Amos

It was pure myth, Biff, and therefore no historical fall existed and just because it was pure myth that there is a need for continuing way need for redemption. The "Jesus save me" thing is based on error and therefore fiction. (I agree because there is some truth behind fiction an therefore "based on error)."

Amos

(Whispers to Adora), I'd be suspicious when a bouquet is recieved from my arch enemy.

Kosh

As I said, you have not done much research into the basic claims of Xianity. This is not the same as saying you must know "everything". We're just asking that you at least understand what you're talking about before preaching it.

I don't have know everything about math up through advanced Calculus to point out that you're wrong when you say that 1+1=3.

Atheism is not a belief system, and I am not preaching about it. Atheism is a lack of belief in supernatural beings. I am (like many here) simply pointing out how absurd your belief system is in light of scientific facts and common sense. As evidenced by this thread alone (and your admittance), there are clearly lots of things you have not considered or researched regarding the claims of both the NT and OT. So I would ask that before:

1. You try to support Genesis as fact, you research the facts of why it is myth, why it is copied from earlier sumerian Myths, and why it is contradicted by well established scientific research.

2. You try to support the global flud, you research why it is myth, why it is contradicted by well supported geological research.

3. [b]Claim that the ressurection is the most well documented event in history]/b] (common Xian apologetics) you research that it is actually not the case and why there is no contemporary reference to it

4. Claim that original apostles were martyred for their belief, you research why that claim is nothing more than church tradition with no factual backing.

5. Claim that the gospels were written by eyewitnesses to the resurection, you research and understand the concensus of Biblical scholarship (yes, Christians too) that they are anonymous, written many years after the fact by unkown people.

I could go on, but I think you get the point. These are just a few of the many fallacies touted by the likes of Strobel and McDowell, and propgated (without research) by their fans.

And we're off topic now.

Also, in case it hadn't occurred to you, many of the posters here are actually ex-Xians who did their research, and found it to be false (myself included).

spin

It might be good before you post messages that you read any of the scholarly commentaries floating around on Genesis. Yes, you'll find that they will tell you that the first creation account ends with God resting on the seventh day and then you'll find a second creation account. (I seem to remember someone here has already pointed out the contents of the second creation account to you which shows that it is simply a different account from the first.)

Let me help you to get what is going here. Look at 2:4.

4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made earth and heaven.

This is a toledoth passage (often marked in translations by talking of generations). Our text is better translated

4 These are the generations of ...

And the toledoth is an introduction to a section.

5:1

This is the book of the generations of Adam

6:9

These are the generations of Noah

10:1

Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah

11:10

These are the generations of the sons of Shem

11:27

Now these are the generations of Terah

etc.

The generations are given after the section head, so when we read

2:4 These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created

we should know that the generations follow. However, when a new account was appended at the front of the text, the toledoth got buried in creation of the heavens and the earth material.

Looking at what the text goes on to tell us, we should be able to see that it is an account of the generations of the heavens and the earth:

2:4b In the day when God made the heavens and the earth,

2:5 and every plant before it was [yet] on the earth and every grass before it had [yet] sprung up, for yhwh 'lhym hadn't caused it to rain on the earth, and man (=adam) was nothing to [be able to] serve the ground (=adamah).

This was a dry world at the beginning of God's work, unlike that of the first creation, which was from water. I have elsewhere shown the Babylonian connection for the first creation account and I should underline that Mesopotamia was prone to heavy flooding, unlike Palestine, which has always been relatively dry.

It is in this dryness before God had caused it to rain that a "mist" came out of the earth and watered the full face of the ground. This was not an act of God, but a starting condition, and it was then that God intervened to make the first man (adam) from the dust of the ground (adamah). You can see the logic of this writer tightly relating man to the ground etymologically. So God's first act was to create man, while yet there were no plant or grass or animal.

Here we have a much more primitive creation story: in a dry world man was created and a garden was made for him. Then to keep him happy animals were made, but that wasn't a satisfactory achievement because man was still not happy, so God created woman so that he would not be alone.

Just maybe you haven't read the first creation account closely. We have the creation of human beings back in 1:26 after the creation of animals. (Human beings were the apex and last stage of creation there.)

Here we have humans created at the beginning of the process and the other things mentioned created later. The order of this second creation account is very different from the first.

They don't exist in the Hebrew. They have been added by translators to help give sense to the reading of the text.

Well, if you are not familiar with the text you can make mistaken value judgments like this, which don't consider how the texts were formed. When texts were built up, adding sections from here and there, you find related texts clumped together, despite the fact that they were not written by the same person, sometimes they are united like the flood account (you'll find lots of contradictions there, if contradictions are significant to you). The writers didn't have the constrainst you do for the construction of the text. Their aims seemed to be to get all the traditions together to preserve them. Each tradition was valuable in itself, so why get rid of them? -- because someone thousands of years later wouldn't like the contradictory nature of the results? Why are people these days such slaves to literalism?

