Genesis 1 uses the days of a week as an organizing element in presenting the story. The narrative makes no mention of how long, by the clock or calendary, the days are.
this is just silly; no offense.
when i say that, for instance, "i'm driving to tallahasse this weekend to see my friend. i'll be gone for two days." how long do i mean? must i define what "day" means? and yet, genesis
does provide us with a definition: a day is a period of darkness, followed by a period of light.
this really isn't very complex, and i will keep making this point no matter how many times you continue to ignore it. genesis is a book of origins. this story explains the origin of the week, and shabat. the days are neccessarily 24 hours
by definition. because
these days were written about to explain and define
our days.
That is what we know. To insist on 'a billion years' goes outside the text. To insist on '24 hours' goes outside the text.
"24 hours" isn't exaclty very far outside the text. it is the only logical implication of what the text says, what it means, and the "moral" application.
Jewish tradition recognizes the need to 'wrestle with' a text. The idea is that a sacred text is like the angel who meets Jacob in the middle of the night. A divine messenger it may be, but it also presents difficulties. We cannot expect ease in coming to terms. We can expect confrontation from the text and shifting postures on our part over time.
yes, and this (among other things), is a very good reason why "there is a jewish interpretation that says
x-y-z" is actually a very specious argument. there's jewish interpretation that says just about whatever you want it to say. if you can't find your particular viewpoint in the many volumes of the talmud, there's always midrashim and modern interpretations.
"so and so says..." just isn't any good with the torah. we must look at the text
a) in the cultural context
of the time (which is rather tricky), and
b) with the intent and purpose of the book in mind.
Dogmatism on the matter is thus ill-advised.
i promise you, this is not an issue of dogma. on the contrary, your point is entirely dogmatic; reading one word to mean another. i am just voicing what the text actually says, and the very barest of logical implications of what it means, how the text was used, and the purpose behind the story. the
only good reason i can see for subscribing to this day-age stuff is the conflict between a young-earth genesis, and an old-earth reality.
The burden of proof lies on anyone who insists the narratives must be understood a certain way, were always understood a certain way, were meant by the author to be understood a certain way.
"were always" was never part of my argument. people have always understood things differently. and jewish interpretation is vast and contradictory. and i am not insisting that it must be understood a certain way, simply that it must
be read for the words on the page, and what those particular words mean in the correct usages.
if you want to understand the whole thing as allegory, that's up to you. but i think the metaphor here is highly unlikely, and does not fit with the style and purpose of the rest of the torah.
One can only describe the supernatural in terms of the natural. Images come to us through our five senses. An extended passage about God requires an extended use of natural images to describe the supernatural. The writer is compelled to use the things of the natural world--and the words for those things--and stretch them to fit the requirements of the supernatural subject.
A responsible reading takes account of this necessity.
there are very few books of the bible which god does not play a rather prominent role. but the presence of god is not a valid excuse to insist on changing meanings as you see fit. the argument is, essentially, that there are different levels of truth to the bible. it can be inaccurate on the surface level, but still contain a deeper truth to it. and even if that deeper truth isn't right either, there's some kind of moral truth to it.
this really is a very amatuerish view of the bible. understand that i am by no means a fundamentalist; i make this argument partly out of personal history.
i looked at the bible this way before studying it more intently.
i once subscribed to this day-age idea myself. but as it turns out, the authors of the bible are much more forward than this. genesis in particular does not beat around the bush, or hide its meanings
at all. the stories practically end in "...and that's how this place got its name" or "...and that's why these people are called this." if you want to know why a story was written,
look at the end of it. the "truth" to the story is the point it's getting at, not whether or not we can fudge the details and make somehow accurate. it's deeper meanings are
human ones. why do we get married?
because otherwise we are lonely. the truths are obvious, not secret divinations about god -- god was almost a granted, like the "scientific" content -- and not the point of the story.
One first-century Jew had no trouble with the idea that God's seventh-day shabbat lasted for centuries. He considers the idea so obvious to his readers that he does not even argue the point. He assumes. He uses it as the premise for a theological argument:
Hebrews 4.1-11
again, you're putting the cart before the horse. if you want to look for deeper metaphorical meanings, hey why not, paul's a good place. but the themes he uses come from genesis. this is a classic fundamentalist blunder; not recognizing the chronological order and textual heirarchy of the book. paul's epistles were written long after genesis -- his reading tells us
nothing about the intent of the authors (
especially because paul so often differs from the traditional jewish reading, tending more towards a hellenized viewpoint).
and in any case, paul is not speaking
literally about a sabbath, but using shabat as an allegory for heaven.
The author says God's sabbath rest has continued since the beginning of the world.
clearly, it has not. the
rest of the bible demonstrates this fact -- such a reading neccessitates the utter absence of god after genesis 2:4, meaning everything from that point on must be complete fiction. such a reading simply does not make sense: why accept the first chapter, but not the rest of the book, volume, or library?
This was written centuries after Genesis. By then God's 'seventh day' would already seem to have gone on since time immemorial. The example does suffice to show that metaphorical understandings of the Genesis story were in circulation, and considered legitimate, among Jews even in ancient times.
i don't think paul was considered a legitimate jew somehow. and, again, this is not a metaphorical reading of genesis. this is another text using themes from genesis as a metaphor. if i refer to a power struggle in the workplace using ideas from shakespeare's
macbeth, am i reading
macbeth as metaphor? or am i using it to make a metaphor?
Any suggestion that Jews only understood their stories literally stands falsified.
the question is not how people have read it, but how the authors intended it. very different ideas.
Any suggestion that the idea of age-long days first originated in our scientific age also stands falsified.
paul does not say what you think he says. but i am also aware of older talmudic readings that describe similar "long days." the argument does not originate in modern times. but the primary reason people accept it
today are
scientific ones. there are no good
textual or
contextual reasons.
To the inerrantist who believes the New Testament is inspired, Hebrews 4 presents a compelling case that God's 'seventh day' (never said in Genesis to have ended) should be understood as lasting far longer than 24 hours.
i am not an inerrantist. making arguments simply to win the approval a crowd who
does not agree with you, and whom you would otherwise want nothing to do with, and based upon a reading and technique i'm sure you know to be highly faulty logic is nothing but intellectually dishonest.
Genesis gathers an ancient body of stories. The stories are simply yet artistically told. The stories exhibit symmetrical structures and sophisticated network of image motifs.
i never said otherwise. but the bit you propose, extended metaphor, is
simply not the style presented in genesis. of course there is art to it, but it's not exactly high art, art-for-art's-sake, or outright poetry. yes, skill went into it. but you have to consider the
style of the book.
just like we wouldn't expect to find abstract expressionism (ala pollock) in medieval tapestry, so we would not expect to find extended metaphor in traditional and etiological history.
Remember too that the Garden story is the older and more 'primitive' of the two stories. Impressive 'bricklaying' indeed!
yes, it is. rigid framework is the definition of "bricklaying" in poetry. so is simplistic language and grammar.
™ Version 4.2