So that they can ‘confirm’ their claim that each day is half the length of the previous one.
No, making that claim does not confirm it. “73.6% of all statistics are made up”… so on average you will be 26.4% correct when making something up. Marg was 33% correct with the timeline of Days so is shooting above average.
Evolution is an extraordinary process for producing plant and animal life that suites its environment. I’m sure God invented it. If it is not witnessed in Scripture, why does it say “let the earth produce…” and it was so. “The land produced…”
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Just as I am sure He didn’t. it does not smell of God. It does not reflect the characteristics of God. It is aimless , random, and built on might or strength (adaptability) There is no beauty or love in Evolution.
Richard
You’re right. Evolution does not come from Scripture, it comes from God’s creation. God has everything to do with everything, even evolution. That understanding is an issue of belief, not fact. I was simply saying that the creation account in Genesis 1 describes a sequential process over time, not an instantaneous one. Evolution is also describing a sequential process over time. The time difference is a matter of relativity from the standpoint of the observer. God is the only observer in Genesis 1. The intent of the writer was to establish a 7 day pattern to the life of the Hebrew people. There is no astronomical basis for a repeating 7 day time period. It is brilliant as it has endured through the ages.
As for times chosen, I attempted to find in the earth’s history, the times at which we see the appearance of the thing God created on the given day. The big bang, 13.8 bya is the obvious beginning of day one. 6.9 bya is indeed arbitrary since the universe spread out gradually over the time from day one to day 3. But it’s a decent guess. Day 3, the rising of the continents is approximately when scientists believe the continents rose above water. It is also just about when the first signs of life are found. This first life is not plants, but then God asked for “vegetation” as a beginning. Since these bacteria and algae were able to use co2 to produce oxygen, they can be seen as the bare beginning of vegetation. Day 4, the sun, moon and stars, I chose the time of the great oxygenation event. For fishes and insects, day 5, I chose the first discovered multicelled animals. For day 6 and land animals I chose the first footprints of quadrupeds found on land. These all seem reasonable guesses. And it makes for a very tidy “week.” I like it.
Don’t get me wrong, this is not an all or nothing argument. I just think that there are elements that science either has not, or cannot see(n).
Richard
I like the approach to understanding Genesis 1 that you are describing. The idea of starting with 13.8 bya on day 1 and halving the age with each successive day is intriguing. Many natural and biological processes occur on a logarithmic scale. A logarithmic scale means that each unit on a linear measure represents half (or double) the value of the previous unit. This same approach is seen when man’s lifespan is reduced to 120 years in Genesis 6:3. The lineage from Shem to Abram that is described in Genesis 11 shows a logarithmic change in lifespan with each subsequent generation. Prior to Noah, the average lifespan was around 960 years. From Shem to Abram it went to 480 years, then 240 years, and then 120 years with each succeeding generation. Even though Abraham lived to 175 yo, the general trend is intriguing and has clearly settled at 120 years. Anyway, your understanding of the time periods for the biblical ‘days’ of creation is interesting.
The lunar cycle is 28 days, or 4, 7 day periods. And even this was probably borrowed from Mesopotamia.
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First of all, no, it isn’t – you have to play fast and loose with both science and the text to make them match.
Second, no, it isn’t – the most important aspect is the relationship between Yahweh and humanity.
Trying to make science the most important aspect is idolatry – it takes the focus from where the text puts it and bends it towards human knowledge, which violates having no gods beside Yahweh.
It says that a raqia was made. A raqia is a solid item, generally something beaten out of metal such a a shield.
In tens of thousands of pages of reading in ANE studies, never once were the “waters below . . . taken to mean the earth” – not once. Indeed the “waters below” were always clearly distinguished from the earth!
That’s not what the text says. According to the text, the moon and stars and sun didn’t exist yet.
Yes – that anyone should be so sloppy with science and cavalier with the text.
Although you did stop short of this insane science fiction–
Looking back and stuffing present science into the text is no better than when medieval thinkers looked back and forced their science into the text – either way is at best a failure to understand the text.
