Apikorus

You're right. yazoku matar literally "they form rain". The falling doesn't happen until the next verse.

spin

Just another small but important point from Gen2:5:

The vapour came out of the earth...

The preposition MN makes clear the origin of this mist is from (within) the earth, ruling out the Futato attempt to place his cloud (= vapour) on the horizon. The text simply, and literally, says from the earth.


spin

Apikorus

I've often thought that the ed in Gen 2:6 must be some sort of dew. But the Hebrew for dew is tal. And curiously, the only appearances of tal in Genesis are in 27:28,39, where it appears as tal hashamayim = dew of heaven (!) Deut 32:2 also very interesting in this context, and Deut 33:28 where dew "drops down" (yaarfo) from the heavens. Dew also "falls" upon the ground elsewhere in the HB, such as 2 Sam 17:12, and Psa 133:3. Hosea 6:4 seems to associate dew with a "morning cloud".

At any rate, spin, I'd be interested in your thoughts here. Apparently the HB authors realized that dew did not come up from the earth, and even passages which are presumably early such as 2 Sam 17:12 reflect this understanding. Since the ed in Gen 2:6 undeniably comes from the ground, it must be something else. But it isn't dew and it isn't rain.

CJD

If time allows, I will follow up your posts witha substantial one. Suffice to say that it is a rare occurrence that a "religionist" would be arguing for a plainer, more naturalistic understanding of a text that skeptics would. If ed does not signify a rain cloud, then you are left 1) to speculate what wonderful event took place so that vegetation could grow, because it "undeniably" comes from under the ground and therefore cannot be (acc. to Apikorus) dew or rain; 2) with the absurdity of the text itself. Verse 5 recounts a problem: there was no wild vegetation ("shrub of the field") or cultivated vegetation ("plant of the field") precisely because there was no rain to cause growth and there was no cultivator to till the ground. Note the absurdity of the text if verse six is read as some type of miraculous water-spouting from under the earth. Why would verse 5 mention that there was no rain only to provide a confounded whatever water-source in verse 6? No, verse 6 proffers the partial solution to verse 5 (rain to cause vegetation to grow), just as verse 7 offers the second solution (a cultivator to cultivate the vegetation).

I am simplifying here, of course. I am sure you folks see the problem that the text has if the usual rendering of ed is embraced. Why are you content to leave it thus?

What is more, arguing for wooden literalism for prepositions like MN in the middle of a poem is hardly a substantive critique.

Regards,

CJD

Apikorus

How can you possibly argue for a "plainer, more naturalistic understanding" of the text when blatantly miraculous events are happening throughout the story? Man, beasts and birds are formed from dirt, woman from man's rib, and there's a tree whose fruit provides knowledge of good and evil. Given all this, I don't have much of a problem with a mist coming up from the ground.

Doctor X

"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln. . . ."

--J.D.

spin

The reason why some translators opted for "stream" was that some streams were known to spring from the ground. But therre are nice plain words in Hebrew for "stream" and "cloud", yet the writer chose not to use them, because he had some other idea in mind.

But the point is not to explain away the text because we don't like the implications of a literal reading. The text points to something coming out of the ground and the little we can glean for that something's meaning is "vapour" (and that comes from from its use in Job). You must start with a literal reading and show why it must be abandoned.

No, it's not a problem but a starting condition.

Literally:
Every plant of the field before it was on earth,
every herb of the field before it was on earth,
for el yhwh hadn't caused rain on the earth
and man (adam) nothing to serve the ground (adamah).

It was in this situation that a vapour came out of the earth and creation could be started.

You are not reading verse 7, which only talks of the formation of man out of the soil of the ground, breathing of life into him and his becoming a living soul.

No.

All you need to do is to justify the sudden change in meaning of a word based on some linguistic evidence. What you and Futato offer, is redefinition of all the key words, earth is not earth, vapour is not vapour, out of is not out of. That's just moving the goal posts to where you can score from.


spin

CJD

First, anyone care to break this discussion of Gen. 2 and ed off of this thread?

Which was what, a "vapor"? How would a vapor suffice to cause vegetation to grow? The point for folks like Dr. Futato is not to remedy anxiety over the implications of wooden literalism; he is commited first to a topical arrangement of the creation narrative because the text itself pulls us in this direction. Even if ed is absolutely not a reference to a rain cloud, the topical arrangement still stands.

Whenever I read fantastical literature or poetry, etc., I do not close my eyes to the genre and proceed interpreting as if the piece was technical prosody. A "literal" reading must be abandoned because the world wasn't created like this. The fossil record shows as much.

Um, okay. But it is still a negative starting condition. If you don't agree, then please explain why. Explain why the text describes the situation in negative terms. There is no wild vegetation because it has yet to rain (v. 5); there is no cultivated plants because there is no cultivator (v. 5). Are you being coy? Isn't it obvious?

Step one in reading a text: look at the surrounding text. Now I am wondering if you are being deliberately difficult. The inclusion of the fasioning of man at this point in the text comes on the heels of a negative description: "and there was no man to work the ground."

Forget the pithy-ness and give me a rebuttal on this point.

Now, I realize that ed does not have to be a rain cloud; the "vapor" could still be the solution to the negative condtion stated in verse 5. It is just that rain is mentioned specifically in verse 5. "Man" was mentioned in verse 5 in the midst of the negative condition, and "man" appears again in verse 7 as the solution to that negative condition (note that the man is also placed in the garden right after that to . . . yep, you guessed it, to till the land). The parallel structure in the text makes more sense if ed has to do with rain.

Please remind me, what am I trying to score? Nevermind, if you can, leave off discussing my ulterior motives unless I offer them to you; it is obnoxious.

Regards,

CJD

Celsus

This discussion is split from Defending the Genesis creation account. As usual, let's remember to behave like gentlemen, er... gentlepeople.

Joel

Apikorus

CJD writes,
Reference to "the fossil record" here is bizarre. There is zero evidence that the ancient Israelites knew anything about fossils. Nor did they know about general relativity, modern cosmology, geology, etc.

spin makes a perfectly good point: a literal reading must always be the default position. To quote the gemara, ein miqra yotsei miydei peshuto (= no passage may be denied its peshat, or literal meaning). We abandon the literal meaning when it is absurd - as is usually the case when one is dealing with metaphor - or when it is otherwise untenable. Sometimes, a passage may have a dual function; a skillful writer may intend to convey both a literal and an implied meaning. At any rate, I see absolutely no reason why the literal meaning must be abandoned in Gen 2:6. I agree that the meaning of eid both here and in Job 36:27 is enigmatic. However it is perfectly clear that this eid is arising from the earth (= min ha'aretz). Whether the eid was a mist or a rising water table is impossible to ascertain. (Even were its meaning in Job crystal clear, it would be a bit risky to automatically apply that meaning in Gen 2:6. With only two appearances of eid in the HB, there's very little one can say with any confidence. The Akkadian edu may be a cognate, but this is hardly a slam-dunk case.)

Again, the supernatural abounds in the J creation account, so it is silly to argue that rain is a better fit than an earthly mist (or flow) simply because it is "more natural". Besides, the conception of the world reflected in the HB includes subterranean waters and "fountains of the deep" (Gen 7:11, Gen 8:2, Prov 8:28), hence the eid moisture "from the earth" is in fact perfectly consistent with this view, and need not be viewed as supernatural at all. Why is rain any more "natural" than an earthly flow?

As for moving the goalposts, both spin and I are quite familiar with this particular canard and its use in Christian apologetics. See here, for example.