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

Hi guysSo do we know when Genesis was written? If it was written around the time of Paul or earlier, the author would have lived in a time where the 'gods genuine world' and 'our mirror of their world' belief was the standard. If this was written at that date, could the author be first documenting the creation of the heavens (the genuine reality), and then the subworld for us which is just a representation of what the Gods did in their world?Apologies in advance if this is a stupid suggestion =P[edit - typo]This message has been edited by boolean, 03-21-2006 05:53 AM

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So do we know when Genesis was written?

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Are you familiar with the Documentary Hypothesis?My statements are based on the information found in the book: Who Wrote The Bible? by Richard Elliott Friedman.According to the documentary hypothesis, Genesis was composed over a period of years by various participants.Genesis 1 is considered to be a priestly writing which may have been written as an alternative to the combined JE texts. It is considered to have been written sometime after the fall of the northern kingdom and after the JE texts were combined. Friedman considers it written after 722BC and before 609BC.Genesis 2 from 4b on is considered a J writing. Genesis 2:1-3 is considered the end of the priestly Genesis 1 and 2:4a is considered a redactor's (R) hand.J (Southern Kingdom) and E (Northern Kingdom) are considered to have developed when the kingdoms were divided and so were probably written after 930BC.The two writings weren't written to compliment each other from what I can tell.

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"Peshat is what I say and derash is what you say." --Nehama Leibowitz

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.

This is a reply to DeclinetoState's post but is generally offered to anyone interested in understanding the Bible as historical literature. I'm hoping somewhere to get Brian's and Arach's opinion.I'm about half way through reading:The secular Bible : why nonbelievers must take religion seriouslyAuthor : Berlinerblau, Jacques.
Publisher, Date : New York : Cambridge University Press, 2005.
ISBN : 0521853141 (hardback) - Description : xiii, 217 p. ; 24 cm.Berlinerblau has two Ph.D.s one in ancient Near Eastern languages. I'm about half way through the book and I think he is offerring a very important viewpoint one a bit different than I've encountered before.The one tidbit I'll throw out here is that he states that translators have offerred what amounts to a cosmetic version of the bible. He make a suggestion that I would love to see which is a bible that is as literal a translation as possible, one that would leave all the difficulties for the reader to be aware of. I'll quote from page 75:"Genesis 6:3 is one of the many verses flagged with this disclaimer. in Hebrew, this curious line features the following proclaimation from God: lo-yadon ruhi badam le olam besagam hu basar. Confronted by this confounding locution, the JPS team does what translators have done for ages: it takes an impressivly erudite stab at the verse's meaning:the Lord said, "MY breath shall not abide in man forever, since he too is flesh."Because we do not feel compelled to clarify ambiguous Scripture, we translate:Yahweh said: My breath (?) will not .... in humanity for eternity ... he/it is flesh."From reading as much of Berlinerblau as I have I would say that his view is that the Bible is an aggregate of many scribes and writers with so many inconsistencies and incongruities that one can make whatever reconcilliation one chooses based on how you select and weight the citations, but there is ulitimately no final or real reconcillation.from page 50 Berlinerblau writes:"Composition by aggregate, it has just been suggested, is a very creative process; it brings into being countless possibilities of meaning. But what is more significant, and almost never discussed, is that the same process also yields countless impossiblilities of meaning. .... Is not the lack of logical coherence that characterizes so many biblical texts the most likely outcome of its peculiar literary assemblage?"It would appear that often from the best of intentions the translators of the Bible have given us a work that did not exist in the texts they translated and they have hidden the true state of the manuscripts thus in effect foisting off a bit of hoax on those who read their translations. I would especially like to hear from Arach and Brian on their take on Berlinerblau book or ideas.lfen

i'll be honest here. it's never going to happen. two reasons. the first is the somewhat obvious one: most people who are buying bibles don't want to have to try to figure out what it means on the surface level (let alone the deeper levels). the second is the more subtle point you had to figure i was going to get at: hebrew is not english. modern hebrew tends to share some grammatical structure with english: word order is generally the same. but biblical hebrew is completely different. verbs come before subjects. there are possesive endings on nearly everything -- everything is conjugated, like in latin.now, some of the things are relatively simple. enough so that i can puzzle out their meanings. but by and large most of the verses i look at, i haven't the first clue what they're saying. i've been somewhat lucky here. most of the verse that have come under debate that required some closer examination have been worded in such a way that a third grader could understand them. (that's about my comprehension level on a good day, if not far, far worse)but you'll notice in the ones that i have puzzled out on this board, i do it in four steps. first i post the hebrew, then the transliterated latin-alphabet hebrew. then i take that, and turn it into a word-for-word literal rendering. things end up out of order, hyphenated, etc. then i take that and turn it into something that makes sense in english. the idea here is that you can see my process.the "cosmetic" changes berlinerblau is talking about is what happens between steps 3 and 4 -- the process of turning it into something that makes sense in english. if you had a bible in the raw, literal form i post for step 3, it wouldn't neccessarily make any sense to an english audience. it'd make LESS sense than the hebrew does to a hebrew audience because it's been removed from its linguistic context. it'd just be english with atrociously wrong grammar. i'll give you an example, for the purposes of discussion. i posted this at the end of serpent thread:

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v'ha-nachash, hayah arom, m'kol chayat ha-sadeh, asher asah yahueh elohim;

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and-the-serpent, was crafty, from-all animals the-field, that made [the lord] god.

