The Unacknowledged Accuracy of Genesis 1

people make this point here all the time. it's still wrong. let me (again) show you why.from your comment, it is evident that you are using, or rather misusing a concordance. to say that hayah is translated "become" or "became" a number of times is accurate, but not entirely accurate. translations are not a 1:1 sort of thing. it may be, for instance, that there's actually a more complex phrase or usage that is not represented by the root words alone, and it just happens that the word for "was" is in the same place as the english word "become." and so it gets counted. as you will see, this is exactly what happens some of the time.should we look at root words alone, as i'm sure you are doing, we would see the text like this:

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Genesis 2:7

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adam hayah chay nefesh
man became living soul

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it doesn't read very well in english, but it reads like crap in hebrew. but we might see hayah being rendered "became" and think that's what it means. let's look at what the text actually says, shall we?

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v'yehey ha-adam l'nefesh chayah
and-was the-man to-soul alive.
and the man became a living soul

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in this passage, the lamed prefix ("to-") indicates the change. that's the "come" part of "become." hayah (in this case imperitive?) is the "be" part.there are a few other usages. in many, many instances, the future cases of hayah are rendered as "become" in king james english, simply because it flows better than "will be." that's how "become" was used then. in other cases, it's used to present a transitional sense where none exists in the story. ie: lot's wife. the hebrew says she turned around, and she was a pillar of salt. "became" is used in english because to present a transition that is only implied in the text. lot's wife was clearly not salt before.but we are given no prior condition of the earth. and the default, literal translation of hayah is "was." it's a very, very common word in hebrew, and 90% of the time it's used it's a past-tense passive verb. there is nothing in genesis 1 to suggest anything else, and if the idea of change is present, it's because the earth did not exist before that point.in all of the above usages, "was" or "is" or "will be" work just fine, but they sound a little strange. and is a common prefix (not a separate word) and is used at the beginning of the majority of sentances in the bible. "let" is from the imperitive of the above word, hayah. for instance:

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Genesis 1:3

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—, ; -
v'yo-amar elohim yehey or, v'yehey or
and said god, "be light," and-was light
and god said "let there be light" and there was light.

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really, "let" or "let there be" is god saying "exist!" again, case and usage and context matters. "become" wouldn't work very well here, would it? from the verb meaning "to pound" as a metalsmith does to harden and strengthen a metal object. implies strength -- a solid object.

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well, there's two modern words that would have worked well: sferah, but i think that's form the english "sphere." kidur, for "ball," possibly used in isaiah 22:18 to mean "like a ball" or maybe more accurately "like a heap." i'm not entirely sure that the ancient hebrews had a word for something shaped like a sphere, because it's not a shape they'd encounter much.but their depiction of the earth is definitally flat for a number of other reasons...

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i suppose it is marginally on-topic, but we have had whole threads devoted to flat-vs-round earth depictions in the bible. i was going to go into a long explanation, but i can see we've already been over a good portion of it in this very thread -- short of walking you through the creation story in genesis verse by verse and explaining what exactly it's talking about.really, anyone who tells you that genesis is accurate to modern scientific knowledge has an agenda, hasn't bothered to read and think about genesis 1 carefully, or is just plain in denial.if one reads the bible without preconceptions, the depiction is rather plain. the world is created from a great ocean. a pocket of air is formed by the creation of a solid object (the sky). the water below this collects and reveals land. sun and moon and stars are placed on this solid sky. we are not being given a depiction of the universe consistent with modern cosmology, with the earth as a spheroid object in an insignificant corner of the universe. we are being told the earth is the center (everything is made in preparation for man), and that everything outside of our own atmosphere is water. and there is nothing else. the earth does not seem to be round at all, because the earth is not a planet. it is simply land that becomes evident when the waters recede. there does not even seem to be a word for "planet" in biblical hebrew.this whole story is almost word for word the sumerian depiction of the universe (which looks like an inside-out snow-dome), and identical to every other levantine religion's cosmology, and even similar to the egyptian idea of the universe (minus all of these objects being gods).

