Jubal_DiGriz

Thanks for that, Lee. Seems like Dr. Ross is a good place to start. A brief glance looks like he's worked out the principles of Old Earth creationism.

Should we bother with Y-E creationists, or just dismiss them as rubbish?

And...can't help it...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMEkCHU2KtA

Boro Nut

Yes. Lee has a simple rule for differentiating what is literal and what is allegorical. Basically, if Ezekiel predicts something is about to happen, for instance, let's say, the utter destruction of Tyre, then you can be certain it literally 100% did happen. But if Ezekiel says something didn't happen at all, for instance, let's say, the utter destruction of Tyre, it just means it did really happen 100%. Oh, and also that Google Earth is not a reliable source to determine the existence of cities, for instance, let's say, Tyre.

Boro Nut

Vicious Love

Because nothing about it suggests a figurative meaning. Particularly to bronze-age readers. If Genesis can be interpreted figuratively, so can any line in the Bible, no matter how straightforwardly phrased. If you disagree, feel free to point out any sign at all (within the text) that the days of creation are metaphorical.

And Raël thought Elohim meant extraterrestrial life forms. I am interested in what the text actually says, not in the contortions believers will undergo to reconcile it with their faiths.

No, "the heavens and the earth (singular form)" literally and succinctly describes the universe. There's what's down here on our moist rockball, and what's out there everywhere else. Omit "and the earth" and you're left with "everything in the universe except the Earth". Retain "and the earth", and you rather strongly imply that the Earth (or some other singular mass of earth) exists.

Speaking of "fountains of the deep", just how much of the deluge do you suppose was metaphorical?

How breathtakingly ad hoc. If the story tells of an Earth that preceded the Sun, it's because it's told from the perspective of a nonexistent observer on a nonexistent Earth, for immersion.

Well, the land creatures did appear after the land. That's pretty accurate. Then again, the Earth was never covered in water in the first place, and the oceans appeared after the land, so I guess that bit's incorrect, too.

Grasses, herbs, and fruiting trees before sunlight or animals. Birds and whales before land animals. Stars and seasons after animals. Stars as points of light in a solid firmament that keeps the sky from spilling and flooding the Earth. A women made out of a rib.

All fairy unremarkable for bronze age myth.

Someone wholly unlike the Old Timey Hebrews, y'mean.

"Created". Verb. Perfect form.

The word isn't used all that often in the first Genesis creation story. God mostly "says", and sometimes "does/makes". But I nitpick.

Clouds with windows in them? Genesis 7:11, Genesis 8:2, and somewhere or other in Isaiah. I could Google for it, but you'd probably dismiss it as metaphor, anyway. Funny how no bronze-age Hebrew had any reason to do so, and how their omniscient God didn't bother to phrase himself more clearly, for his readers' benefit.

Correct.

Assertion 1. And rather an uninspired one. There're basically three options: a universe with a beginning, a cyclical universe, or an infinite one. Big Bang theory tells us the known universe had a beginning. There're vague, semi-scientific speculations out there about a cyclical universe in which Big Bangs are non-singular events, and there's nothing preventing members of other faiths from claiming that the universe could be without beginning or end; it's simply not evidenced.

Strangely enough, I have mentioned before this is not my view. Now to present me with problems with my view, you will have to desist from addressing other views!

Genesis 1:21 and 1:24. Explicitly.

You don't suppose that has to do with bronze age Hebrews being utterly oblivious to the difference between mosses, mushrooms, and plants?

Poetic assertion.

"How odd of God to choose the Jews." (Nash)

Skipping pre-avian theropods and other land animals along the way. Beyond ridiculous. I suppose "birds from yeast" would also have been accurate. "Birds from crabs" would probably have been accurate, as well, since "crab" is just a mistranslation of "neritic animal", which is an obvious allusion to early tetrapods.

Oh, come on.

Yehi. Imperfect form.

Clouseau

Why bother? There is no-one more convinced of the truth of evolution than a Young Earth Creationist. The absurd lies YECs put into print about science and the Bible, readily available, are witnesses to that. You can be an honest YEC only if you are uneducated.

spin

lee_merrill has had his hand held on this issue numerous times before.

He would die to take a text as figurative before he can show that it is so. He will hint, and suggest and have not a drop of evidence to support all this vain hinting and suggesting. He is starting with his conclusion and trying to justify them. lee_merrill does not seem to learn (do you lee_merrill?). He doesn't improve his analyses to cover up the issue. He just keeps coming back with the same mistakes after enough time to get over the hubbub of his previous folly.

lee_merrill will just run to some other text that he tries to make metaphorical to stave off having to do the job of showing that it is metaphorical.


spin

Dlx2

Augustine was a Roman pagan-convert working outside the Hebrew tradition from the Vulgate Bible, which was notoriously poor as far as translations of translations go.