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and the serpent was the craftiest of all the wild animals that the lord god made

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now, you can see that i've come to a different conclusion than the standard translation. this is based partially on the grammatical rendering of step three, but mostly on my own contextual understanding of that relates to and a concept in the english. i've also chosen to render the idea of the "of the field" idiom with the appropriate english meaning, instead maintaining it's literal wording. this is purely a translational choice -- it's based on my knowledge of the context and is of course extremely questionable. translations like the jps tend to render things idiomatically like this -- others don't.now, the standard rendering is that the serpent was "more subtle than the beasts of the field." the idea of posting this, originally, was to demonstrate that the serpent was, in fact, also a beast of the field, not something else. this particular concept is lost in the english, unless worded very carefully. the standard rendering, however, maintains the idea that the serpent was more subtle than any (other) beast of the field.making an optimal english translation is HARD. 9 times out of 10, something is lost in translation. often, even just changing the linguistic context, and the way the grammar works, changes the text. i'm not saying that the only way to read the bible is to learn hebrew -- but it sure helps, if only to provide some of that context and grammatical understanding. without that, even the most literal translation will never contain the clarity you're looking for.so at best, most are stuck with reading how someone else interprets the text. and even the most literal translation (which, btw, imo is probably the kjv) is subject to this. and some of that bit happens even at the most basic level, just reading the "original" hebrew. there's no promise that every native hebrew speaker will read the same meaning from something. how often do we find ourselves in semantic arguments, and misunderstandings in english? and there's some stuff that even the best translators have to guess at. i don't think most translators are trying to hoax people. (granted, some...) but i promise you that the original authors knew what they were writing, and it wasn't gibberish. the original sources MUST have been coherent. the coherency comes, in part, from the compilation of the texts, and the contradictions that brings. but most of it probably comes from the expectations people have. they expect it to agree with itself, and make sense to someone today. mostly, they expect that their translations are, in effect, the word of god, and not subject to question. nevermind that in instances such as the above, maybe no one really knows what it means.in these cases, the translator often takes his best (informed) guess. but the translator should not be assumed to be infallible, especially when almost every translation has footnotes that say "meaning of hebrew uncertain." their guess might be wrong -- but it's no more of a hoax than a failed hypothesis in science.

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Thanks, Arach, your examples helped me see a tiny bit more of how different and how ancient the bible is. "in effect foisting off a bit of hoax on those who read their translations." was my statement of how I feel about the translation not an attribute of the translators. What you have said goes along with Berlinerblau.Berlinerblau stresses that the bibles we have are the aggregate of about a thousand years of many copyists, scribes, and editors working and reworking the material and that this processes has introduced material and also corrupted texts to the point they become confusing or meaningless.Even though the contradictions are there in the translations many are able to come up with interpretations to allow them to claim or believe that the bible is without error or contradiction. What shocked me was Berlinerblau demonstrated that the material is even more uncertain than the translations indicate. It's not that the translators intend hoax but that people reading the translation get the impression that the material is in better condition than the originals really are.Thanks for replying in detail.lfenedit: corrected typo "woarking" to "working"This message has been edited by lfen, 04-02-2006 11:02 AM