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well, not for everything. i promise you there is a lot i do not know. i have seen a lot of apologetic stuff concerning this, and it's a rather tricky case to defend when you get into "that's not what this word means" vs "well that's what the authors must have meant since they didn't have words for that." what it comes down to, imho, is the difference between a straightforwards and careful reading of the text, pitted against an attempt to jam the text into something vaguely resembling reality. literal, vs distortionary interpretations. i don't think the bible has to agree, and there are instances were it very plainly does not, even on matters of great importance. the thing is that it is a very human text, and there are hundreds of sets of fingerprints all over it, and as many if not more voices to be heard in it. and real life is complicated and difficult and not always consistent. we should expect debate and subtlety and contradiction.if it was one consistent little rulebook on how to live our lives, direct from god, it would be FAR less interesting, and meaningful, and valuable. it would tell us far less about ourselves. it would be like cutting it down to just the ten commandments -- what would the bible be without the 23rd psalm? or the 22nd? or song of songs? or job? merry christmas to you as well.

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i would be happy to debate this and your other post in the appropriate thread, which might be this one.

on the contrary, heaven is created on day two. it did not exist before then. its function is to separate waters above from waters below. you could argue that land existed before day three, but for all intents and purposes, that's when it was created."in the beginning" (or sometimes "at the start of...") is clearly just an openner. at least one newer translation renders ‘ as "at the beginning of." for instance, the new jps has "when god began to create..." the trick actually works because the first-person-singular present and past tenses of verbs are identical in hebrew. simply means "first" or "beginning" or "front." a starting place. literally, we can render the text to say "at the start of god creating the skies and the ground, the ground was without shape and empty... " etc. actually, it probably should say "first day." not because of anything you are getting at, but for another reason. the other five days you have bolded are literal translations of the hebrew names for the days of the week. sunday would be not , although the difference isn't important. you still start counting at "one." i don't see any reason to think that. each day strongly implies a length; 1 evening, and 1 morning. it's a week, plain and simple. the animals are not reproducing here. the earth is producing them. the hebrew is identical to the other days, all of which lack the ha- prefix, or "the." in this case, "the" was most likely added by translators. no. has a few meanings, dependent on usage. there are four distinct usages of the word, all with specific meanings.

1. the period of daylight, ~12 hrs. contrasted with night.

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   Gen 1:5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night...

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2. 1 day, 24 hrs. both daytime and nighttime.

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   Gen 1:5 ...And the evening and the morning were the first day.

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3. "year," idiomatic usage in genealogies.

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   Gen 5:4 And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters:

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4. specific idiom: "in the day." open-ended, referring to a larger sense of time, but specific and relating usually to causality. can be translated "when."

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   Gen 2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

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interchanging usages is unacceptable. they are distinct, and somewhat obvious. we use "day" the same way in modern english -- ironically probably due to biblical influence. the key is to not over-thinking it too much. it means what it plainly and obviously means on the first read-through. yamim is the plural of yom. and that's b'yom, "in the day that..." see above. it's actually a fluke that this is not a point of contradiction, as just about everything else in two stories contradict. they are two completely separate tales. the sun is not created until wednesday. it should be obvious from this blunder that you are not really paying very close attention to the text, which is incompatible with your view. the heavens were not created before day one, and the sun was not part of those heavens when they were created. "morning stars" seem to be mythological entities, something like the sons of god. actually, it makes reference to god enclosing the sea. that's one day two, with the creation of heaven. heaven is a dome that confines the seas -- both the ones on the flat earth, and the one in the sky. knowing something about ancient near-eastern cosmology, and actually paying attention for it in genesis 1 really clears this whole bit up. the word implies strength, solidity, and flatness. it's a metal working term. the traditional sumerian idea is a copper dome, but many jewish sources have it as being created out of the waters themselves, in ice. some have glass. the sun is not formed before day four. make from that what you will. i cannot say where the light comes from, as the text does not say either. but wherever it is coming from is NOT the sun. "breath" is more idiomatic than that. the concept is closer to a "soul" or "spirit." when god breathes into us, we become alive. our souls are made of god's soul.

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21 And God created the great sea-monsters, and every living creature that creepeth, wherewith the waters swarmed,

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24 And God said: 'Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after its kind.' And it was so.

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"creeping things" tend to include insects and whatnot.

