The Literal Genesis Account of Creation

i'll have to agree with what i think ringo is trying to say. i'll go back and look at the thread a little more carefully. it's not so much "figurative" as it is a common hebrew idiom. the second half of genesis 2:4 (where chapter 2 rightfully begins), reads:

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‘, —--
b'yom asot yahweh elohim eretz v'shamim...
when yahweh god made ground and skies...

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b'yom is literally "in the day," but is an idiomatic expression that means "when" and does not convey a length of time -- but is specific.similarly, some translations (ie: new jps) render the openning of genesis 1 as follows, to match:

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‘, ‘ —, ,
b'reishit bara elohim et ha-shamim v'et ha-eretz...
when god began creating the skies and the ground...

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the text parses fine either way, and that is closer to meaning of the hebrew. and it alligns more naturally with the start of the other creation story. this is one of the odd things about the text. hebrew has a habit of running together if you don't add punctuation, and you start most sentances with the prefix "and" like the authors of the bible tended to. somehow, this has gotten rendered as a single sentance in most translations, but look at it a bit more critically.genesis 1 gives a list of six days of creation, and the start of chapter 2 has the seventh, shabat. it then says, "these are the days of creation."it should be period, the end, next story. note how well the "earth and heavens" and "heavens and earth" mirror each other -- that half of the verse should be the start of the next. hebrew bibles are divided this way. you're looking at fluke of christian verse-numbering. they're not. they're not even remotely related stories. they're entirely separate. genesis 1, however, tends to be more general (adam here seems to be mankind as a whole), and genesis 2 tends to be more about the specific personal ancestor of everyone (adam here is a proper name).

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whoa, six years of hebrew, but you can't recognize an idiomatic expression, and insistance on the kjv as "the best english version available?" and you make points based on english definite articles that aren't in the hebrew text? and relying on english christian verse numbering and not the implicit divide in the hebrew grammar?granted, i haven't had anywhere near six years of hebrew, but, uh, there seems to be an incongruity between this statement and your arguments.also, you ignored archer's original point, which was:

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Oh--because you can't have Genesis 1.1 being a dependent clause for 1.2, as most Hebrew scholars now render it. That blows the hypothesis.

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which is true. most hebrew scholars do render it as dependent and independent clauses nowadays. see the above post, and the new jps version. (which is btw, prefered by most people who speak both hebrew and english, over the kjv)Edited by arachnophilia, : archer's point

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ignoring the bit about misunderstanding the idiom, which i already covered, why do you presume a huge gap? why have a creation story that is not about creation? it simply fails to make sense in any ration point of view, and requires a fair degree of mental gymnastics.there is no evidence of any prior creation, or that there is a substantial gap between genesis 1:1 and 1:2. genesis starts out by enumerating the days of the week, and defining the reasoning for shabat. it goes "day 1, day 2... etc .. day 7, the end." not "day 0, several trillion years, day 1..." there is a clear structure in the text, beginning with verse 1 and ending with the first half of 2:4.genesis 1 is rather clearly about the division and organization of time. god separates the week into days, and the days into day and night. god puts markers in the sky to help count days and months. god sets one special day aside for rest. time essentially begins when god starts counting. evening is the period before light is created (why night comes first for jews), and daytime begins at dawn. so the whole stretch up until verse 5 is necessarily the first day. why would one day be several trillion years long, but the rest normal? why would god wait several trillion years to make a sun and moon? to create light? to even place the dome of the heavens in the sky?remember here, that heaven is created on day two and the earth on day three. so that "in the beginning" where god creates heaven and earth has to apply to the whole chapter, and not some arbitrary time before god created actually did the things it describes. it describes stuff that happens in the chapter, not before it. the events in the of the seven days are "the beginning."it's one cohesive story. you can't just arbitrarily insert an imagined gap in it to justify the text against an old-earth reality. i'm sorry, but that's the literal text. as my bible professor said to me, "read more closely." adam says "the woman you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and i ate." who is adam blaming? whoa whoa whoa, "a" cherubim? cherubim is plural. six years of hebrew? really? we generally render this name "abel" in english. but i will also accept "habel," pronounce "HAH-vel." (similarly, i will accept "chavah" and "qayin" above)

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sure they can.in fact, the accounts are quite different from each other in every other regard. it just happens that for this specific usage, "day" is not a specific length of time, but rather indication of a generalized temporal relation.

