Minimalist

Just because a bunch of ignorant goat herders believed it was a "day" does not make it true.

spin

Greetings and welcome, Adamu.
Naaa. That was in another country. Besides, the wench is dead.

It's certainly not as obvious as you seem to think. In fact, it's not obvious at all what the relationship is, even though I have argued that there is a relationship.

There is no evidence here. So far, it's been an extended opinion.

I see no sign whatsoever of extended periods of time when the text says repeatedly WYHY (RB WYHY BQR, "and there was evening and there was morning" -- or more accurate in this instance as the phrase marks off the time passing, "and there was sunset and there was daybreak", for that's what (RB and BQR imply.

Eisegesis.

A Babylonian liturgical text, or a related text, may have influenced the writers in the writing of the first creation account, but it is highly unlikely that readers or listeners in Jerusalem could have that esoteric literary background. Instead, as I've already indicated, there are two pieces of evidence -- linguistic and textual -- which point to a natural reading of YWM.


spin

aa5874

Yes, it appears that God took six days according to Genesis, however for those who do not wish to accept the Genesis timeline, I only proposed other alternate speculations.

For example, on the 1st day, God said, "Let there be light". It takes about a second to say, "Let there be light", so God did one second of work on the 1st day.Then, God waits for the next day to do another one second job, and so it goes for the next six days.

By the way does God have recalls? I think he needs to recall the mosquito and make them bite leaves, or get involve in pollinization of plants.

Joan of Bark

I'm with aa, and Toto, on this one. The Hebrews definitely meant them to be literal days. Even an OT apologist like Richard Friedman (In Commentary on the Torah) agrees on this. Christians who want it both ways (that is, have the Bible be truthful without being literally true) are the ones pushing this silly notion of a 'day' being something longer.

-Jay-

It's interesting that a lot of the "Rules of Biblical Interpretation", such as these basically give one license to interpret just about anything as literally or as figuratively as one needs to deal with the cognitive dissonance.

In short, interpret it as literally as possible, unless it makes no sense, then it's figurative, but it's inerrant.

Some of the othe rules are interesting as well, particularly those addressing interpretation within (Biblical) historical context, which essentially advise the reader to ignore anything that doesn't agree with the Biblical version of things.

Quite the logic-proof box, actually.

regards,

NinJay

Adamu

Thanks, spin.

Well, I was only suggesting how an ordinary reader might come to a fuller understanding of the Genesis account by recognizing the enuma elish as probable source material.


I disagree.

From the intro of LW King's authoritative The Seven Tablets of Creation, p.LXXXI:

"It is in Hebrew literature, however, that the most striking examples of the influence of the Babylonian Creation legends are to be found. The close relation existing between the Babylonian account of the Creation and the narrative in Genesis i, 1-11, 4a has been recognized from the time of the first discovery of the former, 1 and the old and new points of resemblance between them may here be briefly discussed." King then recounts each act of creation and its biblical parallel. Simply reading King's brief discussion makes it rather obvious the Genesis account is an edited redacted version.

[/QUOTE]

You seem to have either overlooked the paper I linked or are ignoring it.
For brevity, its conclusions:

"Conclusion: What does all the foregoing mean for understanding Genesis 1?

1) The uniqueness of the Hebrew numbering of the creative “yom” actually supports the view that the creative “yom” are not ordinary (24-hour) days.

2) The numbering of the creative “yom” does not exclude the “extended period” or “age” meaning of the Hebrew word “yom” when referring to the six creative times. The unique numbering of the creative times adds support for the “extended period” or “age” meaning.

3) There are no other applicable examples of the numbering of a sequence that is equivalent to the numbering of the creative “yom.” Assertions which attempt to interpret numberings which read “yom” “second” using numberings which read “in yom” “the second” are flawed.


I see neither an a priori commitment nor eisegesis present in these discussions, only linguistic and textual (contextual, too) analyses.
But I'll concede my use of "phase" might be misconstrued as introducing my own idea; instead I might've stated it should be read as "extended period of time one, extended period of time two, etc."

So again, to me, coupling the enuma elish as source material with the clarifications of "days" as used in Genesis 1, it seems painfully obvious and quite hard to disagree with.

spin

King was writing over a century ago. A lot of changes have occurred since then. Philology has developed in its complexity and responsibilities. There are a lot more exemplars of literature from the periods, so one can no longer be so simple about connections.

As I have acknowledged, there is a connection between the two pieces of literature, but that relationship is not as clear as King would have liked. He didn't have the Sumerian variety of the tradition or any of the others.

No. I have discounted it as being an early work in the field and so much more has been studied since it was written.

When in Gen 22:4 we read that on the third day, YWM $LY$Y, Abraham lifted up his eyes, there is a different meaning of YWM $LY$Y than is found in Gen 1:13? Try and explain why from the text.

This adds nothing, given the rule I gave earlier that there must be something in the text that says how you should read the meanings of the words.

Try and explain this flaw, when we work out ancient languages by the way terms are used in ancient texts.

So far I've seen no reason whatsoever to read anything but "day" from the term YWM in Gen 1. Everything points to such a reading. It would mean that we would have to read all the other terms such as morning and evening as metaphorical as well, with just as lacking evidence.

The Enuma Elish is a red herring. It provides a philological link to a shared background to the tropes in the account. It says nothing about how the readers were to read the text. This leaves us with the natural reading until... shown otherwise from a reading of the text.


spin

rhutchin

It is also possible that both the Genesis account and the Sumerian Enuma Elish are derived from one common source. The issue, then, is which account (Genesis or Sumerian Enuma Elish) is the accurate account and which is a corrupted account.

The Christian accepts by faith (since no one can prove which is accurate and which is corrupt) that the Genesis account is the accurate rendering of the original account whose source would have been a real Adam who described the events to his children, some of whom did not listen very well or just didn't care leading eventually to the Sumerian Enuma Elish.

It is possible that Adam recorded the information conveyed to him by God (Genesis 1) and his personal experiences (Genesis 2-4) in a journal that was preserved by Seth and his descendants and eventually used by Moses to construct the Genesis account.

Johnny Skeptic

But anyone can have faith. What is most important is the evidence upon which faith is based. Since you know that there is not any credible historical evidence that any of the supernatural events in Genesis are true, as well as many other supernatural events, what you need is a good deal of easily verifiable evidence that would justify people accepting evidence that is not easily verifiable.

If you wish, you can start a new thread at this forum, or at the General Religious Discussions Forum.

I would enjoy discussing God's motives with you at the General Religious Discussions Forum. Fundies alway embarrass themselves when they discuss that issue.

rhutchin

Both Genesis and the Sumerian Enuma Elish provide credible evidence of the beliefs of people in ancient times. Each person today expresses faith by following one group of people or another to believe that which they believed.