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Junior Member (Idle past 5036 days) Posts: 14 From: Lebanon Township, New Jersey, USA Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Genesis 1 vs. Genesis 2 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1366 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
ICANT writes: Created = כרא bara' create where no material is used. it's typically used for "special" creations, such as mankind, and for unsubstantial (spiritual, etc) things. but to take from this that it represents creatio ex nihilo is absolutely wrong. rather, one needs only understand the origin of the word. look at the other use, for instance, in joshua 17 (verse 15 and 18):
quote: and
quote: it certainly doesn't mean that they are going to create the forest from nothing. rather, they are going to destroy it. but it doesn't exactly mean "destruction" either. it means division. they are going to separate the trees from the land. בָּרָא means "creation by means of separation". it's related to words for "break" and "scatter" and "cut" and "polish". and examination of genesis 1 will bear this out. god divides the heaven from the earth. the land from seas. he sets up divisions of time with markers in the heavens. he divides male from female. etc. none of these are made from nothing -- rather, the are made by separating one from the other. this idea would be extremely important to the ancient hebrews whose entire concept of piety and holiness was based on separation from the surrounding nations.
Genesis 1:21 God created great whales. so, it's bits like this that make me wonder why you appeal to the hebrew, since you're obviously not reading it. it says,
quote: and god created ha-taninm ha-gadolim. "the great serpents". jewish tradition holds that these are leviyatan and his mate. the "whale" bit is actually sort of funny, because leviyatan happens to be the modern hebrew word for "whale". but as we all know, if you read job, that's not a whale.
The only place anything is said to be bara' created is Genesis 1:21, and 1:27, everything else was just a rearranging of things existing or called forth from things that had existed after their kind or seed that was in the ground. and genesis 1:1! that's a dependent clause,
quote: "when god began creating the heavens and the earth..." which happens to describe the rest of the coming chapter, until genesis 2:4a,
quote: "these are the generations of the heaven and the earth when they were created." they sort of form bookends to the chapter -- notice the similar phrasing. so all that בְדֵּל going on, (verse 4, 6-7, 14, 18, etc) is covered under that initial בָּרָא. as you point out, most of this is just arrangement. the interesting thing is that heaven and earth are both made by division as well, separating raw ingredients that already existed. remember, since verse 1 is a dependent clause, that "unformed and void" earth, and the water, are what existed at the time god began creating.
If none can be found God is still resting from His כרא bara' creating. well, god is not currently creating again. but, your phrasing is kind of vague. god is not currently resting, and it is no longer יּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי. it's just that creation is finished. god has since moved onto other tasks.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1366 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
ringo writes: ICANT writes:
Even the people at Answers in Genesis don't swallow that one.
Two different words for different functions. Their article says that:
quote: the truth is probably somewhere between the two. they are clearly synonyms, and making a strong distinction is a mistake. but not making any distinction is also a mistake. they are different in flavour -- one can be used to describe the other (as the AiG link points out, as have i in previous threads), but they aren't 100% interchangeable either. bara tends to be used in particular special cases -- mostly mankind, and for more spiritual concerns. asah and yatsar tend to be used in more down-to-earth ways. neither implies creatio ex nihilo, though if such a concept had existed in the bible, either could probably have been used to describe it.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1366 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
ICANT writes: Does Genesis 1:1 say? Yes/No
quote: no! it says, "when god began creating the heaven and the earth..." and then continues into verse two, which describes what the earth was like when god began his creation.
Does Genesis 2:4 say? Yes/No
quote: no! it says, "these are the generations of the heaven and earth, when they were created." period, full stop, begin chapter two, "when yahweh god made earth and heaven..." and continues into verse five, which describes what the earth was like when yahweh first made it. as explained above, 1:1 and 2:4a are the bookends to chapter 1. tradition has broken the chapter in quite the wrong place. notice, for instance, the complete shift in style between the first half of 2:4 and the second. why does 2:4a says הַשָּׁמַיִם וְהָאָרֶץ but 2:4b say אֶרֶץ וְשָׁמָיִם? why the sudden reversal of order, and the dropping of the article? why does 2:3 only say אֱלֹהִים but יְהוָה suddenly appears in 2:4b?
