John Kesler

What about Genesis 18?

spin

This reaction seems rather narcissistic to me. We realize a major problem in understanding a text is ourselves, but we let ourselves rule our approach so we make it impossible to see anything other than ourselves reflected.

What actually happens in analyses dealing with literary indications of a consciousness different from our modern day consciousness, is to find different means of dealing with the problem. Literary analyses are constantly dealing with the same problem of getting out of our own consciousness and trying to build a surrogate context from which to understand a text from what can be gleaned from our knowledge of the context in which a work was written, or at least in which it was used.

This means knowing something of the literature of the era and what sorts of methods were available to its writers, what sort of thought were writers dealing with. You need to let the text do as much talking as you can. That's why I have stressed the literal approach to the text. Let it say what it appears to say, before anything and then deal with that as it reflects the thought of the era.

You can't give in before you start as Gamera did assuming that a day must be seen by an ancient writer as necessarily based on the existence of the sun. The text gives us light on the very first day. That would appear to be sufficient to the writer. The light allowed the writer to have a day.

The text helps us to understand. The world was tohu wabohu, "waste and void" as the KJV succinctly translates it. This state of affairs was thematic for the writer. In fact, the first three days dealt with overcoming the state of waste or chaos, through the separation of materials, (1) light from darkness, (2) waters below and waters above retained by a firmament making a sky below the firmament, then (3) land from sea. The writer then went on to deal with filling the void, populating (1') the light and darkness -- sun, moon and stars --, (2') the sea and sky -- fish and birds --, and (3') the land -- animals and humans. This starts to help us understand the world view on its own terms. We can take on board the consciousness necessary to understand the literature, as long as you refrain from judgment while doing so.

The frequent comment about the worthlessness of the literature merely insulates people from understanding it. They are too busy with their own consciousness to have any appreciation of any other consciousness. This is partly because people are reacting not so much against the literature but against the religion that the literature represents and so the literature gets tarred by the same brush and its communicative or express value is put aside. The value of the text becomes reduced to right or wrong and because it does not reflect a modern scientific world view, it must be wrong. Well, whoopie do, it doesn't reflect a modern scientific world view, but then it wasn't written in modern times, so what does one expect? The only thing that is wrong here is that the reader won't withhold judgment for a while and spend the time to assimilate enough of the past to give the text to communicate its ideas.

This passage at the beginning of Genesis is full of interest, if you only give the text its due. It reveals an early explanation of how we got here, how people approached such a problem before the science we take for granted shaped our understanding. It also shows the literary skill of much subtlety and complexity in its exposition of god's power in bring the world into existence not through physical intervention but through will.

As one works through the range of thought embodied in the text, one overcomes to some degree the constructs of our own consciousness, so that the ancient writer can talk to us. The problem for us to face is to clean out our own ears so that we can hear -- if we want to.


spin

smokester

Spin, please note the addendum I added to the paragraph you quoted from.
This clearly states that I believe the difficulties of differing consciousness can be overcome. So, in that regard I definitely agree with you. However, some people regard the difficulty as insuperable. I don't think that necessarily makes them narcissistic. I just disagree with them.

Give me some time to respond to the bulk of your comments. Thanks

smokester

spin
me
Assuming that Genesis 1 is an example of prehistoric thought and not of the later scribes who recorded it:

Not only are we looking at a different set of 'ideas' but a different kind of 'consciousness'. Doesn't this mean that it isn't only different thoughts that we shall be concerned with, but also different perceptions? Aren't thought and sense perceptions interrelated? Wasn't the consciousness of the pre-historical man figurative through and through? A kind of consciousness for which it was impossible to perceive unfiguratively?

So when you say "I have stressed the literal approach to the text" are you assuming the writer expressed him/herself in a literal manner also; but literal to his consciousness not ours and you deal with it accordingly?

If primitive man had as his 'common sense' the perception of the immaterial and material world coincidentally---and did not deliberately add the immaterial to the material, as we do---we certainly need an objectivity which I doubt many are willing to employ since it is contradictory to our 'common sense' way of looking at the world.

