Genesis 1 and 2: The Difference Between Created and Formed

Before God gave the law to the Jews He created the human conscience within man.That was a God given law within man's very being. It predates Sinai and belongs to all humanity - the human conscience. I had to exaggerate to get the point across. Your smugness is repulsive. This whole "What the Bible REALLY REALLY REALLY means" forum is just an attraction for people like who like to get away from what the Bible really means.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

And why do you think YOU got it right , and everyone else has it wrong?

I don't think I have it all right everywhere all the time. Neither do I think everyone else has nothing.But I am too proud. That I confess.Do you have an easier question for me this morning? Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

You are right about that.But don't think being "daddy's favorite" was easy. It carried with it certain responsibilites.Still, the whole Bible's my book. Furthermore, you can't know the intrinsic purpose of the Old Testament without the New. The Old Testament is the picture. The New Testament is the caption underneath the picture.

Strictly speaking, Adam and Eve "ate" their conscience when they ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. It may have come from God indirectly, but it came against His will and against His specific instructions.The human conscience is more like Prometheus' stealing fire from the gods than a part of God's creation.And even that story was given to the Jews. Why do you think it was written in Hebrew? Conversely, misunderstanding the New Testament leads to many misunderstandings of the Old.

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Yes,Why shouldn't something be looked at in the historical and cultural context in the time it was written (as well as the original language).Why must it be reinterpreted by people who came 700 years later?

I think that with the word of God there is a part which is related to cultural and historical context and there is a part which trancends culture and is of eternal wisdom.It is okay to try to put on the cultural historical context eyeglasses and study the Bible. However, you should be aware that many times what someone purports to be the historical and cultural context is just talk laden with someone's own agenda. In that case your are not getting a lot of insight into history necessarily. You may be getting insight into the person's own contemporary biases with his or her particular axe to grind.Worst still is the person who militantly uses "historical and cultural context" to assault that part of the Bible which is of eternal wisdom. This is to discredit the speaking of God under the guise of exploring cultural and historical interests.In Ezekiel God warned the people who came to His word with an attitude absent of proper reverence or for the wrong reasons:"And as for you, son of man, the children of your people talk about you by the walls and in the entrances of the houses and speak to one another, each to his brother, saying, Come now, and hear what is the word that comes forth from Jehovah.

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And they come to you just as people come, and they sit before you as My people, and they hear your words but do not do them; for with their mouth they show much love, but their heart goes after their gain.

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And indeed you are to them like a very lovely song of one with a pleasant voice, who can play an instrument well; for they hear your words but do not do them.

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And when this comes about- indeed it comes - then they will know that a prophet has been among them." (Ezekiel 33:30-33)This could be as true of people today as it was in Ezekiel's time. We may just listen to the Bible like a pleasant story lots of interesting historical stuff in it. We even may focus our hearts on these things to dull our conscience to the conviction against sins in God's word.So historical context is interesting and even useful if the message isn't lost in it. I'd be cautious that its effect on my reading of God's word would not be like those sedated audiences sitting and noding pleasantly along with Ezekiel's speaking divine oracles of warning.Take Genesis for example. From it we can see why the world is so off on a downward decline. How could we be normal? We have been severed from God's original plan for our existence. Our forefather was excluded from the tree of life. That goes for Jews and Gentiles. If I gain great insight into culture and history of ancient Mesopotamia and Hebrew society but fail to grasp that, what has been accomplished? I say exactly nothing. In fact we've lost rather then had a gain. Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

But what you have "grasped" is wrong. The world is not "on a downward decline". We have not "been severed from God's original plan for our existence".It has been demonstrated that you are reading Genesis wrong - that there is no significant difference between "created' and "formed". Your wrong reading of Genesis has led you to your wrong conclusions elsewhere.That is why you need to accept what the Hebrews say about the Hebrew.

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I will have to say that the Jewish interpretation of Genesis and the Christain one are very much different. Of course, the Jewish initial
assumptions are so much different you would conclude it is a different religion.

that's nice, jay. this discussion is about the law he gave to the jews. your claim to exclusive owmership and understanding of a text you claim is given to the world is repulsive. nearest i can tell, jay, you're the one who is trying to get away from what the bible really means. you keep misrepresenting what passages are, and what they say, and taking them way out of context to prop up your own ideas.

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the problem is that your "eternal wisdom" exists outside of the bible. you purport that the bible is "really" talking about things that are not only unsupported by the cultural and historical context, but unsupported by the text itself. you treat the bible like a coded message, when the things it says are pretty plainly evident to anyone choosing to actually read it. my axe to grind is that the bible means what it says, and says what it means. i think this is a very basic and reasonable concept -- and i am willing to make rather large allowances that some situations may even be highly symbolic (such as the book of revelation). my "agenda" is to promote a reading of the bible correct to the words of the text, their implications, the way the authors would have read it, and the cultural and historical context. my bias is the text.if your "eternal wisdom" contradicts not only the culture and the history, but the text itself, then your "eternal wisdom" is wrong -- or at least completely unbiblical. yes, i think so too. but it is based on the text's literal reading, like a building is built on a foundation. the text of the bible is the foundation, not the decoration to be sprinkled around as prooftext.Edited by arachnophilia, : typo

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The discussion is about the Difference Between Created and Formed in Genesis 1 and 2.And for some reason the old Off Topic Flag has been a little lenient lately. Hold on. I did not say "exclusive ownership". I affirmed that the book is written to folks like me. Perhaps strongly I affirmed this. But I did not claim it was only for me. My ideas are correct in this instance. I think your ideas on this matter are wrong. And I am not the only one who thinks so. And I am not just including evanglical Christians who agree with me against you, on this matter of ASAH verses BARA.I lean towards ASAH and BARA having different shades of meaning in Genesis and elsewhere in the Bible. I put forth my belief that God oversaw the exact usage of which word He wanted the prophet to use.

Formed verses created is not a so important that everything hinges on those two words.Even if I say the two words are the same you still hve noexcuse whatsoever not to recignize what Genesis says about man falling away from God.I don't know by what tortured "cultural" and "contextural" insight you fail to recognize that Adam blew it for the rest of us.That is unless you just prefer not to take the Bible seriously.

Well, this whole topic hinges on them. Genesis says nothing of the kind, but that's another topic. I'll be happy to explain it to you at an appropriate time and place.

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yes. and genesis is part of the book of law given to the jews, isn't it? yes, it has. your gap theory is totally off-topic. you claim that god has imparted some kind of external eternal wisdom to you personally, not found in the text, and that you need some kind of decoder ring ("the holy spirit") to understand it (and implied in the process that i do not have such a decoder ring). you have talked very little about two words, just your gap theory. much of this argument has revolved around the fact that you think asah means prior existence to the extent that it negates a creative act -- in order to support the idea that god did not create the sun on the fourth day, but sometime earlier, in a prior existance of the earth. this has been shown to be inaccurate grammatically and contextually. and you avoided answering a simple question, twice:if the sun pre-exists god "making" it, why does god commaned it to exist in verse 14? it would be silly for god to command something that already exists to exist. yes, they do. but that doesn't mean you can apply any meaning you choose to any word you choose, ignore the grammar and context, and read something into the text far, far different from the basic meaning of the verse. really? the words in qere, or the words in cotev? and did god dictate the scribal errors?

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