There was no chapters in the original Biblical Hebrew. Agreed There was no verses in original Biblical Hebrew. Agreed yes, and the christian division is exceptionally bad in this case. i suggest finding a hebrew torah, or at least the great jewish translation, the new JPS version.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1366 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
ICANT writes: According to God's definition of a day in Genesis 1:5 day is a light period or the combination of a light period and dark period. it's important to note that there are several usages of yom, and genesis 1 and 2 use three of them. for instance, your statement here is not quite correct, as the word is actually used twice in genesis 1:5, and to mean two different things:
quote: "day" versus "night", and
quote: a day that includes both the night and day above. colloquially, we have the same two usages in modern english. the third pops up in genesis 2:4b:
quote: "in the day that..." which is an idiomatic way of saying "when..." it doesn't mean a day in the literal sense, just that something i taking place when some other condition is satisfied. it's not durationally specific, just temporally specific. if that makes any sense.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1366 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
jar writes: The first day. The Heaven and the earth get created. no jar, the earth is created in verse 10 (day three). verse 1 is a dependent clause that describes the rest of the chapter.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1366 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Joseppi writes: It appears that many of you turn to Hebrew to escape the English oh, that's classic, and so true. i've studied enough hebrew to know that by and large, translations are pretty good. the exceptions are few and far between, and all touchy little points like where to break chapters, and what's a dependent clause and such. but, to say something so right...
Others also don't realize that the LORD God who put the Bible together speaks perfect English and specifies all his terms and meanings. and then go so wrong... well, that's just amusing. sadly, regardless of the languages yahweh speaks, the bible was written in hebrew, aramaic, and greek.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1366 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
jar writes: I think I would likely quibble with you slightly. I always see that as all is actually created at the beginning, since the earth is there in the balance of day one. Yes, the first VERSE is preamble and describing the rest of the story, but the first day still has an earth existing. existing, yes. created, no. the "creation" of the earth is in the organization that happens on the third day, where the waters are collected into some places and the land into others. the first verse is not a creation event. at that point, the earth (and heaven) exists as indistinct from the waters.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1366 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
ICANT writes: Welcome back. thanks!
Since I do not believe that God created from an absence of anything I do not trust the modern definition of bara'. okay, it was unclear from your post what you were going for -- as you seemed to equally support the "standard" ex nihilo definition of bara, and support the idea that the creation account of genesis 1 described a re-shaping of already existing elements.
I have stated many times in many different threads that I believe the Universe has always existed in some form. In other words the Universe is eternal. God is eternal. Therefore how could there be a beginning? of everything? indeed, and this is sort of the position that genesis takes. there is no beginning of everything, of god, or of the deep. only of god's creation.
The root word is used in Genesis 1:1. In Joshua the root word has been modified with prefix and suffix which changes the word. not especially. for instance, in joshuah 17:15, the prefix is simply a vav ("and") and the suffix is a simple conjugation for number and tense. the word itself is still the same; it's just a different tense and there's more than one subject.
I get from Joshua that he is deriding the people telling them if they are such a great people to get up to the forest they have created if Mt Ephraim was too narrow for them. er, no.
Did the heaven and earth exist prior to Genesis 1:2? yes, and no. yes, in that their component parts existed, and no in that those parts were indistinguishable from each other. the creation of heaven and earth are described later in the chapter, but it would also be wrong to say that they were made from nothing.
Are you saying there is no land under the water? i am saying that the land is indistinct from the water.
I thought God created mankind male and female no division necessary. Genesis 1:27 ah, you might be interested to read some jewish thought on the subject. for instance, the qabalists believe that adam was originally a hermaphrodite before chavah was separated from his side. my chumash has a footnote to this effect, actually. this might be going a little too far, but it does specifically note in genesis 1 the distinction between male and female during the creative act.
Now as to what we think ancient Hebrews concepts would have on what Moses was told to write in the books he wrote I see no connection. I can understand that those that copied the books could have been influenced by their concepts. Just as you are influenced by your concepts when you study. i'm sort of going to ignore the topic of authorship because it's likely somewhat off topic here. however, even in the other books of moses, the point is driven home that the sons of israel are to be separate from the other nations, and that this is what makes them special. the torah is filled with commandments designed specifically to set the israelites apart. the first such commandment comes well before there even was a man named israel, and is given to abraham.
