If it was the same methodology, i would be a flat-earthist.
Fact is, im not…so the methodology is bloody obviously not the same is it Einstein! Its not the same because the claimed theology behind the doctrine of flat earthism is seriously flawed.
At least your usual genre argument, despite significant untennable literary flaws highlighted by Jason Lisle in his book “Understanding Genesis”, is at least somewhat defensible.
Thy pick and choose what to take literally.
YEC picks and chooses what to take literally.
Identical methodology. Neither has the humility nor respect to stop to ask whether the writers intended any of it to be taken literally.
Lying Lisle? who does physics by making stuff up and has no theological training? nor any in literary analysis of ancient material?
I expect his “understanding” of Genesis is about as valid as a five-year-old’s analysis of the Wars of the Roses.
Adam, as they say up in Scotland, yer heid’s full o’mince.
We’ve gone over this one before. Young earth and flat earth are exactly the same. Their logical fallacies are exactly the same. Their underlying principles of how they approach science are exactly the same. Their underlying principles of how they approach Biblical exegesis are exactly the same. The only difference is that flat earthists are consistent in how they apply those principles. Young earthists compromise those principles because they believe that being a flat earthist is too “odd” and “unintellectual” for them.
@Jay313 illustrated this perfectly when he took the Answers in Genesis rebuttal of flat earthism and turned it into an equally devastating rebuttal of young earthism with just a couple of simple finds and replaces.
Hebrew help needed here: Many English versions have “circle”. Anyone up for digging into the nuance of the Hebrew? I can figure out that this is not a hidden reference to the earth being spherical (for one thing, a sphere isn’t a circle), but some people do claim that, and more detailed textual insight than a concordance would be of use.
From the online Blue Letter Bible:
That’s the way I interpret it. A circle is flat. A compass draws a flat circle. Spreading a tent of stars over a round earth would make no sense because one side of the globe wouldn’t see the stars. It’s pretty obvious to me that they are describing a flat Earth.
So the real question is why @adamjedgar takes the word of those evil secular scientists over the word of God when he says the Earth is round.
Of course, if one claims that Isaiah 40:22 is giving scientific facts, the resemblance of the humans to grasshoppers has interesting implications as well. But if one recognizes the passage as a poetic tribute to God’s greatness, then a problem arises with insisting that Genesis 1 cannot also have poetic literary elements.
I keep going back to this quote from @glipsnort
“A story with a talking snake, a man named Man, a woman named Living, a tree whose fruit gives knowledge of good and evil, another tree whose fruit gives eternal life, and a god who walks around in a garden – this reads to you like a literal account? Holy smokes.”
Your laughing is making me laugh! …stop it🤣
But seriously, lets look at this more closely. If the Bible is inspired by God, He can give a description to the writer (Moses assumed) about something called a “firmament” dividing two “waters”. The writer doesn’t have to understand it properly to write it down. So, the people of the ANE have their interpretation, but we today having a much better understanding of the earth, and can then re-map these words to what God was really saying. He is not going to correct someone from the ANE and explain modern science to them. I think you have even said something like this before: Imagine going back in time and try explaining it to them… we would get laughed at!
So for ANE to think the firmament is a solid dome in the sky holding back waters, works for spreading the Word during that time. But its not working anymore today as people turn away from believing in God because of an old interpretation of Genesis.
God calls the firmament “heaven”, which I show to be the earth’s crust, the ground beneath our feet. Heaven is where God dwells and the earth is among His dwelling places, in the garden, walking with Adam before the fall.
BDB definition of Firmament - extended surface, (solid) expanse (as if beaten out)
Some modern translations do their best to avoid calling the firmament something solid and use “expanse” instead, which at least partially describes it. Others just flat out call it the “sky” and ignore the Hebrew word meaning entirely. But the earth’s crust is something else that is solid and has geologic layers that expand the globe like a sheet “as if beaten out”.
We can see that the earths surface began forming at the start of the Siderian “Iron” Period (2.5-2.3 bya) …side note: Iron? as if beaten out like iron?.. which is well known for the “Great Oxidation Event” and continued through the Rhyacian “Lava” Period (2.3-2.05 bya) where modern tectonics with subduction began to take place. Before modern tectonics there was only pronto tectonics where surface layers would start to form but then would easily be broken up. According to my timeline, Creation Day 2 when the firmament was made was between 2.3 bya and 1.8 bya.
