Noah's flood & the table of nations

Jonathan,

This is fantastic! Thanks so much for the various links and authors. It will take me a while to follow through all of them, but I’m looking forward to doing so. I think I will probably have to get the Logos system. I’ve actually applied to Fuller Seminary (to start this fall). I’m just under 5 years away from a 20 year military retirement and am looking to doing either something scholarly or in ministry for the next chapter in my life. Either way, Logos should be tremendously useful.

I read Resurrection of the Son of God (Wright) about 2.5 years ago and it honestly played a huge role in both strengthening my faith and deciding on changing vocation. It is by far the best book I’ve ever read. I then read his other 3 “big books” and am going through his NT commentaries now. The OT world is so much harder for me grasp as it covers such a longer period of time, style of writing, and ANE culture is so different to ours than the Greco-Roman culture of the NT. However, it is so clearly relevant to the gospel writers and Paul that we must strive to understand it better. Thanks again for the resources. I look forward to future OT dissertations of yours of the forum :slight_smile:

Andy

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Wait until you are a student, you can get a nice discount. An even bigger one if you can get a professor to say it’s required for a course.

Concur. They are pricey. I could also get good insight on which version to buy. In the meantime, I have ample material I can read in my free time before I start.

BTW, on a related note, I know you are a linguist. Do you know of any good online resources for learning Koine Greek and Ancient Hebrew?

Bill Mounce has a ton of stuff online: Online Classes | billmounce.com

If you got Metzger’s book of NT words and started memorizing the most common ones, that would be a good head start for any future coursework.

Kubo is a book you can use to read along the NT if you like a more natural approach.

I liked the ParseGreek app for drill. You can set it to work with the chapters of several major intro Greek texts.

I know nothing about Hebrew.

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Very impressive!

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@Jonathan_Burke

It is refreshing to read a writer on Biblical history who consistently makes a distinction between PRE-EXILIC theology and POST-EXILIC theology.

Just such a distinction would “break the brains” of many people I know and read.

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Second Temple Period Judaism, yo. :sunglasses:

Incredible as it may seem there is a perfectly legal and legitimate group for “secondhand” Logos products here on Facebook. And the best part is that Logos products are still as good as new even when sold secondhand! It’s fully approved by Logos, they just transfer the license. People sell a lot of stuff cheap, even for as much as 60% off. Logos also regularly offers free books (or near free, for $.99 or $1.99), typically at least once a month. You can follow those offers here.

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@Jonathan_Burke

When would you say the Hebrews arrived at a consistent view of an afterlife for the common man and woman?
Here are some chronological milestones to stimulate one’s thoughts:

1500 BCE?

1000 BCE?

610 BCE?

550 BCE?

400 BCE?

200 BCE?

This is probably the first time I’ve ever asked anyone this question - - because there wasn’t anyone to ask who would say anything different from “Before 1500 BCE”.

Offhand I don’t know. The situation is complicated by the division between folk religion and elite religion.

43 posts were split to a new topic: OT & NT + Jewish/Christian views of afterlife and resurrection

Jonathan,

Like Mark, I am very pleased with the insights you have shared on Genesis 6. Amazing stuff.

However, I still have a question on the term “sons of God”, The classic bible notes suggests that the “sons of God” are angels, as the Hebrew word for “sons of God” is the same as the one used in Job 38:7 which most bibles translate as “angels”, because the context in Job describes them as shouting for joy as witness to creation of the foundations of the earth before Adam was created.

Can you explain the meaning of the Hebrew word used for both the “sons of God” in Genesis 6 and for "angels’ in Job 38-7?

Neal Heires

@heiresnt you’re welcome. The sons of God in Genesis 6 is a very old exegetical challenge. Yes the sons of God are definitely angels in Job. However, there are a few other considerations to take into account when interpreting the sons of God in Genesis 6.

  1. The two books are written some time apart (perhaps some centuries apart), to different audiences. The character of Job is cited by Ezekiel, in the same verse as he mentions Daniel and Noah. So Job was known to the exilic Hebrews, and was definitely written earlier than Daniel (which means earlier than Genesis 1-11). Since the two books were written at different times, to different audiences, for different purposes, by different writers, we can’t necessarily expect them to use the term “sons of God” with the same meaning.

  2. The phrase used in Genesis 6 is used in Job, and nowhere else. So we can’t use other passages to shed light on the phrase. However, this does mean that apart from the passages in Job we have no other texts applying this specific Hebrew phrase to the angels.

  3. The New Testament doesn’t seem to know anything about “sons of God” as angels. It only knows “sons of God” as Christians. This is not decisive, but it is significant. If there was a well established tradition of “sons of God” as angels, then it’s odd that it didn’t find its way into the New Testament. Meanwhile, the Old Testament also knows of the idea of the faithful as “sons of God”; “children of God” (Deuteronomy 14:1), “sons of the living God” (Hosea 2:1), “they will be my people, children who are not disloyal” (Isaiah 63:8), “Indeed, the people of Israel are my dear children” (Jeremiah 31:20), and other passages.

  4. The interpretation of the sons of God as members of the covenant community is found frequently in the earliest rabbinical commentary. This is not decisive, but it does suggest this is a natural reading.