to further complicate my point, i'm going to contradict that slightly. that example i used was a very easy verse, and a very modern one. most of the bible is not that easy, or modern. however, in my studies i have found that the bible is suprisingly more modern than i thought when i started. we tend to think of it as an ancient book, written by backwards and often silly people who lived out in fields with sheep. nothing could be further from the truth -- most of the book was put together by people living in a rather advanced society, living in a city at the center of the middle eastern world. it was the meeting point between the greek world, the egyptian world, and the babylonian/assyrian/persian empires.the problem is that it is possible to render the bible in such a way that the clarity disappears and the text becomes very backwards and ancient in our minds. this is an artifact of the fact that we don't connect to it, or understand the social context and how the language works. the ancient and backwards quality is the result of something that has been lost in translation. that's why translations, such as the jps, try to work out the contextual and idiomatic readings; to regain the qualities that are present in the original text that have been lost due to social and linguistic changes. well, as faith says, believing is not proving. but i think she'd differ here, and agree with me on this point: the bible is certainly not meaningless, and one needs only look to all the people who see meanining in it to demonstrate that fact. now, parts of the bible HAVE become confusing. and he is right about why. but much of the meaning still remains. it just might take a little work to figure it out. but that goes for anything. in the case of genesis 1 and 2, it helps to know that they are two different stories. in my opinion, the multiple source idea explains the contradictions quite well. like i said, part of the problem is the belief people approach the bible with, not the bible itself. i have a three volumne set of the norton anthology of world literature on my shelf. it contains selections from almost every important ancient text there is. how do i explain the contradictions i find between the stories there? ...i don't, because i don't expect them to agree. the problem is that the bible is not one book, by one author. it's a library, and many of the books in it are anthologies. well, that's exactly it. it's the people who are reading it, and taught not to doubt, or question it. personally, the questioning of translation was the start of my journey down the questioning road. it led me to question the composition and authorship, and very many other things. and a lot of people view this as bad, unchristian.but i will tell you, the more i learn and study, the more i find that generally the translators know what they're doing. very rarely do i find something that's just been translated wrong. sometimes i find things that could be worded better (like the example above) but that might just be my own error based my limited knowledge. there is a lot of debate over some words, and phrases, and verses, yes. but by and large, it's not a giant questionmark.This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 04-02-2006 09:54 PM

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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.

this is a bit off topic, but ah well. maybe someone will post a new thread about it, if people wanna discuss kjv-only-ism. i think this is a misinterpretation of the kind of point made above. granted, there are features of early modern english that are NOT present in late modern english. for instance, in modern english the plural personal pronoun "you" has taken over the job of the singular "thou." there is no distinction now of number with the word "you." in elizabethan english, there is. this doesn't make the kjv better; in actuality it makes it worse. we don't commonly use words like "thou" and people end up finding the language confusing. it would be better only is we spoke elizabethan english.the other issue is that, at best, it replicates the hebrew in number. in hebrew, we'd say "atah" for "thou" and "atem" for "you." at worst, it lacks the gender of hebrew. this has caused some problems, because hebrew speakers understand gender (and neutral male cases) better. a group of all men are describe -im, male. a group of all women is describe -ot, female. but mixed company is also -im, male.for instance, in the famous story of sodom, the "men" of the village are probably not all male. neither word used (for the men of the village, nor the visitors) is neccessarily male. but when we translate it into english, it just says "men" which we now associate only one gender with. in reality "people" would be a better contextual understanding -- the gender has been mistranslated because it remains literal.but i really think it's quite disengenous to say that biblical hebrew had "communicative limitations." i assure you, it communicated what it wanted to its audience quite effective. it's US that are limited in understand its communication, not vice-versa. close! the last books of the bible were written (at least partially) in aramaic, which is a different semetic language. classical hebrew (including the masoretic text) derives its alef-bet from a modification of the aramaic letters.This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 04-03-2006 01:30 AM

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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.

oh, no, i know. sorry if that seemed misdirected. it was aimed at the kjv1611 crowd. the "you" was there because i was trying to explain to you that they're full of it. i'm sure you have no argument there. yes, as you can see in the discussion above, i agree with this. there are vast differences in grammar from source to source, and some parts are much more modern linguistically. although, to be honest, i'm not sure the dates of the books, so i can't really give you picture of how the language evolved. the case might be that the "modern" stuff is actually older, and the more "archaic" stuff is a linguistic high point of the language. i don't know enough of the history of the book, or about the language to say, though.

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oops! Jman my alter ego has stepped in and... well there goes the neighborhood. You guys will have to look at message 138 to see the new and improved response.This message has been edited by Jman, 04-08-2006 11:50 PM

