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Author | Topic: Giant People in the bible? | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Amlodhi Inactive Member |
quote: Hi spin, Glad to see you here. I do understand Arachnophilia's frustration. Eddy's been around for a good while now and seems incorrigible. Some of the best advice I ever heard (and that I can only hope Eddy will heed) is that: "Before attempting to think outside the box, it is essential to have at least some idea of what is in the box." (Attribution unknown) Amlodhi
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spin Inactive Member |
Hey, Amlodhi!
I also understand Arachnophilia's frustration and I guess I wasn't doing such a good job at saying that A. shouldn't be discouraged by someone who doesn't have the same preparation. All one needs to do with Eddy is laugh at his pitiful linguistic skills until he picks up his act and either learns some Hebrew or stops pretending to deal with the text. spin
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1344 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Eddy's been around for a good while now and seems incorrigible. seems! no he is. i know not seems.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1344 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
I also understand Arachnophilia's frustration and I guess I wasn't doing such a good job at saying that A. shouldn't be discouraged by someone who doesn't have the same preparation. this is my curse:
quote: seriously, go find our earlier conversations. they're a hoot.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1344 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Anyways, the mighty men of renown mentioned in Genesis 6. If we really look at who they were in relevance to the traditions of those ancient times, we usually would come to the conclusion they are similar to the heroes of legend like Hercules etc. The Nephilim were the people who are supposed to have been born from the gods and men. Similar to many traditions world-wide. if we look to Enoch for elaboration, enoch calls them giants. they are portrayed as abominations that ravage the earth, slaughtering millions. in response, the angel azazel and a few other teach mankind to make weapons, and it is THAT that prompts god to flood the earth. interesting story, but that's just a reinterpretation from the intertestamental period.
I guess you could intereperate the 120 years of Genesis as the time from Joseph Smith to the Israel Statehood. But it doesn't fit in with the rest of Genesis very well. Now I suppose the great flood is a prophecy of The Holocost?lol don't encourage him!
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MangyTiger Member (Idle past 6354 days) Posts: 989 From: Leicester, UK Joined: |
seriously, go find our earlier conversations. they're a hoot. Was that the truly mad stuff about people taking a 386 IBM PC running Windows 3 back through time to show Biblical characters scenes from some obscure CD-Rom ? That was just wrapping up (dying a death ) when I first started lurking at EvC - I wondered what the hell I'd wandered into ! Confused ? You will be...
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1344 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
yeah, that would be one of them.
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spin Inactive Member |
if we look to Enoch for elaboration, enoch calls them giants. they are portrayed as abominations that ravage the earth, slaughtering millions. in response, the angel azazel and a few other teach mankind to make weapons, and it is THAT that prompts god to flood the earth.
Whoa thar, nelly! interesting story, but that's just a reinterpretation from the intertestamental period. A reinterpretation?? The Enoch material provides the information that has been deliberately left out of the Genesis account. The much unstated material oozing behind the Genesis text says that there was more than meets the eye. People who heard would have known the extra material and the reader would have elaborated on it for his listening audience. What we have in Enoch is evidence for what that material was. Enoch's text, by putting the fundamental blame on the watchers, takes a different theological standpoint from the Adamant Eve story that we only have ourselves to blame. I would say that the Genesis material is a later development than that found in Enoch.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1344 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
A reinterpretation?? The Enoch material provides the information that has been deliberately left out of the Genesis account. The much unstated material oozing behind the Genesis text says that there was more than meets the eye. People who heard would have known the extra material and the reader would have elaborated on it for his listening audience. What we have in Enoch is evidence for what that material was. Enoch's text, by putting the fundamental blame on the watchers, takes a different theological standpoint from the Adamant Eve story that we only have ourselves to blame. I would say that the Genesis material is a later development than that found in Enoch. uh, to my knowledge, no. enoch is one of MANY books that elaborates on the stories in genesis. most are written to explain common questions, such as "where did cain's wife come from?" among others. enoch is essentially no different that jubilees, or the book of adam and eve. and it does show thinking much different from genesis. the depiction of god and his angels is a much more recent view of god, not found in the genesis text. it is, i believe, an intertestamental text.
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John Williams Member (Idle past 4999 days) Posts: 157 From: Oregon, US Joined: |
I tend to agree with Arachnophilia on this one.
The book of Enoch is a much later text than the genesis story. It has a different cultural mythology than the genesis traditions.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1344 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
The book of Enoch is a much later text than the genesis story. It has a different cultural mythology than the genesis traditions. agreed. when was enoch actually written? do you know? i'm not that familiar with the subject.
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Probably between 150 and 80 BCE.
Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1344 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
yes, that is a good deal later.
even at my outrageously late esimate for genesis, 600 bc, which even my bible professor agreed with but wasn't ready to accept for religious reasons.
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spin Inactive Member |
Enoch is actually a collection of books (a pentateuch in itself) written at different stages and edited and redited until the complex literary history has mainly been lost.
The first book, the Book of the Watchers reflects an early 2nd c. BCE major redaction, but it points to many touches before then, so it points back into the 3rd c. BCE. The third book, the Astronomical Book also goes back to the 3rd c. BCE. The latest of the books in the collection is the second, the Parables and could be a 2nd c. CE work. Only four of the books were found at Qumran, the one missing naturally was the Parables. But back to the Book of the Watchers. There is no reason to suspect that this text was "heretical" in any way, but presents a view of the world which is fundamentally different from a world in which humans had fallen. The world's problems are from the intervention of the Watchers, not from humans. Between the theology of Enoch's Watchers and Genesis there has been a major change. It is inconceivable that the Watchers' theology was developed after that of the fall in Genesis. It's old view has been preserved from long before the fall in Genesis. If this is the case it is not strange for Enoch to contain clearer information about the giants than Genesis, as it would appear that Genesis is attempting to cover up the old theological view while obliged to include the story. That cover up was by reducing the report so much that it's significance was no longer apparent, thus removing the conflict with the new theology.
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spin Inactive Member |
John Williams writes:
I'd love to see anyone seriously try to date Genesis as we have it before the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls (even though I believe it was written before then). The book of Enoch is a much later text than the genesis story. It has a different cultural mythology than the genesis traditions. Try it. You'll be surprised at the lack of achievement. The best we can say is that it was basically complete by the time of the scrolls deposit, though there are a lot of lacunae in the various versions that were preserved, because of decay or later damage. So please, try to give a date to when Genesis was written. You'll find that you can't get beyond the fact that it was probably complete by the time of the DSS. Here's an interesting indicator: when Ben Sira wrote his book (we usually call it "Ecclesiasticus" or "Sirach") he wrote a section in praise of illustrious men in the form of a chronology talking about each. He started with Enoch. What happened to Adam? He got sandwiched in as an appendix. Starting with Enoch should tell you a few things: 1) Enoch was important enough to get the first mention and 2) Ben Sira mightn't have had a Genesis as we have it today to use for his illustrious men. This message has been edited by spin, 12-17-2004 02:24 AM
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