Gamera

Where did you come up with that ungrounded rule. Only a very small percentage of our discourse is literal. The same is more or less true of our texts. Most texts aren't literal. Just look at a magazine ad. There probably isn't a single statement in it intended literally. This is all the more true with ancient texts, whose agenda was very likely not the transmission of everyday facts (and Genesis certainly falls into that category -- nothing quotidian about it)

Given this, the better rule is assume metaphorical meaning unless the text can be shown to be part of that small percentage of texts that are literal in nature.

But even following your own counterintuitive standard, Genesis 1 and 2 are simply chock full of obvious metaphorical statements. That suggest that "day" should not be taken literally.

Here's a couple off the top of my head:

Gen 1: 4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. 6

[Can't be a solar day since the sun isn't created until the fourth day, so on its face the "day" here is something different than what we consider day]

Gen 1: 26: Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.

[Since no Jewish text describes God a man with a body in any sense, this must be metaphorical]

Gen 2: And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. 3

[Obviously God doesn't get tired, so "rested" is metaphorical here]


Gen 2: 24 Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh. 25

[Married people don't literally become on flesh. It's metaphorical discourse for something like "they psychologically close.]

So the creation myth is embedded in numerous obvious metaphorical statemetns, which suggest the reference to day is metaphorical too. This story really isn't a geology textbook. It's about spiritual matters the authors want to illuminate.

Mihilz

You are reading the passage with many assumptions in mind.
You say that the passage cannot be refering to 24 hour periods because the sun hadn't been created yet. The people who came up with this myth didn't necessarily understand that it is the sun that causes the daylight.

Vicki

As a longtime lurker, I have to call *bullshit* on this one.

Since when has spin put forth anything on an intuitive or counterintuitive standard? Spin has clearly stated on many occasions that he is reading the text "as is".

Who are you to decide that "intuition" (especially modern-day influenced pre-suppositional thought) would apply to these ancient texts?

Exactly how are you deciding what is literal and what is metaphorical? Why do many Christian sects disagree with you?

Angrillori

Eh, day, age, the order of creation is all wrong anyways. No matter how long a "day" is, you have light before the sun, plants before sun, plants (seed bearing plants even!) before "teeming things" in the ocean, etc.

So, even if you muck up genesis into day=age, you're still left with a creation order that is completely out of line.

Gamera

Well, I'd start by examining discourse and determine what percentage is literal and what percentage is metaphorical. Just by doing a five minute experiment you can see for yourself that most discourse is metaphorical. For instance someone just left my office and said it's time to hit the showers, but he's didn't mean he was going to take a shower; he meant the "game" of work is over and he's going home, just like an athelet leaves the field and takes a shower.

Then I would examine the universe of texts and see what is supposed to be taken literally. I would note that there is this whole genre of literature called novels and plays, which aren't about real things, and aren't to be taken literally. Then I might devise a formula to determine what are the odds that any particular texts should be taken literally.

All of which shows that spin's "rule" is in fact bullshit.

His only point is to attack Genesis, and so that's the convenient rule. If a metaphorical reading of Genesis supported his argument, he'd quickly shift gears, and claim it's nonliteral. I've noticed that about Detractors like spin.

As to your plaint that who am I to determine what is literal and what is metaphorical in a text, well, I think you've just made my point, not his.

Gamera

But doesn't that make my point. We think of a literal day as 24 hours. That's what the Hebrew word apparently came to mean if later texts are any guide (and it's what the literalists claim it means, using lexicons and comparing it with uses in other Hebrew texts). But it's hard to tell what the author of Genesis 1 meant with his odd language about the sun and the moon, and a day existing before them.

This suggest either (a) a semantic development in which the word for day "evolved" to mean a 24 hour day, or (b) the author isn't using the word literally.

Either way the "rule" that the default is to take it literally, ceases to work. The day in Genesis 1 literally isn't the day we think about with the word day.

Gamera

Which suggests that the author isn't concerned with meteorological and biological verisilimitude. Which suggests he's not using "day" in the sense we understand it.

spin

It's only ungrounded when one attempts to misunderstand it. Gamera, why do you have to make things hard on yourself?

