Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Bill Rea <cctr114 AT its.canterbury.ac.nz>]

Ken Litwak wrote:-

>2.  I'd suggest that Genesis 1 is not a reinterpretation with a new
>twist, but a deliberate anti-myth tractate that uses the form
>deliberately to counteract a defective view of origins. The Genesis
>account, while similar in some ways in form to other accounts, 
>is RADICALLY different in content:
>a.  There's no mating between gods
>b.  The earth is made from nothing, not divine seed or part of a god 
>or anything else like that.

There was a discussion about Rashi's comments on Genesis a while back.
One of the points which wasn't made in that discussion is that Rashi
clearly does not support a creation from nothing idea. If you have
access to Rashi's commentary you might find it interesting to read
his comments on Gen 1.

Dave Washburn wrote in response to comments by Walter:-

>I'm afraid this is a bit of a straw man, because I don't know of any 
>scholar, conservative or otherwise, who holds to Ussher's 
>chronology.  In fact, every conservative scholar I've ever met or read 
>finds Ussher a bit of an embarrassment and feels the need to 
>explain that Ussher was sincere, but sincerely wrong.  Hence, 
>what we have in the above paragraph is a theoretical construct, not 
>really a representation of any current viewpoint.

There is a remarkably sympathetic treatment of Ussher written by
Stephen Jay Gould. Unfortunately I can't remember where I read it,
but given the fame of the author it shouldn't be too difficult to
track down if anyone is interested. Ussher was trying to line up
Biblical Chronology with known dates from surrounding civilizations.
A task people still are trying to do today. 

Bill Rea, Information Technology Services, University of Canterbury  \_ 
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