rhutchin

You have a lot of opinions. Why not take some, one at a time, develop them into a series of threads and let people comment. This thread is directed to Genesis and you are not.

spin

Yes, and citing old texts are no help.


More knowledge gives you a better understanding of what you are dealing with.

I have to say this again: the Enuma Elish is not Sumerian. If you check the archives you'll see that I point out several times that THWM is a cognate of Tiamat. Tell me something I don't know.

This seems to be out of a post I made some time back.

A linguist always finds it funny how practitioners of a language think they know it all.

You're not by yourself.

Dealing with linguistic data.

I guess then it was an aside. This is purely philology. We are dealing with understanding, or trying to understand, what a text actually says.

You aren't making much sense here. In English we usually require a definite article with an ordinal. That's an English requirement. The definite article is a late development in most languages, so has unique usages in those languages.

Why don't you buy a newish translation of the Enuma Elish. N.K. Sandars did one about forty years ago. Then there's the Oxford translation of Mesopotamian Myths which has the text. You'll find all the changes you'll ever need from King's text. Using old translations is a bad methodology.

Read our archives.

Anyone who cites Archer as an authority is suspect.

He is assuming how the text should be, if it were to mean what he doesn't want it to mean.

He knows what his outcome is already.

We are dealing with use of the definite article. As shown in )XD L:XD$ it's certainly not necessary in Hebrew in order to translate with a definite article in English.

Actually we are not. We are dealing with YWM which means "day" as we understand its central meaning and why it shouldn't be translated as "day" in Gen 1.

Deut 4:10 talks of Moses on the day he stood before the lord... but there is no definite article there before YWM. Perhaps that doesn't mean a specific day, or perhaps it means an extended period.

Samson would be a Nazarite till the day of his death, Josh 13:7. Oops, no article in Hebrew.

Etc.

I doubt that we disagree. It's just that you suspend your criteria here.

Any expert you'd care to name who doesn't look at the rest of the data.

This equivocation is not based on Hebrew but on translating it into English. If it is more normally rendered in English as an ordinal, it doesn't reflect on the Hebrew.

You are still arguing for a non-literal reading for YWM, so stop kidding yourself. You have no criteria for reading it differently, but you still do so. The best you've got is what the apologists have provided you, assumptions about why YWM )XD can't mean "day one".

They show how some Jews during the second temple understood Genesis 1's days.

Rubbish.

This might sound good to you but it doesn't deal with the fact that the days were imposed onto the text in Hebrew giving it the structure of a week and it's not there in the Akkadian.

There is no such word in Sumerian.

Sure does.

What in the text itself indicates to you that YWM doesn't mean what it normally does, but some extended length of time?

If the Hebrew writers were using the Enuma Elish directly, then they were doing a lot more than editing. However, we have no evidence that they were using the Enuma Elish directly. They may have used something which summarized it; they may have used something that it was derived from; or some other relationship.

Your endorsement makes it yours.

Umm, day one, day two, ...

If our job is to understand the text, there's no need!


spin

Adamu

And so you accept their translations of the creative acts as "a first day" "a second day" etc?
I just figured that if they were generally accepted you'd be able to point quickly to a resource in support of your arguments.
I don't care whether or not you're dependent on the net.

What "desired meaning" do you think they, or even I, have, and thusly are clinging to extraordinary things?

Ignoring the source material for Genesis and the uniqueness of the "day"s therein does not constitute exegesis.

Unsatisfactorily.

This is the ignorance to which I refer above.

Incorrect!
It is generally accepted that the enuma elish is of Sumerian origin, that its protagonist was either EA, along with other primeval gods, or some as yet un named god. The Assyrian version exalted Ashur, the Babylonian version Marduk, the shortened Hebrew version YHWH.

Understanding the widespread religio-cultural influence of these ancient near eastern civs on the early Hebrews is paramount to philology of the bible.
The akkadian cuneiform remained the "scholarly" language until the common era. Akkadian is a semitic sister language of Hebrew and therefore it stands to reason that echoes of the much earlier creation epics are heard in the Genesis account.

spin

Get an ASV.

One that doesn't seem based on Genesis 1 at all. One which cannot be derived from the words used in the text.

You don't know what the source material was.

I see.

Read my lips. The Enuma Elish is not Sumerian. You don't want to assume that the Akkadian text is the Sumerian text. Even the name "Enuma Elish" is Akkadian.

So now it's not just "edited" at least. That's a mild improvement. However, you trivialize the relationship between the texts with your attempted slavish rapport between Gen 1 and the Enuma Elish. What is the relation between "Heart of Darkness" and "Apocalypse Now" or Stoker's Dracula with Bela Lugosi's Dracula? The source and the derived text is extremely different having gone through hands that have done their own creative work. THe difference is that we know the relationship between these texts though we don't with the Enuma Elish and Gen 1.

