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Author | Topic: What Genesis Two Says | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Phat Member Posts: 18631 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 4.4 |
Why is this topic in the Coffee House? Can I move it to Faith@Belief, Buz?
This poor coffee house must have a waiting line around the block!
Phat, on facebook writes: As for who wrote the Bible, I believe that humans wrote it but that they were spiritually inspired. In other words, they had no personal agenda. They just poured their heart and soul into the words they penned. Now, as for how to interpret scripture,,(or Genesis Two) I've not yet decided what I believe. Anyone have any ideas?
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Phat Member Posts: 18631 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 4.4 |
I have a few questions.
1) As for God resting after doing lots of work....why would a Creator of all seen and unseen even get tired? Or am I not correctly understanding the context and meaning of the word, "rest"? Evidently its a special day, because God blessed it. (the seventh day) And do we know whether these so called days were 24 hour ones? Thousand year ones? Or perhaps .00001314 ones? 2) quote:I suppose I can believe that God created rain as well as migrant laborers. But whoever is narrating this passage, how the heck do they know what reasons God has for doing these alleged things? Ive no argument that God does things...though I do question the author of this scripture and his/her relationship with God. 3) quote:Do trees grow in a different method today then they did back then? Why didnt those two particular trees have any seed bearing offspring? And what type of fruit was on them? Apples? Oranges? 4) jar writes: Good point, but perhaps a better question is this: In our daily personal observation of other humans, do we see any evidence that some people are cursed and others are blessed? Or am I stepping out of line with the topic?
Order and sequence. There are no plants because there is no rain and no gardener. Streams water the earth. God creates man from dust. Plants grow. Animals are created. Woman is created by cloning. That is the order and sequence of events in Genesis 2. Nothing there about earth being cursed.
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jar Member Posts: 34140 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Phat writes: I have a few questions. 1) As for God resting after doing lots of work....why would a Creator of all seen and unseen even get tired? Or am I not correctly understanding the context and meaning of the word, "rest"? Evidently its a special day, because God blessed it. (the seventh day) And do we know whether these so called days were 24 hour ones? Thousand year ones? Or perhaps .00001314 ones? God resting and the days is NOT in Genesis 2 and is totally irrelevant to the topic.
Phat writes: 2) quote:I suppose I can believe that God created rain as well as migrant laborers. But whoever is narrating this passage, how the heck do they know what reasons God has for doing these alleged things? Ive no argument that God does things...though I do question the author of this scripture and his/her relationship with God. The author(s) of the story tell us the reasons the god character is doing stuff. The author has no relationship with the god character other than being the creator of the god character.
Phat writes: 3) quote:Do trees grow in a different method today then they did back then? Why didnt those two particular trees have any seed bearing offspring? And what type of fruit was on them? Apples? Oranges? The fruit was "Knowledge of right and wrong" and "Everlasting life".
Phat writes: 4) jar writes: Good point, but perhaps a better question is this: In our daily personal observation of other humans, do we see any evidence that some people are cursed and others are blessed? Or am I stepping out of line with the topic? Order and sequence. There are no plants because there is no rain and no gardener. Streams water the earth. God creates man from dust. Plants grow. Animals are created. Woman is created by cloning. That is the order and sequence of events in Genesis 2. Nothing there about earth being cursed. But that is an irrelevant point and has nothing to do with the topic or Genesis 2 or 3.Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1592 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Calminian writes: Actually wiseman proposed that the hebrew toledoth actually didn't mean genealogies. A better translation would be 'histories.' that's sort of accurate, i guess.
And you are right, the tablet theory completely destroys the charge of 2 creation accounts. not especially, no. there are two creation accounts; they are easily separated due to writing style. genesis 1:1-2:4a is written in a much for rigid, organized, and utterly boring style. genesis 2:4b through chapter 4 is written in a fluid, narrative, conversational style, that plays on words and ideas and ironies. genesis 2-4 is significantly better writing than genesis 1, and is in all likelihood a portion of a larger story which genesis 1 has strongly revised. let's start by looking at a creation story that's not found in genesis, or even anywhere in the rest of the torah. let's look at yahweh and the dragon.
quote: there's an element here you might be surprised the see: the leviathan. he appears also at end of job, listed among god's accomplishments during creation, where god asks what the puny job can do against such a mighty beast -- a mighty beast that yahweh has killed. the author job and the psalmist are both talking about a creation story that simply is not present elsewhere in our modern bibles. yet, a similar story is present in on a set of tablets called the "enuma elish".