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yes, but no.i think we should be rather specific here. comparing the two accounts is a no-no. genesis 1 could have a creation of seven (literal) days and genesis 2 could have a creation of one (literal) day, the same as noah takes (literally) two of every kind of animal in genesis 6, and (literally) two of every unclean and (literally) seven fourteen of every clean kind of animal in genesis 7. that the two contradict in terms of plot shouldn't be a concern as to how they are read. if they contradict, they contradict. they're from two different sources, so we shouldn't expect perfect unison.it just happens that in this particular case, genesis 1 has two usages of the word "yom" and genesis 2 has a third. and this usage, unlike the other two, is idiomatic and does not indicate a length of time, but rather when something happened.we could say ‘ — ‘ and mean the two days in which he created the heavens and the earth, or the whole seven days of creation, of the whole first 5 chapters of genesis, or even maybe the whole book of genesis, or perhaps something else entirely if genesis has not yet been compiled and chapter 1 hasn't even been written. it depends on context.in this case, in simply means the equivalent to "in the beginning."Edited by arachnophilia, : typo

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but they are clearly two different stories -- that cover much of the same material in substantially different orders and with different logic. i can't tell what he's trying to do, personally. i just see a whole big problem with misreading this relatively common idiom, comparing it to other story, and jumping to very erroneous conclusions.perhaps ICANT should reply with what he sees as the strict chronology of events? i'm not sure, exactly, what either of you arguing for or against. he seems to be, at the same time, separating and then conflating the two stories. saying they are different events, but then reading one into the other? either way, it's some attempt to justify genesis 1 with genesis 2, which is sort of a pet-peeve of mine. especially when people making points about the word "day." it is just ironic that in this case, it happens to be backwards. normally i have to argue that the days in genesis 1 are literal -- not that the idiomatic usage in genesis 2 is not. probably, but i've always been the kind of guy that prefers to knock over all the cups.

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to think that the creation stories in any way relate to reality is another fatal flaw. there are two creation stories, period. events are irrelevent, and we don't get this debate about "one or two" unless we try to justify them against each other. yes, i saw those. they didn't quite make sense. pretty much. it's not an issue that i care, but of what the text actually says, and how it was written. if it said there was a gap, i would be fine with it, because that's what it says. but randomly inserting one and butchering the text in the process just is not acceptable. all apologetic that seeks to rectify the bible against reality does, because it is a compromise solution. it compromises science, and it compromises the bible. and then tries to deny that it did any such thing.

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genesis 1:1-2:4a?it certainly is. all textual analysis says it is. i'm saying that you're reading it wrong. no, actually, it includes heaven (and everything in/on it), and earth (and everything in/on it). because that's what it says. though this is a common hebrew idiomatic phrase that could be rendered figuratively to mean "everything."but, as you ignored my point, i'll reiterate. heaven is created on day two. earth is created on day three. "in the beginning" is the whole chapter, not some time before verse 2. what bible are you reading? try reading the verses after genesis 1:1.

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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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7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so.

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8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.

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that's the creation of heaven. on monday.

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9 And God said: 'Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear.' And it was so.

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10 And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas; and God saw that it was good. ...

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13 And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.

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and that's the creation of the earth. on tuesday.verse one refers to these two events. verse two (before the earth was formed) that the earth was unformed. how is the earth unformed after it's created? you are adding a step, or requiring that god created heaven and earth twice, and they were both destroyed before 2. it's far, far simpler to just read the text that's there, with verse 1 applying to the rest of the chapter.bookending like this, as you should know from six years of hebrew, is a relatively common stylistic element. yet, our week goes by normally, every day the same length. this is not a false comparison -- the function of genesis 1 is to give an etiology of the sabbath. the creation story is actually secondary to this goal. genesis 1 is about the division of time, and it seems rather strange to have a wonky start like that, when that week is a model for our week.and the length of "day" is defined. no, you were right in that adam was shifting blame. he's just shifting it to god, not eve. he treats eve like a piece of furniture -- she's not bright enough to be responsible for her own actions. rather, it's god's fault for putting temptation in the garden. (heard this argument before?)god basically says, "sorry, you're responsible for your own actions."