A day is a time period. And consecutive days have no unknown periods between them.
You need it differentiate the “day with the Lord” from the “one day”. They are not the same thing. Looking at 2 Pet 3:8 in the KJV:
The “is” in italics is not in the original text but was added to make the sentence flow better, I think it is misplaced. If we move it over it changes it a bit:
Adding a few more clarifying words:
The “one day with the Lord” in the first part corresponds to the thousand years in the second part.
One day with the Lord… is as a thousand years. So what is a year with the Lord? Its 1,000 x 365 days in the year.
So one year with the Lord is 365 thousand years.
And one thousand years with the Lord is then 365 million years.
So again:
The number one thousand in scripture can mean to reign over. God gave us dominion over the earth, but He then reigns over us. So its one thousand times one thousand.
That doesn’t make any sense in Genesis.
The land was described as being different than the vault of the sky. Also, birds don’t fly through dirt, they fly through the vault of the sky above the earth.
IMO, it wouldn’t hurt to read: Roberts, John R. (2020). The Biblical Cosmos is Three-Tiered—No Question.
The waters under the firmament are gathered to one place and the ground appears. The gathering waters below the firmament could be magma. An island forms by volcanic activity pushing the ground up. The dry ground is differentiated from the firmament because it is now standing above the “waters above the firmament” which I believe are the seas.
This is a bit confusing because the waters under the firmament that are gathered are not the same waters that are gathered after the dry ground appears. The two instances of “gathered” are not the same Hebrew word.
First “gathered” (Strong’s 6960) qavah - Definition: To wait, to look for, to hope, to expect Meaning: to bind together, collect, to expect
Second “gathered” (Strong’s 4723) miqveh - Definition: Gathering, collection, hope Meaning: something waited for, confidence, a collection, a pond, a caravan, drove
Some of the (waiting) waters below the firmament, which a volcano can erupt water, steam as well as magma become part of the waters (waited for) above the firmament, or seas.
Here the earth is almost synonymous with the open firmament, as the dry ground that is exposed (or open) is part of the firmament.
Also “fowl” created on the 5th day are not birds but insects. Birds created on the 6th day are land animals that gained flight.
BDB definition of fowl - flying creatures, fowl, insects
How is he going to write down thoughts from his own head that he didn’t understand? How is he even going to have thoughts that he doesn’t understand?
What God was really saying is what the text says in its historical context.
The solution is to be honest about the text and explain what it means, not try to make it fit a modern scientific worldview.
But it isn’t – the firmament is what the stars hung from. The earth’s crust doesn’t even come into it.
Maybe to a fifth-grade understanding of geology. Geologic strata do not “expand the globe” and nowhere resemble something “beaten out”.
Maybe, but the grammar does not indicate a succession of day right after day – the refrain is “a second day”, a third day", etc., with no indication they are back to back.
That ignores the Greek grammar. You don’t just get to move an English word that isn’t actually in the Greek text and put it where you want.
The rest of your post boils down to mostly making stuff up. It destroys the ancient literature and all of the theology. Genesis was not written to answer scientific questions or to satisfy modern scientific curiosity, it was written to convey theology, which every attempt to make the days literal and fit them to science throws out.
The gathering waters could also be kangaroos. Or breath mints. If we’re simply assigning whatever meaning we want to words to make texts mean whatever we want them to mean, regardless of what they meant to their authors and original audiences, there’s no reason to hold back.
As Borges put it in “The Library of Babel”
(A number n of the possible languages employ the same vocabulary; in some of them, the symbol “library” possesses the correct definition “everlasting, ubiquitous system of hexagonal galleries,” while a library — the thing — is a loaf of bread or a pyramid or something else, and the six words that define it themselves have other definitions. You who read me — are you certain you understand my language?)
Please take the time to review this page. This page governs initial registration requirements, rules for continued membership, board etiquette, and rules for general usage.
I stand corrected. Yes, he understands what he is saying within his world view. But when we can glean more meaning from the text, and not just here but in other parts of scripture, for it to have meaning in our world view, that shows inspiration.
I don’t disagree, but it can say something to us as well. God knows how He made the world and can make it shine through to us where it was veiled before.
