My problem with the Genesis' Creation is the 1st and 4th day.
Mykola's argument (in
More of Adam and Eve thread) that light was created first, before the sun (4th day), to divide the Day from Night, is quite possible, is to my mind not very convincing at all.
Mykola said:
First of all, there's no problem at all for God to have light without the sun. Moreover, the Bible clearly states the purpose of creation of the sun (generally, luminaries, "lights"):
"And God said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years" (Gen. 1:14)
So, the problem here is assumption that there could be no light without sun. But that's not right, hence the confusion.
How can create Day and Night without the Sun? From the scientific point of view, Day and Night is created where part of the Earth is in shadow, as it spin in its wobbly axis.
waacman said:
Your right that the Bible was not meant to be a science text. But what it does claim is to be the truth. Science seeks truth. Yet you seperate the two. Is there a dualist type of truth, one of science and the other of spirituality/religion/Biblical.
Science seek more than just the truth, waacman. They are interested in either proving or disproving this "truth", with something more convincing and conclusive (ie facts) than just mere "faith". Science want something more; they want evidences, not just mere ancient words from some sorts of scriptures.
Religion's truth and science's truth (or scientific proof) are not the same.
And the Creation in Genesis is not even an original. Long before the Genesis was ever written down, there have been similar Creation myths.
There Egyptian god, Ptah, from the Mephite Theology, created the world with just his thoughts and words, similar to that of the biblical God. But there are more similarities between the biblical Creation with that of Mesopotamian myth, from the Babylonian, and before that of the Akkadian, and from the earliest literature on the creation, from the Sumerian religion/myth.
The Sumerian literature have the gods created man from the earth (ie clay or dust). They also have Flood hero, named Ziusudra (
Atra-hasis in Akkadian or
Ut-naphishtim in the Babylonian), who created the ark. These stories are 1000 years (or more) older than the first composition of the Genesis. The creation reappeared in Semitic languages, such as the older Akkadian, which Babylonian and Assyrian dialects were derived from.
Abraham is said to have come from the land of Babylonia (c. 1800 BC), in his own exodus to find a home that was promised (ie Canaan). But Abraham left no writing, and before him, Noah didn't leave any writing too. No writings existed among the Israelites until Moses' time (c. 1300-1200 BC) or later. If the Hebrews or Israelites used oral tradition to pass down their history, then Abraham must have brought with him the memory of the Sumerian/Akkadian creation and flood with him, and over the generations, changed to what Moses have. The gods became one god, and Ziusudra (or his Semitic names, Atra-hasis or Ut-naphishtim) became Noah in the Hebrew creation myth.
Divine said:
isn't that 'earth' as in land, not as in 'THE EARTH'? correct me if i'm wrong.
Well, I don't think we can ignore what it is written.
When the original composition of the Genesis, do they really mean "universe" and "earth", or it has different meaning, could be argue either way. It is important, not to ignore what have been given in the texts.
A lot of translations on the bible that we have available today, is not really translations. It is re-wording the words or phrases in modern usage from the King James' Version. KJV is okay, but many of the phrases and words are now obsolete. Only few of the current editions of the bible have actually translated from the languages (eg Hebrew, Aramaic) they were written to the modern English language.
I preferred to use the translation from Hebrew on the old testament in the 1985 version known as the
Jewish Publication Society (JPS), because they have started from scratch.
(There is older JPS version available on the internet (1917), but this was based on KJV too, and not independent translation.)
The new JPS translation exclude the first part of phrase in the opening verse "In the beginning..."
In Genesis 6:4, KJV uses the word "giants", but JPS uses the word "nephilim", which is more accurate, and closer to the Hebrew word. The word giant is derived from the Greek word "
gigas" (and Latin used a similar name). You must remember that the Old Testament, or more precisely the
Tanakh, were first translated into Greek (the
Septuagint), so the Greek might have used giants instead of nephilim. So did the compilers of KJV settled with the English version of the Greek word, instead of Hebrew? I don't know.
I am no expert in language, so I can't tell if they meant "earth" as in "planet" or "earth" as in "soil", but if it use "universe", "sun", "moon" and "stars", then it would be natural to assume the Genesis is talking about the planet "Earth" or the "World". So you have to take the word in their proper context, by comparing them with the other cosmic or planetary words.
In Hebrew the words could be different for earth/soil and earth/planet. You have to remember that we are dealing with the bible in the English language, not Hebrew or Aramaic, Greek or Latin.
You must also understand that the word "earth" is originally derived from Old High German name "erda", which was name for ancient Teutonic Earth Goddess. Erda is equated with the Norse goddess, named "Jord". This was later translated into Old English as in "eorthe".
So the question you might ask is:
Does Hebrew have different words for the English word "earth" for soil and planet?
