If evolution is not valid science, somebody should tell the scientists.

[nolidad]

gluadys writes:

He knew the firmament was a long way up. He knew nothing of space.

He knew of a shamayim where the birds flew and a seperate shamayim that held the stars! It ain't so techinical but there is the concpet of atmosphere and space-- just in laymens terms. Sorry you refuse to accept it.

But you have not shown that the heavens are equivalent to space or that ancient Jewish teachers thought of the heavens as space.

Frankly I don' think any of yo TE's would accept it cause it doesn't use words like light years, and galaxies, and vacuum and th elike but its strill there.

Air below the firmament, yes. God above the firmament, yes. But there is not a single word about space in these verses. The words are heaven and heavens and heaven of heavens. And in Genesis the firmament is called heaven. The firmament is not space. So where is the evidence that the biblical writers or the old rabbinic teachers ever thought that heaven or the heaven of heavens consisted of space?

Well once agqain I will accept the teaching of the rabbinic scholars who have consistently said the heaven of heavens is what we call space because it cannot contain God! The heaven of heavens is never a euphemism for the city of God called heaven.

And how early are those teachings?

Iw ished I had kept them on my favorites list from another debate on a different forum. I will try to dig them up again and show that the teaching s date back to the 3-5th centuries B.C.
[/QUOTE]

Anyway, here is my take on the subject. I see two meanings of the word heaven in Genesis. There are the heavens God created in Gen 1:1 which are the heavens that exist today both the physical universe and the spiritual realms. We are told God created them but they are not explained to us, but Genesis tells here us that the universe astronomers study today, God created in the beginning.

Well you are entitled to your opinion, but why should you be taken credibly over thousands of years of teaching and Hebrew linguistics ont he subject? Can you present your credentials that would let us know we are to take "your take" on Genesis 1 seriously??

God creates what looks like a flat or bowl shaped expanse to separate the waters below the expanse (sea) from the water above the expanse (clouds). The expanse is what we call the sky. It is described as an expanse is because it stretches out flat or bowl shapped from horizon to horizon. Then we get a cosmology for neolithics lesson. God calls the expanse 'heavens'. Now we were already told God had created the heavens before he created the expanse, but this is a simplified version. See the sky with the clouds streatched across it? Lets call that 'heavens' for now. So in this purposely simplified cosmology, clouds are in the flat stretched out expanse of the heavens, bird of the heavens fly across its face, the sun moon and stars are lights in the heavens marking our days seasons and years. Gen 1:1 tells us there is more to the heavens than the sky, but that understanding will do for now.

Well thought out--but just wrong!! First off God knew that He created a globe no a flatr disc-- God is not a liar nor does He countenance fables attributed to HIs n ame unless it is clear it is a fable.

Second all throughout the OT there is a different word for clouds than water, and Moses being the editor of genesis would have certainly knwon to put clouds in cause He did haver the language down pretty good.

So your theory has to be discarded on teh face of the truth of Scripture.

There is no reference to the atmosphere curving completely around the earth, what Genesis calls the heavens, what Genesis teaches its neolithic listeners to call the heavens is simply the sky above them, the seemingly flat expanse from horizon to horizon. so when Noah talks of the high hills under the whole heaven being covered with water, he is using the vocabulary God gave us in Gen 1, he is talking about the hills under the visible expanse of the sky from horizon to horizon.

Well you may think God is a lousy teacher but thank HIm many don't. That is all speculation on your part and viewing pagan beliefs and imposing them on the bible without proof!

And the high hills were buried by 22.5 feet of water without spilling over!!! I mean the flood account is a pretty detailed account. How tall, wide and long for the ark, how many floors, God calling the animals to Noah, how long it rained, how long the fountains of the deep kept spilling water up, etc.etc. You think God would have made it known He was going to keep the waters standing up over the local mountains without spilling over!!

Plus God being omniscient would have known this tale as written would cause confusion to the Jews and the church until aggasiz and Cuvier and grey et al. But He decided to keep His people in the dark for millenia until secualr science could show what eh bible meant???

Well thank God we don't have to rely on that and the geologic record is prima facia evidence for a global flood.

It's a pity then the bible called the sky flat.

Then you need to get Gods Word cause HIs word calls it a stretched out expanse!! and a circuit or circle!

Where does the bible say the firmament was shattered with the flood?

Where does the bible say it is okay for man to fly in planes or drive in cars???

 

[gluadys]

He knew of a shamayim where the birds flew and a seperate shamayim that held the stars!

Agreed.

It ain't so techinical but there is the concpet of atmosphere and space-- just in laymens terms. Sorry you refuse to accept it.

Atmosphere, yes. Space no. Not unless you can show this from pre-Copernican writings. After all there were plenty of laypeople before modern times, too. How did they understand the scriptural description of the cosmos when no one had even mentioned outer space to them?


Ever read Milton's Paradise Lost? or Dante's Divine Comedy? Both have a good layperson's description of the heavens before helio-centricity was accepted. And there is no outer space in those heavens.

Frankly I don' think any of yo TE's would accept it cause it doesn't use words like light years, and galaxies, and vacuum and th elike but its strill there.

Doesn't need to use those terms. Doesn't even need to use the term "space". It just needs to indicate that the shamayim enclosing the atmosphere was not made of solid substance.

Well once agqain I will accept the teaching of the rabbinic scholars who have consistently said the heaven of heavens is what we call space because it cannot contain God!

All I am asking for is a pre-Copernican rabbinical statement to that effect. The older the better.

The heaven of heavens is never a euphemism for the city of God called heaven.

I don't recall making that claim.

Iw ished I had kept them on my favorites list from another debate on a different forum. I will try to dig them up again and show that the teaching s date back to the 3-5th centuries B.C.

I appreciate your frustration. I often wish too late that I had kept an item in my favorites. But that is what I am looking for.


btw--you are wrong about Columbus thinking the earth was flat. That the earth was a sphere had been known for nearly 2,000 years by the time he sailed.

 

[shernren]

SHERNREN:

You implied in your last posting that you reject the biblical date of c. 2600B.C. as the date f the flood.

So that would mean you reject teh chronologies following form NOah on and the geneologies. Well then in order for us to further debating I want specifics form you

1. When you beleive Noahs flood occured in JUST the Meso vaslley area.

2. What evidence you present to supersede the biblical datin gof Noahs flood

3. Also how do you reconcile NOah being thousands of years older than the bible shows and yet accepot Jesus as @2,000 years ago when we have direct line geneologies tying Jesus to NOah??

I cannot respond to any more ofyour threads until you get specific with this. And form now on I will ask very specific quetions for now I have to assume that you and I disagree on most dating points of Scripture.

Yes, I think we do, as we disagree in many other areas too. To be frank I haven't really done my homework in that particular area of origins yet - right now I sort-of-subscribe to the idea that the genealogies could have had gaps in them.

Well for all your elucidating on your theory and all yoru attacks against YEC beleivers you have yet to answer the simple question I asked--- How do yu define the resurrection as myth and what is your definition of myth in these terms??

I should apologize - I did not make my reply to this explicit and clear. I can often talk too much and say too little. Yes, I agree with your definition of myth:

an ancient story or set of stories, especially explaining in a literary way the early history of a group of people or about natural events and facts:

but not your interpretation of it:

which uses fiction to show some truth

Aren't the Gospels and Acts essentially stories?
Aren't they literary? (Exquisitely so.)
Don't they show the early history of Christianity and narrate the death and resurrection of Jesus?

Therefore they are myths by your own definition.
They are also history.
And they are also true.
The idea that "a myth cannot be true" is a scientism virus in modern thought systems. Nowhere in the Bible are we told that myths are somehow of less value than historical fact. In fact, the power of oral tradition in those times reverses the relationship.

I'll look at your explanation of raqiya shamayim. It sounds right. I need to go and learn up some Hebrew of my own very soon, but in the meantime, is it acceptable to study the Septuagint as the closest-to-original I can manage?

I have a question for you though, and I don't think it requires advanced Hebrew ... one of your "Jews knew outer space" verses was Psalm 19:1 : The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

But you say that the firmament was destroyed in releasing the floodwaters ... so how can the firmament still show his handywork? And how is it appropriate to call 99.9% pure vacuum "raqiya", which AFAIK (with my rudimentary Hebrew) comes from the idea of a metal being cast into a shape, and carried connotations of solidness and strength?

So you are saying God was incapable of telling His children the truth and had to resort to letting them buy into the pagan cosmologies of their day???

Look, the day you can teach an 8-year-old child the details of (since you're a YEC) Humphrey's (flawed) white hole cosmology, to the point where s/he can derive the earth time from the Schwarzchild time, then I'll concede. But until then I'll say it's just not doable. Plus the Hebrews were very much disadvantaged compared to even a modern child, and God had far more important things to communicate than quarks and electrons.

And God never really let them "buy into" the contemporary pagan cosmologies. There was one very big spiritual difference in what He taught them: the sun and moon and stars and seas and animals and birds and fish were all created, and therefore not worship-worthy. What rmswilliams refers to as the desacralization of nature. And that was the one stupendous error in pagan cosmology which God erased from their culture.

But having said that I see no conflict between Judaism, or even Christianity, and a solid dome over the sky - though it conflicts with modern science instead. So why are you protesting? For the Bible's sake or for science's sake?

No we accept the bible as is it is you who have to reinterpret the scriptures to fit what you beleive is the truth concerning science!! Your response is to attack YEC's as being unscinetific and out of touch, but we will accpet the Bible as written and we do knwo the difference between God speaking literally and God speaking parabolically. And the Bible when kept in its contexts was written as doctrine for all men for all cultures for all of temporal time!! It s not subject to change according to the latest cultural or educational "theories" unless the Bible itself leaves the room for it.

