His argument consists of making stuff up, obfuscations, and bad scholarship.
Just a couple of points:
we now know that oral tradition could transmit material over generations just as well as written material
it’s hard to find a scholar who thinks that the ‘toledoths’ are not headings
the “generations” may refer to existing material regardless, so the above argument is wasted effort
So the conclusion that “This account had been extant for centuries before the first ancient Hebrew appeared on the scene” is not supported, it is just speculation.
“Does this mean that the ancient Hebrews actually believed that the universe is literally a three-story house? No, it doesn’t, any more than we actually believe that heaven is somewhere “up there,” and hell is somewhere “down there.” This is a symbolic understanding of the nature of reality. We still speak of “sunrise” and “sunset,” and think of the sun as moving through the heavens, even though it is far simpler to describe all planetary motion relative to the Sun, and relative to the Sun, it is the Earth that is doing all the circling.”
False comparison: the example given is derived from the questioned view, and can be used neither to support nor deny it.
Beside that, there is no evidence that they or anyone else in the ANE considered this language to be symbolic.
“The ancient Hebrews’ worldview was shaped by Scripture, not reflected in Scripture.”
Irrelevant. Beside that is the fact that if you want to shape someone’s understanding you start where they are, you don’t make a radical leap to something completely different.
“…views the Bible as the work of men interpreting reality, instead of as the work of God, meant to shape human understanding of reality.”
False dichotomy and bad theology: if we call the scriptures “the Word”, then we ought to assess them by the true Word, Christ, and thus see God acting through the truly human.
I didn’t see anything in his material that would add to this discussion.
To do that you have to know what it actually means, not start by slotting in ideas that tickle your fancy. To find meaning in our worldview you have to translate it from their worldview, and that requires understanding and beginning with their worldview. I see no effort at all to understand the actual text in what you present, but rather just ad hoc contradictions to the text.
The inspiration gives the message, and the message is the original meaning. Throwing out that meaning and replacing it with bizarre notions that don’t at all fit the text ignores inspiration.
That statement rests on the assumption that the account is aimed at explaining how God created the world. The trouble with that is that the account isn’t interested in any such thing, it is interested in what God’s creation of all things means to us.
The only way to do that is to begin with the actual original message/meaning. Shoving in ad hoc notions from modern science can only lead astray.
Hung from or embedded in, though the Hebrew is best taken as the latter.
False analogy: רָקִ֫יעַ (ra-qee-ya) is equivalent to “ceiling”, not to “kitchen”; “heavens” is equivalent to “kitchen”. So far in the account there are only the waters above, the רָקִ֫יעַ, the earth/ground, the waters below the רָקִ֫יעַ, and the waters under the earth.
A stack of pancakes – perhaps.
Math requires assigning the right values and operations to something; all you did was arithmetic. It’s a cute scheme, but your assignment of values is not in accord with the grammar, so your arithmetic is meaningless.
Water could separate from other substances. I also mentioned water and steam that can erupt from volcanos. This article supports the idea that meteorite could have delivered water to the early earth, trapping it in rocks (firmament) and later released (dividing the waters) through volcanic activity.
It’s not clear when these meteorites might have delivered their water, but they are a good match for the rocks found in Earth’s interior. If Earth started out with water trapped beneath its surface, volcanic activity could have released it as water vapor, which would have condensed and fell back to Earth as rain.
My intent is to show that it doesn’t have to be just birds as its translated to be. Its a generic term for flying creatures. God made something with wings that can fly. While birds and bats are an example of a flying creature, they are not the first ones. Flying insects are the first things to gain flight on the 5th day.
Right? Something like ants that can fly muddies that up. So, creeping things are primarily interpreted to be reptiles created on the 6th day. Main categories of land animals being creeping things (reptiles), beasts (mammals) and cattle (domestic animals).
The creation order is a summary of when those functions were started. Flight began on the 5th day but does not preclude land animals such as birds and bats from evolving flight later on. We could say the same with whales who were also land animals before returning to the sea.
I believed they are trained to go after the low hanging fruit. You are too difficult. lol… It seems the reception in teaching it as ancient literature is not much better than as modern science. I believe its both at the same time.
Some geological constraints:
The mantle is basically solid. There are small patches here and there of melted rock. Some of the aesthenosphere is about 1% melted. The outer core is melted, but apart from the magnetic field that doesn’t make a noticeable difference for us at the surface.
The water inside the earth is chemically locked in and often isn’t water but hydroxide. An accessible example is plaster. Mix the powder with water and it all turns to plaster (or let it happen naturally and call it gypsum). The water is trapped in the crystal structure. If you heat a bit of plaster or gypsum in an enclosed container, you get steam as the piece turns to powder. But it’s silly to clain that a plaster wall has waters beneath. Bad headlines about there being an ocean in the mantle actually mean that if you could extract all the hydroxide and turn it into water, you’d get a lot of water. Water is the most abundant gas coming out of volcanoes, but as steam.
I’m waiting to hear an explanation for how the stars are part of the earth’s crust and an example of birds that fly through rock.
Find me some rabbinic material and something from the church Fathers supporting that notion.