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Lev 11:21 Yet these may ye eat of every flying creeping thing that goeth upon all four, which have legs above their feet, to leap withal upon the earth;

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Lev 11:22 Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind

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locusts, beetles, grasshoppers = (flying) creeping things. Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.Edited by AdminPD, : Warning

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the problem i see with this is rather obvious. using science to reinterpret genesis as backing science -- "unacknowledged accuracy" etc -- is circular. genesis means what it means, regardless of any relationship to reality. if it backs up what we know today, you can argue that it is accurate. if it does not, you can't simply change it around so that it is. that's not honest. that's not what the text says. you can't say that these verses are talking about a DIFFERENT heaven, as your view would insist.

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1 In the beginning God created the heaven...

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6 And God said: 'Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.'

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8 And God called the firmament Heaven.

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the first and the second are clearly the same -- and the creation of the earth is described on the next day. this makes your interpretation untennable. as for made vs created, they are very close to synonymous. "created" can mean ex-nihilo, or is generally interpretted that way, yes. really, they refer to different foci of attention. "made" emphasizes physical creation (generally by hand), and "created" emphasizes intellectual design. genesis 1 is a more lofty idea of god, genesis 2 portrays him as a hands-on kind of guy. see:

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Isa 43:7

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for I have created (baratiu) him for my glory,
I have formed (yatsartiu) him;
yea, I have made (asitiu) him.

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same basic idea, different emphasis. this is really a common oec-gap-theorist canard, and one that really makes little sense in ANY language. the translation is a good one: the reflect the same emphasis and connotation in english, and are NOT mutually exclusive. again, you're over thinking it -- it means the same in english. please see this thread. "twot" stands for theological wordbook of the old testament. it's a bible dictionary. conversely, a concordance is NOT a dictionary and should never be used as one. entries reflecting translations are not usage-specific, and can be misleading for people inexperienced with the language.in any case, the hebrew word is shamim, which is literally derived from the word for "waters," mayim. i trust you can see the similarity there, and this is to be expected. heaven is the object that divides the waters. this is highly inaccurate. biblical hebrew has MANY words. it does not have as many as english, because it did not take in as many words from as many other languages, but the vocabulary is quite large. as i point out to buzsaw somewhat recently, they have at least four words for "but, nevertheless, although," etc.people who make points about context when they have already shown that they know nothing about context or even grammar are generally trying to distort meaning by interchanging usages. there is no good textual reason to assume that one "heaven" and the other "heaven" are any different.just read it plainly, in english. the structure makes sense as it is. don't mess about in hebrew unless you actually know some. there are two possible renderings of genesis 1:1.

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‘, ‘ —, , .

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b'reishit bara elohim et-ha-shamim v'et-ha-eretz/

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in-beginning create/created god (d.o)-the-skies and-(d.o.)-the land.

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because the third person singular verb cases are the same for past and present tense, we can thus render the verse as either:

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in the beginning, god created the skies and the land

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or:

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at the beginning of god creating the skies and the land

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that's the ambiguity of the translation there. and that's the extent of it. one of the possible translations refutes your idea. the other isn't exactly a strong case for it. when you pretend that the bible is sufficiently vague, it's easy to confirm just about anything. this is what i suspect you are attempting to do, as is anyone who talks about "unacknowledged accuracy" of genesis 1. clearly, the text is NOT accurate, and talking about vagueries and difficulties in translations is one way to disguise that inaccuracy.but suppose for a second that you speak biblical hebrew, and live in 600 bce jerusalem. is there any difficulty in translation? no, there is not. you know what it means. the bible is NOT vague. it's actually quite specific -- that "context" you talked about above is actually one of the things that help make it so. i can't tell you how many fundamentalist quotemines are defeated by context that limits or specifies a verse they have ripped out of the text. the levantine cosmology consisted of a flat earth, and a domed sky. that was the entire universe. to read anything else is anachronistic. and yes, "heaven and earth" is a common dualism. it represents the entire universe because, to the ancient hebrews, all they knew of the universe as "sky" and "ground." yet they both have to be created, don't they? "day and night" is another common dualism, as you mention. day is created, isn't it? and its creation defines night. similar, heaven is created, and its creation allows the definition of land. tell me from my above translation whether or not you think this argument should impress me. there is only water above the sky. yes. the first verse is an introduction, or dependent clause, depending on how you parse the grammar. it merely signifies that this is the beginning of god's creative act. there is simply no logical reason to separate this verse from the rest of the text. rather, it would be surprising if it WAS consistent. it's a 2600 year old story, strongly reminiscent of the babylonian creation myth, and every other creation myth in the levantine and sumerian regions of the world. if your generalized version of it is correct, so is the enuma elish. they generalize about the same way, only one has seven gods where the other has one. does it look like i need translations? and it's not every major translation. there are a number that are still under copyright. for instance, the new jps i mentioned above. that's certainly news to me. it hasn't been in ANY translation i've ever read, and it's NOT in the hebrew.