In that case I wholeheartedly recommend Solid Atmosphere Theory for your perusal and belief: http://www.christianforums.com/t2936947-the-sky-is-falling-solid-atmosphere-theory.html

 

[nolidad]

Yes, I think we do, as we disagree in many other areas too. To be frank I haven't really done my homework in that particular area of origins yet - right now I sort-of-subscribe to the idea that the genealogies could have had gaps in them.

Well seeing th eamount of attack info you have brought about on the flood, I am very skeptical that you haven't thought it out yet.

As for gaps in the geneologies-- you need a minimum of 4,400 years worth of evidential gaps. Reason? The european cave drawings suppossedly date to c. 7,000 B.C. and the chronolgy of Noahs flood is c. 2,600 B.C., The bible declares Noah to be the eighth from Adam so I don't see mush room for gaps.

They are also history.
And they are also true.

This would tend to just create confusion because the greek, Romans, Egyuptian gods are myth and they are not true. But I will accept your definition of myth in using it onthis thread.

I'll look at your explanation of raqiya shamayim. It sounds right. I need to go and learn up some Hebrew of my own very soon, but in the meantime, is it acceptable to study the Septuagint as the closest-to-original I can manage?

Yeah but just know that like from Greek to English, many times nuances are lost and nuances in teh original languages sometimes are very important.

But you say that the firmament was destroyed in releasing the floodwaters ... so how can the firmament still show his handywork? And how is it appropriate to call 99.9% pure vacuum "raqiya", which AFAIK (with my rudimentary Hebrew) comes from the idea of a metal being cast into a shape, and carried connotations of solidness and strength?

This is the one excpetion to the rule concerning raqia. I can only offer my opinion but then it is very equivocal.

Actually raqia is a verb which means to stretch out or expand. It is not connoted to a solid though it is used vastly in describing metalsmiths thinning out metal, tanners stretching hides and the like. Firmament is the Vulgate translation of the septugiants use of steroma which is the Hebrew raqia. You can do a google search and find alot fo differing opinions not just only between the cons and libs but even between cons and libs amongst libs.

Look, the day you can teach an 8-year-old child the details of (since you're a YEC) Humphrey's (flawed) white hole cosmology, to the point where s/he can derive the earth time from the Schwarzchild time, then I'll concede. But until then I'll say it's just not doable. Plus the Hebrews were very much disadvantaged compared to even a modern child, and God had far more important things to communicate than quarks and electrons.

This is a smolescreen argumetn to try to complicate a simple issue! I did not even try to imply that God could reveal the minutae of detail of modern astronomy! But He could and did tell His elect the earth was round, and there were two material heavens. The second one we call space. He didn't give the vast details- as it wass not important for HIS reasons- He jsut gave the basic facts. I cant teach a child schwarzchild time cause I don't even know what that means!! But I can teach a child that there is the heaven we call sky and has the clouds and birds fly in it and then we have the heavens we call space and it is very very big and that is where the stars are!!

What rmswilliams refers to as the desacralization of nature. And that was the one stupendous error in pagan cosmology which God erased from their culture.

This is true (but only after the flood) there is no evidence of preflood false gods. But there is also a big difference in the pagan and elect cosmologies-- we have the bible calling the earth a circle (orb) and the bible teaching of two material heavens. There is no evidence that the elect of the ages up to and in cluding the Hebrews held to the pagan cosmologies (except when they were backslidden and brough trinto captivity!)

But having said that I see no conflict between Judaism, or even Christianity, and a solid dome over the sky - though it conflicts with modern science instead. So why are you protesting? For the Bible's sake or for science's sake?

For boths! The preflood earth was vastly different than the post flood earth. The length of a mans life went drastically down after th eflood form the 900's to 400's down to the 70's and 80's. As for teh dome--the biblical evidence calls for some typ eof matrix holding the waters that God seperated in Genesis 1 and were held in store for the purpose of the flood.

In that case I wholeheartedly recommend Solid Atmosphere Theory for your perusal and belief: http://www.christianforums.com/t2936...re-theory.html

Thanks will do !

 

[nolidad]

appreciate your frustration. I often wish too late that I had kept an item in my favorites. But that is what I am looking for.

Well I was amazed that the other debate forum kept an archive. I found a few from one of the threads from both Chrisatian and Hebrew references.

http://www.bible.gen.nz/amos/hebrew/shin/shamayim.htm

http://www.carm.org/questions/threeheavens.htm

http://www.kolel.org/cgi-bin/webglimpse.cgi/web/www/kolel.org?MAXLINES=5&query=Firmament

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=472&letter=H

http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/other_papers/tom_maddux_the_three_story_universe.pdf

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atrium/3678/Gnosis/jewish2.htm

 

[rmwilliamsll]

But there is also a big difference in the pagan and elect cosmologies-- we have the bible calling the earth a circle (orb) and the bible teaching of two material heavens. There is no evidence that the elect of the ages up to and in cluding the Hebrews held to the pagan cosmologies (except when they were backslidden and brough trinto captivity!)

this is the crucial point in the discussion.

at least two options:
1-God taught the ancient Hebrews the way things really are, in contrast to the cosmologie s of the day.

2-God used the common ANE cosmology and corrected the theological ascepts of it and left the rest alone.

concentrate on few issues in the ANE cosmology, whether a solid firmament, a flat earth, a geocentric solar system, the moon as a light or whatever.

look at how the Babylonians and Egyptians looked at these issues. Then look at the text of the Scriptures where they talk about the same elements. Then look at the history of those verses, how Christians through the ages interpreted those elements as they were challenged by the rise of science and cosmology changed.

I believe that attention to these details shows that option#1 is untenable. Because of the conservative nature of religion at each stage where modern cosmology has overturned one of these elements, Christians have been left crying in the wilderness that to change was to desert God's very word. Not only is the current modern scientific cosomology completely unanticipated in Gen or anywhere in the Bible, the ANE cosmology is clearly being used in distinction to the modern......

 

[shernren]

This is a smolescreen argumetn to try to complicate a simple issue! I did not even try to imply that God could reveal the minutae of detail of modern astronomy! But He could and did tell His elect the earth was round, and there were two material heavens. The second one we call space. He didn't give the vast details- as it wass not important for HIS reasons- He jsut gave the basic facts. I cant teach a child schwarzchild time cause I don't even know what that means!! But I can teach a child that there is the heaven we call sky and has the clouds and birds fly in it and then we have the heavens we call space and it is very very big and that is where the stars are!!

It is not a smokescreen and it is not a complicated issue. It is actually a very simple one:

If God had wanted to communicate to the Jews a scientific worldview how would He have done it?

Remember, they haven't seen electricity. They still think life is caused by an elan vital or "life force" which makes living things fundamentally different from non-living things (while we today know that living things are driven by non-living chemical processes - even YECs agree on that, they just believe that God had to have started off those non-living chemical processes supernaturally). I don't know if they had magnets or not. Even in the time of Saul they couldn't work their own metal, they needed to get iron from the Philistines (IIRC).

What this tells me is that God wasn't interested in teaching them science at all. Because, to be frank, if God was being a science teacher to them, He did an atrocious job of it. We don't see even a hint of Newtonian ideas (very fundamental ones now: but we must not forget that "acceleration" was not something you measured and mathematicized until 400 years ago). Not even the slightest bit of calculus, which 16-year-old students routinely learn in schools in my country. Thunder is God shouting, lightning is hurled from heaven by God's hands, hail has storehouses and the sun has a tent from which it emerges in the dawn.

Given this, why should I be surprised to find that Genesis 1 abandons scientific accuracy for theological uniqueness? You yourself know the resources which say that theologically the Jewish cosmogony was very different from that of the cultures surrounding them, and nearly all of this stems from God brilliantly subverting the extant Canaanite mythos for His own agenda to give His people a theologically unique (although scientifically primitive like everyone else) view of the universe.

This is true (but only after the flood) there is no evidence of preflood false gods. But there is also a big difference in the pagan and elect cosmologies-- we have the bible calling the earth a circle (orb) and the bible teaching of two material heavens. There is no evidence that the elect of the ages up to and in cluding the Hebrews held to the pagan cosmologies (except when they were backslidden and brough trinto captivity!)

Actually, the sources you cite don't show it at all.

The CARM resource just lists verses describing "heavens" without showing that the Jews made a fundamental division between a heaven for the stars and heaven as the sky.

The list of Jewish quotes is really far ahead of patriarchal time (150 BC? Isn't that at least 1500 years later?), and its concept of a sphere for each planet seems to be more a borrowed idea from Hellenism than anything even implicit in the Bible. Note that in accordance with the cosmogony of the day (but not with the picture of God giving the Jews a scientifically accurate cosmology) we see nothing of Uranus and Neptune. (Pluto isn't really much of a planet to shout about, and I wouldn't have been surprised if God considered it "just another Oort Cloud body I don't need to tell people about", but Uranus and Neptune are noticeable omissions which can't be explained by any model of God-teaches-science but can be explained by the crudity of optical apparatus pre-Galileo.) Also, I can't find any reference to the stars at all. Did they conceive the stars as being beyond the planets? Could they have even mentalized the four light-years' distance between the nearest star and us?

And from the PDF:
... heaven, in which the birds fly and clouds hold water, and in whose outer reaches the stars and planets move.

This is the one excpetion to the rule concerning raqia. I can only offer my opinion but then it is very equivocal.

Actually raqia is a verb which means to stretch out or expand. It is not connoted to a solid though it is used vastly in describing metalsmiths thinning out metal, tanners stretching hides and the like. Firmament is the Vulgate translation of the septugiants use of steroma which is the Hebrew raqia. You can do a google search and find alot fo differing opinions not just only between the cons and libs but even between cons and libs amongst libs.

If the raqiya is still displaying the glory of God how can it have been destroyed in the Flood?

 

[gluadys]

Well I was amazed that the other debate forum kept an archive. I found a few from one of the threads from both Chrisatian and Hebrew references.

ok. let's take a look at them.


http://www.bible.gen.nz/amos/hebrew/shin/shamayim.htm

A definition. No reference to outer space.


http://www.carm.org/questions/threeheavens.htm

I like the first sentence from this site:

At the time of ancient Israel they did not have as complete an understanding of the universe as we do today. So they wrote in terms they were familiar with. The Jews spoke of three heavens. The first heaven consisted of the the earth atmosphere where the clouds and birds were. The second heaven was where the sun, stars, and moon was. The third heaven was the dwelling place of God.​

The identification of the second heaven as the abode of the sun, stars and moon does not imply that this abode is outer space.

The authors of the site do identify it as outer space when they gather the scriptural references. But they should have remembered their first sentence and not imposed a modern perspective on the ancient one. They did not derive that description from scripture nor from ancient commentaries (see below).


http://www.kolel.org/cgi-bin/webglimpse.cgi/web/www/kolel.org?MAXLINES=5&query=Firmament

Now this is exactly what I am looking for. Note how the compilers of this glossary go right back to the ancient rabbis to see how they understood the Hebrew terms. Emphasis added.

The Hebrew root ( ) also appears in Isaiah 42:5, 44:24, and Psalm 136:6, with the meaning 'to spread out' (like a tent), or 'establish.' Job 39:14 reads: Can you help God stretch *out the heavens, Firm as a mirror of cast metal? It is also used to mean stamp [your feet] in Ezekiel 6:11; 25:6. We see in the construction of the Mishkan, that the root is used in stamping metal. "The ephod was made of gold...They hammered out sheets of gold..." (Exodus 39:3) Step 5. Study Commentators The Rabbis are always a handy source for help. Rav said, 'The heavens were in a fluid form on the first day, and on the second day they solidified.' Rav thus said, 'Let there be a firmament means let the firmament become strong.' Rabbi Yehudah the son of Rabbi Shimon said, 'Let the firmament become like a plate, just as you say in the verse (Ex. 39:3), 'And they did beat [from the same Hebrew root] the gold into thin plates.' (Breishit Rabbah 4:1)​

*verb form of 'rakiya'

It seems clear that Rav and Rabbi Shimon understood the firmament to be a solid structure.


http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=472&letter=H

This seems to agree that what you are referring to as the second heaven was a solid structure. Emphasis added.

Chiefly, the upper part of the universe in contradistinction to the earth (Gen. i. 1); the region in which sun, moon, and stars are placed (Gen. i. 17). It is stretched out as a curtain (Isa. xl. 22), and is founded upon the mountains as on pillars sunk into the waters of the earth (II Sam. xxii. 8; Prov. viii. 27-29).​

http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/other_papers/tom_maddux_the_three_story_universe.pdf

A modern interpretation, not backed up by any references to ancient interpretations.



http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atrium/3678/Gnosis/jewish2.htm

Highly mystical, but so far as the physical reality of the heavens goes, it relates to the seven heavens identified with the stars called planets. This is consistent with both flat-earth and spherical earth geo-centric cosmologies in which the heavens are not space, but solid structures.

It should have said; “Heaven was opened.” Why does it say; “The heavens were opened?” This teaches us that seven heavens were opened to Ezekiel: Samayyim; Shemi ha-Shamayyim; Zevul; Araphel; Shehakim; Aravot; and the Throne of Glory. Rabbi Levi said in the name of Rabbi Yose of Ma’on; Rabbi Meir said; “The Holy One, blessed be He, created seven heavens and in these there are seven chariots* [Merkava]....​

*These would be the chariots which carried the planets, just as the sun was often pictured being carried in a chariot. Ancient peoples believed the planets were a special category of stars, not rocky earth-like bodies.


So, it seems that there is no pre-Copernican interpretation of scripture by ancient Jewish commentators that identifies heaven as an expanse of vacant space, but rather as a solid structure. Although there are a variety of visions of the cosmos, all ancient versions, including the Hebrew versions, feature a solid firmament, not the space of modern cosmology.

Only when the concept of space had entered modern post-Copernican consciousness did anyone interpret "firmament" to mean an expanse of space rather than an expanse of metal (like Job's mirror) or skin (like Isaiah's tent).

This is an anachronistic imposition of modern science on an ancient text.

 

[Assyrian]

And this is you taking a modern use of idioms and imposing it backwards in time! Idioms in ancinet Hebrew are not like our use of idioms. Go check with a rabbi and learn something new. The term dying you will surely die shows the result and the process. the result is mortal death. The process is dying--meaning that as time progresses youa re reaching the goal of death- so you are dying to wards death!

That was me taking a modern idiom you would recognise, because you don't seem to recognise idioms in Hebrew. But idioms are not a modern development or confined to English. They occur in languages throughout the world and throughout history. Hebrew is rich in idom. 'Heaven of heavens' is an idiom. It does not mean the place heavens go when they die, it means the highest heaven just as 'king of kings' means the high king. Gen 22:17 your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, does not mean Abrahams's descendents will run off with their enemies doors. It does not mean their enemy's gates would be possessed by the ghost of Abraham's children, like the front door in the Adam's family home that opens by itself when people knock. It is an idiom that means they will capture their cities.

'Dying you will die' does not mean as time progresses you will reach the goal of death. It means surely die, and the rest of the verse tell us when Adam would surely die, the day he ate the fruit. The previous verse uses the same idiom. Gen 2:16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden. The Hebrew says eating you will eat. But it does not mean Adam would begin the process of eating a banana and as time progresses he would eventually reach the goal and finish it. It means he could surely eat. He was allowed eat any of them.

Num 35:16 tells us, the murderer shall surely be put to death. As Greens literal version put it dying the murderer shall die. Does this mean the murderer was to begin a process of being put to death and finally reach the goal of dying 930 years later? No. It is the same idiom we seen in Gen 2:17. The murderer will surely die.

And AGAIN context determines definition. An angel with a sword is definitely going to be construed as guarding- while a command to dress a garden and shamar it- is not going to be construed as guarding except to those who have to make it say that!! Remember Adam was not going to have to work hard in th egarden until after the fall and Goid made work hard--but yoiu ahve him working hard before the fall!!

The context of a gardener being told to shamar a garden means protect, just as much as it does for an armed guard. By the way Adam did not work in the garden after the fall, he was kicked out and had to grow his own crops.

Sorry but wrong again. Having to "interpret" something means to give definition or define terms-- we just simply accept it at its face value in light of rules governing grammar!! We don't nned the latest advancements of "science" to let us know what teh bible is saying! We don't have to relegaste clear simple stastements to "myth" because to accept them at their face value destroys ouyr thinking-- we allow Gods word to form ourt thinking and then funnel all other thoughts through that (or at least we struggel to do so) while you will elt a-theistic science tell you what you should beleive and then alter the scriptures to fit what they tell you is truth! Big difference here!!

You interpret it as prose rather than poetry, a historical narrative rather than prophecy, that it was meant literally rather than figuratively. All these are interpretations you make even before you start looking at the text. Then you interpret the timescale as six days even though the text never says that, the animals as herbivores even though the text never says that. Then creationists ignore the literal meaning of the text when it contradicts their theology. The order of creation in Gen 2 is different from Gen 1 so it has to be reinterpreted. Adam surely dying the day he ate the fruit cannot be taken literally so you reinterpret it.

WOW !!! I read your fanciful opinion of you think God might have meant when He told the animals that vegetation was to bew food for them, and I stand amazed that you and your fellow TE's would even think of accusing any YEC of imposing modern thinking in to the scriptures! I truly am saddened for you! Even linguists have come outr and said trhat genesis 1 does teach a 6 day creation, vegetarianism for all animals and no death before sin-- they just do not beleive they are true. You go further down the slip[pery slope and say that even though that is what the words say you can no longer see that and look through the jaded glasses of reinterpretation!! It really breaks my heart for you to read the biblew and look at wordsa and then say I know what it says but it soesn't mean what it says.

Can you give a reference for you claim that linguists say Gen teaches a six day creation?

There may be other interpretations of Gen 1:30. I have no problem with that. I do know that the interpretation I have have given you is one that is true today. It works and it fulfil what God says. Green plants do form the food source for every creature. What I can tell you is that your claim that there were no carnivores is simply your interpretation, a further implication you think you see from the passage, but it is not what the verse actually says.

Well then you show by verse when God subjected the universe to the bondage of phthora (decay destruction and persishing) You are great to say that it is unrtelated to the fall but I don't see you giving a time frame when God placed creation under servitude to phthora. (that is what subjected means BTW to make one a slave)
Well when I get teh time I will finds them again and hopefully will allow you to shut up for a change.

Romans 8 does not say when God subject creation to the bondage to decay. It simply says that God did. But I have given you a timeframe from 1Cor 15. Decay is part of the way God created us.

Nice try but no! Then Adam also was omnivorous for he was told to eat fruit and veggies only. So He must have eaten meat from animals who ater lettuce (rabbits) corn(raccoons, beavers etc) seeds (fowl of varied kinds). So when God told Noah it was OK to eat meat in Genesis 9 that was a redundant statemetn for Noah was already doing it, if we are top remain consitent with your interpretation.

I suppose God telling Moses that the Israelites should be circumcised was redundant too, because he had already commanded Abraham. I have no problem with Adam eating any of the animals he had been given dominion over, but your argument that he had to is badly flawed. Just because wolves were free to get their nutrition through carrot fed rabbits, does not mean rabbits had to be carnivores too.

HAve you been so long twisitng the Scriptures that you cannot understand its simple text anymore???

Long enough to learn that God loves to speak to us in poetry, prophetic pictures and parable. Long enough to learn that God is not autistic unable to see meaning beyond the dry literal meaning.

Let us look at you rverse in context and see how foolish your accusation is:

Lev.25:

3Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof;

4But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the LORD: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard.
5That which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest thou shalt not reap, neither gather the grapes of thy vine undressed: for it is a year of rest unto the land.
6And the sabbath of the land shall be meat for you; for thee, and for thy servant, and for thy maid, and for thy hired servant, and for thy stranger that sojourneth with thee. 7And for thy cattle, and for the beast that are in thy land, shall all the increase thereof be meat.

The subject IS NOT Israel eating dirtr-- but that the land will know rest every 7th year. And in that year there is to be no farm activity on the land-but it is to grow of its own accord- and the food that grows is not to be harvested but used as food, and according to rabbinic thought- on an as needed basis- no storing or large harvesting done. C'mon you should know better than the silliness you proposed.

I understand the land was to be left fallow the seventh year. The Israelites were not to farm it but the land was going to continue to produce vegetation, corn, figs and grapes they could eat, cattle and sheep would continue to eat the grass and the Israelites would eat their meat. But the way God describes his provision was the sabbath of the land shall be for meat. This is the same construction we saw in Genesis 1:30 where Gid gives every green herb for meat.

If we take your interpretation, that Gen 1:30 has to mean no one ate anything other than vegetables, the same rigid hermenutic applied to Leviticus would mean the Isrealites had to eat clay.

Well it is a command whether you like it or not-- you just dont like the implications so you add all sorts of complicated "added addendums" to try to prove Scripture doesn't mean what it explicitly says! And in Chptr one it explicitly says that vegetation was to be food for all the beasts! Not indirectly but directly!! If God wanted to show that animals were carnivores in the beginning He could have used the same language He did in the Psalms or Genesis 9 or elsewherein Scripture--but He didn't. So the burden of proof is actually on you.

You mean the language he used in Psalm 104 where he was feeding meat to lions in a creation account? There is no command in Gen 1:30, it is simply a provision. You think it 'explicitly says' there were no carnivores, but it never does. You really need to read the text and see what it actually says.


Cheers Assyrian

 

[Assyrian]

You guys should write your own vwersion of the bible and stop twisting this one so much!! Gen. 9 was a permission to eat meat weith a "proviso" added-- don't eat the blood! 3Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.

This is so clear!! Now animals can be food just like the green herb was!! I have biblical evidence and have displayed it-- you just twist and complicate it with all side theories to hold onto TE. Genesis 9 refers back to what people ate before the flood and Genesis 1 definitively shows what was eaten before the flood.

When did God give man the green herb to eat?

Tell you what--go find a child of say 6-7 and show trhem these verses in say the NIV and ask them what it means. Dont hint- dont explain just ask them what it means--See God gives wisdom to the childlike but hides His face from the sophists of the world.

1Cor 14:20 Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be men.

No I think Moses and Peter werte using phraseology to tell us that God is longsuffering and patient and time is not an issue with God. And if you t hink the thousand years is referring ot creation then you really do not know how to read things in th ebible at all.

I don't see where you get the idea that 'as' means a comparison is not literal. Comparisons such as 'the blue whale is as long as thee double decker buses', can be quite literal. Of course I agree Moses and Peter are not saying God's days are all exactly 1000 years long. this is being much more rigid than the writers intended. They do mean that God's 'days' are much longer than our concept of a day. Yes there is an implication that God is long suffering, but also the warning not to squeeze God into a human timetable, as YECs do, because God's days are vastly longer than ours. We see this throughout the bible in passages about 'the day of the Lord' or 'the day of vengeance of our God'.

Genesis describes the heavbens as a stretched out expanse-- not a flat expanse, but if you looked up the root of raqia (raqa) you would understand that.

The root meaning of raqia is to beat something until it spread flat and wide, out like a lump of metal being beaten into a flat sheet.

And no we are not talking about Noahs ideas- we are talking about what God said to Noah and what God did, and NOah just wrote it down! Remember if you hold that you have to come upo with unrecorded miracles like shernren and declare that the waters just piled up 22.5 feet above the Meso valley mountains and did not spill over them! You also have to come up with Noahs flood being at least 8,000 B.C. or older for according to archeologists and C-14 we have european cave drawings approx 7,000B.C. so yo uhave some real problems to solve in you r flood theory even if you want to protrest it bein g just a local event,

There is nothing in the flood account to say that God simply dictated everything to Noah, instead it reads like an eye witness account of the events. Does the account say the waters were 15 cubits deep over the hills? It says the waters prevailed, that is, the waters were strong, mighty. It sounds like a description of waves 15 cubits high, as high as the ark itself if it was floating at its mid line. So we have waves 15 cubits high, that even covered the hills. It doesn't say the hills were covered 15 cubits deep, but that waves 15 cubits high washed over the hills.

Did you talk to Isaiah?? Or are you just taking surrounding cosmologies again and trying to force the Jews to beleive those without evidence!

Just looking at what Isaiah said.

Ok why don't you prove he just meant region and not the planet or the whole earth. You guys keep demanding proofs and we give it and you reject it--now its your turn-- show that this means just the local area.

I have just shown you that it earth meant a region or Cain was an astronaut who settled on planet Nod.
I am quite happy with an interpretation that say Noah's flood could have meant either a region or the planet. (Though in the context of Cain, the flood would have had to fill the universe to drown Cain's descendants on planet Nod.) But if erets can mean either a region or the world, you cannot say the bible tells us it was the planet that covered.

Only to those with a negative bias to ward Scripture!

Just looking at what the scripture actually tells us. Seeing as erets in Genesis can be read as either a global or local flood, and Job, Psalms and Proverbs all contradict a global flood, the only scriptural interpretation is local.

Amazing isn't it?? Before the fall God declared that every herb would be food for the beasts but in Psalm 104 written after the fall it now says this:
21The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God.
Maybe God was having a bad day in Genesis 1 and couldn't tell Adam this very simple thing like He said here?? Let me see--

Genesis herb for meat
Psalm prey for meat! something sure changed!!

Simple =>
herb for prey for meat
Same as Sabbath of the land for meat really means
Sabbath of the land for grass for sheep for meat
I don't think you are right to say God was having a bad day.

ir the Godly orb that circle also means that got corrupted by pagans and then corrupted Jews t hinking and the churches thinking for centuries! I have seen many of yoiru "scholars" declaration of the Jews and pre Jewish bible writeres as declaring they haeld to the same cosmologies as the pagans surrounding them, but they never seem to produce the evidence to prove that!! HMMM??? Is it because they have none other than their own "superior intellect"????

If the writers meant a sphere rather than a circle, you would think they would have used a word that was more specific wouldn't you? How were the Israelites supposed to learn your godly cosmology if the bible doesn't tell them it is really a sphere instead of a circle?

Well seein ghow gnosis is the root word that became the english word science your protests are rather juvenile. And I will take my use of the AV over any other english translation (with the possible exception of the NAS) and my greek and Hebrew aids and dictionaries and commentaries anyday over your "modern" benighted view based on the sceptics view of God.

Actually gnosis is the root word that became the English words gnostic and know. But if you want to use the AV you should learn 16th century English and not confuse it with usages came up centuries later and never entered the minds of the translators of the AV. Unless of course you think a stalled ox (Pro 15:17) is one whose engine cut out.

to shernren:

You have completely reversed the reason for the Sabbath.

Actually Jesus did that: The Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath.

When a noun (raqia) is used as an adjectival noun it is clarifying or distinguishing the noun from other uses.

Genesis 1:6&8 is describing a creation that God called heaven as well as the heaven created in 1:1 1:6 is a second heaven that God created. So you have the first heaven (shamayim) and you have the second heaven which is called (raqia).

Ha shamayim the first 'heaven' you talk about actually means the 'heavens'. Then God makes the sky raqia and called it 'heavens' too. Is this two sets of heavenses? That means there are at least four of them not the three you talk about. Or was God naming the sky 'heavens' when the heavens already existed before the sky was made, a simplified cosmology for people without telescopes?

Surely 'the heaven of heavens' or 'the highest heaven' as the phrase means, refers to the realm where God and the angels dwell. After all, that has to be higher than than the mere materialistic astronomical heavens? Paul tells us the third heaven is paradise.

Assyrian

 

[nolidad]

mrwilliams writes:

look at how the Babylonians and Egyptians looked at these issues. Then look at the text of the Scriptures where they talk about the same elements. Then look at the history of those verses, how Christians through the ages interpreted those elements as they were challenged by the rise of science and cosmology changed.

Well their cosmologies would have some similarities as their races came to be ffrorm the dispersion at Babel--they are just corrupted imitation of the
truth of God.

2-God used the common ANE cosmology and corrected the theological ascepts of it and left the rest alone.

Then you are left in the precarious position of saying God intentionally inspired something He knew was not the truth about the cosmos but just tweaked it to correct the theological implications. Once again you have God intentionally deceiving man. If you say it is because they could not understand basic concepts then you are just inserting your own supposition.

Not only is the current modern scientific cosomology completely unanticipated in Gen or anywhere in the Bible, the ANE cosmology is clearly being used in distinction to the modern......

Well of course modern "scientific cosmology" nt anticipated in the bible cause it is not how God called in to existence the universe!

Gluadys writes:

The authors of the site do identify it as outer space when they gather the scriptural references. But they should have remembered their first sentence and not imposed a modern perspective on the ancient one. They did not derive that description from scripture nor from ancient commentaries (see below).

Well this is a dead end discussion. I have repeatedly said that the though to fouter space was very basic and not any where near the depth we have today! They did not understand vaccum and redshift etal. so I think this thought is dead. Cause I think unless you see some anciuent rabbi using the terms "outer space" you will not acceopt they had a very basic understanding that the 2nd heaven was the dwelling place for the sun moon and stars.

So, it seems that there is no pre-Copernican interpretation of scripture by ancient Jewish commentators that identifies heaven as an expanse of vacant space, but rather as a solid structure. Although there are a variety of visions of the cosmos, all ancient versions, including the Hebrew versions, feature a solid firmament, not the space of modern cosmology.