It doesn’t say the stars are hung from the firmament. It just says He made the stars also. He made two great lights to give light on the earth. If I want light on in the kitchen to give light on the countertops (land), sink (lakes), faucet (rivers), stove (camp fire) and cabinets (mountains), I just say that I turn the lights on in the kitchen. I don’t say that I turn the lights on in the ceiling above the kitchen.
As if beaten out. You cant see strata having any resemblances to a sheet of metal, a thin flat plane? Hmm… how about a stack of pancakes?
But then in other parts of scripture, its compared to a work week. I would love for there to be a gap in there!
Well we can just remove the English word then and take another look.
It doesn’t look to me that where the translators put it is any better than where I put it.
It is not easy to make up math. Math doesn’t lie.
Excellent brief article! It’s nice to see someone take the text seriously instead of assuming what it means – far better than fantasizing geological meanings in Genesis.
Water is not magma. The Great Deep (the t’hom) is not magma, it is water. Since the waters below were separated from the waters above, they are the same substance, and the sky is certainly not made of magma.
No, because the seas are below the firmament, which the text links to the sky.
They have the same root; the second form is from the verb in the first form, קָוָה (qa-wa), which can be plainly seen in the second form, וּלְמִקְוֵ֥ה. The first three letters of the second form are augments that shift the meaning of the word itself or function as words themselves, e.g. the first letter is “and”.
So in terms of Hebrew they are in fact the same word. Strong’s just fails to note that “miqveh” is merely “qavah” with an augment added. (Never forget that there has been nearly a century and a half of heavy-duty linguistic and biblical scholarship since Strong did his work.) The vowel differences between the two forms is not relevant; they are the equivalent of ending in English – though we have examples of words shifted by interior vowels as well, e.g. ran → run, man → men, sit → sat.
“Waiting” is a metaphorical usage and cannot be combined with the core meaning of "gather(ed).
The ancient Hebrews’ worldview was based on observation: the horizon was pretty much the same distance away in every direction, from which they concluded that the world was a circle; the sky stretched from one horizon up and over to the next, from which they concluded that the sky is a dome; the sky showed various shades of blue, and since water showed various shades of blue they concluded that the sky was made of water; and since water is heavy and needs something to hold it, the sky must be solid, and since containers for water were often made by pounding out copper they concluded that the sky was something that had been pounded out.
So the “firmament”, the רָקִיעַ (ra-qee-ya), was something material and strong which happened to be clear and thus through which the waters above the רָקִיעַ could be seen.
Trying to force the text into some totally contrived meaning doesn’t help to communicate to a modern worldview, it ruins the actual connection: their worldview was built on observations, which are people today can understand; they just didn’t have all the ways of observing that we do. The link between the OT cosmology and ours isn’t to force modern scientific ideas into the text, it’s to show that the people of the ANE were regular people who experienced the world the same way we do and did their best to draw conclusions about what they saw – in other words, they were using a scientific approach, just with very limited means to work with.
Try really reading: the firmament is “above the earth”, not part of it.
No – עוֹף (ohf) is not insects, it is things with wings, which in ancient Hebrew included bats. Insects generally fell under the category of רֶמֶשׂ (reh-mesh), things that crawl, even if they could also fly – though there are exceptions. The classification of living things was not based on their form so much as their function.
Nice misrepresentation. That should be “fowl, birds; fowl of wings; winged insects”.
Totally unfounded in the text and contrary to it. Birds were all in the category עוֹף, which is obvious if you actually read the BDB material.
The real tragedy here is not just that you are wasting mental energy to try to make material several millennia old fit your personal thought patterns but that in doing so you end up in the same place as YEC does: throwing out the vast majority of the theology.
= = = = = = =
BTW, while I was writing this a pair of Mormon missionaries came to the door. They looked really uncomfortable as I started referencing the Hebrew and the Greek, and ended up fleeing as I took them through the opening Creation story as the ancient literature it is.
It struck me that they were relying on the KJV and had no clue what the account is rally about, and then it struck me that they YEC approach to the text fits just fine with Mormon theology, while taken as the ancient literature it is it doesn’t fit at all.
For now, just want to clear this one up. Will respond more later.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
This is a place for gracious dialogue about science and faith. Please read our FAQ/Guidelines before posting.
