A New Approach To The Image of God--and Satan's ongoing counter

[EarlyActs]

The question isn't about what can or cannot be split. The question is what does Genesis 1 mean in its original context.


And this statement would be incorrect - I think we both agree here (but I could be wrong).


As I mentioned elsewhere, your understanding of the phrase tohu wa-bohu is flawed. The word 'tohu' appears 20 times in Scripture, but the word 'bohu' occurs only 3 times, and in each case appears in combination with 'tohu' (Genesis 1:2, Isaiah 34:11 and Jeremiah 4:23). A semantic look at each place where 'tohu' is found shows the word to mean non-productive (in human terms), desolate, desert, wasteland, etc. Obviously it could be used to describe the land after a conflict or defeat has taken place, but there is no requirement for it to be confined to a conflict or a defeat. The grammar of Genesis 1:1-3 does not support such a reading and there is simply nothing in Scripture that indicates that a destruction had taken place before Genesis 1:2. It is just not there. If I am wrong, show me.


You are correct that image of God is a reference to being God's representatives. It is a statement about vocation. We are to reflect God into the world and reflect the praises of Creation back to God.
I am not so sure about your idea of markers though.


No, we don't see that something was destroyed. This is your assumption and has no biblical support.


No, this is not the "theology".


The ancient Hebrews understood the references, much better than modern Christians do.


Yes, we are the image-bearer, therefore we are not to make images.


There are not "very few details", there are zero details of a conflict before Creation week, because there is nothing in the Bible to support such a view. Is this what you mean by "history"?


Through His life, crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus is proclaimed King over all the nations - the Kingdom of God has arrived. That is the Gospel message after all.


Let's not get into a discussion here about the Nephilim.

The question is about splitting if that is what people are doing to it, and that might be you. That is what neo-orthodoxy is. The geologist Lyell practiced it.

I do not find it in the text. The natural order of reproduction in Gen 1 is “after their kind.” The Satanic Nephilim practiced the opposite. So we will speak of the demonic Nephilim here since that is what text is about, to quote your rule about text.

 

[EarlyActs]

The question isn't about what can or cannot be split. The question is what does Genesis 1 mean in its original context.


And this statement would be incorrect - I think we both agree here (but I could be wrong).


As I mentioned elsewhere, your understanding of the phrase tohu wa-bohu is flawed. The word 'tohu' appears 20 times in Scripture, but the word 'bohu' occurs only 3 times, and in each case appears in combination with 'tohu' (Genesis 1:2, Isaiah 34:11 and Jeremiah 4:23). A semantic look at each place where 'tohu' is found shows the word to mean non-productive (in human terms), desolate, desert, wasteland, etc. Obviously it could be used to describe the land after a conflict or defeat has taken place, but there is no requirement for it to be confined to a conflict or a defeat. The grammar of Genesis 1:1-3 does not support such a reading and there is simply nothing in Scripture that indicates that a destruction had taken place before Genesis 1:2. It is just not there. If I am wrong, show me.


You are correct that image of God is a reference to being God's representatives. It is a statement about vocation. We are to reflect God into the world and reflect the praises of Creation back to God.
I am not so sure about your idea of markers though.


No, we don't see that something was destroyed. This is your assumption and has no biblical support.


No, this is not the "theology".


The ancient Hebrews understood the references, much better than modern Christians do.


Yes, we are the image-bearer, therefore we are not to make images.


There are not "very few details", there are zero details of a conflict before Creation week, because there is nothing in the Bible to support such a view. Is this what you mean by "history"?


Through His life, crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus is proclaimed King over all the nations - the Kingdom of God has arrived. That is the Gospel message after all.


Let's not get into a discussion here about the Nephilim.

Re tohu
It is certainly about lifelessness, though, which is why I now find for the conclusion that the ‘spreading out’ of Job-Psslms-Isaiah is some time before Creation Week which is only local things. That event was lifeless; Gen 1 was sudden and thriving life.

2, I have also learned over the past year that the LXX rabbis meant ‘submerged’ (in water) when they translated this into Greek. Which makes sense given that the next lines are about that very water. So is Psalm 104 and the ‘Walam Olam’ tablets confirm this. (They are tablets from the northeast US about cosmology and history that echo Genesis consistently but also record a migration eastward from Babel across ice until stopped by (the Atlantic) ocean. They were assessed in 1750 by an Englishman who had recently come to America. They refer to earth (land) rising out of water during creation).

3, even so, Jerusalem in Jer 4 was not submerged but destroyed. There had been a war. If you have a timeless view of heavenly events in the Rev, you know that there was war in heaven and some evil entities were cast down to earth. It is highly possible that this resulted in the same, the Nephilim, also mentioned in 2P2 and Jude.

 

[EarlyActs]

The question isn't about what can or cannot be split. The question is what does Genesis 1 mean in its original context.


And this statement would be incorrect - I think we both agree here (but I could be wrong).


As I mentioned elsewhere, your understanding of the phrase tohu wa-bohu is flawed. The word 'tohu' appears 20 times in Scripture, but the word 'bohu' occurs only 3 times, and in each case appears in combination with 'tohu' (Genesis 1:2, Isaiah 34:11 and Jeremiah 4:23). A semantic look at each place where 'tohu' is found shows the word to mean non-productive (in human terms), desolate, desert, wasteland, etc. Obviously it could be used to describe the land after a conflict or defeat has taken place, but there is no requirement for it to be confined to a conflict or a defeat. The grammar of Genesis 1:1-3 does not support such a reading and there is simply nothing in Scripture that indicates that a destruction had taken place before Genesis 1:2. It is just not there. If I am wrong, show me.