  5. Reading the sons of God in Genesis 6 causes more problems than it solves (theologically, not just linguistically), which is usually a sign that exegesis is heading in the wrong direction.

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Thanks for the explanation. I come to the conclusion that the use of the Hebrew word in context in Job has a different meaning in the context of Genesis.
I now come the question of the terms used in Genesis 1 when God created “man” in his image, and Genesis 2 describing Adam as the first of “mankind”, versus the term “human beings” in Genesis 6.
I find my “opinion” agreeing with yours that the “sons of God” refers to the lineage of Adam and “mankind” as made in the image of God, versus that of “human beings” which could mean homo sapiens prior to Adam. Also, when Cain was expelled and left the presence of the Lord, and “knew his wife”, one questions where the wife came from. The classic bible notes explanation is that Adam and Eve had daughters that were never mentioned. But just perhaps it may mean “human beings”, outside of the lineage of Adam who were not made in God’s image and therefore not "sons of God."
So can you explain the term “human beings” versus “mankind” used in Genesis to see if there is an basis for this possible explanation?
Neal

The problem of Cain’s wife is one of the oldest exegetical challenges in the Bible, and more to the point it is one which has taxed expositors over the centuries far more than other problems. The reason for this is that Genesis 1 has traditionally been understood as teaching that Adam and Eve and their immediate family were the only humans alive at the time. This is a natural reading from the text alone.

But the fact is that a natural reading of Genesis 1:26-4:2 (that Adam and Eve and their two sons were the only humans in existence), actually conflicts with a natural reading of Genesis 4:14, 17, that humans outside the primal family already existed, that Cain was aware of them, and that he left the primal family to go and marry one of these other people, leaving the covenant community. So we have two natural readings and they conflict with each other. What are we to do?

Traditionally, Jewish and Christian exegetes simply privileged one passage over the other; they chose to privilege the “Adam and Eve and their two sons were the only people who existed” passages in Genesis 1:26-4:2 over the “other people already existed” passages in Genesis 4:14, 17. We should recognise this as a flawed strategy. When we privilege one passage over another, we are not actually harmonizing the text, we are simply attempting to avoid a conflict by devaluing one of the two conflicting passages so that it is silenced. In effect, we break Scripture.

When faced with two natural readings which conflict when we read the text alone, how can we avoid privileging one over the other? Well, we have learned the hard way (from incidents such as the Galileo affair), that reading the text alone, uninformed by external sources, can lead to exegetical error. In this case a host of external knowledge informs us; paleology, geology, archaeology, biology, and other sciences tell us that Genesis 4:14, 17 is correct, that there were other people around, and that they did not come from Adam and Eve.

Ironically now we know that this is a fact, we don’t have a conflict with Genesis 1:26-4:3; the passages can be harmonized because it’s easier to explain how people were not mentioned in Genesis 1:26-4:3, than to explain that they didn’t exist even though they are mentioned in Genesis 4:14, 17.

With that as the backdrop to your question, I’ll look into what you have suggested and return tomorrow with more information.

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In Genesis 1:26 the word for humankind is “adam”. It has the definite article, so “ha adam” here. In Genesis 6:1 the usage is exactly the same; “ha adam”, the generic term for humankind.

Thanks Jon,
This seems to suggest that Adam was the first human being and in looking at Genesis 6 the reference to human beings is the same as that of Adam and his descendants. Yet scientific evidence on carbon dating stands in contradiction to this.
This caused me to pause and research some items and ponder the meaning of all of this.
All age of civilizations is based on carbon dating whereby cosmic radiation causes carbon 12 to convert to carbon 14 with a specific half life of 5730 years and by measuring the amount of carbon 14 to carbon 12 in a sample from artifacts made of wood would define the age at which the wood was harvested and therefore the age of a civilization. The premise however is that cosmic radiation today is the same as it was in the past. If there was less or more radiation there would be significantly more or less carbon 14 in the wood when harvested.
Some scientists suggest that cosmic radiation might have been higher rather than lower in ancient times, but also some suggest that this could have caused much higher cloud cover in the atmosphere that could block radiation.
So is it possible that human beings actually existed only 6000 years ago and carbon dating is incorrectly estimating the age of the human race? Also, is there a connection between cosmic radiation and the fact that Adam lived ~900 years. Lower radiation may lead to longer life span and to inaccurate carbon dating. Is it possible there is a link? Is there any evidence to substantiate this link?

There’s more evidence to suggest that the numbers in Genesis reflect an ancient numerology: Long Life Spans in Genesis: Literal or Symbolic? - BioLogos

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Neal, there are articles dealing with the issues you bring up with carbon dating, and the problems of varied levels have been identified and taken into consideration. tree rings have provided excellent information carbon dating is very reliable when used appropriately. However, it is only good for relatively recent dates, and other methods must be used for ancient times.
Regarding humans and Adam, I think there may be a distinction between the population we call human, and the individual we call Adam in the population who was the first “in God’s image.” I am still fluid on whether Adam was a specific individual, or a population that developed the capacity to tell right from wrong, if that makes any sense.

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