Sauron

Huh? If you have the evidence to support your claim, then why can't you present it here? You *started* the discussion here; any particular reason why you can't finish it here as well? Fingers broke or something?

If not, then why should anyone bother to visit some other forum, when you can't even be bothered to support your claims on this forum?

No, that would be your particular view. The one you hold right now. Today. Until someone comes along with another contradiction, and you change your position. Again.

Because that is the role of an adverb: to describe how the verb is being carried out.

You think spin is your friend, lee? You seem to forget a lot of what spin said - like this part:

It was more a reflection on your knowledge, lee_merrill. You were the one arguing about (WLM being an adjective, remember.

1. I am under no obligation to tell you anything, until you support the claims you've set forth already. As I said before:

Since you have first claim on this, you need to back up your claim first. As soon as you support you claim, you'll be in a position to ask others to support theirs.

2. This is all a distraction from the original point: Gen 1 talks about a "day", and you have yet to provide any evidence that a period other than a literal 24-hour day was intended.

3. By the way: you've yet to explain what the sun was doing:
I believe the sun was created on the first day, and was “set in place” on the fourth, that is, started its function of separating day and night on earth, as did the moon.

Where were the sun and moon hiding, until they were "set in place"? If they weren't being used on Day 1, then why bother creating them 3 days early, before they were set into place? Does God need to set them aside on a shelf or something?

spin

With this sort of reductionism, lee_merrill, you can turn the results of an upset stomach into a wind, but it wouldn't really be wind would it? just as your distortion of a simple idea wouldn't make it a day. The text clearly tells you what a day is. You simply seem to have to deny what the text says. What you want isn't there. You want the sun to be there in the beginning, but clearly the writer doesn't agree with you, for he creates it where we would expect, so as to populate the light. If you want the writer to change the story, why don't you send him a letter?

You love these tangents because they give you the slimmest hope that your rewriting of the text can be justified even a little.

If we are still talking about 2 Chr 36, then you don't understand the text. It merely says that all the days it kept sabbath in the seventy years, sabbath comes from rest/cease, so obviously nothing happened during that time. There is no indication that sabbath here meant sabbath year. It merely refers to the origin of the ideqa of sabbath. However, it's a tangent, lee_merrill. It's j ust another thing to keep you from dealing with the text.

If you can't answer it here, then you discuss it there. Let me know the results, if you think you get anything coherent.

Sure should. The word for lights [M)WRYM] is derived from the word for light [)WR].

lee_merrill, you are not reading what the text says. Day 1, "let there be light" [)WR]. Day 4, "let there be lights" [M)WRYM]. The writer can't be any plainer. When you get over trying to dictate what the writer should say, let us all know.

You're confusing the events of 1:16 with 1:14.

Beside the attempt to make something out of the verb structure in v16 could easily be done with the same verb structure for "created" in 1:27. You might want to argue just as validly that humans were created earlier because it's the same verb form in 1:27 ("so god made man in his own image" -- or was that "so god has made man in his own image"?) as 1:16 ("and god made two great lights"). But it does't work from the verb form isn't used that way.

Give up the tangents, lee_merrill, and get into what the writer says where he says it. What does the text say? not what do you want the text to say. You must start with the text, and stop running away from it.


spin

lee_merrill

Hi everyone,

Right, and in the examples I know of, “olam” modifies a noun, as in the translation Spin gave.

You still need to tell me which Hebrew word is the verb in the phrase in question (not the English word, the Hebrew word).

What I’m asking though is why this distortion is wrong.

I might respond in kind, and say you have to deny the obvious meaning, what you want, isn’t there! But this will not be productive.

But this is undeniable, every seventh year the land was to lie fallow, and this was called an (unqualified) sabbath.

Yes, so this reminder might be an indication that the events are related, would be my point.

Which fits fine with lights “set in place” on the fourth day, which were giving light indistinctly before. The interpretation could not be any plainer!

Yet this account contains the account of the making, so it fits with the first reading, I would conclude.

Regards,
Lee

spin

Rubbish, lee_merrill. You want the word "day" to mean something other than the common meaning of the word. When asked from the text to show evidence for any reason not to treat the word as commonly understood, you change the subject. When that fails you try to turn the discussion around. You fail yet again to justify the meaning that you want the word "day" to have in the passage.

It's terrible when you try to obfuscate and then have trouble with the obfuscation. Denial, lee_merrill? No, you need to justify your stuff especially when it is an apparent useless tangent. Here is what I said about the passage:

If we are still talking about 2 Chr 36, then you don't understand the text. It merely says that all the days it kept sabbath in the seventy years, sabbath comes from rest/cease, so obviously nothing happened during that time. There is no indication that sabbath here meant sabbath year. It merely refers to the origin of the ideqa of sabbath. However, it's a tangent, lee_merrill. It's just another thing to keep you from dealing with the text.

You did not respond.