But once again you are confusing the solid dome lid of trhe raqia (what we call atmosphere) that held the flood waters up when God divided the waters with the heaven of heavens which the sun, moon and stars all made their circuits. The solid portion of the heavens (the dome of the raqia) was destroyed at the flood. Once again you are putting hte cart before the horse. It was the biblical cosmology that is premier and all other ANE cosmologies were corruptions from tyhe true when these civilazations came to be after the dispersion at Babel.

Assyrian writes:

'Dying you will die' does not mean as time progresses you will reach the goal of death. It means surely die, and the rest of the verse tell us when Adam would surely die, the day he ate the fruit. The previous verse uses the same idiom. Gen 2:16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden. The Hebrew says eating you will eat. But it does not mean Adam would begin the process of eating a banana and as time progresses he would eventually reach the goal and finish it. It means he could surely eat. He was allowed eat any of them.

Well I have three Hebrew experts all with at least masters in Hebrew that say you are wrong.

The fact that the second die in the verse is in the qal imperfect lets us know it is an ongoing process:

8811 Imperfect

The imperfect expresses an action, process or condition which is
incomplete, and it has a wide range of meaning:

1a) It is used to describe a single (as opposed to a repeated) action
in the past; it differs from the perfect in being more vivid and
pictorial. The perfect expresses the "fact", the imperfect adds
colour and movement by suggesting the "process" preliminary to its
completion.

Num 35:16 tells us, the murderer shall surely be put to death. As Greens literal version put it dying the murderer shall die. Does this mean the murderer was to begin a process of being put to death and finally reach the goal of dying 930 years later? No. It is the same idiom we seen in Gen 2:17. The murderer will surely die.

Well this is in the hophal imperfect which has a differing sense than the qal imperfect

Gen 2:16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden. The Hebrew says eating you will eat. But it does not mean Adam would begin the process of eating a banana and as time progresses he would eventually reach the goal and finish it. It means he could surely eat. He was allowed eat any of them.

This is the qal imperfect which lets us know that the trees are what Adam is free to continue to eat from. It is a phrase that says Adam is free to keep eating form the trees-the qal impoerfect tells us it is a process that will be ongoing!!

The context of a gardener being told to shamar a garden means protect, just as much as it does for an armed guard. By the way Adam did not work in the garden after the fall, he was kicked out and had to grow his own crops.

My bad! I was focused that prior to the fall the work was not difficult-but after the fall God cursed the gorund and made the labor hard for Adam.

But you are wrong about the garden-- in its context (kept in the bigger context of the chapter) manage is the only difinition that makes proper sense in light of all other facts of the chapter.

You interpret it as prose rather than poetry, a historical narrative rather than prophecy, that it was meant literally rather than figuratively. All these are interpretations you make even before you start looking at the text.

Actually these are things I came to after looking at the texts and parsing them and understanding they are prose and not petry and statemetn of facts and not prophecy. And that teh construct was meant to be taken literally as they have been for 6,000 years by the majoprity of beleivers.

Then you interpret the timescale as six days even though the text never says that, the animals as herbivores even though the text never says that.

Well I interpret it as six lteral days because the text tells us clearly it is six literal days. And we see it as anilals eating greens cause the text says that greens will be their food. It is you that is imposing modern scientific thoughts on the texts becuase you just can't accpet the simple command of God.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

Then you are left in the precarious position of saying God intentionally inspired something He knew was not the truth about the cosmos but just tweaked it to correct the theological implications. Once again you have God intentionally deceiving man. If you say it is because they could not understand basic concepts then you are just inserting your own supposition.


only if God intends Genesis to be read as a scientific textbook, that is as a description of how things work as well as a theological text telling us Who created the heavens and the earth.

Again, it is curious that both YECists and atheists declare the same hermeneutic concerning Genesis. That it must be giving us an accurate description of the world as it really is. The atheist says "see the Bible is wrong the earth is not flat, with a solid firmament with the sun revolving around it" therefore the Bible is wrong about everything it says.

and the YECists declares the very same hermeneutic, that if God is using anything historically or scientifically false then the whole thing must be wrong, therefore God must be teaching modern cosmology, because we know it is true, and God can not lie.

 

[gluadys]

Well this is a dead end discussion. I have repeatedly said that the though to fouter space was very basic and not any where near the depth we have today! They did not understand vaccum and redshift etal. so I think this thought is dead. Cause I think unless you see some anciuent rabbi using the terms "outer space" you will not acceopt they had a very basic understanding that the 2nd heaven was the dwelling place for the sun moon and stars.

I don't need the term "outer space". I do need an understanding that the raquiya was not a solid structure. But look at what Rav said---"on the second day the firmament solidified". A firmament which solidified is not open space.

Look at the description from the jewish encyclopedia. The firmament was held up by pillars. What need does space have to be held up by pillars?

But once again you are confusing the solid dome lid of trhe raqia (what we call atmosphere) that held the flood waters up when God divided the waters with the heaven of heavens which the sun, moon and stars all made their circuits.

You are the one who is confused. raqiya IS the solid dome. It is not the air/atmosphere enclosed within the dome.

The solid portion of the heavens (the dome of the raqia) was destroyed at the flood.

This is adding to the text what is not in the text. Other scriptural passages clearly indicate the continued existence of the raqia. The notion that it was destroyed is a very modern interpretation I only heard about less than 10 years ago. I doubt you will find it in any commentary prior to the 20th century. There is no scriptural justification for inventing this idea.

 

[gluadys]

The context of a gardener being told to shamar a garden means protect, just as much as it does for an armed guard. By the way Adam did not work in the garden after the fall, he was kicked out and had to grow his own crops.

Interestingly, the same notion attaches to the English word. The Latin term for garden was "hortus" from which we get "horticulture". A "hortus gardinus" was a garden protected from unwanted visitors by an enclosure. Eventually the meaning of "hortus" was tranferred--in French, German and English--to the protecting enclosure "gardinus".


http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=garden&searchmode=none

 

[Assyrian]

Well I have three Hebrew experts all with at least masters in Hebrew that say you are wrong.
...
This is the qal imperfect which lets us know that the trees are what Adam is free to continue to eat from. It is a phrase that says Adam is free to keep eating form the trees-the qal impoerfect tells us it is a process that will be ongoing!!

You seem to set a lot of store on these three experts with their masters degrees. Against that we have all the translation committees for our English bibles who missed out on the ongoing process of eating fruit in Gen 2:16, especially the ones who thought the infinitive + verb was a construction used to indicate a strengthening of the verb, and mistakenly translated it 'freely eat', 'eat freely' or 'surely eat'. According to your three experts, they should really have translated it 'continually eat', 'gradually eat' or 'keep eating'. Why not write to them and explain their mistake

In fact God simply gave Adam permission to eat and gave it in a form that meant he should 'surely eat' or 'freely eat'. The permission wasn't revoked until he was kicked out of the garden, but the construction used simply emphasised that Adam should eat, not the any timescale involved.

The fact that the second die in the verse is in the qal imperfect lets us know it is an ongoing process:

8811 Imperfect

The imperfect expresses an action, process or condition which is
incomplete, and it has a wide range of meaning:

1a) It is used to describe a single (as opposed to a repeated) action
in the past; it differs from the perfect in being more vivid and
pictorial. The perfect expresses the "fact", the imperfect adds
colour and movement by suggesting the "process" preliminary to its
completion.

You are ignoring the fact that the imperfect is in a construction with the infinitive which gives the whole phrase the meaning 'surely', as we see when the same construction is translated in passages through out the bible.

But if you say the imperfect describes a single action in the past, how could Adam die (single action) the day he ate the fruit, and still be alive the next day? Even it he died (single continuous action) the day he ate the fruit, it would mean he was dead by night fall, otherwise he didn't actually die that day. In fact the grammatic construction says nothing about single or continuous actions but tells us Adam would definitely die, on the day he ate the fruit.

Assyrian: Num 35:16 tells us, the murderer shall surely be put to death. As Greens literal version put it dying the murderer shall die. Does this mean the murderer was to begin a process of being put to death and finally reach the goal of dying 930 years later? No. It is the same idiom we seen in Gen 2:17. The murderer will surely die.

nolidad: Well this is in the hophal imperfect which has a differing sense than the qal imperfect

But you have just given us a long section basing you argument on Gen 2:17 using the imperfect. The difference between qal and hophal is that hophal is passive and causative, 'die' as opposed to 'cause to be put to death'. But they are both infinitive + imperfect, which means, as all those bible translators tell us, 'surely be put to death'.

When God appeared to Abimelech and tells him if he doesn't return Sarah to Abraham 'you shall surely die' Gen 20:3, was he talking about a gradual process, or warning that his death was certain? When Manoah and his wife saw the angel of the Lord, why did he tell his wife "We shall surely die, for we have seen God." Judges 13:22.? Did he think they were going to grow old and slowly die? Or did he mean they would surely die, as the bible translators thought? What did Saul mean when he told the priest "You shall surely die, Ahimelech, you and all your father's house." 1Sam 22:16? If he meant a continuing process that finally resulted in Abimelech's death, why did he then go and order Doeg the Edomite to "turn and strike the priests"? Why did Doeg kill them all that day if Saul really meant a gradual process?

But you are wrong about the garden-- in its context (kept in the bigger context of the chapter) manage is the only difinition that makes proper sense in light of all other facts of the chapter.

I think by context, you mean theological presuppositions, but the actual context of a gardener told to shamar a garden, is the the way any gardener will shamar his gardens. It means watch, protect, guard.

Actually these are things I came to after looking at the texts and parsing them and understanding they are prose and not petry and statemetn of facts and not prophecy. And that teh construct was meant to be taken literally as they have been for 6,000 years by the majoprity of beleivers.

In other words, you look at the text and decide how you should interpret it.

I am not sure how you can decide Gen 1 is not prophecy, when clearly no human witnesses were around to tell us what happened and the only way we could find out is if God told someone. Jewish Rabbis have understood Gen 1 is poetic, as Jerome the great Hebrew scholar of the early chuch who said Moses described the creation 'after the manner of a popular poet'.

Well I interpret it as six lteral days because the text tells us clearly it is six literal days. And we see it as anilals eating greens cause the text says that greens will be their food. It is you that is imposing modern scientific thoughts on the texts becuase you just can't accpet the simple command of God.

As we have seen, the animals were limited to eating vegetation the same way the Israelites were limited to eating clay every seven years.

Genesis uses the word day in three or four different ways in the first two chapters. I am not sure that is a good basis to insist 'literal day' as the only way to interpret it. Even if you interpret the days literally, you still don't get a six day creation. Instead you have six work of creation followed by each of the numbered days. We are not told how long the creative period were, and the numbered days don't start until each period is over. Nothing in Genesis tell us the world was created in six days.

Blessings Assyrian

 

[nolidad]

Assyrian writes:

There may be other interpretations of Gen 1:30. I have no problem with that. I do know that the interpretation I have have given you is one that is true today. It works and it fulfil what God says. Green plants do form the food source for every creature.

This makes you guilty of what your side has said I have done--taken modern understanding and forcing it back onto the scriptures. But God di dnot say that some animals will eat herbs indirestly--The bible says that the animals were given vegeatation to be their food! That is all-no more or less

Can you give a reference for you claim that linguists say Gen teaches a six day creation?

From K&D Hebrew commentary on the OT:

"Thus evening was and morning was one day." אחד (one), like εἷς and unus, is used at the commencement of a numerical series for the ordinal primus (cf. Gen_2:11; Gen_4:19; Gen_8:5, Gen_8:15). Like the numbers of the days which follow, it is without the article, to show that the different days arose from the constant recurrence of evening and morning. It is not till the sixth and last day that the article is employed (Gen_1:31), to indicate the termination of the work of creation upon that day. It is to be observed, that the days of creation are bounded by the coming of evening and morning. The first day did not consist of the primeval darkness and the origination of light, but was formed after the creation of the light by the first interchange of evening and morning. The first evening was not the gloom, which possibly preceded the full burst of light as it came forth from the primary darkness, and intervened between the darkness and full, broad daylight. It was not till after the light had been created, and the separation of the light from the darkness had taken place, that evening came, and after the evening the morning; and this coming of evening (lit., the obscure) and morning (the breaking) formed one, or the first day. It follows from this, that the days of creation are not reckoned from evening to evening, but from morning to morning. The first day does not fully terminate till the light returns after the darkness of night; it is not till the break of the new morning that the first interchange of light and darkness is completed, and a ἡερονύκτιον has passed. The rendering, "out of evening and morning there came one day," is at variance with grammar, as well as with the actual fact. With grammar, because such a thought would require 'echaad אחדליום; and with fact, because the time from evening to morning does not constitute a day, but the close of a day. The first day commenced at the moment when God caused the light to break forth from the darkness; but this light did not become a day, until the evening had come, and the darkness which set in with the evening had given place the next morning to the break of day. Again, neither the words ערבויהיבקרויהי, nor the expression בקרערב, evening-morning (= day), in Dan_8:14, corresponds to the Greek νυχθη̈́̀ερον, for morning is not equivalent to day, nor evening to night. The reckoning of days from evening to evening in the Mosaic law (Lev_23:32), and by many ancient tribes (the pre-Mohammedan Arabs, the Athenians, Gauls, and Germans), arose not from the days of creation, but from the custom of regulating seasons by the changes of the moon. But if the days of creation are regulated by the recurring interchange of light and darkness, they must be regarded not as periods of time of incalculable duration, of years or thousands of years, but as simple earthly days. It is true the morning and evening of the first three days were not produced by the rising and setting of the sun, since the sun was not yet created; but the constantly recurring interchange of light and darkness, which produced day and night upon the earth, cannot for a moment be understood as denoting that the light called forth from the darkness of chaos returned to that darkness again, and thus periodically burst forth and disappeared. The only way in which we can represent it to ourselves, is by supposing that the light called forth by the creative mandate, "Let there be," was separated from the dark mass of the earth, and concentrated outside or above the globe, so that the interchange of light and darkness took place as soon as the dark chaotic mass began to rotate, and to assume in the process of creation the form of a spherical body. The time occupied in the first rotations of the earth upon its axis cannot, indeed, be measured by our hour-glass; but even if they were slower at first, and did not attain their present velocity till the completion of our solar system, this would make no essential difference between the first three days and the last three, which were regulated by the rising and setting of the sun.
(Note: Exegesis must insist upon this, and not allow itself to alter the plain sense of the words of the Bible, from irrelevant and untimely regard to the so-called certain inductions of natural science. Irrelevant we call such considerations, as make interpretation dependent upon natural science, because the creation lies outside the limits of empirical and speculative research, and, as an act of the omnipotent God, belongs rather to the sphere of miracles and mysteries, which can only be received by faith (Heb_11:3)

These were turn of the century linguists and are considered by most the most skilled hebrew linguists of the modern era.

Romans 8 does not say when God subject creation to the bondage to decay. It simply says that God did. But I have given you a timeframe from 1Cor 15. Decay is part of the way God created us.

But it is an incorrect timeframe even in the context of 1 Cor. 15-- because even here Paul says death came by man and by sin so we were not designed to die.

I suppose God telling Moses that the Israelites should be circumcised was redundant too, because he had already commanded Abraham. I have no problem with Adam eating any of the animals he had been given dominion over, but your argument that he had to is badly flawed. Just because wolves were free to get their nutrition through carrot fed rabbits, does not mean rabbits had to be carnivores too.

apples and oranges argument! Different events involving differing scenarios- no relation

Long enough to learn that God loves to speak to us in poetry, prophetic pictures and parable. Long enough to learn that God is not autistic unable to see meaning beyond the dry literal meaning.

I too love Gods poetry-- but it still does not mean that God will give intentionally false information. Parables are comparisons not intended to be taken literally but to hide to some and to illustrate to tothers principles, and visionary language is no lie either-just visions that God gives interpretations to.

If we take your interpretation, that Gen 1:30 has to mean no one ate anything other than vegetables, the same rigid hermenutic applied to Leviticus would mean the Isrealites had to eat clay.

That is because you are looking at it to prove you rthesis, but if you just exegeted and parsed you would seet he differences in teh two passages and then come to understand what both passages say!!

Differing passages with differeing tenses and stems so have differing meanings.

You mean the language he used in Psalm 104 where he was feeding meat to lions in a creation account? There is no command in Gen 1:30, it is simply a provision. You think it 'explicitly says' there were no carnivores, but it never does. You really need to read the text and see what it actually says.

Assyrian the problem lies in the fact thatr you are so use to reinterpreting Scriptures in light of modern thinking and observation that you think you are translating. I just simply look at what is said int he text and understand from there. God told all the beasts and birds that vegetation was to be their food. In Psalm 104 which is now long after the fall and the curse-- animals and man are eating meat.

1Cor 14:20 Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be men.

Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.

And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of
Mat 18:4Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

 

[nolidad]

Assyrian continues:

I don't see where you get the idea that 'as' means a comparison is not literal. Comparisons such as 'the blue whale is as long as thee double decker buses', can be quite literal. Of course I agree Moses and Peter are not saying God's days are all exactly 1000 years long. this is being much more rigid than the writers intended. They do mean that God's 'days' are much longer than our concept of a day. Yes there is an implication that God is long suffering, but also the warning not to squeeze God into a human timetable, as YECs do, because God's days are vastly longer than ours. We see this throughout the bible in passages about 'the day of the Lord' or 'the day of vengeance of our God'.

Well you are showing your noviceness in handliong the scriptures.

I have told you time and time again words like day (yom hbrw) have to be determine buy context because it can mean a literal day, or an undefined period. The day of the Lord is an undefined day as is hsown throughout the OT.\

Also if you read both passages carefully you would see that as is constructed to identify a comparison not to be taken literally. You are trying to force english grammar on hebrew and greek and you can't so that.

The root meaning of raqia is to beat something until it spread flat and wide, out like a lump of metal being beaten into a flat sheet.

Wow you are using a comparison to help explain something--just like God does! Yes God did spread out the atmosphere just LIKE a smith expands out gold by berating it thin!! But the key is the stretching and thinning-not a solid! And in Gen. 1:6 what was stretced out was a space that was not there before thatr divided waters. C'mon how many timnes doi we have to repeat this grammar 101 lesson tillyou understand???

There is nothing in the flood account to say that God simply dictated everything to Noah, instead it reads like an eye witness account of the events. Does the account say the waters were 15 cubits deep over the hills? It says the waters prevailed, that is, the waters were strong, mighty. It sounds like a description of waves 15 cubits high, as high as the ark itself if it was floating at its mid line. So we have waves 15 cubits high, that even covered the hills. It doesn't say the hills were covered 15 cubits deep, but that waves 15 cubits high washed over the hills.

Nope!!