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if Genesis 1 begins with only a title or summary, then verse 2 contradicts verse 1. God creates the earth (verse 1), but the earth pre-exists creation (verse 2).

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what an exceptionally narrow-minded reading! can't "the beginning" be the entire creation week? i think it can! in fact, that word is the title for the book, "b'reishit" or "in the beginning" or "genesis" if you will. the whole book is "in the beginning." it is the origins of the hebrew faith. your source and your logic contradict rational sense, and a reasonable reading of the text, regardless of translation. but just for kicks, here's that new jps:

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When God began to create heaven and earth -- the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water -- God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.

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etc. i believe i've already shown why this translation is acceptable, though i would personally render it a little more literally (as above). i don't take kindly to threats. i counter your revelation with deuteronomy 12:32 and 13:1-whatever.and i am not adding anything to the text -- you are. you are inserting a entirely distinct creation where the text describes none. why have a "vague" reference to a previous creation that was not described? the fact that this creation is described totally refutes your point. why not start with noah? god un-creates everything (except heaven) in chapter 6 and 7, and returns the planet to the condition it was in genesis 1:2. why not start there? because the text wants to start "in the beginning." the point of this text and its placement is to be the beginning. no, it does not. not at all. if heaven existed, and there was a sun, why WAS it dark? why did light have to be created if it already existed? where does the sun exist before it was "made" and before the place it exists is "made?" how is something "created" and then "made" at some point afterwards? your view does not make a lick of sense. again, saying there was a sun directly contradicts the text. your interpretation is anti-textual, and therefore wrong. the text CANNOT be accurate if we have to ignore what it says to make it so. you see this word in verse 14? . yehey. literally, "be!" it is an emphatic command to come into existance, and ALWAYS associated with creation. if god says tells something to come into existance, and to exist in a certain place when it already does, god is about as powerful as the dog trainer who tells his sleeping dog "play dead."Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.

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a good point. creatio-ex-nihilo is basically not ever once described in the bible. the only ARGUABLE instance is in genesis 1:1. and that's arguable. clearly, water seems to pre-exist (as you mention). the "cutting" is because god creates by means of division. he sorts things into creations by separate one thing from another in the primordial chaos. you'll find that almost all of god's creation is separation: light from dark, day from night, land from water, etc. dualism is strewn throughout the chapter, everything created with its opposite.

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oh no, of course. your additions are always informative. i highly suspect that you know a great deal more about theology and the text than i do, and it's always a pleasure to learn new things.i tend to get bogged down in the details, and miss the obvious forest for the trees. your observation is much more concise and to the point.Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.

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no. why? because obviously if we read the text literally, it's wrong? that's not a good reason if we are testing for accuracy. we are merely confirming our own biases.there is simply no good argument that they mean anything other than "days." even in the more symbolic and applied readings -- higher interpretations than the literal -- it's clearly talking about one singular week of creation. the story is about time, what marks time (the sun, the moon), day and night, and the origin of shabat. reading it as anything else is simply to support a rather faulty idea of what the text is. of course not. the people who wrote the story had no idea of what those things are, and this is NOT the focus of the text. consider yourself corrected.

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20 And God said: 'Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let fowl fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.'

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24 And God said: 'Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after its kind.' And it was so.

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yes, "expansion" as in what happens to hot metal when you beat it with a hammer. that "expanse" essentially means "flat."similarly, the word "firmament" has a rather strict connotation of solidity. i mean, the word "firm" is right in there.

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and yet, evidently, misunderstood by you. when the text says "after its kind" it doesn't necessarily mean that the thing it names is a "kind." it means that those things have subsets that breed amongst themselves and the author doesn't want to list them all.if you're particularly interested, here is a post i made a while back cross-referencing the "kinds" listed in leviticus 11 with their place in linean taxonomy, where i show that the usage of the word is closer to family or genus, and obviously colloquial and not scientific (as it's all over the map).

