Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Jerry:

On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 4:32 PM, Jerry Shepherd <jshepherd53 AT gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> Contributing to this discussion again, I'd like to reiterate that a lot of
> the opposition to George, Yigal, Nir, and myself has focused on what are
> considered by some to be merely isolated mythological elements within a
> literal account.  But I think it is important to note that we are not
> talking about individual pieces of the account, but rather, its whole
> orientation.  The entire account is of a piece with the cosmological
> orientation of the ANE. Just like other ANE accounts, the Genesis 1
> narrative begins with chaos, without feeling the need to explain where that
> chaos came from.  The first three days of creation, then, describe the
> process by which God brought order out of that chaos, turning disorder into
> order: separating between day and night, separating between waters above
> the sky (vault, dome) and waters below the sky, and separating between
> waters below and the dry land.   In the flood narrative, then, this ordered
> creation, returns to the chaotic conditions of 1:2, the rejoining of the
> waters above the sky (the floodgates of the heavens opening up) to the
> waters below the sky (the springs of the great deep), the water covering
> the dry land, and the inevitable confusion of day and night which these
> conditions would cause.  As the waters finally recede, things return to
> their created state at the end of Genesis 1, thus yielding the pattern of
> creation, de-creation, re-creation
>

My opposition is the whole, not only the individual elements. The
individual elements combine to make up the whole, that’s why we mention
them.

There is no chaos mentioned in Genesis 1. In that one element alone, it
already contradicts other ANE cosmologies that start with chaos. The first
verse starts with God, and his first action in creation. The second verse
states the state of one just created object  The third verse the second act
of creation, and so forth. There is no pattern of creation, de-creation and
re-creation. That is just not supported by the text analyzed in its
linguistic elements.

>
> To be sure, the ancients were keen observers of the sun, moon, stars, and
> planets (travelers).  But these astronomical observations were still made
> within an orientation that was both flat-earth (though aware that there was
> some curvature), and earth-centered (geocentric).  They were not
> Copernicans before Copernicus.  And this goes for the entire Old Testament.
>

This argument is historically inaccurate. I’ve heard that it was made up by
Thomas “Darwin’s bulldog” Huxley in the late 1800s as a way to attack
believing in the Bible. I wonder if what we call “medieval cosmology”
really was medieval cosmology, seeing as how the medieval monks were so
steeped in Plato, Aristotle, Ptolomy, et al who taught a spherical earth
that was in relation to the vastness of the universe the equivalent of a
mathematical point. It also ignores the literary use of Biblical metaphors.
Based on what I know of the Biblical use of language and literature, I have
no choice but to reject this argument.

>
> For those who have theological concerns, this is, of course, not a
> theological forum.


Of course not, which is why I have limited my objections to the linguistic
and literary, and not the theological.


>  But I would add that, at least within my theological
> tradition, this understanding of Gen 1 does nothing to detract from my own
> confession of God as creator.  Rather, it accords nicely with my
> understanding that God has revealed himself both progressively and
> accommodatively, and that the Scriptures are both a divine and human text.
>

I belong to a confession that teaches that we are to find out the best as
we can the meaning of the text, using the best tools we have at our
disposal, then the theology follows. That is why I have tried to avoid
theological arguments on this board.

However, I will mention it when I think another’s argument sounds more
theological than linguistic. And this defense of medieval cosmology sounds
like one of them.

>
> Blessings,
>
> Jerry Shepherd
> Taylor Seminary
> Edmonton, Alberta
>
>
> Jerry Shepherd
> jshepherd53 AT gmail.com
>

Karl W. Randolph.