Actually my understanding of the word is that it meant sea monsters. yes, but literally, the words are "great serpents." it's the same thing that moses' staff turn into when he casts it in front of pharaoh.
How do you get the prefix Beit used here בראשית to mean when? i don't. it's what's called an idiomatic translation. it happens to parallel the beginning of genesis 2 (2:4b) much more nicely that way, since "in the day" also idiomatically means "when".
Could you take the 5 Hebrew words in Genesis 1:1 as there are 2 that is not translated and explain how they came to mean anything other than; "In Beginning created God Heaven Earth." Go word by word. "word by word" isn't a particularly great translation method, since, as you point out, the words in hebrew don't actually quite correspond to the words in english, thanks to prefixes, etc. but i'll spell it out for you if you'd like.
so, literally, "in the beginning of god creating the heavens and the earth". now, i understand the point of contention here is going to be rashyt. it's frequently translated in genesis 1:1 without the "of" that it implies, making it seem like it begins an independent clause, instead of the dependent clause. but look for example at genesis 10:10:
quote: there, it begins a phrase, "beginning of his reign". there is no prefix on "reign" -- it's just implied because of the phrase. similarly, look at jeremiah 26:1:
quote: here we have a verse that begins the exact same way, "in the beginning of the reign of..." and notice that it begins a dependent clause. the independent clause of the verse is "came this word from yahweh". so, where is the independent clause of genesis 1:1? verse 3. "when god began creating... god said, 'let there be light'." this is the first act of creation. it also means that verse 2, a kind of parenthetical aside, describes the initial state of the earth. it indicates, in support of your assertion, that creation was not from nothing. you can find a full argument HERE Technologies | The world's #1 location platform, in a thread i posted more than 3 years ago. you actually participated in this thread at the time, though you never particularly addressed the OP.
I can't help it if our translators used rested instead of ceased in Genesis 2:2, which would have been the proper word to use. don't be silly. you spent six years learning biblical hebrew so you wouldn't have to trust what the translators wrote, right? in this case, the hebrew helps greatly. it's not that the translation is wrong, by any means, it's just that you're running too far with what the english says. for instance, genesis 2:2 is parallelism.
quote: note that "finish" and "rest" are paralleled? note also that "rest" in that form has the same consonants as "seven" and "sabbath"? not a coincidence.
My point was that God had ceased to created and was still ceased from creating. He will create a New Heaven and a New Earth restoring it to the condition it was in in Genesis 1:1. John saw this New Heaven and New Earth in Revelation 21:1. okay. and that's fine. we're not exactly treated to very many brand new creations after that (except in genesis 2, but that's a different story right?)
Where did the period come from [in genesis 2:4] causing a full stop? It wasn't put there by Moses. no. in fact, nothing in the torah was put there moses. and even if it had been, punctuation and spacing wouldn't have been included. which is quite the point -- since the punctuation and spacing had to be inferred by the early translators, and by the more modern of the masoretic editions, there's some possibility of error in this regard. this is one fairly definitive case of error. the grammar and stylistic differences make it pretty clear where the break should be.
Why would I want to use a new JPS version? because, so far, it's the best translation i have ever read. not only does it retain the meaning and poetry of the original hebrew, but it reads very well in english. you will find that it uses something very like the translation i gave you for genesis 1:1. notes on the translator's reasoning can be found in the thread i linked.
So if I said "in the day" I created a B24 (base cabinet) I created a W24 (wall cabinet) it would just mean when, and would not mean a specific day in which I created them? correct. it might have taken you a lot more than a day to create either.
Other than that in the message you seem to agree that a light period can be and is call[ed] day. And that a combination of light period called day and a dark period called night can be combined and called day. If this is not correct please clarify. indeed. Edited by arachnophilia, : sub-title mangled by board
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1366 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
ICANT writes: Great work on the chart. thanks!
I just disagree with it's content. can't win 'em all, i suppose.
What is your source for the information provided in the chart? personal knowledge.
Now to the sentence structure. sure. however, as mentioned above, this is not actually a sentence. it is a clause, and a dependent one at that. the subject of the sentence can be found in verse 3.
