sandy whitelinger
Veteran Member
Also, doesn't any inquiry need a control?
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
In the Beginning...of What?
- Thread starter sandy whitelinger
- Start date
sandy whitelinger
Veteran Member
In reality I'm looking at the Biblical account with a view that the Biblical world and the natural world coincided at " the beginning " and trying to understand if the beginning included a preexisting natural world.
There is none. What's tricky is you have to totally ignore the cultural noise completely. It's extremely christianized through accedemia including science. It's a natural process that happens. We can see it in music very easily. It goes through cycles of fire, lava cooling fields of rock into strip malls with artifical grass, and a community gathering spot to sit on the grass. That's my art!!! It's cultures reality. I built a strip mall on top of 10,000 year old pheasant breeding grounds in salt lake city! At night I would drive home, at 8,000 feet in the rockies to my camp site. I lived as a camp host in a remote area with no campers all week. Talk about extreme contrast. I did that for 4 months. Awesome. On the weekends the place was over run by quads and guns. Mormons love their quads and guns apparently. But Sunday afternoon, it was just me the quaky as pens, moose, owls, bat's deer porcupine earth profound. We would all get together breath a sigh of relief as the all went back to my art. Lol. Yes I do engage in the complete destruction of nature I encourage urban growth boundaries I spend nearly all my time when possible out in the forests here in the coast, it's the only place I know where sanity actually exists. John Muir and I have a lot in common. That's a powerful voice he has, for today. I am working on that voice myself all the time. Doubt I can match though. But I squeak occasionally.
sandy whitelinger
Veteran Member
Nothing to do with Genesis but a cool bunny trail you hop on.
I was gonna say....
I apologize for only small comments on these wonderful points but I am "time starved" at the moment. I like your point that there are multiple heavens assumed in this scripture. In Hebrew the word for heaven used in this scripture is שמימ (I can't make a final mem on my keyboard), Sha-ma-yim, and it is a plural word for which no known singular form exists. Greek readers will already be aware that many, many times, perhaps most of the time when "heaven" (singular) is written in english bibles, it is actually a plural greek form that is in the greek source texts. Thus, usually, when "heaven" is written in english bibles, it is referring to "heavens" instead.
The point in my last post regarding the evolving translations that realize that "in the beginning" is not what the Hebrew actually says, and they are shifting to forms of "in beginning creation" or "in beginning the creation process" and similar forms are now appearing in translations, is to point out that this scripture seems to be referencing a specific process of creation rather than creation itself. This is consistent with Rabbinic Judaisms teaching that there were many worlds that existed before this one (though apparently this one is the "best" of them). Talmud Chagigah 13b states that 974 generations of people existed before creation. In this early Jewish model, God was not creating a world, he was creating another world.
That being said, Midrash Rabbah Breishis 3:7 and 9:2 states that many other worlds were created and destroyed previously to this one. Midrashic commentaries describe a model of gradual improvement in each world until this one was seen as "good". I mentioned that early Judeo-Christian religion believed in pre-existing, matter in a chaotic or less organized form from which God then created a more organized set of planets/stars, etc. This chaotic matter included matter from prior worlds, sort of "junk" or "trash" left over from prior creations. Thus Midrash Rabbah Breishis 1:5 states that this world is like a king's palace which was built on a landfill - a garbage dump. This sort of "shameful"...trashy...origin was used by rabbis to justify not speaking of pre-creation.
The Gemara uses the example of a king who built his palace on top of a garbage heap and The king does not want people to discuss what was there before the palace (the trash dump) as justification regarding why such subjects are not to be examined. Scholars have made other suggestions regarding the prohibition that are much more likely motivations for such prohibitions surrounding specific areas of knowledge in Rabbinic Judaism.
The Rabbinic prohibition regarding any study of conditions prior to this creation resulted in the Rabbinic Jewish religion losing much of their traditions and knowledge and texts that had to do with pre-creation conditions. The specific prohibition I am referring to in GENESIS RABBA reads : " It is forbidden to inquire what existed before creation, as Moses distinctly tells us (Deut. iv. 32): "Ask now of the days that are past which were before thee, since the day God created man upon earth." Thus the scope of inquiry is limited to the time since the Creation. "
This prohibition explains why there are lot of doctrines, textual traditions, and descriptions of pre-creation themes in early Jewish religions and their interpretational textual witnesses, while the later and different religions referred to as rabbinic Judaism will not have this knowledge (at least among those who were obedient to this prohibition...)
Wonderful questions Sandy
Clear
σεσεφυω
Last edited:
I just hop around the garden and go it's just not that hard...although we love turning it into rocket science
the beginning of any created thing from potential to actualized. the idea comes into being from the first experience of time/space. the potential idea was with god in the beginning actually and with god potentially eternal; when not realized when not formed.form comes from the formless. the created comes from the uncreated.
john 1:2, genesis 1:2
sandy whitelinger
Veteran Member
An informative post. For some reason the way I see scripture, it's meaning seems unhindered by anyone else's opinions on the matter but more an understanding of the English language.
That said the singular usage of the Hebrew word for heaven seems to imply duality in heaven in verse 1:1 which clearly puts it dead squat in the middle of the natural world of created duality..
sandy whitelinger
Veteran Member
Would you see this as the spirit of God moving on the face of the waters?
sealchan
Well-Known Member
I don't know the original language enough to comment on the choice of those words or the translation, but in the context of what follows it seems clear since all the most basic aspects of the universe are created soon thereafter in the text.
sealchan
Well-Known Member
That's a different question than you started wirh...does heaven need to be physical?
sandy whitelinger
Veteran Member
It begs the question why did God need another unfathomable place when apparently he already operated from one.
Orbit
I'm a planet
So you don't think it's a creation story?
its the unconditional mind moved by love upon the potential. the actual comes from the potential. the potential comes from the actual. upon the collapse of the actual it becomes a potential. upon the raising of the potential comes the actual. like einstein's e = m(c*c). one is just the other. they are equal and the same thing; except in form. creation comes from love and god so loved the world, herself realized.
similar to the hindu cosmology
Last edited:
To me, instead of interfered be more like intervened, but either way, then God could be accused of being a Bully by involving Himself into mankind's affairs. Remember: God gifted us with free-will choices. By breaking God's Law then Adam set up People Rule as superior to God Rule, so only with the passing of enough time would it show who rule is best.
Before the King James Bible was translated into English, Genesis was in Hebrew, so originally its heavens with an 's'.
I do not understand what you're saying here.
Why?
Any thoughts about 1 Kings 8:27; 1 Kings 8:30,39,49
Plus we have the mid-heavens where the birds fly, besides outer space sometimes referred to as the heavens.
There is the ' spirit heavens ' where angelic life resides. So, to me the plural heaven(s) is logical at Genesis 1:1.