Genesis does not include evolution. Stop trying to turn ancient literature into modern science – it makes you look foolish.
It is ancient literature, and that’s how it should be taught. Trying to force it to talk science as the YECists do requires ignoring the fact that it is ancient literature and destroys the message.
“And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven.”
Since when was Heaven underground???
Really?
“And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.”
Fowl are birds, not insects. Pretending that “fowl” doesn’t mean ‘birds’, when it has been interpreted and translated and understood as ‘birds’ for thousands of years, when your only reason for doing so is to reconcile the ancient text with modern discoveries, is desperate and futile.
Also, you seem to have forgotten that just as birds/bats came after land animals, flying insects came after non-flying ones. So whatever problem you are trying to solve concerning 5th-day birds coming after 6th-day beasts also applies to 5th-day flying insects coming after 6th-day creeping things. There are no flying creatures that weren’t preceded by non-flying ones.
The ancient Hebrews didn’t know that birds appeared after land animals. Live with it.
What about the fruit trees? What function that led to fruit trees started on the 3rd day, before what function that led to fish and started on the 5th day?
Let me guess: you want to use actual fish to represent ‘fish’, because using the precursors of fish doesn’t fit your objective due to them appearing long before any land plants.
Right?
T_aquaticus
(The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)
49
Genesis describes birds flying through the vault of the sky. It is as plain as day. Your model is so twisted it is unrecognizable.
An edited transcript of the 3 minute 35 second clip of Deborah Haarsma’s comments in the Test of Faith Project’s film is here: How does Genesis contrast
The following description of Witteveen’s first article was written by Gemini AI:
"Rev. Jim Witteveen’s first article challenging Deborah Haarsma’s clip from the Test of Faith Project’s film, “How does Genesis contrast, as a story of origins, with those of surrounding cultures at the time?”, follows a critical analysis structure. He begins by identifying specific claims made by Haarsma in the video, such as the idea that the ancient Hebrews did not believe in a round Earth or an atmosphere. Witteveen then challenges these claims by presenting counterarguments and evidence.
He points out that the Bible does not explicitly state the shape of the Earth, but it does imply a spherical shape in passages like Isaiah 40:22. He also argues that the concept of an atmosphere is implicit in biblical descriptions of the sky and clouds.
Witteveen’s article further examines Haarsma’s claim that God accommodated the message of Genesis to the understanding of the ancient Hebrews. He argues that this interpretation downplays the divine nature of the text and suggests that God’s revelation is limited by human understanding. Instead, Witteveen proposes that the Genesis account should be understood as a timeless and transcendent revelation of God’s creative work.
Overall, Witteveen’s article presents a systematic challenge to Haarsma’s interpretation of the Genesis text. He employs a critical analysis approach, identifying specific claims, providing counterarguments, and offering alternative interpretations. By doing so, he aims to demonstrate that the Genesis account is not merely a product of its cultural context but a divine revelation with enduring significance.
Dissatisfied with Gemini AI’s recap, here’s my version of Witteveen’s first article:
The specific claims that Witteveen declares “unproven” are:
"The ancient Hebrews did not believe that the world was round.
"The ancient Hebrews believed that there was a solid sky dome over the earth (the “firmament”).
"God accommodated the message of Scripture to “where they were at,” in their lack of precise scientific knowledge, and their beliefs about the form of the heavens and the earth.
“But before we even begin examining the claims,” Witteveen interjects: ""we need to deal with an assumption that goes unmentioned, an assumption that must necessarily be true if Dr. Haarsma’s claims actually have a bearing on how we interpret the Genesis account of creation. And that assumption is a simple one: that the original audience of the creation account was “the ancient Hebrews.”
How does Witteveen deal with the assumption that he says “must necessarily be true if Dr. Haarsma’s claims actually have a bearing?” He questions it, introducing a rather spectacular (IMO) intricate and convoluted “rabbit hole” which I currently don’t think I can describe, briefly or not. So I’m going to jump over it and go directly to the Reverend’s conclusions, to wit:
“We need to discard that assumption; Adam was an intelligent man, the first scientist, who named and classified the animal kingdom, who probably travelled widely. Even after the fall into sin, he must have retained his original intelligence, and with the years of life that were allotted to him, he would have developed an astounding array of knowledge, which he had opportunity to pass down to his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great grandchildren, and so on. So I call this first assumption into question, and that means I also call the conclusions that follow from that assumption into question. In short, we cannot assume that the original audience of the creation account as we have it in Genesis 1 and 2 was in fact the “ancient Hebrews.” And following from that, we cannot assume that this original audience was ignorant about the physical nature of the heavens and the earth, and that God accommodated his account to their ignorance. There is no doubt that many people fell into ignorance, unbelief, and disobedience after the fall; this is what led to the destruction of humanity in the flood. And after the flood, sin and rebellion against God also led to widespread idolatry, ignorance, and rejection of God’s Word.” But throughout it all, God preserved his Word from generation to generation. We have this Word in Genesis and the other 65 books of the Bible. We must examine critically our own assumptions, and the assumptions of others, as we seek to understand its message.