What is the noun? What is the verb? What is the subject of the verb? What is the completed action of the verb? at this point, i'm not too convinced you understand english grammar. there are three nouns in this clause. one is the subject of the clause, elohim, and the other two are the direct objects, shamim and aretz, as signified by the direct object marker, et.
Where do you get present tense in the Biblical Hebrew language? It only has perfect tense and imperfect tense. correct. perfect happens to correspond to past tense, and imperfect to future tense, though they do not actually denote time frames in biblical hebrew. biblical hebrew lacks the "intermediate" tense of later writing, which would correspond to present tense. the problem is that when translating into english, it's often up to the translator to infer tense based on context. and, since this is part of a dependent clause, present tense happens to make the most sense in english.
Where do you get... yeah. i'm actually not going to sit here and walk you through basic hebrew reading, because it's increasingly obvious that you just don't get it. in any case, i have already posted such a thread, where i defer to orlinsky, and rashi.
"in the beginning" Where do you get the definite article ה from? i don't. it's inferred, by almost every bible translator, ever. except, of course, for the nJPS, which renders the clause, "when god began to create..." i personally don't like that, because it turns the verb into an infinitive. "when god began creating" is more technically correct. see the link for why the temporal construct is correct.
"of god creating" Where do you get of god from? "of" is inferred. baresheyt is the first of something, or the front of something. do not expect to mechanically render modern english into biblical hebrew. there will be no bet or mem here, just as there is no bet or mem in הַעֵץ, הַדַּעַת טוֹב וָרָע (but notice there's a hey we don't render in english?) look at jeremiah 26:1
quote: seriously. that's 4 "of"s and 2 "the"s that just aren't mechanically in the hebrew. they're all implied, every one of them. note also that i've very wisely chosen a verse that shows specifically why baresheyt implies an "of".
"and the earth" I can't find the conjunction. hint: look for the vav.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1366 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
there is nothing here that actually addresses anything i've written.
Translation: In (at) beginning created God the Heaven, the Earth. This is what the literal text says. no, it is not. you are being over-literal, and entirely mechanical, to the point that it makes no sense in english. no hebrew-speaking person would read it that way -- they would read the grammar exactly as i've described because that's how hebrew grammar functions. you cannot just literally paste it into english and expect it to make sense.
If by infered you mean added by the translators to make a better English sentence I would agree look, you can either read it in english, or read it in hebrew. you're doing neither, just making a hodge-podge of nonsense. as i posted above,
quote: the "of"s and "the"s are not actually present in the hebrew in form of bet/mem, or hey. and if it were, the clause would be grammatically incorrect. this is because in hebrew you form complex phrases where articles agree. this is often a pair of nouns, one of them proper, such as memalkut yehoyaqim. and when definite, it often involves inserting another article where one wouldn't be found in english. for instance, ha-etz ha-dat. we would write "the tree of knowledge" but in your over-literal reading, it would say "the tree the knowledge". guess which one is actually appropriate? hebrew is not english, and it takes a little bit of work to render it correctly -- and not just represent the words that are there in one language blindly into another. translation does not work that way. and seriously, this is first year hebrew stuff.
יאת Is this the vav you are talking about? considering that's a yud and not a vav, no. the alef-bet: also first year hebrew stuff.
That is not a conjunction for האדץ It would be a conjunction adding a second direct object of the verb. yes, that is what a conjunction does, when it's used to link two direct objects together.
אלהים God is always the subject of ברא bara' create. except when it's not.
quote: and
quote: but i've already given these examples in this thread. you just haven't paid attention to them.
So the subject of the verb in Genesis 1:1 is God. Not as you claim something in verse 3. no. please try to understand sentence structure. "when god began creating... god said..." where is the subject of the sentence? in english, since you can't seem to understand dependent clauses in hebrew.
English grammar: An independent clause is a group of words that contains a subject and verb and expresses a complete thought. A dependent clause is a group of words that contains a subject and verb but does not express a complete thought. A declarative sentence states an idea. It does not give a command or request, nor does it ask a question. In beginning created God the Heaven the Earth is a complete declarative sentence. It has a subject and a verb which says the subject formed the Heaven and the Earth which is a complete thought. except that this is not what it says. dependent clauses frequently have both subjects and verbs (and sometimes objects). the thought is not complete because it begins with a word that tells the reader they are reading a dependent clause. the thought is completed at the end of the verse 3.