By the way, what do you mean by the word "literal"?

FreeFromReligion

Here is my take on the whole day-age thing:

From what I have read,"Yom" is the hebrew word used to describe one day of the creation account in genesis. This word is also used in other places in the bible to describe a literal day.

Describing a day as "the evening and the morning" was a custom used by the sumerians. This custom was probably picked up by the hebrews as their culture was highly influenced by the sumerians.

A logical explanation of why the writers of the bible thought the earth was around 4,000 years old at the time is because about 4,000 B.C. is when the first form of writing (cuneiform) was developed. Therefore, there was no written record, or knowledge of anything, prior to this time.

aa5874

There is also the possibilty that a statement or text is fiction. I noticed you have not addressed that issue. I hope that you are aware of false claims in ads.



This is most likely to be fiction, since the 24hr day is based on the revolution of the earth with respect to the sun.

This is likely to be one's imagination, since God is only believed to be real and no-one can verify His physical characteristics.

That is your unsubstantiated belief. So perhaps you can tell all the capabilities of God, since He can get 'angry' at times.


What about physically close, literally.

I think they wanted to illuminate that their God could create the world in seven days, but it was just a fairy tale to be taken mythically.

spin

You can't assume this. The text assumes quite a more complex and nuanced world view from that in chapter two of Genesis. There are actually two creation accounts and the second is much more primitive, with god physically intervening and creation not going straightforwardly, eg animals were created for man but man was still not contented, so god made woman.

The Genesis one creation is dependent on an earlier creation tradition represented by another exemplar, found in the Babylonian Enuma Elish, which at one point talks of the god dominating the waters and slitting it in half placing half sbove and half below, then creating the world out of the bottom half.

The Genesis one creation is far from prehistoric. In fact it seems to suggest a long, at least partially literary, tradition behind it.

Up until the point you dropped "impossible" into the expression, I'd probably agree with much of this.

It is a linguistic consequence. The writer was writing to be understood. Otherwise the words could evoke anything. If the words don't mean what the writer's reading audience could understand, then the writing is not communication. And my comment was originally aimed at those people who take a word which has a range of meanings and choose a less transparent meaning, apparently based on their own approach to the text rather than the text itself. Unless a word can be shown to bear a less frequently used meaning, the more frequently used one should be used. A day is a day unless proven otherwise. We have to take a literal approach to the lexical items in a communication. I have also said that texts might carry other content beside the literal meaning, content which cannot be ignored, but our starting point is always deal with the literal content before all others. It is only when one has dealt with what the text seems to say on the surface that you have a chance of seeing more.

Now, our understanding of what the text is saying depends on our knowledge from other such texts. We reclaim meaning the more we get to know the content in context. I guess we are also reclaiming to some minor degree the consciousness behind the texts, that shared between the writer and the reader. But this necessarily involves using the texts as our starting point, not our own world views.

An objectivity that can to some degree be developed through familiarity with the texts. To gain familiarity you have to shelve modern common sense and judgmentalism and frequently ask WTF? in order to get further into culture.

Hopefully, I have answered this earlier in my response. What the texts say, the surface of the texts. It is only after having dealt in depth with that can you consider other meaning.


spin

Tigers!

Suprisingly enough I agree with Spin on this.

Berthold

Would atheist/agnostic fall under "not a creationist"?

And, furthermore, should there not be the category "I don't care because, anyway, the sequence of events is wrong, too" :devil1: ?

Mihilz

I'm sure it's possible to be a theist without being a creationist. I just wanted to distinguish between creationists and non-creationists rather than theists and atheists. I don't doubt that the sequence of events in the creation myth are wrong; my purpose is not to try to disprove something that is obviously false anyway (or obviously false to people who have common sense anyway). I just wanted to check that proving the day-age claim wrong is as simple as actually reading the first chapter of Genesis.