beachbum

Genesis 1:14 - 1:16
And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.

And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

If this last verse were so, what about the time there is no visible moon. And then how does one explain the fact that the moon is not a source of light at all but is simply a relfection?

Any ideas?

kctan

Well even with the absence of the moon, it is still not 100% pitch black darkness. You can still see around you & make out things.

Unless you're in a forest with a very thick canopy, then maybe you'll get 100% pitch black darkness where you can't even see your hands raise right infront of your face.

emotional

The Jewish rabbis of olden times appeal to legend to fill the blanks. It says in the Aggadah (the Jewish legend supplement for the Torah) that the moon had originally been created ever full, but because of laughing at Adam (that he fell so easily for the forbidden fruit temptation) God punished it with waxing and waning. There's plenty of that fancifulness in the Aggadah and Talmud.

beachbum

devnet

You made that shit up, right? If not, then how do the sensible people disassociate their fables from other mythologies?

Stan the confused beachbum

3DChizl

devnet - are you the loneliest person in isreal?

emotional

</STRONG>

No, I did not make that shit up. It's written black on white from right to left in the Jewish Aggadah, the "sayings" commentary on the Torah which every Orthodox Jew gets to learn sometime. And I, as a former Orthodox Jewish fundamentalist, learnt it too. There's many more fanciful stories where that came from, such as the story of how the lion became the king of the animals by parading the other animals into Noah's ark. Child fables, certainly, but they're studied aplenty in the yeshivas.

What sensible people are you talking about? The believing Orthodox Jews aren't any more sensible than your average Bible-belt Christian fundo. They're six-day, young-earth creationists, they believe in the all-sovereignty of God over the creation, they believe terrorist attacks are the judgement of God over the sins of men - all the rich cream of Pat Robertson and Osama ben Laden.

The Jewish Aggadah is a set of midrashim, of commentaries, composed ad-hoc to explain things which are not explained to the full in the text of the Torah.

emotional

Lonely in what sense? In beliefs? Certainly not, there are many likeminded Jewish atheists with me. My entire family is atheist. The secular and religious Jews aren't lonely, in fact they're tightly-packed and separate from each other (an unfortunate situation of "one camp against another").

I am lonely in my social life (I wish I had a GF to love), but I don't think the superlative "loneliest" is appropriate. I'm just about as lonely as any hi-tech worker could be.

btw, what's all this psychoanalysis in aid of? Doesn't seem to be of much use for the debate on the Bible, I suppose...

Boro Nut

Actually there must have been four.

First the two lights of the Genesis era. This is cahracterised by being static and displaying no refractive properties.

The next two lights were after the flood, which had speed and could refract to create rainbows.

aikido7

Are you fundamentalist or are you an obedient skeptic who also insists on taking the Bible in a literal manner?

Geeze Louise! These are myths, stories and midrash on ancient creation tales from the Ur-memory of mankind. You wouldn't want to myth this for the world....