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it's not for this one instance. it's an idiom that's found all over the bible. why, here's another instance in the same chapter:

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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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feel free to check the hebrew. it does not mean that "you will die within 24 hours of eating..." it means "you will die when you eat..." the length of time is not specified, though the implication is immediacy. in this case, it's relating cause and effect. here's another instance:

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Gen 35:3 And let us arise, and go up to Bethel; and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went.

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did jacob only have one day of distress?it's an idiomatic phrase. it doesn't relate to length of time, but location in time. we're talking about the third use of yom, this would the second if it were in hebrew which it's not. john of patmos is talking about daylight the period of illumination. in this case, revelation is a highly figurative text --night/darkness is classically a symbol of evil, and daytime/light is classically a symbol of good (or the presence of god). no night, and unending daytime is a symbol for the defeat of evil, which you find happened just prior to this point in revelation.consider one of my favourite verses from isaiah:

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‘ ,
— ‘ ;
, —-—

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note how shalom is paralleled with aur, and how ra is paralleled with chosek. if you look, you can find any number of verses where these words are used almost interchangeably. i know where you're coming from: trying to justify the bible against reality. please don't. it only damages the bible, and requires you to incredibly distort the text. this is not the literal reading, this is "i have an idea and have re-interpret the text to make it fit." just read what's on the page.

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how can you write this, and then in the next few statements try to insert genesis 2 into genesis 1? yet, the story in the great judean hebrew epic "J" continues unbroken from genesis 2. we have a direct lineage from that adam to king david, and beyond. this view requires that genesis 1:2-2:4 has not happened yet.there is nothing in the text, as it is, where heaven and earth are re-created until the end of revelation (as you mentioned before). so this has to be what you mean.why start at the end? why insert a catastrophe that's not in the text? why have a model for the jewish work week that's all bent out of shape, and hasn't even happened yet?your view just is not a literal reading of the text. in fact, it's among the most bizare distortions i've ever heard -- and i've heard some doozies.

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well, maybe it is. he denies that he's trying to reconcile the texts, but clearly that is what he's doing. he's taking all of genesis 2 and 3 (and thus the rest of the bible!) and inserting it between genesis 1:1 and 1:2. he's mucking about with a way to make them one story.that there is no reconciliation possible is a refutation of his supposed reconciliation -- even if he doesn't want to admit that it is trying to be one. i'm not sure. he's also dodging left and right.

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no, the earth was without form. the spirit of (or a wind from) god moved across the waters, which evidently pre-existed. nowhere does it talk about the creation of waters, just things from the waters. it's no mistake, btw, that "water" is and "heaven" is . the two are related, one is made from the other, to separate it. similarly, the earth is shaped by the recession of the water, in day three.this is relatively common place ancient near eastern alchemy -- water being the primordial element.

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i believe you're reading it wrong. and frankly, read the text again -- god says man will die. the serpent says man will have his eyes openned. according to god in chapter 3, who told the truth? what use is the word "day" before time begins? it's meaningless.

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oh, i see, so there was a third adam, who just happened to have children with the same names as the first one?

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yet, you are trying to fit one into the other. i'm reading the exact words. i'm reading the exact words with some knowledge of structure and purpose in classical jewish writing, some idea about the semantics of hebrew grammar, and keeping the stories properly separated.inserting one into the other violates the function and style of both. yes, and with good reason: genesis 1 is explicitly about the division of time. thus, time is important to the argument. genesis 1 defines a "day" as "evening, followed by morning." it defines a "week" as 7 such days. it depicts god placing the sun in the sky to mark the days, and god placing the moon in the sky to mark the months. it then depicts god taking the seventh day off, as a day of rest -- and thus we are to honor god's creation by doing the same.that is the point of the text. the literal week, composed of seven literal days (all of the same length) is absolutely required. distorting one day to be of arbitrary length is no better than the people distort all the days to be of arbitrary length. it is apologetics, and pathetic apologetics at that, attempting to modify the text with reality in mind.forget reality. read the exact words without the bias of what really happened.

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