Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Jerry Shepherd <jshepherd53 AT gmail.com>]

Hi Karl,

I'm going to come to George's side on this.  You say, "The Bible is not a
science textbook, rather one that spoke in human terms, in the same way as
modern, scientifically trained people still talk about “sunrise” and
“sunset” and similar figures of speech. Just as those figures of speech in
modern mouths do not code for a cosmological understanding, so, except for
medievalists, we cannot take Biblical figures of speech as giving
cosmological understanding."

This just doesn't correspond with the biblical data.  Genesis 1, to be sure
is not a scientific text, but it does seem to be reflective of ANE
cosmology.  In a passage like Ecc 1:5, "The sun rises and the sun sets, and
hurries back to where it rises," there is no reason in the context to think
that the author is referring to the rising and setting of the sun as a
figure of speech.  He believes the sun does rise, does set, and makes its
way back under the earth to the eastern horizon where it will start the
same cyle all over again.  When today we refer to sunrise, it is a figure
of speech.  It was not for the ancients.

Blessings,

Jerry Shepherd
Taylor Seminary
Edmonton, Alberta

Jerry Shepherd
jshepherd53 AT gmail.com