Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Ian Hutchesson" <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

>No, Ian, B- in BERESHIT is not analogous to be- in "behind", despite the
>purely accidental cross-linguistic similarity. 

Perhaps the notion of analogy was a little to 
difficult here. I am looking at the way 
combinations take on extra meaning, not any 
literal significance that behind might share 
with br'$yt. Duh. Try again, Peter. You simply 
cannot get significance by mathematically 
adding up the value of the parts. That is just 
ridiculous.

[..]

>Ian, you wrote, "Your "interpretation" is pure eisegesis from the Greek
>philosophical influence in early Christianity." Well, actually most
>accept that LXX at least of the Pentateuch is pre-Christian. 

You are not dealing with the LXX, you are 
interpreting it through creatio ex nihilo. 
What do you think of the verb form in 
Greek being inceptive aorist?

>But my main
>reply is this: I would say that your "interpretation" is pure eisegesis
>from a different kind of Greek philosophical influence in medieval
>Judaism, compounded by eisegesis from Babylonian mythology.

This is tit-for-tat. Please think again.

You have this bad habit of forgeting that 
arguments are made up of a number of 
parts thinking if you forget one and try to 
rubbish one that will be sufficient. 

You have no grammatical support for your 
understanding of the first part of the 
account. I have shown that br'$yt is always 
qualified and that each b-time phrase is 
also qualified. You then pick on an example 
which holds no relevance, because it is not 
a b-time phrase, and try to argue that it is 
somehow relevant.

The seven day structure shows when the creation 
started, ie at the beginning of the first day, 
ie when God first spoke. Each day starts with 
God speaking. You forget this.

The Enuma Elish also indicates when the creation 
started, ie when Tiamat/tehom was overcome.

There are three independent but interlocking 
sources that show what the structure of the text 
is. You have said, well, b-time phrases need not 
be relevant. You say, ummm, I can't see any 
relationship between Genesis and the Enuma Elish 
while we have various elements of similarity. 

I can  only see your approach as a tendentious 
refusal to look at fairly transparent relevant 
data, tendentious because you support something 
that just is not in the text, but in some 
external belief system.


Ian