Words mean the most usual meaning unless there are signs that that is not the case. This is called communication. A word will carry its common meaning, because a reader will not understand the intended content if it didn't. If I say,

• I went for a run yesterday.

Given nothing else you should assume that I was moving on my legs faster than walking. More information might change your understanding,

• I bought a new Ferrari on the weekend. I went for a run yesterday.

Here the run referred to is probably in the Ferrari, but without the extra information, you cannot reasonably get to the new interpretation. The text will indicate its most common meanings.

There are those linguistic wonders who have to think that a text doesn't say what it appears to because the content doesn't adhere to their presuppositions. This is eisegesis. A writer usually attempts to communicate an idea rather than obscure it. This means we should take the text to say what it appears to say, at least while trying to come to terms with its apparent content. Once that fails you look for other ways of interpreting the text.

The text of course can work on more than one level, but you first have to deal with what it literally says. As I said,

The general rule is: read the text literally until you can't.

It's a good rule. Any other approach cannot succeed.

This is ingenuous. Most text works at least on the literal level and you must deal with it first.

Rubbish, as usual: you want to misrepresent through oversimplification. Of course most texts are at least literal. But you are generally missing the point. The overdetermination of texts, for I think that's what you'd prefer to be dealing with rather than confusedly going on as you do, requires that the literal text works, but that the implications of what is contained in the literal texts reverberate. A simple story of god creating the world in six days, of course it's literal, leads to the notion of the sabbath, for we rest on the seventh day. Had the notion of day not been literal then the institution of the sabbath would be meaningless, but the text is about more than a simple creation. So the text is both literal and says more. Yet my rule holds good. The words mean what they say until shown otherwise.

However, my initial rule is a good rule of thumb. You cannot take obscure meanings of terms without the text justifying those meanings.

Of course they're meant to be taken literally. They wouldn't work otherwise. Literal meaning is necessary, but it is not the only meaning in the communication.

Rubbish once again. You are stuck pushing obscurantist claptrap onto texts. If you don't deal with the literal text you'll never understand it. Once you've done so -- and only then --, you can look for what it does with the communication.

If you refuse to read the text, then you can make "day" mean whatever your whim wants.

See where your refusal to read the text takes you? You misunderstand it from the beginning. God separated light from darkness at the beginning of day one, hence it's all been dealt with. But as you don't understand the text you won't see how it works. The sun only populates the light as the moon and stars populate the darkness and the birds populate the sky and the fish populate the sea. Read the text, not what you want the text to say.

You won't read the text for what it says because you fall over other texts not to get there.

Rest, ie he didn't do any work. He ceased or desisted from work. Get it? Don't rely on the English because you're bound to get it wrong.

This is the closest you get to having an example, but look at what I said:

The general rule is: read the text literally until you can't.

Obviously, in this case you can't read it literally. And so my rule holds good.

You're so muddled about this I can understand that you're still christian.

It is a no-boner to say that you must deal with the literal content of a statement first. Unless you do, you have no way at all of approaching the text. If a text doesn't function literally, then you must find some other way of dealing with it. Usually the writer will try to help the reader understand.

Treating a text literally doesn't mean to ignore any other content in a statement


spin

spamandham

I voted the last option, merely because the Hebrew words really are ambiguous, and because I don't think Genesis was originally intended as a creation explanation at all. I think it's a mystical parable of some kind, seemingly in reference to either the transition from childhood to adulthood, or a legendary story about the dawn of agriculture (or both).

I seriously doubt even our ancient ancestors were stupid enough to take such a story literally. For that level of stupidity, you need modern evangelicals.

:edit:
IMHO, it's important to consider that Genesis is not only the first book of the Bible, but also the earliest written and conceived. Everything else you think you know about the Bible must be forgotten when analyzing Genesis. There's a tendency to think of the Bible as all written at the same time, which causes all kind of problems in interpretation.

smokester

I have always assumed that Genesis 1 was conceived by a consciousness different from my own or most of us modern thinkers. For that reason, whatever we succeed in saying about the account must necessarily be the expression of OUR OWN consciousness. I don't think there is much other way of thinking about this; unless, we say, that there is not much difference between a prehistorical consciousness and our own.

However, I don't think the difficulty is an impossible one----if a sensitive examination of language is employed fruitfully.