What's Best Reconciliation of Gen 1 and 2 You've Heard?

Click here for the first two chapters in Genesis according to the Douay-Rheims Bible.Other than finding that the language of the Catholic Bible makes the King James seem modern by comparison, I don't know what there will answer the questions you (and I, for that matter) have.

We wait with bated breath.

Many fundamentalists reject the Documentary Hypothesis and assert that the Pentateuch was written by one person, namely Moses. (Technically, that's not correct, since Moses' death [Deuteronomy 34:1-12] is recorded, so someone else would have had to have written that account at the very least.) The repetitions, doublets (dual, and sometimes dueling, i.e., conflicting accounts of a number of incidents) and inconsistencies within passages indicate that Genesis, Exodus and the other early O.T. books were written by a number of different people at different places and at different times.

I don't intend to either defend or attack KJVOnlyism in this thread, but I do find it kind of interesting that some (not necessarily most, and certainly not all) of those who hold the KJVO position also insist that the KJV is more accurate than the ancient Hebrew and Greek manuscripts, i.e., that the ancient languages had communicative limitations that were overcome by early Modern (i.e., Elizabethan or Jacobean era) English.All I can say about this is that languages are constantly changing, with words (and grammatical structures) being invented while at the same time others are being lost or changing their meaning completely. These changes happen at different times in different languages, and sometimes even at different times and in different ways in different dialects of the same language. It should be remembered that, while the N.T. was written over a comparatively short period of time (probably less than a century), the O.T. was composed by a wide number of people, in two different though related languages, over a period of perhaps a thousand or more years. It's quite unlikely that the last O.T. books were written in a form of Hebrew that was substantially unchanged from the language of the oldest O.T. books. Translators should realize that, but how many of them actually do?

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Never overestimate the intelligence of someone who thinks you're wrong.

I never said the Biblical Hebrew had communicative limitations. I said that some in the KJV Only camp have made that assertion (not necessarily using those words, however). Those folks claim that the 1611 KJV is the only perfect version of the Bible ever written--in any language. (Other KJV Onlyists take a somewhat more reasonable position, and acknowledge that at least some Bibles written in other languages--such as the Spanish Reina-Valera--might be just as accurate as the KJV.) According to the KJV Onlyists, then, the KJV rendition of Gen 1 & 2 has no errors, either in content or translation.As for the language of the Old Testament, I know that a few small parts were written in Aramaic (including much of the book of Daniel), but if we confine ourselves to the Hebrew, it stands to reason that the Hebrew of the last books written might be quite different, at least in some grammar and vocabulary respects (I won't venture in pronunciation) from those of the earliest books.This message has been edited by DeclinetoState, 04-03-2006 12:13 PM

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Never overestimate the intelligence of someone who thinks you're wrong.