Johnny Skeptic

Message to CJD: Why do you continue to refuse to answer my questions? What do you think of James Holding? Who are your favorite Christian authors?

spin

I'd recommend that you choose something else, such as redactor. "[A]uthor" suggests someone who does the actual writing of a text, not a reworking of it.

This may be your understanding but you just seem to be manipulating the English text. By uniting the heavens and the earth into a single entity, "the universe", you might be able to transmogrify the complex subject so as to appear as a single subject or agent of the generations. However, they are what is generated in this case: the heavens and the earth are not an agent; they are not potent in themselves. God is an agent. The object nature of the heavens and the earth is clearly indicated by the second clause "when they were created".

The important thing to understand is that the first creation account was added after the toledoths were, as it has no toledoth of its own. This means that your idea of expansion is inappropriate as there was at the time nothing to expand upon.


spin

manu dibango

Unless the toledoths, or the phrase "these are the generations" occur at the end of each account and not the beginning. If the toledoths, or the phrase "these are the generations" are a closing signature and not an introduction, then the first creation account does have a toledoth.

spin

Well, ya don't say. So that must explain why all modern bibles tendentiously separate 2:4a from 2:4b and link it with the first creation account.

Here you go, boyo:

2:4 the heavens and the earth
5:1 Adam
6:9 Noah
10:1 Noah
10:32 (repeat)
11:10 Shem
11:27 Terah
25:12 Ishmael
25:13 (repeat)
25:19 Isaac
36:1 Esau
36:9 (repeat)
37:2 Jacob

I supply this list to save you having to search for yourself and to facilitate you in making the case that toledoths are passage final rather than passage initial.


spin

Boro Nut

Absolute and utter balderdash. Poppycock from beginning to end. Rubbish heaped upon garbage. That sir is what I think of your lies. I challenge you to search the document again. You wont find any mention of apparent. It just isn't there. If anything is apparent it certainly isn't apparent.

Boro Nut

CJD

"This is a book about man's offspring: In the day of God's shaping of man, he fashioned him in his own likeness ..."

(And then the book goes to describe what God's creation, namely, man, generated.)

CJD

Well, I have been using "implied" rather consistently. Still, I would use "editor" over "redactor" any day, simply because of the unfortunate assumptions associated with "redactor."

It's best to consider the author of Genesis to be anonymous anyway, because of its nature as a compilation. Surely a guy named Moses, however, could have started compiling ...

Not really; I mean, I'm working from a translation much like the one you proffered above. Essentially literal, and I've given the gist with no intent of manipulating it.

But only indirectly. To be sure, the text wants us to see God standing behind his creation, but it's not asking us to see his giant finger coming down out of the sky, manipulating natural events. Again, the plain sense of 2:4 seems to be as I've indicated (to further 'manipulate') : "This is a book about the offspring of the heavens and earth: In the day YHWH elohim fashioned the heavens and earth ..."

"Object nature" meaning "not an agent"? I can't see where this is even implied in the text, and I think the renderings I've offered of 2:4 and 5:1 make this a little clearer.

Maybe the second account, with its attending toledoth, was written with an eye on the first account? I can't all imagine why this is a strain; again, perhaps because I am accusing the editor of actually thinking when he's putting this stuff together?

CJD

CJD

"Refuse" implies willfulness. I simply had forgotten about you.

Who is "James Holding" and why should I care?

My favorite Christian authors? Hmm. I think John Irving may be a Christian. I really like his stuff.

spin

There's that pre-processor at work again.

Manipulated it has been. Must be that dang preprocessor yet again.

More eisegesis.

There is no notion of book in the original. You are tainting from other toledoths. And noooo, it is not the offspring of the heavens and the earth. You are making analogies with other toledoth without considering the nature of "the heavens and the earth". You are trying to convert them into potent entities. To do so, you need to give some further examples of such conversion into potent entities, especially examples of the heavens and the earth, to show that the original readers could have perceived them as potent.

This is a simple grammatical problem, but you need to understand the grammatical terms. An agent in a passive sentence in English is marked by "by". That agent would be the subject of the related active sentence.

1a) Tom was hit by Bill.
1b) Tom was hit with a stick.

2a) Bill hit Tom.
2b) A stick hit Tom.

Bill is an agent in both 1a and 2a. The stick is an instrument in both cases, even though it is the subject of 2b. Grammatical manifestations, ie surface structures, may appear to be the same form as others, yet their "deep" structures can be different. This difference is indicated by the type of noun: while Bill can be an agent, the stick can't.

This is analogous with the heavens and the earth in 2:4a. They like the stick can't be agents, so they are not the ones doing the generating. If it had been the "generations of signals", I doubt whether you would have tried to make the signals potent.

As I pointed out, toledoths go at the beginnings of passages.

The first account is written in the context of an existing account of creation, the Enuma Elish, both start with watery chaos tehom in Hebrew, Tiamat its Akkadian cognate. The god kills Tiamat by forcing a wind down its throat to keep the throat open (this is why we have a wind in 1:2) and once Tiamat is slain, the god slits her in two horizontally and lifts half of her up to the sky and draws a bolt to keep the waters in place. And from there the god continues creation.

Watery chaos is the flooding in Mesopotamia. The second account is a dry creation. There are no dangerous waters to be divided. There is a helpful mist which comes out of the ground, like a spring. The second account is from a very different geography from the first.

It's got nothing to do with your accusing the editor of thinking. It's to do with your modern assumptions of what people should do. Stick with the text, what can be gleaned from the era and don't project.

I don't see why you need to relate the second account to the first at all. If you can accept that the text is derived from diverse sources, there is no need to force them together as you seem to want to do.


spin

manu dibango

Not uncommon for colophons to occur at the end of the story, not the beginning.

The Babylonian Story of the Deluge and the Epic of Gilgamish