Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Bill Ross" <BillRoss AT norisksoftware.com>]

<Rolf>
>>I cannot see I single expression in Genesis 1 that is contradicted by
scientific knowledge...

<Bill>
If we go back to the discussion earlier about ARETZ being "land" as
opposed to the planet Earth, is it possible that the creation of "heaven
and earth" is actually "heaven and the land?" The reason I say that is
there is no land, only ocean, until God divides the land from the
waters.

This view is obviously the ancient Hebrew view in Psalm 24:

Psalms 24:
1  <<A Psalm of David.>> The earth [ARETZ] is the LORD'S, and the
fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.
2  For he hath founded it [the ARETZ] upon the seas, and established it
[the ARETZ] upon the floods.

In other words, the creative act is not the seas and the land, but the
land upon the sea.

The sea is the seat of chaos. As light must be separated from the evil
darkness, so the orderly land must be separated from the evil sea. That
is why in the NT, the ultimate triumph is not "heaven" (as christianity
has historically taught) but rather a new earth and sky in which there
is no more sea.

But you see no contradiction with science? Light, day and night, land
emerging from water, and then day 4 sun, moon and stars, embedded in an
overhead canopy containing the storehouse of rain?

Bill Ross