Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Yigal Levin <Yigal-Levin AT utc.edu>]

Mike,

It's perfecty legitimate for any one of us to interprate scripture
according to our beleifs, as did the ancients. But that's not what we're
discussing here. My assumption is that wherever the story came from, it
would not have used concepts that the Ancient Israelite/Judahite would not
have known about. "Energy" (in the modern physics sense of the word),
"time-matter" and so on are just such terms.

Was God revealing a scenario, that only we moderns can really appreciate?
Perhaps. But that's way beyond the scope of this list.

Yigal

At 11:02 AM 8/19/2002 -0400, Mike Sangrey wrote:
>And nor were the Biblical authors there at the time--and yet they tell
>the story.  So, how did they know?  Questions like:  Was it revealed? 
>Was it made up?  Were people then a lot smarter than we think they
>were?  are interesting discussion questions (and, no, I'm NOT suggesting
>that we discuss them here!).  Just because you make certain assumptions
>and I make other assumptions doesn't make something either of us says
>ridiculous.
>
>My point was that the language of this story, as I understand the
>discussion of it on this list, is quite consistent with modern physics. 
>Whether one chooses to say, "Wow, that helps validate Gen. 1:1" or to
>say, "Wow, that helps validate Einstein" is a matter of one's basic
>theological presuppositions.
>
>In any case, the consistency is not ridiculous.  The consistency is what
>it is.
>
>BTW, I can quite easily think of a belief system that assumed that both
>what we call energy and what we call matter needed to be in place in
>order for sequencing of events to take place.  I mean, without energy,
>what can matter do?  And without matter, what can energy do?  Until you
>have both, sequencing of events makes no sense.
>
>Is there evidence the people of the time believed in this kind of
>duality?  Well, this same author will shortly describe the entrance of
>human life as a lump of dirt (analog to `matter') being infused with the
>breath of God (analog to `energy') and therefore becoming a living being
>(analog to `moving through time').
>
>-- 
>Mike Sangrey
>msangrey AT BlueFeltHat.org
>Landisburg, Pa.
>                        "The first one last wins."
>            "A net of highly cohesive details reveals the truth."
>
>
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Dr. Yigal Levin
Dept. of Philosophy and Religion
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
615 McCallie Avenue
Chattanooga TN 37403-2598
U.S.A.