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  • From: TedBro AT aol.com
  • To: George.Athas AT moore.edu.au, b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] skies in plural?
  • Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2012 12:28:21 -0400 (EDT)

Hi, All:

Members of this list have done a good bit of research on this issue,
turning up some fresh ground. Much appreciated since I have studied this
issue
for 30 years and thought I had a handle on all the relevant texts and
arguments.

Here's what I believe is clear and what the open issues are:
1) RQ( is a metallurgical term meaning beaten into a smooth surface. It is
not clear to me that this implies, as someone wrote, that small bits are
hammered into a plate, creating an analogy with droplets of water being
hammered into a hard surface.

2) One issue that has not been discussed is: How do we understand
anthropomorphic descriptions of G-D in the Hebrew Bible? If YHWH has a
physical
body with eyes, nose, etc, then it would seem to follow that descriptions of
God as builder, erecting pillars, stretching out the measuring line,
hammering, etc, would tend to be intended as literal descriptions.
Contrarily, if
we see all these terms as intended metaphors, then what is hammering when
used to depict an act of God? If there is no literal hammer, why would there
need to be a literal hammered surface?

3) Someone has suggested that (l pny must refer to a physical, touchable
surface. Not sure why that follows. Since the birds appearing "in heaven",
ditto the stars, is a visual phenomenon, then it is not touching but seeing
that is at issue. When we look up, the sky does have an apparent surface.
Could the HB language be taking an observational perspective without intent
to speculate on what the sky is made of?

4) Since various Bible writers describe different substances that the sky
is made of depending on weather, isn't it clear that they were not to
concerned with the substance of the sky or how it got from copper to
turquoise to
ice, etc?

5) This same question can be asked of other ANE texts. In one Egyptian text
the goddess Nut is depicted arched over the earth, fingertips on one
horizon and toes on the opposite horizon with stars on her belly. It is hard
to
see any of these descriptions as ANYTHING but metaphor.

Regards,
Ted


In a message dated 9/9/2012 3:31:51 A.M. Central Daylight Time,
George.Athas AT moore.edu.au writes:

None of this gets around the basic exegetical fact: In Gen 1, the birds
fly across the surface of the רקיע, just like the spirit/wind hovers across
the surface of the waters. If it has a surface, it is perceived as
something that could be touched. That's what the text says.

Whether the ancients understood this as a metaphor is another issue, but
one which inevitably sees us importing extra-textual considerations, into
the equation. In other words, the argument that the רקיע is not actually
something that could be touched is invariably a foray into tangential
considerations that take us away from what the writer of Gen 1 actually
wrote.


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

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