I agree that the cultural context is eminently important to understanding a text. However, you must deal with what the text says first. And you and your sources haven't.

Actually Akkadian was being dropped in the later stages of the Assyrian new empire with Aramaic becoming the language of choice. The Chaldeans used Aramaic as their official language, as did the Persians. This of course has nothing to do with what the end receivers of the traditions in and around Jerusalem knew. They were speakers of Hebrew and Aramaic (though not chancelry Aramaic used in Mesopotamia), not Akkadian. One cannot expect those who heard Gen 1 to have known anything at all about the Enuma Elish or whatever the source Gen 1 was derived from. The problem is to show that they would understand anything other than what the text appears to say -- from the text itself. That is the first and apparently insuperable problem the non-literal reading must face.


spin

Adamu

Thanks, I will; it apparently supports my view.
But you didn't answer my question: Do you accept their translations as " a first day, a second day,..." etc.?
And in so doing agree there's a difference as it's employed during Creation?

Do you agree with the above or not?
Furthermore, do you agree there's a connection between the Genesis account of creation and the Enuma Elish?
These are closed-ended questions; a simple "yes" or "no" will suffice.

Given the congruencies between the Creation accounts, as well as in others (eg. The Flood), and the cultural influence of the mesopotamians across the ancient near east, it should be quite clear from whence the authors of Genesis took theirs ideas.
So again, ignoring the source material, let alone the differentiated use of "yom" in the Genesis Creation, does not lend itself to exegesis or good philology.

You do?
You understand why I can't accept "yom" meaning 24hrs as used during the creative acts?

I don't see your lips; bits and bytes will do.
And I'm shocked.
Please explain why Sumerian deities inhabit the Enuma Elish.
Please show how Marduk WAS NOT Enki's son; Enki being the akkadian, EA the sumerian. And why in the Enuma Elish is the transfer of power from the Sumerian high god Anum to the Babylonian high god Marduk, described?
Please explain how Sumer-Akkad didn't coexist largely indistinguishable from one another and how a writing system borrowed from the Sumerians didn't incorporate their myths.

Of course we do. The editors of Genesis, no doubt familiar with the various religious systems of the ancient near east, prepared a text intended for a specific audience, exalting a specific god and His people. this is no different than what the Babylonians did with Marduk, the Assyrians with Ashur, the Sumerians with several gods (theirs were more city-gods than state-gods). They all describe the same primordial events which ordered the universe, created the Great Gods, the Heavens and the Earth, culminating in Man, and then attributed them to whichever god was theirs. The redactors of Genesis clearly condensed, that is, shortened, the events of Creation inot "days" -sic- so as to get quickly to YHWH's story and His people.

It's ok to disagree then, no?

Well, as I've shown, and maintain, a literal reading of the Hebrew use of "yom" during the Creation exposes it to differ from everywhere else in The Bible.
No problem.
Now, I think the general reader (not those meant to be indoctrinated by the scripture) should be aware of this differentiation, and ask "what did they mean by "a first day, a second day, ...?" Going further, one might reason "If we can't glean from the language or text the meaning of this, perhaps a sister language will offer some insight."
And what, in exploring this do we find, Spin?
Regardless which flavor of semitic language they spoke, what do their Epics of Creation tell us?
Chaldean's were Babylonians exalting Marduk. the Sumero-Akkadian texts exalt Anu, Enlil et al. The Assyrians, Ashur.
The stories the same, the names changed.
I daresay there exists a copy of the enuma elish in Aramaic.


I don't know, spin, it appears we simply will not agree here. I'm inclined to respond to your previous post but I'm unsure it will get us anywhere. I feel I owe it to you for taking the time but there are, it seems, "insuperable" points of departure.

Then again, being completely baffled as to why it should be so difficult to acknowledge Genesis' source material in understanding what "day" doesn't necessarily mean (24hrs), I find reason to pursue.

I can imagine few reasons to resist the Enuma Elish as source material for Genesis, which happens to elucidate the use of "yom" found there:
There are those who hold faith in The Word of God, and as such can't have their supreme being subordinated to older and prior supreme beings, much less accept that theirs is but a single actor in an ancient drama with multiple important players, or if you will, Gods; And then there are those who need such things as literal 24hr days during the creative events in order to expose the ridiculous nature of such faith based thinking. After all, they can't allow believers the chance to think their scripture is accurate to the point that events of creation took place over extended periods of time.

I suppose it's easy for me to see the connection and more fully understand the story, as I belong to neither.

spin

As a functional rendering, yes, just as I would, "day one, day two, etc".

A difference regarding what exactly?

Read what I have already said.

I.e., your guess is as good as mine.