Once K&D comment:

Gen_7:17-24 contain a description of the flood: how the water increased more and more, till it was 15 cubits above all the lofty mountains of the earth, and how, on the one hand, it raised the ark above the earth and above the mountains, and, on the other, destroyed every living being upon the dry land, from man to cattle, creeping things, and birds. "The description is simple and majestic; the almighty judgment of God, and the love manifest in the midst of the wrath, hold the historian fast. The tautologies depict the fearful monotony of the immeasurable expanse of water: omnia pontus erant et deerant litera ponto." The words of Gen_7:17, "and the flood was (came) upon the earth for forty days," relate to the 40 days' rain combined with the bursting forth of the foundations beneath the earth. By these the water was eventually raised to the height given, at which it remained 150 days (Gen_7:24). But if the water covered "all the high hills under the whole heaven," this clearly indicates the universality of the flood. The statement, indeed, that it rose 15 cubits above the mountains, is probably founded upon the fact, that the ark drew 15 feet of water, and that when the waters subsided, it rested upon the top of Ararat, from which the conclusion would very naturally be drawn as to the greatest height attained. Now as Ararat, according to the measurement of Perrot, is only 16,254 feet high, whereas the loftiest peaks of the Himalaya and Cordilleras are as much as 26,843, the submersion of these mountains has been thought impossible, and the statement in Gen_7:19 has been regarded as a rhetorical expression, like Deu_2:25 and Deu_4:19, which is not of universal application. But even if those peaks, which are higher than Ararat, were not covered by water, we cannot therefore pronounce the flood merely partial in its extent, but must regard it as universal, as extending over every part of the world, since the few peaks uncovered would not only sink into vanishing points in comparison with the surface covered, but would form an exception not worth mentioning, for the simple reason that no living beings could exist upon these mountains, covered with perpetual snow and ice; so that everything that lived upon the dry land, in whose nostrils there was a breath of life, would inevitably die, and, with the exception of those shut up in the ark, neither man nor beast would be able to rescue itself, and escape destruction. A flood which rose 15 cubits above the top of Ararat could not remain partial, if it only continued a few days, to say nothing of the fact that the water was rising for 40 days, and remained at the highest elevation for 150 days. To speak of such a flood as partial is absurd, even if it broke out at only one spot, it would spread over the earth from one end to the other, and reach everywhere to the same elevation. However impossible, therefore, scientific men may declare it to be for them to conceive of a universal flood of such a height and duration in accordance with the known laws of nature, this inability on their part does not justify any one in questioning the possibility of such an event being produced by the omnipotence of God. It has been justly remarked, too, that the proportion of such a quantity of water to the entire mass of the earth, in relation to which the mountains are but like the scratches of a needle on a globe, is no greater than that of a profuse perspiration to the body of a man. And to this must be added, that, apart from the legend of a flood, which is found in nearly every nation, the earth presents unquestionable traces of submersion in the fossil remains of animals and plants, which are found upon the Cordilleras and Himalaya even beyond the limit of perpetual snow.


You may beleive in some splashy waves but the text of the bible let us know that the waters conquered the mountains so that they were under (covered like a cloth) to a depth of 15 cubits. So yoiru theory is not founded on Scripture.

Just looking at what Isaiah said.

I wish you did JUST that alone. INstead you look at what Isaiah sais and interpret in light of thinking that he thought just like the pagan nations surrounding him. That is really what youa re doing.

Just looking at what the scripture actually tells us. Seeing as erets in Genesis can be read as either a global or local flood, and Job, Psalms and Proverbs all contradict a global flood, the only scriptural interpretation is local.

Well see if you simply translated in stead of interpreted you would see that the flood is and can only be global form the text. But because you have let your self be convinced by some geologist and anthrop[ologists-- you now see a passafge that says global and read it as local.

Simple =>
herb for prey for meat
Same as Sabbath of the land for meat really means
Sabbath of the land for grass for sheep for meat
I don't think you are right to say God was having a bad day.

Well if we are to accept you ropinion of the what the texts are saying instead of accepoting what the text are actuyally saying we can only conclude God had some really bad days back then!!

If the writers meant a sphere rather than a circle, you would think they would have used a word that was more specific wouldn't you? How were the Israelites supposed to learn your godly cosmology if the bible doesn't tell them it is really a sphere instead of a circle?

Well could be because the Hebrews had one word that meant a circle and a sphere. they had chuwg and dure and both mean a sphere and a circle.

Actually gnosis is the root word that became the English words gnostic and know. But if you want to use the AV you should learn 16th century English and not confuse it with usages came up centuries later and never entered the minds of the translators of the AV. Unless of course you think a stalled ox (Pro 15:17) is one whose engine cut out.

Well science is from gnosis which means knowledge so the AV folkk knew what they qwere doing and once again you are taking a 21st century mind and trying to force it upon the past. If you just used a concordance you would not sound so irrelevant.

Actually Jesus did that: The Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath.

Irrelevant to teh debate at hand for he was not correcting the concept of how the Sabbath came about but how the pharisees and scribes twoisted the observation of the sabbath.

Ha shamayim the first 'heaven' you talk about actually means the 'heavens'. Then God makes the sky raqia and called it 'heavens' too. Is this two sets of heavenses? That means there are at least four of them not the three you talk about. Or was God naming the sky 'heavens' when the heavens already existed before the sky was made, a simplified cosmology for people without telescopes?

Again I will let you go to the Hebrew and get a l;ittle education!

But no-- He made the expanse heavens we call space in vse 1> then in 6-8 He creates a stretched out space betweenthe waters and calls that heaven as well!!

Als if you looked at Hebrew grammar tools you would find out that the singular for shamayium is an unused form so the plural does dual usage.

mrwilliams11 writes:

[only if God intends Genesis to be read as a scientific textbook, that is as a description of how things work as well as a theological text telling us Who created the heavens and the earth.
/QUOTE]

any way you rread it says God with knowledge and afore thought used untruth in explaining to Adam first tehn to the nation of Israle later how long it took Him to makew all of creatrion. There is no way around it. The construct nor thew language nor the context gives any credence that this is to be taken parabolically or a prophecy using visions that need ed interpreting.

and the YECists declares the very same hermeneutic, that if God is using anything historically or scientifically false then the whole thing must be wrong, therefore God must be teaching modern cosmology, because we know it is true, and God can not lie.

Yu keep using this argumetn because you like to side with the atheist when they see a word that could mean a tweo dimensional circle but also means a three dimesnional sphewre and they demand it to be two dimensional. We use the same hermeneutc- but far more correctly than the atheists do. They have an agenda to destroy the veracity of all SCripture , we don't.

gluadys writes:

Look at the description from the jewish encyclopedia. The firmament was held up by pillars. What need does space have to be held up by pillars?

UI wish you guys would look at teh whole thoughts more carefully

I don't need the term "outer space". I do need an understanding that the raquiya was not a solid structure. But look at what Rav said---"on the second day the firmament solidified". A firmament which solidified is not open space.

Commenataries are not the same as scripture but are commentaries. But the raqia is considered a vaulted dome!! empty space with a cover!! So raqia has a solid and a space-- that is what is being said in 1:6 a dome that suppoorted waters that also had a great empty vault under neath it!! why do you guys refuse to see it???

You are the one who is confused. raqiya IS the solid dome. It is not the air/atmosphere enclosed within the dome.

see above!

This is adding to the text what is not in the text. Other scriptural passages clearly indicate the continued existence of the raqia. The notion that it was destroyed is a very modern interpretation I only heard about less than 10 years ago. I doubt you will find it in any commentary prior to the 20th century. There is no scriptural justification for inventing this idea.

There is plenty but it takes simple understanding! And just because YOU just heard about ten years ago doesn't mean it hasn't been around for many many years for it has.

If you would look at the verb structure you would not be so adamant about your stance for it says what I have been telling you . I did not make this up nor did AIG or ICR or CRS. It is simply what is the text!!

 

[Assyrian]

Hi nolidad

This makes you guilty of what your side has said I have done--taken modern understanding and forcing it back onto the scriptures. But God di dnot say that some animals will eat herbs indirestly--The bible says that the animals were given vegeatation to be their food! That is all-no more or less

It is a fulfilment of Gen1:29 that we see around us today, but it was just as easily observed by nomadic herdsmen. Sheep eat grass, wolves eat sheep. It's not rocket science. The concepts you force back however, are.

nolidad: Even linguists have come outr and said trhat genesis 1 does teach a 6 day creation, vegetarianism for all animals and no death before sin-- they just do not beleive they are true.
Assyrian: Can you give a reference for you claim that linguists say Gen teaches a six day creation?
nolidad: From K&D Hebrew commentary on the OT...

These were turn of the century linguists and are considered by most the most skilled hebrew linguists of the modern era.

A commentary written in 1866 is hardly turn of the century. When you wrote of linguists who don't believe in a six day creation, but admit that Genesis does actually teach it, I thought you were talking about modern linguistic scholarship not some ancient commentary.

Published just six years after The Origin of Species, they are hardly in a position to comment on the linguistic arguments that have gone on since.

I do like K&D, but there seems very little of their linguistics gone into the discussion here, usually K&D delve deep into the Hebrew. There is very little of that here. All they end up with is a calendar that misses the start of Genesis and contradicts the biblical calendar that Moses gave for celebrating the Sabbath, a Sabbath that was based on the seventh day in Genesis. Even skilled linguists and committed creationists cannot reconcile the text of Genesis 1 with a six day creation.

But it is an incorrect timeframe even in the context of 1 Cor. 15-- because even here Paul says death came by man and by sin so we were not designed to die.

The next verse say that 'in Adam all die' which suggests we are dying in Adam even today and that Adam is still around for us to die in. It suggest Paul is speaking allegorically. Besides he is talking about humans, not animals. Whether humans would have died if mankind had not sinned or would have been kept alive through the tree of life, Paul links decay with the way God created us, of the earth from dust. It is only when the perishable flesh God created is transformed into the spiritual that we put on perishablility. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, but that is what Adam and Eve were made of.

apples and oranges argument! Different events involving differing scenarios- no relation

Which? The fact that God repeats parts of an previous covenant when he makes a new one? Or the little illustration that showed the non sequitur in your 'if lions ate meat so did Adam' argument?

I too love Gods poetry-- but it still does not mean that God will give intentionally false information. Parables are comparisons not intended to be taken literally but to hide to some and to illustrate to tothers principles, and visionary language is no lie either-just visions that God gives interpretations to.

You assume that if you mistake a figurative passage for a literal one, God is intentionally giving false information. Not a safe hermenutic that.

