Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Jerry:

On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 3:13 PM, Jerry Shepherd <jshepherd53 AT gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi Karl,
>
> You said, "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."
>
> I just don't think you're giving sufficient attention to the description in
> v. 2.


That’s exactly why I insist that there is no chaos mentioned in Genesis 1.


>  I know you have your own definition for some of these words.


Did you not read my description of my lexicographic method? When one takes
all uses together, there isn’t support for the traditional translations.


>  But
> when the only other time the terms tohu and bohu occur together in the
> Hebrew Bible at Isa 34:11 and Jer 4:23, both pictures of total devastation,
> chaos, the world turned topsy-turvy,


That’s a good example of taking only a subset of its uses, then making a
determination, a determination that contradicts other uses.

However, when I looked at a meaning of “lifeless”, it fits all its uses.

I don’t believe in defining words according to form in semantic domains,
where each use can have a radically different meaning. The meanings you are
defending is doing just that. This is not the way I use my native tongue
English, nor what I used to learn modern foreign languages, and seeing as
Biblical Hebrew is just another language, the only difference is that it
has not been spoken by a native speaker for 2.5 millennia, I see no reason
to apply special rules of linguistics to its study.


>
> As for the rest of your email, you confuse things by talking about medieval
> cosmology.  Medieval cosmology plays no part at all in my understanding of
> Gen 1; but ANE cosmology plays a huge part, and the historical evidence
> argues that as far as the basic "cosmography" is concerned, Israel's
> picture of the structure of the universe was of a piece with its ANE
> neighbors.
>

The only way you can make Genesis 1 and other Biblical texts to read
similarly to the other ANE cosmologies is to apply the rules of “medieval
cosmology”, which is why I bring it up. This does violence to Hebrew way of
reading the text.

>
> Let me throw one more thing in here.  In previous posts I brought Ecc 1:5
> into the discussion, and how the author at that point describes
> three movements of the sun:  it rises, it sets, and it hurries back to
> where it rises again.


The text does not say “it hurries back”, that is your eisegesis.


>  This corresponds perfectly with the ancient
> geocentric understanding of the sun as a sphere which makes it way around
> the earth, rather than with the heliocentric one that sees earth making its
> orbrit around the sun.


So modern, post-Copernican historians who recount that an event occurred at
“sunrise” or “sunset” are teaching a geocentric understanding. Is that what
you are saying?


>  Both times you said this was eisegesis and not in
> the text, but gave no alternative explanation  So what is your translation
> of Ecc 1:5?


This is a difficult verse to translate literally because of its poetic
nature, so a literal translation could be, “The sun rises and the sun goes
(sets), and unto his place hunted down for rising, there it is.”


>  How do you understand what the author is saying?


In its context, the sun’s path through the skies is entirely predictable
from sunrise to sunset. Don’t expect a change. (And no, I’m not
ignoring Copernicus.)


>  Right now,
> as I see it, it fits well within the context of Ecc 1, which describes the
> circularity of nature and human existence, and shows the sun as
> participating in that same circularity.  And it also fits in the context of
> ANE geocentrism.  So, how would you explain it alternatively?
>

The same way as I do in English—that just as saying “sunrise” and “sunset”
in English doesn’t imply geocentrism, neither does it in Biblical Hebrew.

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