It would be nice if you understand what I said before trying to make your point. The word for light M)WR in v.14 is derived from the light )WR in v.3, not vice versa. That light in v.3 is not caused by the lights n v.14. You are trying to shoehorn the text into your science. In so doing your are betraying the text, which clearly has god creating the lights on day 4. Notice that god says that these lights were signs for the seasons, for the days and for the years. They are signs, not the source of light in v.3. Light was created in day 1 and the lights in day 4. If you want to question the language of your own source, you should be consistent about it. Did god create light on day 1? If so, the language being the same as in day 4, doesn't that mean that he created the lights on day 4?

Or more wrong. The grammar is appalling. In v.14 we get the creation of the lights, then in v.15 we get the details of that creation, ie god made the lights. The verb form of "made" is the same as "said" in "And god said, let there be lights in the firmament" or "And god said, let the earth bring forth grass..." and numerous other verbs in the passage. To get back to your error, you said:

I agree that this is a weak point in my view, and I have to take refuge in a possibility, the text could mean "had made". More support for the sun appearing on day four I mentioned in my opening post, which points I would hope now you would find it seemly to address!

But of course the logic doesn't work. It shows no understanding of Hebrew verb forms and their use in narrative discourse. No, with the use of the notion "had made" you are working from an English understanding of verb tenses and even then, a sequence of past perfects (eg "had made") provides a narrative sequence in which a later one cannot be before an earlier one.

Stop weaseling. Read the text for what it says rather than what you have to make it say. It says on day 1 that god made light and it says on day 4 that god made the lights. Why must you try to make it be something else?

But you don't say anything clear with this statement, lee_merrill. You don't enter into the grammar problem and you don't see the incoherence of moving events ad hoc.

I know it's not a case of dishonesty, lee_merrill. You truly want to believe that your perversion of the text is warranted. What I keep trying to tell you is that your meanings are not those of the text and therefore you are not being responsible.


spin

Sauron

The role is that of an adverb, lee. It is modifying the action. If something exists forever, or occasionally or never, then all three of those bolded words are modifying how something exists / lives / etc. That is what the Hebrew phrase is doing here.

As I told you: if you think spin is supporting you or your position here, you're sadly mistaken.

Already answered. Twice, in fact.

1. I am under no obligation to tell you anything, until you support the claims you've set forth already. As I said before:

Since you have first claim on this, you need to back up your claim first. As soon as you support you claim, you'll be in a position to ask others to support theirs.

Gregg

Good heavens to betsy! A recognized Hebrew scholar interprets Genesis in a way that can be harmonized with science! I guess this is supposed to give us pause?

Earl Doherty gives a good example of the lengths some scholars will go to harmonize the Bible with science. I can't remember the particular scholar or Bible translation, but there was a passage where God is saying someone's descendants "shall be as numerous as the stars in the sky and as grains of sand." The scholar commented that, since only a few thousand stars are visible to the naked eye while there are billions of grains of sand, the writer must have been privy to "inside knowledge" of how many stars there really are in the universe. Instead of the writer just using poetic language to say "a lot" with no real interest in whether the number of stars came anywhere close to the number of grains of sand.

Again, I can't remember the scholar or translation, but I seem to recall he was a pretty respectable scholar and it wasn't some fundy Bible.

lee_merrill

You would be implying the Hebrews couldn't tell the numbers were very different? I would say they realized this.

Sauron

Then prove it, lee.

Demonstrate that the Hebrews knew that the total number of stars was in the tens of billions.

Smullyan-esque

Yes, they realized this. Any halfway intelligent person who looks at the night sky, and then looks at a desert full of sand, will realize that there are a LOT more grains of sand than stars (that they can see).

But are you seriously suggesting that this is something OTHER than a piece of poetic exaggeration? You really think they meant this passage literally? And you really think this is evidence that they had some sort of impossible scientific knowledge, inspired by God?

If so:
1) There are LOTS more stars than there are grains of sand on the Earth. Or, if you are counting all the grains of sand in the universe, there are LOTS and LOTS more grains of sand than stars. So, one way or the other, you are suggesting that God got it wrong.

2) What about the rest of the passage? Do you really think that this person's descendents really number in the Umpteen-Quadrillions?

Sauron

It's funny, isn't it?

lee_merrill is taking an obviously poetic passage and trying to claim that it's literally true. Yet when it comes to Genesis chapter 1, he takes a clearly used word like "day" and without any reason to do so, tries to interpret it as something it clearly is not.

So lee, how about this passage? It's a discussion of the Hebrews walked over the Red (Reed) Sea:

EXO 15:8 And with the blast of thy nostrils the waters were gathered together, the floods stood upright as an heap, and the depths were congealed in the heart of the sea.

Since we have to take things literally, I guess this means that God blew his nose, and a big snot booger was what rolled back the Red Sea. Because obviously poetic texts must be interpreted literally.

Right? :rolling: