reply was in this topic all along as well…)

@J.E.S

This is not really an answer. Modern audiences know that the “light” and the “dark” phases of a 24 hour day are created by the Sun.

You are proposing that without the Sun, there would still be light and darkness…

So basically, you have abandoned any idea that there are markers in a story that flag to the reader that it is a parable.

For you, there are no markers significant enough to flag a parable… because All things are possible - - no matter how little sense they make, or how much things contradict the witness of the eyes and ears.

[Richard_Wright1 (Richard Wright)]

@jammycakes

@Socratic.Fanatic

Anybody with some basic linguistics background knows that just because a certain collections of texts (e.g., the Hebrew Old Testament) tends to use a word or phrase in a particular way does NOT mean that there is a rule requiring that alleged restriction.

I never said that the instances of word combinations with yom proved that there is a, “rule requiring the alleged restriction”. I used the data as addition evidence, along with Exodus 20:11 and 31:17 in making the case that yom in Genesis 1 is meant to be interpreted as a normal 24-hour day. Really, you don’t need anything more than the Exodus verses.

@jammycakes

“However, every time that, “yom” appears with a number, 410 times outside of Genesis 1, it is translated as a literal 24-hour day in the Old Testament. Also, the Hebrew words for, “morning” and, “evening” used together, which occurs 38 times, always represent a regular day, as do the combinations of “yom” plus, “morning, used 23 times, and, “yom” plus, “evening” which is used 52 times.”

Ah, the good old “yom with a number” rule, which first appeared in material published by the Institute for Creation Research in the 1970s, only ever crops up in YEC attacks on the day-age, framework and gap interpretations, and is not recognised as a valid rule of Hebrew grammar by any Hebrew scholar outside the YEC community.

The footnotes from the section of my paper were taken out by this system, but there were 2 sources in the passage, one from Dennis Lamoureux’s (hardly a YEC) book Evolutionary Creationism, along with 2 from GotQuestions.org, a YEC group. The figures of yom appearing 410 times outside of G1 is backed up by Rodney Whitfield at OldEarth.org, though he disputes 2 of the instances. Again, I’m not proving a rule, but if the figures are correct (even granting the 2 exceptions) then, IMO anyway, they strongly support a normal G! yom, along with Exodus verses.

I can see why the, “yom with a number” stats would be used to attack the Day Age Teory, but why would they discount the Framework Theory? In fact, my paper was written to prove that the FT is the best way to interpret Genesis 1.

[jammycakes (James McKay)]

@Richard_Wright1

In fact, my paper was written to prove that the FT is the best way to interpret Genesis 1.

Thanks for clarifying your position Richard.

@Richard_Wright1

The footnotes from the section of my paper were taken out by this system, but there were 2 sources in the passage, one from Dennis Lamoureux’s (hardly a YEC) book Evolutionary Creationism, along with 2 from GotQuestions.org, a YEC group. The figures of yom appearing 410 times outside of G1 is backed up by Rodney Whitfield at OldEarth.org, though he disputes 2 of the instances. Again, I’m not proving a rule, but if the figures are correct (even granting the 2 exceptions) then, IMO anyway, they strongly support a normal G! yom, along with Exodus verses.

I’m not surprised that gotquestions.org cited this argument — after all, they’re as dyed-in-the-wool YEC as they come, uncritically citing demonstrably untrue or misleading AIG/ICR/CMI claims verbatim without doing the slightest bit of fact-checking. Regarding Whitefield’s article — I take it you mean this one? Again, he’s responding to John MacArthur — again, another dyed-in-the-wool YEC, and as such he’s refuting the “yom with a number” argument. In fact, he doesn’t only point out that there are exceptions to the “rule,” he also points out that the way that yom is combined with a number in Genesis 1 is unique to Genesis 1 — yom ehad rather than hayyom harison — and as such, even if those exceptions didn’t exist, the rule still wouldn’t apply.

I haven’t seen Lamoureux’s book — do you have an exact page reference that I can look up if I get the chance?

[bill_wald]

I think Jesus was a Zen Buddhist and his teachings are sort of koan-like. Sort of Socratic?

In the same way the Torah 7th and 49th year fiscal laws sound … egalitarian, they didn’t “work” and the rabbis devised “workarounds” as authorized before Moses went to the Mountain and got the Law.

In the same way, Jesus “commandment” to give away all assets except what is needed in the immediate future would prohibit any planning for the future and we would all be “dirt-poor” farmers. Is that what God wants? Everyone living from growing season to growing season? Sounds like a living Hell to me.

[Celticroots (Emily)]

The idea that Genesis is not literally history is not a new idea. It’s been around since the time of Augustine. Secondly, I’d think God would be upset about all the people being led away from Christ because of some insistence that one can’t be a Christian if Genesis isn’t interpreted as literal history.

Man is separated from God by his sinfulness. Hence why we need Christ to intercede on our behalf. That is the plain reading. Not fretting over whether or not the events in Genesis actually happened. I’ve no clue why some people get so hung up on this, but it drives people away from Christianity and it’s sad.

[Celticroots (Emily)]

Not to mention that God isn’t the the author of confusion. The fact that Genesis has contradictions should be proof enough that it wasn’t meant to be taken literally.