The use of a cultural context to determine intent requires a number of assumptions. It validates itself, as all world-views do.
A cultural context at least provides some evidential clues as to what the intent could be; even more so as to what the perceived intent would be.
And it is not as if we had a choice about using cultural context. The default, if we do not use the cultural context of the author, is to use our own. Which one is more likely to be a reliable indicator of intent, or at least, perceived intent?
In fact, is not the only reason to question whether the author's intent was culturally conditioned the conflict between an intent conditoned by the culture of the author and an intent conditioned by our own?
I am pretty happy with the narrative structure and sequence, especially as compared to several of the psalms we have discussed. Its one of those things where the peripherals don't seem to make a difference to my methods and my assumptions. To some I am building the house from the roof down, but I don't apologize.
That's fine as a choice. But I don't see this passage as a narrative structure. The second creation account is narrative. And it is very different in style from the first. The first comes across to me as much more poetic and liturgical in its format.
I am not much on Hebrew grammar, but one might say "It was the beginning of time and God was there to make ...."
And one doesn't have punctuation in the original to guide the reading. Some have suggested it is a subordinate clause: "In the beginning, when God was creating the heavens and the earth, the earth was empty and without form."
How do you justify it if you are just making it up? I am trying to imagine how that would work.
The writer is not making up the Sabbath. He is justifying a practice unique to Hebrew culture in the face of pagan challenges to that culture. It is a way of validating their identity and the need to hold on to that identity as part of their covenant with their God. Remember that the Israelites were constantly tempted to follow other gods and the religious practices of their neighbours. Failure to observe the Sabbath is one of the constant indictments against them by the prophets. So there was evidently questioning, not only from outsiders, but within the community itself, as to why the Sabbath should be observed.
We seem to have broad agreement on the existence of human error in several issues. I am saying that human error is missing from the surface text -- ie, essential structure, idiom, the persons involved, dates, etc.
I think the bible has proved to be quite accurate historically when referring to history. Though I wouldn't try to say it is perfect in this respect. There are curious little contradictions, such as whether it was David or someone else who killed Goliath. Obviously, in such a case, one account has to be wrong.
But I would also go deeper than the surface text. I would say that sometimes the text reflects error in theology. The genocidal wars said to be commanded by God would be an example of where IMO the Israelites did not have a correct concept of the will of God.
In that context, it is hard to imagine that the Bible would require a choice between the two. What it seems to do invariably is to invoke both or multiple meanings, particularly when Jesus is in view -- a hypostatic union, if you will forgive me.
No, I won't let that pass. That would make the bible part of the Trinity and it's not.
I still think you have to justify that the psalmist is referring to a text at all, even before you can start justifying that the text is the bible or any part of it.
It is interesting to see the different translations of this verse. Not all translations use the word "above". Both the NIV and the NRSV say "You have exalted your word and your name". The NRSV gives the "above" reading as an alternate in a footnote, but the NIV makes no comment. The TEV uses "command" instead of "word". And a particularly interesting translation is that of the Jerusalem bible which says: " I give thanks to your name for your love and faithfulness;
your promise is even greater than your fame".
That sounds quite different, but when we remember that one meaning of "name" is "reputation" or "fame" and that when making a promise we often say "I give you my word" one can see the logic of this rendering. Just as clearly, in this rendering, no reference to a text is required.
The assumption that every time scripture speaks of the word of God it is referring to itself is just that: an assumption. In many cases, it is really not clear that it is. Some might even say it is never a self-referential phrase. It is interesting that in the NT, whenever the authors refer to the text of scripture, the word they use is "scriptures" (literally, "writings") not "word" or "word of God". Or they refer to some section of the scriptures such as the Law, Psalms, Writings or Prophets.
That "word of God" means first and foremost the written word of scripture is an easy assumption to make in a literate culture, but not necessarily one we should impose on a pre-literate culture.
Corroboration of intent, assuming as I do that God is speaking .
In one passage or both of them?
Again, some precise concepts meet the ear and in particular order. The immediate focus of the narrator and the audience is on what is explicit. A time. A person (or three persons). What he does.
As for invention, you are not inventing the concept of greatness as one that appears in the text. It is in there, by implication. That's all. Just trying to say I don't think your reasoning is a flight of fancy. I am just trying to focus on something different, the bare essence of the concepts that the reader encounters in each word.
Thanks for the clarification. I guess what I am getting at is that what seems to you to be clearly a reference to the beginning of a temporal sequence may not be. "In the beginning" may mean something like the "dream time" of the aboriginal people of Australia, or the "Once upon a time" of traditional fairy tales. It may even imply the immeasurable singularity of t=0 in big bang cosmology.
The Bible depends upon idiom and sequence for its essentials. Repeated patters of picture words. It is a method intended to survive corruption. To me, it succeeds. Most evidence of scribal consistency is off the charts. To presume otherwise for the days of Moses is to, well, presume.
It occurs to me all the time.
Though I do fight the bloody culture pretty hard, which I guess is a culture of its own. .
I don't think we are dealing with any scribal inconsistencies here. What I am suggesting is that the surface text itself may be different in different cultural contexts. To you the days of the Genesis creation account suggest a measured sequence of time. That is a normal and natural expectation of a modern Enlightenment-based point of view that assumes numbers are primarily for counting and measuring. But pre-Enlightenment views of numbers were often different. There was much more emphasis on the essential meaning of numbers i.e. their symbolic meanings.
A big impetus in the birth of modern science was Galileo's defence of the importance of measurement. In fact, modern science can almost be defined as the study of what can be measured. But in medieval thinking, the numerical measure of something--whether height or weight or volume or time--told nothing of importance about it. Numbers only told you there was more or less of something. It told you nothing about its nature. And medieval philosophers were interested in discovering the nature of things.
Numbers themselves were believed to have specific natures. And that goes back to very ancient times. Numbers were not just a counting mechanism, though they were that as well. They were important symbols and principles of the essence of things. So to the ancient Hebrews, the important thing about the Genesis days could well be not a chronology, but the expression of the essence of the number 7 which signified completeness, wholeness as it combined 3, the number of spirit with 4, the number of earth i.e 7 = the totality of the heavens and the earth, the completeness of creation. And that is why the Sabbath falls on the seventh day.
To us, that is a strange way of thinking, and not one that would occur as a natural way of reading the surface text. But to a people for which such a relationship of numbers was familiar and important, that could well be the most natural way to read the surface text.
So we should not assume that the surface text is what seems plain or common sense to us. The meanings that seem esoteric to us may be the meanings that were meant to be plain and common sense in the mind of the writer.