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which OT are you reading?the "old testament" covers a vast range of writings, subjects, and authors, all with different styles associated. some are wordier than others. genesis/exodus/numbers (up to the census) are essentially one work that is a combination of two epics that span a great length of time: the beginning of the hebrew race to the gift of the covenant on mt horeb, some 2,000 years. the terse quality is sort of required.other works, like the books of samuel and kings cover a period of only four hundred years or so, and comprise about twice the length. what should have been apparent is that "kind" is just as a general word in hebrew as it is in english. it's not talking about a specific biological division. it's talking about "variety" on any level. what hidden attribute would that be?it's an artiodactyl (even-toed ungulate) but not a ruminant. that makes it not kosher (along with peccaries, hippos, and camels). ruminants (deer, sheep, goats, etc) are. it's not a surprise that the people that wrote the bible observed these animals enough to be able to basically classify them. my point was a linguistic one. it is a bad idea to look at one source and assume that because it uses it one way, that that is the definition, when it might be a more broad, vague term. in this case, leviticus tells us that it's used to mean something else. the word, it seems, simply means "group of animals," and not a specific sort of group. sort of like, in biology, the term "taxon." it could be used to mean "family" or "order" or "genus" or even "species." it's the just a general term. genesis (one) separates mankind from other forms of life in two ways: firstly, the verb it uses. bara is used for special creations -- other life is simply "brought forth" from the earth or the sea. second, it says we are made in the image of god. genesis (two) also says that we are containers for the breath of god. "son of man" is a hebrew idiom. it means "lowly mortal." it's used in contrast to god. see the book of ezekiel, where god calls the titular prophet by that name. figuratively, it's the equivalent of "lower than dirt." (the name adam being from the word for dirt) actually, it's rather vain. and somewhat wrong by one account. genesis 1 has us the final creation with dominion over all else, but genesis 2 has us as one of the first creations. animals (and then woman) are created because man is lonely, on a trial-and-error basis.

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perhaps you should then use the correct terms. i will understand you if you write "torah" and "nevi'im" and "kethuvim." but normally, we use "old testament" and "OT" to refer to the entire tanakh according to the masoretic texts (protestant christian old testament). then the authors should have taken more time to spell them out clearly, as they do later on in leviticus, where the critical divisions of what is and what is not kosher are made. perhaps they are more fundamental, yes, but that's exactly my point. the word is used both for fundamental distinctions AND for nitty-gritty precise ones. that's what i said. "artiodactyl (even-toed ungulate) but not a ruminant." perhaps the biology escaped you. i listed several. camel are non-ruminant artiodactyls. so are hippos. (hippos are even in the same family as pigs). yes, and one of them is the camel. which is curious, because camels do have split hooves, being artiodactyls. and they do also chew the cud, but they are not ruminants, and should really be listed as not kosher for the exact opposite of the reason it actually says.the other two are rabbits. which are not even close to being ruminants, and don't chew their cud. pretty poorly by modern standards if you ask me. but for 6th century bce judah, it was pretty good. they made some attempt at differentiating and classifying animals, and that's a start towards biology i suppose. no, i mean the word itself is general term meaning "group" and can be applied to any group. uh, that's a bit of a stretch, but since god in genesis 1 creates by speaking, i could see someone making this sort of point in the talmud or midrashim. i've certainly see crazier ways of reading these two chapters. indeed. yes, if you read one chapter and not the other. in chapter 1. in chapter 2, man is formed from the dirt, and woman is made from him. at separate instants, and after some amount of time of man being lonely. nor at all in the that story, which starts about halfway through genesis 2:4 and continues through ch 4. it is a separate story, and it is a mistake to conflate the two. generalized, yes. but at that instant, there was only one human god was talking about it. "adam" is also a proper name. in genesis 1, "adam" refers to mankind, as it is a generalized text. in genesis 2, "adam" is a proper name of a specific man, as it is a specific text.the gender is not particularly implied in the mankind case, but it is in the proper name case. not many women running around named "adam."

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all mammals. all vertebrates. all amniotes, adult amphibians, and some various sarcoptergiian fish oooh, tough one. most vertebrates, some molluscs, arthropoda... uhh... uh... easy, gnathostomata. not sure that's even a good definition. pretty much everything from the microscopic level on up. among hominids? that's actually a good one for homo sapiens that differentiates us from even our closes relatives. primates (and possums). insects, cephalopods, and many higher mammals (dolphins and whales, particularly) all have complex forms of communication.

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