That is because you are looking at it to prove you rthesis, but if you just exegeted and parsed you would seet he differences in teh two passages and then come to understand what both passages say!!

Differing passages with differeing tenses and stems so have differing meanings.

One says the vegetation is to you for meat, the other says the Sabbath of the land is to you for meat. The only difference is Genesis uses the qal imperfect, it is for meat, while Leviticus uses the qal perfect which can be used in prophecy,it will be for meat. The word 'for meat' is exactly the same. In both we have the same context of God's provision, God providing something that was 'for meat'. But in Leviticus it didn't mean the Israelites had to eat clay.

Assyrian the problem lies in the fact thatr you are so use to reinterpreting Scriptures in light of modern thinking and observation that you think you are translating. I just simply look at what is said int he text and understand from there. God told all the beasts and birds that vegetation was to be their food. In Psalm 104 which is now long after the fall and the curse-- animals and man are eating meat.

Yet K&D whom you seem to respect realised Psalm 104 was about the creation. Your over literalistic rigid insistence of only one way God's promise in Gen 1:30 could be fulfilled, breaks down when we see how the same phrase is used in Leviticus. Scripture interprets scripture nolidad. You don't force it to fit you theology.

1Cor 14:20 Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be men.

Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.

And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of
Mat 18:4Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

Yes we enter the kingdom of God with a simple and child like trust. But we are expected to grow up once we become Christians. 1Pet 1:13 gird up the loins of your minds.

Heb 5:11 About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. 12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk not solid food, 13 for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. :14 But solid food is for the mature...



Blessings Assyrian

 

[Assyrian]

Well you are showing your noviceness in handliong the scriptures.

I have told you time and time again words like day (yom hbrw) have to be determine buy context because it can mean a literal day, or an undefined period. The day of the Lord is an undefined day as is hsown throughout the OT.\

And the days in Genesis are also the Lord's days with no humans around. They are prophetic because it is God telling us what happened. They are days are days in the Lord's sight, not man's, which as Moses and Peter tell us can be much longer than ours. The only context YEC claim says they were literal days are the evening and morning, which Moses uses figuratively too after telling us about God's days in a Psalm that begins with a discussion of the creation Psalm 90.

Also if you read both passages carefully you would see that as is constructed to identify a comparison not to be taken literally. You are trying to force english grammar on hebrew and greek and you can't so that.

It is a comparison that tells God's view of time, what a day means to him. It tells us God's days are not always literal. Peter warns us not to overlook this one fact. Why do YECs struggle so hard to overlook it?

Wow you are using a comparison to help explain something--just like God does! Yes God did spread out the atmosphere just LIKE a smith expands out gold by berating it thin!! But the key is the stretching and thinning-not a solid! And in Gen. 1:6 what was stretced out was a space that was not there before thatr divided waters. C'mon how many timnes doi we have to repeat this grammar 101 lesson tillyou understand???

I though you used the concept of a thin raqia to describe space not just the atmosphere? Nor do I think any of the ancient Hebrews would have taken a thin beaten out raqia as a description of a spherical atmosphere surrounding the earth. Raqia described something beaten flat or at most bowl shaped. You cannot take a hammer and beat a lump of gold into a hollow sphere.

But they would have understood raqia as the (almost) flat expanse of air between the earth and the clouds, the waters above the earth.

Nope!!

Once K&D comment...

You may beleive in some splashy waves but the text of the bible let us know that the waters conquered the mountains so that they were under (covered like a cloth) to a depth of 15 cubits. So yoiru theory is not founded on Scripture.

Goodness K&D are really not on form here. The only reference to linguistics is a quotation in Latin!

It is interesting that they give an example of 'under the whole heaven' that only covered the promised land, Deut 2:25. However their whole argument about the height of the flood, 15 cubits above the highest mountain, is not based on linguistics, but on the mistaken notion that the ark came to rest on top of mount Ararat. If it came to rest on top of Ararat, it must have floated there and the draft of the ark was about 15 cubits. But there is no evidence the mountain we call Ararat had that name when the bible was written. The word refers to region instead of a mountain, possibly the ancient kingdom the Babylonians called Urartu. The ark came to rest, not on top of an individual hill there, but in the hills, the hill country of Urartu.

I wish you did JUST that alone. INstead you look at what Isaiah sais and interpret in light of thinking that he thought just like the pagan nations surrounding him. That is really what youa re doing.

Isaiah is the one who described the heavens as a curtain and tent.

You are the one trying to force modern cosmology on his statements, even though you reject science as 'science so called'.

Well see if you simply translated in stead of interpreted you would see that the flood is and can only be global form the text. But because you have let your self be convinced by some geologist and anthrop[ologists-- you now see a passafge that says global and read it as local.

Where does the bible say global? Simply translating it can be difficult when erets can either mean 'the earth' or 'a land'. Simply would probably take the way erets was used in the chapters that went before. In which case, it just means Noah's land was flooded.

Well if we are to accept you ropinion of the what the texts are saying instead of accepoting what the text are actuyally saying we can only conclude God had some really bad days back then!!

When God looks down on his children, he sometimes does have a bad heir day...

Well could be because the Hebrews had one word that meant a circle and a sphere. they had chuwg and dure and both mean a sphere and a circle.

So there is nothing in the bible that teaches us the world was a sphere rather than a circular disk? dure means ball, at least in some contexts, so why wasn't that word used to describe the earth?

Well science is from gnosis which means knowledge so the AV folkk knew what they qwere doing and once again you are taking a 21st century mind and trying to force it upon the past. If you just used a concordance you would not sound so irrelevant.

As I pointed out, you are the one taking a meaning for 'science' that has only been around since the 18th century and forcing it onto the 16th century English of the AV. You are trying to bump start a stalled ox.

Irrelevant to teh debate at hand for he was not correcting the concept of how the Sabbath came about but how the pharisees and scribes twoisted the observation of the sabbath.

No. Exodus says the Sabbath law came about because God rested on the Seventh day and made it holy.

Jesus doesn't take that literally at all. He completely reverses the reason given in Exodus and tells us the Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath. The Pharisees didn't twist the law, they just made the mistake of interpreting it literally...

Again I will let you go to the Hebrew and get a l;ittle education!

But no-- He made the expanse heavens we call space in vse 1> then in 6-8 He creates a stretched out space betweenthe waters and calls that heaven as well!!

Als if you looked at Hebrew grammar tools you would find out that the singular for shamayium is an unused form so the plural does dual usage.

Thanks for the heads up on shamayim, I hadn't realised the singular was an unused form. Cheers.

However, God didn't make the expanse until verse 6. He made the heavens (or heaven) in verse 1. The only expanse we are told about came later, which as you say, God calls heaven as well.

Blessings assyrian

 

[gluadys]

Commenataries are not the same as scripture but are commentaries.

Commentaries tell us how the people who wrote them understood the meaning of the scriptural text. And that is what is at issue here. What did 'raqiya' mean to the people who read it say 2500 years ago? People for whom Hebrew was their native tongue and who shared the culture of the original writer.

But the raqia is considered a vaulted dome!!

Exactly. And a dome is a solid structure, of limited dimensions, not a vaccuum extending millions of light years beyond the surface of the earth.

empty space with a cover!! So raqia has a solid and a space-- that is what is being said in 1:6 a dome that suppoorted waters that also had a great empty vault under neath it!! why do you guys refuse to see it???

We do see it. The raqia is the covering dome. Like any dome, even an overturned bowl, it encloses an air-filled space. But the space inside the dome is not the raqia; the dome, the covering over the space, is the raqia. And in ANE cosmology, what was outside the dome was not space either, it was the primeval waters.

The biblical description sets everything in heaven and earth in/inside the great dome (raqia) i.e. beneath it (the earth) or in the interior vault (air.clouds, rain, sun, moon, stars) or as part of the fabric of the raqia itself, heaven of heavens, throne of God. Above and below is water.

There is plenty but it takes simple understanding! And just because YOU just heard about ten years ago doesn't mean it hasn't been around for many many years for it has.

I know. I didn't hear about YECism until 1982, but I learned later that it got its start in 1950. In the '50s all the creationists I knew were OECs.

But to get back to the matter at hand, just when did anyone come up with the notion the raqia disappeared after the flood? Which 19th century commentator mentions this? Which 17th century commetantor makes this observation? I am not going to ask about 15th century commentators since they believed the firmament was still a present reality in their own time. The idea that it disappeared after the flood would be nonsense to them. As far as they were concerned it was in plain sight above their heads.

If you would look at the verb structure you would not be so adamant about your stance for it says what I have been telling you . I did not make this up nor did AIG or ICR or CRS. It is simply what is the text!!

Well, they are commentators too. Why should I trust their commentary over that of Rav and Rabbi Yehudah?

If it is "simply what is the text", why was that not obvious to commentators who preceded those of AiG, ICR and CRS? If it is "simply what is the text" why does Rav find the text to say the firmament was liquid on the first day and turned solid on the second day?

And does any commentator cited in the Talmud suggest the firmament disappeared in the flood?

This is the problem I have with YEC scientization of scripture. If it really is a plain reading of the text, then it should not require a knowledge of modern science to see it in the text. It should be a common theme of ancient and medieval and pre-20th century commentators and biblical scholars as well as those of this generation.

If it shows up in commentary only after scientists discover it in nature, (whether pro or anti-science), it is not "simply what the text is" for it was not observable in the text without the prior work of scientists. It is, therefore, an interpretation filtered through scientific knowledge not available to the original writer and his/her audience.

The meaning of a text is what the original author intends it to mean, not a meaning that is obscure to all scholars not conversant with 21st century scientific knowledge.

The plain and simple meaning of 'raqia' in biblical and medieval times is the dome of heaven, conceived as a solid structure.

The only reason WE call it space is because we have access to modern scientific models of the cosmos from which the concept of 'raqia' is missing.

But imposing this meaning on scripture distorts its originally intended meaning.