Are you truly telling me that you at the beginning of this bright new millennium are going to turn your back on all the scientific learning of the past few centuries and the uncovering of numerous Mesopotamian religious texts to read the Adam and Eve text literally? When people from ancient times described things, they did so with the knowledge available for various reasons, often to explain the way things were. For example, why are humans, though born with no clothes, forced to wear them? Just how did the leopard get its spots?

This is a statement of belief that has nothing to do with the text we are looking at. You are projecting your beliefs onto the text because of one of those unhappy contradictions that disturb you. How can you possibly hope to understand the text when you are too busy to read what it says and what other people were saying before it was written?

Thanks for sparing us your speculations. I'm sure you'll realise they have nothing to do with the text and will only help you no to deal with what it says.

A good rule when dealing with ancient texts: read them, read them in context, read what their authors were reading and use this first to help you to understand their significance. Your job in reading a text is to reduce the amount of impediments you have that prevent you from dealing with the text. When you cannot read a text because your other ideas get in the road (such as your modern ideas of God), what is the point of reading it?


spin

Apikorus

Most Hebrew Bible scholars would say, pace spin, that Gen 2:4a ("These are the generations of the heaven and of the earth when they were created") is closing a section, rather than opening one. Gen 1:1 to 2:4a is assigned to the Priestly author (P). P is concerned with genealogical information and is the author of the other toledot passages in the Torah. The non-P (most would say J, or Yahwist) strand begins at 2:4b ("In the day YHWH God made the earth and heaven").

Doctor X

Again, reference to Who Wrote the Bible? will provide the information spin suggests.

I cannot make this point too strongly.

As for previous myths:

Creation:

Enki and Ninhursag: a Paradise Myth

Enuma elish--Akkadian Creation Myth

"Enuma elish" means, "when on high," from the opening line of the myth.

This is too damn long for me to quote the salient points here. Basically, it contains the combat-myth creation of which portions exist in the Exodus after the "parting of the sea of destruction."

The Flood:

Sumerian Deluge

The text is severely damaged. Nevertheless, Ziusudra--the Noah figure--has a "huge boat"--and survives the deluge.

Babylonian-Akkadian Deluge from Gilgamesh:

As stated in a previous post, Gilgamesh seeks the two mortals who became immortal--Utnapishtim and his wife--the Noah figure--to find out how to become immortal. Utnapishtim tells the story of the flood.

Et cetera . . . et cetera. . . .

--J.D.

Reference:

Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. J.B. Pritchard, ed, third ed., Princeton University Press, 1969.

spin

Yes, I've already explained why they are probably wrong: other toledoths initiate passages, not end them.

Let me add that the first creation account is complete when God rests. What does a generic epilogue add to the passage?

Go for relative consistency: the toledoth in 2:4 belongs with what follows.

The account in Gen:1-2:3 was simply inserted before the second account and its toledoth. The process is very simple and fits the facts we have better than the alternatives, while there is nothing which conflicts with it.


spin

Apikorus

Just that J doesn't use toledot in that way. 2:4a could have been inserted by a redactor who used P terminology. Impossible to say, really. The Hebrew of 2:4 is a bit awkward to attribute to a single author. The double mention of shamayim and eretz (chiastically, nb - maybe a redactor's trick of linking P and J) is clumsy. Also the two different verbs for creation (bara and asah) a dead giveaway. Think your argument a bit too simplistic in this case. No doubt P likes toledot formulations and uses the word to introduce material. This case a likely exception though.

spin

I'm not a great fan of the alphabet soup approach to Genesis. It is too riddled with assumptions.

`SH is not much of an indication of anything. It is used in the first account. And BR' in the toledoth is no problem whatsoever for the scribes that structured their materials with tolediths. Hence your problem with 2:4 awkwardness disappears.

I see no problem whatsoever with the heavens and earth, as they are used together. They are in fact used often enough together elsewhere. So, how else would you put such a toledoth if you had written the sentence?

I think you are trying too hard to explain away the obvious, ie that the toledoths introduce sections and what follows this toledoth is appropriate.


spin

Apikorus

This is hardly "alphabet soup". Simply P and non-P here. Gen 1:1 and 2:4a frame the P creation account:

My point, which you really haven't addressed, is not that shamayim and eretz appear in the same sentence - indeed they are paired. The problem is that they both appear twice in 2:4. If we read 2:4 as a single sentence, the result is quite awkward:

It sounds even worse in Hebrew. Had this been the work of one author, he'd have done better to write bayom asah otam YHWH elohim or simply bayom asah otam ("in the day he made them") for 2:4b. (Incidentally, note the use of YHWH elohim in 2:4b - another giveaway.)

P certainly does use asah, but the use of bara and asah in the same putative sentence, both applied to the heaven-earth pair, is very clumsy.

Another improbable aspect to your reading is the fact that 2:4b says bayom - "in the day" - and not bayamim ("in the days"). If the sentence is introducing a toledot account, as you say, it should not refer to a single day. Reading 2:4b as the beginning of the non-P account eliminates this difficulty.

Best book I know of on source criticism of Genesis is D. M. Carr, Reading the Fractures of Genesis.