Gen 1:17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
Not “hung from or embedded” - 5414 נָתַן nathan: To give, put, set
Not if the raqia is the surface of the earth and not an imaginary dome in the sky. You are insisting that God made something that doesn’t exist.
There is the heavens/sky (8064. שָׁמַיִם shamayim), waters (4325. מַיִם mayim) above and below the firmament/earths crust (7549. רָקִיעַ raqia) which God also named Heaven, the dry land (3004. יַבָּשָׁה yabbashah) which God named Earth (776. אֶרֶץ erets), the gathered waters God named Seas (3220. יָם yam) and the deep/earths core & mantle (8415.תְּהוֹם tehom) which is chaos, unordered. It is light and dark mixed together… It is solid, liquid and gas all mixed together that would need to be extracted as @paleomalacologist describes here.
All of these things mentioned in Genesis we can identify with reality. In the beginning God makes the heavens/sky (8064. שָׁמַיִם shamayim) and the earth which was all without form and void (8414. תֹּהוּ tohu and 922. בֹּהוּ bohu). The earth was all part of the deep (8415.תְּהוֹם tehom) before God starts working at its surface, separating the waters and forming the earths crust.
The firmament separates water from water and you have a problem if is a solid dome in the sky. The ANE people may think that there is water above the dome, but directly below it they should know that there is a lot of air space before there is any water or land. They had their interpretation.
I don’t hear any objections to the arithmetic (which is not complicated) from you or anyone else. The way it matches scientific estimates for the age of the earth (4.543 bya) with the beginning of Day 1 in my estimate (4.528 bya) is a very small difference of 15 million years. Margin of error is 0.3%. Quite intriguing!
So will you confirm the math after getting the grammar cleared up? Waiting for a response here:
Is there something else in the Greek that tells us that there should be an ‘is’ between ‘one day’ and ‘with the Lord’, or is it a matter of English grammar? It does not say one day ‘to’ the Lord as if that’s how God measures time independent of us, but its ‘with’ as in time with us.
And of course “fowl” are birds. My point is that it is a collective of flying creatures and does not have to be translated as birds. It does not say ‘all’ flying creatures were created on the 5th day.
Very informative. Perhaps I should describe the waters below the firmament as subterranean waters or an aquifer rather than magma or the earths core/mantle which is part of the Deep. There is a lot of subterranean water more closer to the surface that is not trapped within rock.
These are some of the bad headlines?
Dividing none the less through natural processes.
See my response here:
Gen 1:20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
No need as its all within the definition of abundantly (8318. שֶׁרֶץ sherets), a swarming thing, creeping thing, swarm - which is often associated with insects. Insects being the descendants of crustaceans, these swarming things are brought forth (according to KJV) from the waters and perhaps not only stayed in the water but also came up and lived on land before some of them also gained flight.
Certainly it does. There is a lot of detailed information about evolution in the genealogical record from Adam to Abraham, but I am still working on the details and don’t want to derail this thread.
Yes, having someone like you standing in the gap between an ancient understanding and modern science is important. I really do appreciate that… it is very important and I have no intent in destroying that message. However, as science has moved forward and has a very good understanding of reality, its time to take another look at the Word.
Yes, those are some of the bad headlines in question.
In ancient Near Eastern thought, springs were surface manifestations of the waters of the deep. Although claiming that aquifers are the waters of the deep is forcing the text into modern categories, it’s closer than magma.
T_aquaticus
(The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)
55
Your response just makes the same absurd assertions. Birds don’t fly through rocks and earth. They fly through the air. Your interpretation is so convoluted that you have birds flying through rock.
I misspoke. The water trapped in rocks deep within the earth is all still part of the Deep .
This is in my response to St.Roymond:
Also this:
Its based on a common decent with mankind. This tree of life diagram shows that our common decent (when we diverged from plants) lines up with the 3rd day of creation based on my chart in this post (between 1.82 bya and 1.33 bya).
Our common decent with the precursors of fish appeared after the precursors of land plants.
I’ve shown that it says they fly above the earth. If you insist that it says the vault of the sky (a solid dome) is what they are flying through, the ANE people are also saying birds are flying through something solid. But no, they fly in the air (open firmament) whether its above or below the actual firmament. The firmament is solid whether its the surface of the earth or a solid dome in the sky.
I agree, that sound better.
My apologies.
T_aquaticus
(The Friendly Neighborhood Atheist)
60
Genesis 1:6 And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” 7 So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.
Are we agreed the vault of the sky separates the water on Earth from the waters above the Earth?
Later, God puts the Sun and Moon in the vault of the sky, and creates birds that fly through the fault of the sky. So Genesis has the vault of the sky separating the water and land of the Earth from the waters above the Earth.
In the Noah’s flood story, God opens the windows of heaven and has rain from the waters above come down to Earth.
Your arithmetic is fine. It is your assumptions that don’t make sense.
Why assume there are always 8,766 hours in a year?
Where did you get the length of the day?
What is your definition of an hour, 1/24 roughly of a solar day or 86,400 seconds as measure by a atomic clock?
While we have evidence that the earth’s rotation has gradually changed over time, is there any evidence that the rate of the earth’s rotation about the sun has changed? Don’t think so.