If you want to see any science in the text, the place to look is at conclusions reached before modern (or any other) science developed. That’s why the fact that in the eighth century scholars who studied Genesis 1 concluded that the universe started out as the smallest thing possible, grew inconceivably fast to immense size, that it was filled with fluid (waters) that thinned as the cosmos expanded, that when the fluid was thin enough for light to be able to shine God called light into existence . . . that the Earth is uncountably ancient and the universe (obviously) more ancient still. There you have a plain set of scientifically assessable statements that can be compared to modern science, and what it looks like is a good summary of cosmology, from back before it was even known that Jupiter has moons!
LOL
But that;s exactly what your entire scheme is – altering the definitions of words!
Genesis 1 is not about science. It doesn’t care about science. It wasn’t written for your modern narrow worldview to answer narrow modern questions. It uses two kinds of ancient literature at once, and neither of those cares a whit about science. It has (at least) three major messages, and none of them are about science.
Sorry for your failure of imagination.
Or 18th-century priests insisting that lightning rods are of the devil.
Which is exactly one of the problems of trying to force items from a later worldview to fit the scriptures.
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Well put. It’s a great description of the post that follows yours!
Substantial treatises were written to demonstrate how the Bible fit Greek science! The irony is that people who laugh at those attempts often try to repeat the same mistake.
Nice point – the bit in Genesis 2:5 can mean “till”, but the meaning ranges from “worship” to “maintain” or “manage”; it is used of things from building a temple to serving in one! Tilling is contrary to the Edenic picture of everything being present in abundance.
“More frail”? Where do you get that from the text? It explicitly includes anything with seeds!
You would do better to stop trying to read it as science in the first place. Doing do throws out the real messages!
And to stop trying to make Genesis fit a modern scientific worldview. It’s not the “old time encrusted interpretations” that are the problem, it’s trying to force the scriptures to fit any contemporary worldview!
The Bible does very little history reporting – indeed, by modern standards it does almost none at all!
And none of Genesis 1-11 qualifies as history; the closest is mythologized history (though “theologized” might be a better word). Genesis 1 does not purport to be history at all; it takes the (generic) Egyptian creation story and radically edits it to convey (at least) three messages/themes at once.`
This is a false distinction – the two Hebrew words are used fairly interchangeably. Besides which, the same language is used of “sun, moon and stars” as of light in verse 3; in fact verse 14 echoes verse 3, the difference being that in verse 3 “light” is singular" while in 14 it is plural. There’s a name for the phenomenon that I forget; it’s particularization of something already present, just like the waters are gathered into seas.
Or to obscure them by trying to force the text to talk science!
Bingo!
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That assumption regarding authorship cannot be found in scripture – inspire does not mean "dictate*. Since it cannot be found in scripture, I don’t agree that it is “reasonable” in the least.
Which is why a number of ancient rabbis said that trying to name a beginning of Creation was a fool’s errand, as God was the only person present for most of the process – and thus called the days “divine days” – and so each day could have a morning that would by evening be considered “ancient” (invoking the “Ancient of Days” imagery from Daniel).
That length of a week was common all over the world, derived from the phases of the moon: full moon to half moon, half moon to dark moon, dark moon to half moon, half moon to full moon.
“Borrowed” isn’t the right word – “inherited” is more accurate, given the Sumerians seem to have used it. Their basis was both lunar, from the phases of the moon, and celestial, from the number of moving celestial bodies (sun, moon, five planets). The rest of the ancient near east inherited that, with the Babylonians encoding it and everyone else following suit. By the time Israel was a people/nation, Mesopotamia was using a seven-day week.
Egypt, BTW, was an exception, holding to a ten-day week. That’s interesting, and it’s been suggested that Genesis 2 was composed partly to make it clear that the Egyptian priests had it wrong, as an addition/augment to the priestly polemic of Genesis 1 against all things (mythological and theological, anyway) Egyptian.
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According to this article, there are about 171,000 English words in use vs 9,000 Hebrew words.
Biblical Hebrew has a minimal vocabulary of fewer than 9000 words but is tremendously rich in expressing itself.
In comparison to Biblical Hebrew, the 20 volume Oxford Dictionary exposes 171,000 English words in current use.
That’s a 19:1 ratio! …which means that to communicate everything in Hebrew sufficiently in English, each word could have up to 19 different meanings, on average.