You are correct that image of God is a reference to being God's representatives. It is a statement about vocation. We are to reflect God into the world and reflect the praises of Creation back to God.
I am not so sure about your idea of markers though.


No, we don't see that something was destroyed. This is your assumption and has no biblical support.


No, this is not the "theology".


The ancient Hebrews understood the references, much better than modern Christians do.


Yes, we are the image-bearer, therefore we are not to make images.


There are not "very few details", there are zero details of a conflict before Creation week, because there is nothing in the Bible to support such a view. Is this what you mean by "history"?


Through His life, crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus is proclaimed King over all the nations - the Kingdom of God has arrived. That is the Gospel message after all.


Let's not get into a discussion here about the Nephilim.

Re markers
This is found in (going from memory) the Keil and Delitszch commentary, and Walter, among others. The term is used for marking boundaries in the ANE. So again each human marked that the earth was the Lords not the property of Nephilim, let alone humans.

 

[EarlyActs]

The question isn't about what can or cannot be split. The question is what does Genesis 1 mean in its original context.


And this statement would be incorrect - I think we both agree here (but I could be wrong).


As I mentioned elsewhere, your understanding of the phrase tohu wa-bohu is flawed. The word 'tohu' appears 20 times in Scripture, but the word 'bohu' occurs only 3 times, and in each case appears in combination with 'tohu' (Genesis 1:2, Isaiah 34:11 and Jeremiah 4:23). A semantic look at each place where 'tohu' is found shows the word to mean non-productive (in human terms), desolate, desert, wasteland, etc. Obviously it could be used to describe the land after a conflict or defeat has taken place, but there is no requirement for it to be confined to a conflict or a defeat. The grammar of Genesis 1:1-3 does not support such a reading and there is simply nothing in Scripture that indicates that a destruction had taken place before Genesis 1:2. It is just not there. If I am wrong, show me.


You are correct that image of God is a reference to being God's representatives. It is a statement about vocation. We are to reflect God into the world and reflect the praises of Creation back to God.
I am not so sure about your idea of markers though.


No, we don't see that something was destroyed. This is your assumption and has no biblical support.


No, this is not the "theology".


The ancient Hebrews understood the references, much better than modern Christians do.


Yes, we are the image-bearer, therefore we are not to make images.


There are not "very few details", there are zero details of a conflict before Creation week, because there is nothing in the Bible to support such a view. Is this what you mean by "history"?


Through His life, crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus is proclaimed King over all the nations - the Kingdom of God has arrived. That is the Gospel message after all.


Let's not get into a discussion here about the Nephilim.

Re destroyed
Even if the reference is not to destroying something that was on earth that was amiss, a ‘spreading out’ might destroy a mass of material, making the random distant universe in an event something similar to the Big Bang, but utterly different from what is designed and placed together in Gen 1st week (ie, not before Day 1)

 

[EarlyActs]

The question isn't about what can or cannot be split. The question is what does Genesis 1 mean in its original context.


And this statement would be incorrect - I think we both agree here (but I could be wrong).


As I mentioned elsewhere, your understanding of the phrase tohu wa-bohu is flawed. The word 'tohu' appears 20 times in Scripture, but the word 'bohu' occurs only 3 times, and in each case appears in combination with 'tohu' (Genesis 1:2, Isaiah 34:11 and Jeremiah 4:23). A semantic look at each place where 'tohu' is found shows the word to mean non-productive (in human terms), desolate, desert, wasteland, etc. Obviously it could be used to describe the land after a conflict or defeat has taken place, but there is no requirement for it to be confined to a conflict or a defeat. The grammar of Genesis 1:1-3 does not support such a reading and there is simply nothing in Scripture that indicates that a destruction had taken place before Genesis 1:2. It is just not there. If I am wrong, show me.


You are correct that image of God is a reference to being God's representatives. It is a statement about vocation. We are to reflect God into the world and reflect the praises of Creation back to God.
I am not so sure about your idea of markers though.


No, we don't see that something was destroyed. This is your assumption and has no biblical support.


No, this is not the "theology".


The ancient Hebrews understood the references, much better than modern Christians do.


Yes, we are the image-bearer, therefore we are not to make images.


There are not "very few details", there are zero details of a conflict before Creation week, because there is nothing in the Bible to support such a view. Is this what you mean by "history"?


Through His life, crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus is proclaimed King over all the nations - the Kingdom of God has arrived. That is the Gospel message after all.


Let's not get into a discussion here about the Nephilim.

Re zero details of a conflict before creation:

Unless the conflict in Heaven resulted in imprisonment of entities here in the depths of the earth , the ‘cities’, the ‘regions’ of Eph 4/Ps 68, Sheol, Hades, the abyss, etc., along with all the evil persons before the Cataclysm, and that Christ preached to them, 1P3.

2P2 and Jude refer to such demonic entities as being confined to ‘blackest darkness’ which happens to be the condition of earth before Day 1; locally there was not even starlight bouncing off the surface until Day 1.

 

[CrowCross]

As I mentioned elsewhere, your understanding of the phrase tohu wa-bohu is flawed. The word 'tohu' appears 20 times in Scripture, but the word 'bohu' occurs only 3 times, and in each case appears in combination with 'tohu' (Genesis 1:2, Isaiah 34:11 and Jeremiah 4:23). A semantic look at each place where 'tohu' is found shows the word to mean non-productive (in human terms), desolate, desert, wasteland, etc. Obviously it could be used to describe the land after a conflict or defeat has taken place, but there is no requirement for it to be confined to a conflict or a defeat. The grammar of Genesis 1:1-3 does not support such a reading and there is simply nothing in Scripture that indicates that a destruction had taken place before Genesis 1:2. It is just not there. If I am wrong, show me.

I agree. There was no pre-Adamic world.