The Heaven and the Earth existed at the end of the sentence. except that they are created later in the chapter. the independent clause reading makes no sense because it contradicts the rest of the chapter.
If you want to hold the reformed view you are welcome to it. The problem is you need Genesis 1:1 to begin with כי so you can have your dependent clause. The Hebrew conjunction כי for when does not exist in the text. don't be silly. כי is certainly one way to begin a dependent clause, but is not the only way.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1366 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
What is wrong with taking the text at face value of what it says? nothing. but that is not what you are doing.
Why does Hebrew have to make sense in Englis it doesn't. it (generally) has to make sense in hebrew. if you're going to translate hebrew into english, your translation has to make sense. otherwise, you have turned sense into nonsense. if the hebrew is not nonsense, and your english translation is, you've done something terribly wrong.
Since any Hebrew-speaking person is 3500 years removed from the writing of Genesis 1:1, why would they read it the way it is written if they use current Hebrew? this may come as a surprise, but hebrew was a dead language for approximately 2,000 years. it was falling out of use by the time of christ (only used by the levites for formal purposes), and more or less destroyed with the destruction of the second temple. hebrew as a language was formally revived in the 1940's -- and based almost entirely on biblical hebrew. the differences between biblical and modern hebrew are minute. modern hebrew is generally SVO, and biblical is generally VSO. modern hebrew has some new vocabulary that has been imported from arabic and aramaic. modern hebrew tends to drop possesive suffixes and construct states for prepositions. etc. but, other than those tiny differences, biblical and modern hebrew are damned near identical. if you can read one, you can read the other. (hell, a lot of people who can read biblical hebrew can even understand spoken aramaic) contrast this with english. here is a sample of english, dated approximately 700 AD at the earliest:
quote: my spellchecker is currently freaking out, because only about a dozen of those words still exist in english. that's how much english has changed in only 1300 years. and the date you're look for for genesis 1 is about 700 BC. not 1500 BC.
Biblical Hebrew is not a spoken language and is not even represented in the original Paleo Hebrew form in which it was written but in modern Hebrew. this might come as a surprise to you, but the bible was written in biblical hebrew. you know, by definition. while the originals almost certainly used the paleo-hebrew alef-bet, the language is still what we have represented in biblical hebrew.
Have you ever read the KJV in its original English? Most folks that read it today don't understand it, and it has only been about 400 years ago that it was written must less 3500 years ago. this is because people are stupid. the KJV is one of the formative works of modern english. and again, this in contrast to the hebrew. you cannot draw an analogy here -- hebrew remained dead and unspoken for close to 2000 years. and when it was restated as the official language of the state of israel, it was specifically constructed with an eye to biblical hebrew. Edited by arachnophilia, : important typo
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1366 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
ICANT writes: Combined translation or original text: "In (or at your preference) beginning created God the Heaven the Earth." [Do] these English words represent the exact Hebrew words of the Hebrew text word for word? Either they do or they don't. they do not. (i've also taken the liberty of making your subject and verb agree in number, above)
If you believe they don't then go word by word and explain why they don't. You have to know what English word represents the Hebrew word before you can translate the text. knowing the words is not enough. this is a child's understanding -- and leads to some creative conspiracy theories such as microsoft windows 3.1 described in the bible. no, you have to understand usage. and context. and grammar. simply looking the words up in a dictionary does not a translation make. for instance, you seem entirely ignorant of the construct state in biblical hebrew. which is really quite puzzling, as it's used significantly more frequently in biblical hebrew than it is in modern hebrew. as i mentioned above, modern hebrew prefers a more mechanical use of prepositions, generally של. and we went over construct states in second year modern hebrew. why aren't you aware of them, with your six years of biblical hebrew study, such that you insist on removing "of"s and "the"s that you claim aren't there? and why have you removed a conjunctive vav that is there?
If we can get past this point we then can discuss the text further. If not we are at a dead end. we are at a dead end because, while you may know the first thing about biblical hebrew, you certain do not know the second. tell me, those six years didn't happen to be the same first year course six times, did they?
{Topic closed Aug. 13, 2013. There is a new proposed topic that more or less gets into this area. - Adminnemooseus} Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Closing note.
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