The reasonable aspect applies only to the human writer, not to the author. I am using the word ‘author’ to refer to God who is believed to have inspired, not dictated, the information in Genesis 1. Does Scripture say that God is omniscient? Sorry if that was not clear.
My scheme, as you call it, is recognizing that words and their meaning are a human creation. If Scripture is ‘God’s Word’, then limiting the interpretation (translation) to the literal meaning of the words is forcing human limitations on God. The literal translation is valid as a basic foundation. Expanding on a literal translation requires calling it by a different word. That is why I use the word ‘epistemic’ translation. An epistemic translation has rules that must be followed just like a literal translation has rules. Those rules can be applied to any creation story in any ancient language. It is not just making up something with a loose association to an original story. Epistemic translation is as valid as any human creation that uses words. Words are all made up to begin with and they are put together with rules to produce something that is understandable.
I’m not scheming… thats what St.Roymond called it.
Yes, I like that… That is my intent in how I translate the words. So for example, the word ‘firmament’. It is clearly something solid in the original meaning, with some sense of being beaten out flat like a thin sheet of metal. It has waters above and below it. ‘Waters’ can mean something other than just water but is something in a liquid (or viscous) state. I think that is pretty much what we have to work with in the definition. Its pretty general ,but St.Roymond will insist that it can only mean a solid dome over the sky holding back the waters, an ancient flat earth view… and modern translations will say it just means the atmosphere, completely disregarding that it is solid.
So we just have to think from a modern perspective, knowing what we know now about how the earth is structured, what this firmament really is. If it really is God’s Word, and I believe it is and is speaking directly to us today, then what really fits the description within the meaning of the words? I believe the earths lithosphere fits this description.
The lithosphere is the solid, outer part of Earth. The lithosphere includes the brittle upper portion of the mantle and the crust, the outermost layers of Earth’s structure. It is bounded by the atmosphere above and the asthenosphere (another part of the upper mantle) below.
Although the rocks of the lithosphere are still considered elastic, they are not viscous. The asthenosphere is viscous, and the lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary (LAB) is the point where geologists and rheologists—scientists who study the flow of matter—mark the difference in ductility between the two layers of the upper mantle. Ductility measures a solid material’s ability to deform or stretch under stress. The lithosphere is far less ductile than the asthenosphere.
There are two types of lithosphere: oceanic lithosphere and continental lithosphere. Oceanic lithosphere is associated with oceanic crust, and is slightly denser than continental lithosphere.
And of course, the oceanic lithosphere is bounded by water above and a viscous asthenosphere and even more viscous layers below. Before continent building on Day 3, much of the earth was covered almost completely with water on Day 2.
With the idea that it is beaten out like a thin sheet, just look at all the stratified rock layers, all pancaked like they are beaten out flat.
First, that’s lingusitic silliness.
Second, it’s not a license to manufacture or select the meanings you prefer.
The human writer is the author. The author is the one who selects the words and puts them to paper. Calling God the author indicates dictation.
As to Genesis 1, using the term “information” is already a worldview error. There is information there, but it has nothing to do with a MSWV.
I see no difference at all. Any scheme that tries to write science into Genesis 1 - 11 is “making up something with a loose associaition to an original story”.
It is also arrogant: rather than ask what medium the Holy Spirit inspired the writer to employ, it demands that God conform to the modern worldview.
The lithosphere is not where flying things roam, nor where the stars and planets are found. You have to utterly butcher the Hebrew to get the lithosphere to be the firmament, since the lithosphere is part of the earth.
Stop this idolatry of demanding that scripture conform to your worldview!
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Of which about 12,000 are used in the KJV.
No, it means that most English words have meanings that aren’t necessary for translating the bible.
If you want you take the ridiculous positions that the Bible contains every Hebrew word, and covers every topic that might require words in English, and also ignore that the OED includes a lot of local dialect words, eponyms and Germanic/Latin/Greek equivalents, that’s your choice. Just don’t expect most people to do anything other than laugh at you.
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A day, a lunar month, and a year are complete astronomical cycles. Tying the creation story to the 7 day period makes the week a complete repeating cycle when it had been a fractional period astronomically.
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Thank you for your perspective. We obviously see and understand things differently. It is useful to know the scheme that the rabbis came up with to explain the creation story. It all boils down to perspective and what someone is drawn to and chooses to believe.