Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

George:

On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 7:57 PM, George Athas 
<George.Athas AT moore.edu.au>wrote:

> Karl,
>
> They are figures of speech to us today who live on this side of the
> Copernican revolution. This does not mean they were figures of speech in
> antiquity.


Where is your evidence?

You’re making a positive statement about an issue where I say there’s not
enough evidence to make such a positive statement, either for or against.


> They could be, but we'd need to see the evidence. Even the Ptolemaic
> universe, as I understand it, was geocentric rather than heliocentric.
> Therefore, when the ancients said, "The sun rises," they actually thought
> that the sun rose. If they didn't think that, where are the descriptions
> for what they did think was happening? Why did they use this particular
> 'figure of speech', and not give us any other ways of really describing
> what was happening as they understood it, in fact they understood 'sunrise'
> and 'sunset' as purely figurative?
>

Other than in a history of science, I have yet to see a single reference
that the term “sun rise” was to be taken figuratively. Yet there are plenty
of references of events that happened at “sun rise”. And I’m talking about
histories written within the last century.

The Bible is unique, in that it claims to be a record of God’s actions into
history, datable history. In order to be believable, it has to be accurate
history. As such, it is a history book. See above paragraph.

How much knowledge has been lost over the centuries? We still have
relatively few, tantalizing clues that even now we haven’t recovered all
the scientific and technological knowledge that at least some ancients had.

>
> In terms of biblical 'apostasy', I don't see what that has to do with the
> architecture of the universe in the ancient mindset.


Much in many ways. It’s the difference between the scientific mindset of
Northern Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, as opposed to the
pre-scientific beliefs of the ancient Greeks, Romans, Babylonians, Chinese,
etc.


> Apostasy seems to be a covenantal concept, describing disobedience and/or
> disloyalty to the covenant deity.


I mentioned a specific apostasy, not generalized apostasy.


> Please show me where a biblical writer discusses having the wrong
> cosmology as 'apostasy'.


That’s the wrong question. Using American baseball terminology, why would
the prophets talk about third base (cosmology) when they haven’t gotten
beyond first base (disobedience)? Their big issue was in reaching first
base.


> Also, would we have the same standard of 'orthodoxy' about their biology?
> If so, we'd have to consider Jeremiah, who thinks with his kidneys, as an
> apostate.
>

Where do you get that idea? Not from Jeremiah 11:20, 12:2, 17:10 or 20:12.

>
> Job 26.10 is the verbal form of the root.
>
> As for your other arguments, you're dealing with a series of 'could'
> statements, for each of which there is another 'could not'.


Likewise, you. I at least admit it from the beginning, but I see you trying
to say that your coulds therefore ares.


> These kinds of arguments are merely discussing possibilities and ignoring
> the hard contexts in which the relevant words occur. In other words, it is
> an acontextual approach to semantics that entertains possibilities by
> overlooking hard data that suggests plausibilities.
>

I see you ignoring one of the most important contextual clues, namely that
the Biblical belief system, at least from the time of Moses in the 15th
century BC and following, had set itself up in opposition to the prevailing
beliefs in the surrounding societies. That would include their cosmologies.
In taking account of this, important, contextual clue, your plausibilities
become implausibilities.

>
> You can entertain the possibilities all you like. I could propose that חוג
> actually means dodecahedral prism because it might be related to the root
> for making pilgrimage, and all of Israel, the twelve tribes, were told to
> make pilgrimage, and therefore the number most naturally associated with
> that root is twelve. But how are you going to assess the viability of this
> argument? It's possible!
>

That would be the etymological error, you’d have to have much better
evidence before I’d even entertain such an idea.

>
> But at the very least, to use your own argument, חוג might mean sphere,
> but it also might not. It might also mean just circle or ring. And indeed,
> that's how the ancient Greek translators did understand it. Keep putting
> forth possibilities, but I've yet to see an argument of plausibility.
>

And I have yet to see an argument of implausibility in which your argument
of plausibility is weak. Which leaves us in limbo. Which is where we
started from.

>
>
>
> GEORGE ATHAS
> Dean of Research,
> Moore Theological College (moore.edu.au)
> Sydney, Australia
>
> Karl W. Randolph.