The Neviim were being chronicled in the tradition of the Torah, and thus events in the Torah were adapted as metaphors in the Neviim.

It should also be pointed out that your translation of "yom ekhad" as "unique day" doesn't work, because on the second day, the phrase is hayah erev v'hayah boker yom sheni.

Oops, we're using counting numbers.

http://www.jstor.org/view/00424935/ap050095/05a00070/0

http://www.jstor.org/view/00222968/ap020064/02a00040/0

http://www.jstor.org/view/00030279/ap020030/02a00210/0

The following book might also be of interest:

Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel by Frank Moore Cross (or via: amazon.co.uk)

JLK

spin said all there is to say about lee, but what the heck...
I love the "in fact". It is, as you said to RBH, a Hebrew euphemism, but it could easily mean all things of heaven and earth - all under the dome of the firmament and within the "circle of the earth" and not include the mysterious outside chaotic, desolate "waters" above and below.
There may have been no Heb word exactly for "universe/all nature", but there were obviously various ways to say "absolutely all things/everything" if they had wanted, but instead we get this euphemism. "All nature" is just your bias.
Absolute creation ex nihilo? Spacetime itself, abstract principles, primordial ylem? No, opinion was divided. Many argued over it just like we do. Right thru the middle ages, based on the text - another 13th century Jew.
The crazy Jews in their english Torah say B'reshit begins with a compound clause and all one sentence - note the "and" beginning of v 2.

When God began creating the heavens & earth and (which is in the text, modern translations have a dash) the haaretz was [or being] tohu&bohu with darkness over the surface of the Tehom and a wind from God sweeping over the water [clause ends with punctuation comma or dash] God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.

Those ignorant top scholars-with-no-evangelical-ax-to-grind of the New Oxford have it:

In the beginning when God created the heavens & earth, [comma in place of the literal and] the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.
Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.

Basically similar-in-meaning translations. Taken on their face, "obviously" not creationexnihilo.
"God said" precedes every creative event of the 6 days in the poetic pattern -- if creationexnihilo is correct why not simply start with some version of:
"In the beginning when God created everything, God said, 'Let there be tohu&bohu haaretz & Tehom"
"In"? No, those crazy Jews as well as the New Oxford don't say the birds fly in the raqia', they fly across the firmament. Attributing 3-dimensionality to this clearly 2-D "expanse" is your after-the-fact apologetics. The prepositional phrase is the same as is used with regard to moving over the land; and not even just a simple preposition "on" but a phrase "on/across the face/surface."
I found Leupold's book, and his justifications are often not primarily based on scholarly text analysis, it's stuff like

"For if creation began with light and then with the organizing of existing material, the question would crowd persistently to the forefront: but how did this original material come into being?"

Just like you, assuming your conclusion. There are vast numbers of things Biblically unexplained. So what? Or

"But a chapter marked throughout by very simple sentence structure would never begin with so complicated a structure as any of the ones noted above."

Well, it's the start of the whole, fricking creation story, and book, and Torah, so perhaps there's some allowance for a compound, introductory sentence. Plus there's the forced numerology that's shot throughout Genesis - first word must have 7 letters, first line must have 7 words, etc.
Although:

"...the translation, "in the beginning of God’s creating," etc., is not only entirely unnecessary but unfortunately, leads to an involved and confused sentence structure in place of a simple and a clear one. Besides, such a change is born entirely out of the desire to make room for a particular interpretation, viz. the interpretation that claims long ages of the earth’s existence prior to the creative work here to be described.
[later] "...to make this statement refer to two parts of a long geologic period: the first part a kind of evening; the-second a kind of morning; both together a kind of long period, runs afoul of three things: first, that "evening" nowhere in the Scriptures bears this meaning; secondly, neither does "morning"; thirdly, "day" never means "period."

Heh. lee's expert is neither a gapist or a day-ager, he's a YEC.
But there are no points.

lee_merrill

I think I'm going to talk to Jubal, all the other posts here are with the proverbial axe to grind, and I don't have time to fuss with people who cannot possibly acknowledge any point made by the other side, a sample of this, here:

It seems to me fairly consistent.

Not unless a person with such a view would post here, I would say.

Johnny Skeptic

Message to Lee Merrill: Are you not aware that your beliefs about science would have been completely different if you had lived before Copernicus and Galileo? Consider the following:

http://www.infidels.org/library/mode.../creation.html

I posted the following a few minutes ago at the Evolution/Creation Forum:

lee_merrill

Or before Einstein! But let's not open lots of other questions, please.