You have refused to acknowledge good philology. I've already asked you to tell me how you would redefine "morning" and "evening" in this rewriting of Gen 1. Please tell me what these words mean in their contexts. And please show me where your hypothetical source materials contain a structured creation based on individual days on which creative acts were performed.

No. You provided no textually based reasoning for doing so.

Look harder.

For the wrong reasons.

For the same reason there are Sumerian logograms in Akkadian.

How does this change the fact that the Enuma Elish is not a Sumerian narrative?

More guessing.

This doesn't help you get to an actual direct source for Gen 1.

It is not a matter about agreement about generalities, so your response is inappropriate. You don't deal with what the text says first. That is a problem that doesn't require agreement, but either demonstration that I'm wrong or that you start to deal with the text for your conclusions.

You are joking. You are trying to read YWM non-literally. You haven't come up with a single reason for reading it to mean anything other than the common time period we refer to with the normal meaning of day.

You have a big problem. Besides quibbling about a definite article by quoting the likes of Gleason Archer, you've shown no evidence that YWM has any other meaning than our normal day. Yet you think your wild "extended time period" waffle has some basis.

Or day one, day two, etc. But then we are dealing with translations and not the text itself.

Sorry but what you cited is talking about language. If you want to deal with language, do so. What in the language of the Enuma Elish would you like to talk about?

Ummm, just to keep focus we are trying to establish what YWM means in Gen 1. Besides some stuff about articles, you've avoided the topic, gleefully waffling on about texts which seem to shed no light specifically on the meaning of the word you want to change.

If you answer the basic questions we can see:

1. What substantive linguistic evidence is there that YWM means an extended time period?
2. How does the lack of articles change the meaning of YWM?
3. What do (RB and BQR mean (given their relationship with YWM in Gen 1) and what is the linguistic evidence for those meanings?
4. Given the institution of the seventh day rest in Gen 1, what would such an institution mean if the YMYM weren't days as we understand them?

It may have been the source. But then again they both may have been derived from the same tradition. Relations need not only be parental but filial or of uncle/nephew, etc. Why you hit on only one is a mystery. I may be a lack of imagination.

As the Enuma Elish doesn't impact on the meaning of the word YWM, this grandstanding and strawman making is pretty useless.

Your rear window should give you a good perspective. Too bad it's too dark in there.

I don't understand why you are bothered in trying to redefine YWM. You don't admit to a religious persuasion that requires you to distort the text for tendentious reasons. The text makes perfect sense if you read it without proposing errors of translation, ie YWM does in fact mean what "day" usually means. The notion of the world being created by an omnipotent god in six days shouldn't seem strange to people who accepted the notion of a god stopping the sun's progress for a day. Why can't you accept the text as it is, for the audience it was aimed at?


spin

Joan of Bark

Okay, I've found the reference in Friedman's Commentary on the Torah:

People have questioned whether the first three days are twenty-four-hour days since the sun is not created until the fourth day. But light, day, and night are not understood here to depend on the existence of the sun, so there is no reason to think that the word "day" means anything different on the first two days than what it means everywhere else in the Torah.
[page 11].

Johnny Skeptic

So do you.

Well, I have tried on numerous occasions to get you to discuss inerrancy, but you always refused to discuss it, even though inerrancy is the basis for most or all of your arguments. You once asked me to start a thread on inerrancy at this forum. I told you that there were already two existing threads on inerrancy at this forum, which were on the first page, and that you had not made a reply in either of them, but you did not make a reply to that post. If I start a new thread at this forum on inerrancy, will you participate in it? If you won't, then I accept your admission of defeat since most or all of your arguments depend upon the Bible being inerrant, including anything that you claim about the book of Genesis. Your reluctance to debate inerrancy is obviously because you have read debates on inerrancy and found out how difficult it is to defend. Inerrancy is an absurd and easily refuted claim.

Ok, what about the book of Genesis do you wish to reasonably prove that would be useful to people? If you wish to reasonably prove what some followers of the God Bible believed about events that no human witnessed, including the writer of the book of Genesis, what differnece would that make regarding which worldview people choose today?

As far as I know, everything in the book of Genesis has to be taken by faith, or rejected. No competent historian would consider the book of Genesis to be historical.

Adamu

Hi spin (and Happy New year all!).

Listen, I don't profess to be an expert in linguistics or literary criticism (I earnerd mere Bachelors in English & Sociology) but I've seen nothing to convince YWM should mean only 24hr periods in reference to events of Creation. To the contrary, in considering the unique usages of the word and its particular sequential numbering attached to these "days" -sic- and recognizing the source material (not exclusively the Enuma Elish as you presume) I feel it is as likely to mean "extended period" or "age" as not; I daresay more likely.
Certainly the debate rages on but again, when one recognizes the earlier versions of Creation accounts and their subsequent modifications, it seems obvious the Genesis account was meant to appeal to a particular audience and reinforce belief in a particular God.