Agreed, but there is a clear difference between the two. The parables in the New Testament are clearly marked as parables. The story of Adam and Eve is not. The lack of such designation does not preclude that the author originally intended it to be a parable. Agreed I have to disagree with you on this.In an earlier post you already stated that there were two creation stories, so we do not have to argue about that. The problem is that we apparently disagree about where the first story ends and where the second starts. The quote above suggests to me that you believe the second story starts with the first verse of Genesis 2. The second story - the one about Adam and Eve - starts on the seventh day. I believe you are mistaken.First you have to understand that the original Hebrew text did not have verse markers and chapters. The numbered verses and chapters were added centuries after the stories were initially written. So when we are talking about the chapter break between Genesis 1 and 2 we are talking about an artificial addition. The location of the break does not indicate that the original author or redactor intended a break in that location.If you look at the second and third verse of Genesis 2 you can clearly read that God was finished with his creation and that God rested. This is in contradiction with the rest of Genesis 2 which clearly indicates that God did not rest. How can he be resting and creating Adam at the same time. This indicates that the chapter break was indeed put at the wrong location.Many believe that the break between the first and second story is in the fourth verse of the second chapter. The first part of the fourth verse is the end of the first story and the second part is the start of the second story.The result is that God rests on the seventh day and that is where the story ends. We only hear about Adam and Eve in the second story. I thought you just said that the story about Adam and Eve was a parable. Here you seem to argue that two fictional characters had a real life historical son. Oh well...Anyway, this is based on the false premise that God created ”man’ twice. First on the sixth and once again on the seventh day. As explained above this premise is based on the false assumption that the current chapter break is where the first story ends and the second begins. I doubt you can provide a scriptural foundation for this assertion. The idea of a “chosen race” of men has nothing to do with any of this. It is based on the idea of a covenant between Abram and God. The offspring of Abram is the “chosen race”. After reading your explanation I agree wholeheartedly: humans have a talent for making easy things complicated. Your explanation is a perfect example of this.Again, I doubt you can provide a scriptural foundation. Until you do and prove me wrong, please do not hold it against me that I consider your explanation the result of an overly active imagination. Am I interpreting this correctly? It sounds like you are trying to use the argument that you are right because “there are lots of people that agree with me, they just don’t tell anyone because they are afraid somebody will use it against them”. I’m sure a lot of people are willing to buy your book. History has proven over and over again that people are willing to believe in anything - and even more so if it is written in a book. Personally I would put this book in the same category as all those “holy blood, holy grail” and “ufo’s in the bible” nonsense.This message has been edited by rakaz, 06-Apr-2006 03:50 PMThis message has been edited by rakaz, 06-Apr-2006 03:57 PM

The two stories of creation do not seem to agree with each other. That fact (if it really is a fact) seems to agrue against the infallibility of the Bible.I think I will support the version which agrees more with the known facts which support the evolution theory.This message has been edited by Jacob, 04-07-2006 11:10 PM

I too believe the story of Adam and Eve is a parable. That does not mean that you can simply take it and interpret in any way you like. A proper interpretation should fit in context, both scriptural and historical context. I believe your understanding about the history of the bible may be a bit flawed.First of all, there is not such thing as a catholic bible (a term you used in a previous post). Neither did the reformation change the bible. There must be a clear distinction between canon, translations and source manuscripts.The Catholic canon - the official selection of books which are part of the bible - is based on the Septuagint, an early Greek translation of the Hebrew bible. The Jewish canon was finalized a century or two after the Septuagint was finalized. The Septuagint included a couple of books that were not present in the Jewish canon. These book are not forbidden or wrong, they were simply not considered to be ”inspired’. Centuries later the reformation adopted the Jewish canon.The books that are part of the Catholic canon and not present in the Protestant canon do not give the pope some special authority, nor did they contradict the reformist movement. The reason for deleting these books may have been politically inspired, but I think you are stretching when you are using the change of canon by the reformist movement as an example of humans distorting the bible.What the reformation did change was the way scripture was interpreted and the importance that is given to scripture in contrast to tradition (sola scriptura). This change in interpretation is also noticeable in certain modern translations. Maybe this is what you mean by the reformists changing the bible.Fact is, the original Hebrew manuscripts have seen very little change in the last 2300 years. Some scribal errors may have been introduced but that is largely it. The Masoretic Text (ca 1000 AD - still in use today) is largely identical to the Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran (300 BCE - 70 AD). If you go further back in time, you may be right (see for example the Documentary Hypothesis). The bible was written in a different culture. A culture that is very different from current cultures. This does not mean the bible is ”sketchy’. The bible is very clear and understandable if you understand the culture in which it was written. This is what minister do in their sermons. They interpret the bible and explain it in terms that are more recognizable in today’s society. Of course there is disagreement about what texts meant in their original context and how these should be translated to modern equivalents. Again, this does not mean the bible is ”sketchy’.You can interpret the bible in different ways. This does not mean that every interpretation is automatically valid. Any interpretation should be plausible within the context in which it was written. A plausible interpretation does not automatically mean a correct interpretation, but if an interpretation is not plausible it is almost certainly incorrect. Even “liberal” interpretations must be plausible within the context of the bible. You cannot simply take some verses out of context and base your interpretation on it and ignore all those verses that contradict your interpretation.Now, to get back on topic. If you are going to interpret the two creation stories your interpretation should fit within the context in which the stories were written. I am not saying that you should follow dogmas and traditional interpretation. Instead, it should fit with the Israelite or Judean mindset at the time and it should fit with the history of scripture. From what I read so far, it does neither.For what it is worth, I am not Christian or Jewish either.This message has been edited by rakaz, 07-Apr-2006 05:14 PM