spin

Evidence isn't interesting enough eh, Manu Dibango?

Just look at it and stop the rot.


spin

Amaleq13

The answer to the first is that 1) he did and a possible answer to 2) is that it doesn't appear relevant to the OP/thread.

You can find the answer to 1) here and, if you are still interested in CJD's personal preferences among Christian authors, I suggest you ask him via PM. Unless they are referenced in a thread, they really aren't relevant.

Amaleq13, BCH moderator

Fortuna

Well, I'm from the RJ tradition, no longer practicing nor believing, but I did learn Hebrew and sometimes my jaw hits the keyboard when I read some of the interpretations (both Christian and Jewish).

As for my hebrew, its been a while since I've done this, so pardon my translits, you'll notice I'm a bit free form with it.(I really need to learn and stick to a translit system, but that's my problem)

Basically, I come down on Spin's side of this issue. I don;t think that Gen 1 and 2 are reconcileable nor do I think they should be reconciled nor were they intended to be. 1 is a stand-alone account whose purpose seems to be to establish shabbat tradition. It does with parallels to other creation myths from the ME (the parallels I note are the 7 day cycle and the primal water/sea/ocean). Gen 2 is more linked up to the continuing stories that follow.

I really do believe that because these stories come from 2 very different traditions and/or times/places in history and they might have originally referred to different gods. At some point they were placed together in the same collection and the scribe who did this knew this very and saw no need for these to reference each other. Note that if one were to remove Gen 1 none of the rest of Gen would be without a back reference to it. (I'm not as certain but as I remember dont think any of the rest of Torah has a back reference to it either. (Nor does it agree on when god changed his name or became known as one or the other. As I remember, there's disagreement forward in Torah about that also - I'm also undecided about the elohim as a god or a heavenly court issue, but that's another issue)

Some things that were stated in this dicussion are from the traditional understanding that really dont add up when examined closely. Among and besides those, some things stated here did not makes sense to me.

About the toledoth separaters, I always thought that we do have a sort of pseudo-toledoth right at the very beginning. The very first phrase(if memory serves, bereshith bara elohim et ha-shamayim et ha-erets) always seemed like a short intro, because it seems to go on to describe exactly that, the making the sky(or heavens - see note below) and earth. Some have said it might be like, "In the beginning [when] god created the sky and the earth... So, nothing is really created there. I also think this exactly because it goes on to describe the formation of heaven and earth out of the primal water or sea (the Tehom, usually translated as "deep", but I'll call it primal water). The sky(heavens) only come around when the firmament(I like the word "dome" here because of the idea of separating water) is put in and separates the primal water. The earth really only shows up when the water gets separated (the dry land is called "earth").

Of course many argue that the primal water was created ex-nilio in the prior phrase along with sky and earth, and I've been told that in support of this is that the verb is in the perfect (something completed - against the intro idea above). OTOH we do have the in/during prefix on beginning and nowhere in that first phrase does it talk about the primal water being made.

This primal water seems to already be there and the soon to be earth and to be sky are to be in/under it yet at this point unformed, and there is no mention of any creation of the primal water.


Gen 2 does, as spin said, seem to start out with a dry earth and goes from there. And as I said above is an intro to the next several chapters.(same characters in a continuation of the story). The order of things created looks different to me, and any attempts to reconcile it to 1 look like strained attempts. The name change for god with the gen 1 name tagged on looks like an idiomatic usage of some type, one that I think is lost to history. I've seen other explain it as a transition attempt (that seems hollow), and of course I dont buy the traditional judge/cosmic/covenant explanation.


One thing that somebody posted here that really confused me was the term "cosmos". Now, that only confuses the hell out of things here, because in this context I cant even figure out what that word would refer to. WE have a sky, an earth, a primal sea, what is "cosmos" here ? Theo nly thing I could imagine was the poster meant where the elohim creator is ?

Well, this post turned out to be a mish mash, but I posted it in haste.
I think its 2 separate stories that are used for 2 different purposes. One to establish a tradiiton, the other as more the beginning of the story of mankind.

It's a collection of stories. There is no conflict unless you try to reconcile them and I see no reason to do so.


Note - "sky", "heavens" - In this account, these should be seen as synonyms.
I prefer to use the word "sky", because "heavens" carries that connotation of the place where god lives and spirits supposedly go after death. This is not what is being referred to here.