quote: tiamat, of course, is a dragon that lives in the water. now, the enuma elish is a selection of seven tablets. you might be familiar with another creation story split up into seven sections. the enuma elish is, of course, much longer and better written. but so was the book of J, that almost certainly copied aspects of this story, including yahweh slaying the dragon, breaking his head, and carving channels from his blood. genesis 1 was written specifically to take all this out, and the evidence is that it retains the structure, but changes the important details. note in psalm 74, above, we have the creation of heaven (separation of the waters), the creation of day and night, the creation of seasons and sun and moon, all aspects found in genesis 1. so where is the dragon? he's two places:
quote: the "deep" here is תְהוֹם, tehom, a cognate for "tiamat". further, the initial state of creation was water and chaos, much like tiamat's rule at the beginning of the enuma elish. but here's where the leviathan literally appears:
quote: literally in hebrew, it says, הַתַּנִּינִם הַגְּדֹלִים, ha-taniynm ha-gdolim, "the big snakes". dragons, in the water. some translations, like the KJV, will say "whales". "whale" in hebrew, you see, is לִוְיָתָן. livyatan. leviathan. yeah. what's going on here is that genesis 1 is replacing text wholesale from J. it is taking all the seven chapters of J's creation epic, and redacting them down to the core essentials. it removed all of the conflict between the leviathan and yahweh, because that would make god seem weak. it removed all the parts where yahweh personally creates with his hands, because that makes him seem to human. instead he issues verbal commands. and it generally provides a cliff-notes version of the story. the paragraph or so on the creation of animals and mankind and the sabbath (genesis 1:24-2:4a) is the cliff-notes version of genesis 2:4b-4:26. it says more or less what happens, but leaves out the parts where yahweh creates with his own hands and breath, lies, condemns his people to death, and then lets a murderer go free. it's the sanitized version, and was intended to wholly replace the eden narrative. there are two creation accounts. but one was intended to edge the other one out, and only got part of it. the rest stuck, because it's such a good story.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1592 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
phat writes: In other words, they had no personal agenda. of course they had personal agenda. there are two trees in the garden of eden. one, etz-hadaat, is sort of morality, which yahweh commanded us to avoid. the other, etz-chaim, is another name for the law of moses. the kerubim that separate use from etz-chaim are the same as the kerubim on the ark of the covenant, which also watch over the law of moses. genesis 2 and 3 are dripping with agenda.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1592 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
phat writes: 1) As for God resting after doing lots of work....why would a Creator of all seen and unseen even get tired? Or am I not correctly understanding the context and meaning of the word, "rest"? Evidently its a special day, because God blessed it. (the seventh day) as jar somewhat bluntly replied, this is part of the genesis 1 narrative, not genesis 2. that story is the etiology for jewish week, culminating at shabbat. the whole thing is rather bad writing in general, and treats god like an black box, who is mysterious and different and totally unlike us. genesis 2, in contrast, ascribed motivation to yahweh, who is portrayed a lot like the man he creates with his own two hands at the beginning of the J source, and his prophet moses whom he buries with his own two hands at the end of the J source. you can feel the pain and isolation in yahweh's voice when says of the man "it is not good for the man to be alone." yahweh fails at first to make the man a suitable companion, as he failed at first to make himself a suitable companion in the man. man is as unlike him as the animals are unlike the man; basically the same stuff, but not quite right. but don't expect to find motivation and personality like this in genesis 1. it's not there.
And do we know whether these so called days were 24 hour ones in genesis 1, yes, necessarily so. the story exists to explain where shabbat (day seven) came from and why it's observed. the whole thing is ordered with the intent of explain why things became ordered as they are.
But whoever is narrating this passage, how the heck do they know what reasons God has for doing these alleged things? because this god, yahweh, is J's fiction. he's a character in her book. an interesting, dynamic, vibrant, conflicted, complicated character. but a character nonetheless. one of the hints is that throughout the book of J, yahweh acts completely differently to each patriarch who then "calls the name yahweh" much like a parent would "call the name" of their child. this yahweh is her fiction, and he is also their fiction. that's not to say that J didn't believe in yahweh, but her belief was as complicated and conflicted as the god she so frequently portrayed as complicated and conflicted. and she was more interested in saying certain things than in honoring belief.
Do trees grow in a different method today then they did back then? Why didnt those two particular trees have any seed bearing offspring? And what type of fruit was on them? Apples? Oranges? they're metaphors, dude. in the context of the literal events of the story, they are special, magical trees.
but perhaps a better question is this: In our daily personal observation of other humans, do we see any evidence that some people are cursed and others are blessed? J's book is largely about who has the blessing and why. most of her heroes steal the blessing from those that deserve it. Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.
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