The institution of The Sabbath, I think, was nothing new to Hebrew readers. The act of "resting" (though perhaps more accurately "ceasing") on "the seventh" is found in the Enuma Elish where likewise the Lord is exalted and the "gods" rest after the ordering of the universe, the creation of the heaven and earth, and then of Mankind. Moreover, the concept is also found in the Epic of Gilgamesh when describing the events of the flood. The Hebrew Shabbat seems clearly linked to the Shabattu / Shapattu, Shebittu and Sa-Bat of the Babylonians, Akkadians and Sumerians respectively. "Heart rest" of the "Gods" on "the seventh," in my mind, is the clear forerunner of the Hebrew version (though it appears they rejected certain aspects of earlier versions; namely, that Man was created specifically for agricultural slave labor in the Garden of the Gods - Eden, or the mesopotamian E.DIN. However, I digress...). So to me, the argument that the "days" -sic- of Creation in Genesis 1 are to be taken only as 24hr periods so as to reinforce the institution of The Sabbath is in error.

But I most certainly accept the text as it is, spin, and its specific audience / God, just as I accept the earlier versions and their specific audiences / Gods. Sure, I can entertain the notion that intended readers of Genesis were to understand the Lord's handiwork took only seven natural days, but it doesn't change the fact that the story had been in circulation for a couple thousand years already. It is evident to me that either by the time the editors of Genesis began writing the source material was already distorted, or they redacted it to suit their own particular views on the omnipotence of YHWH. So, while the intended audiences no doubt understood the concept of "the gods heart-rest on the seventh," were they then to understand the events of Creation as having taken place over seven 24hr periods? Is there any evidence for this?


And so it is we're at an impasse, spin.
You can continue to think the "days" of Creation are only 24hr periods for whatever reasons, be they linguistic or personal, while I think of them simply as "ages" or "phases."
Whatever the case, I think we've sufficiently covered the viewpoints present in the OP. I imagine Jayco has much of the info needed to address such a Fundie Genesis Challenge," and from either perspective.

But I must ask: Are you a Fundamentalist, given that you've maintained such a position as described in the OP?

And if so, what are your literal translations of Psalms 90:4 and 2Peter 3:8?

Is "day" literally 24hrs or is it literally 8760000hrs?

spin

And same back at ya.

I did ask you to redefine "morning", "evening", and "night" so that they work with your redefined "day". Perhaps you might try to do that before you're convinced to the contrary.

You are once again merely asserting this without any evidence whatsoever. That's naughty. The case for YWM being an ordinary day stems from

1. the usual meaning of the word;
2. the fact that it is accompanied by other related words, "morning", "evening", etc.; and
3. the institution of a special day that the Jews must observe.

Three points to zero.

More assertion!

I have pointed out that Sumerian Sa-Bat doesn't exist. It was a conjecture. The Akkadian shabattu was the fifteenth day and its significance is still not clear. It doesn't have anything to with the Hebrew seventh day.

First I cannot find what you claim is in the Enuma Elish. Perhaps you can provide some exact reference in the text. Which tablet for example. It seems to me that although there is mention of resting, eg Marduk rested after having slain Tiamat, after which he used her body for creation, I see nothing in the Enuma Elish to suggest anything like what Genesis is doing regarding the institution of the sabbath. The only mention of "seventh" is to do with the moon and the marking of phases.

Are you cribbing from Walter Mattfeld?

That story in circulation doesn't change the fact that Genesis works with days as we normally understand them.

I'm having difficulty seeing the coherence in this. What has the omnipotence of god got to do with days, ordinary or not? How did you get from the supposed content of the Enuma Elish to what the Hebrew audience would have understood?

As you provided nothing at all for the days in Gen 1 being anything other than ordinary days, I see no impasse. You've referred to the Enuma Elish for some reason and tried to inject it with a semblance of structure found in Gen 1 and failed, because it's not there. Beside that, zilch.

I will continue to do so unless something better comes along.

You may be right.

What would ever make you think such a thing? The fact that I don't fudge the text to suit modern theories? That I argue that the text should be taken literally if you want to understand what the ancient ideas were? The bible is two collections of literature, nothing more to me. You should give it the respect of any literature and attempt to understand what the writers intended. A religious point of view will tend to make the text more difficult to read. Literal significances can quite often be unpalatable.

I don't understand at all why you need to redefine YWM if there is no skin off your nose to read it literally. What's wrong with ancient writers thinking that god could create the world in six days? There are supposedly educated people who believe it today.

The common translations are good enough. We are dealing with a simple literary device called a simile, nothing more.

As is this a simile. But then you shouldn't use christian literature to elucidate Jewish literature.




spin