A Reddit member asks about theistic evolution

[Sereni-tea]

Gen 1 is a record of Adam's understanding. I cannot see anything that would not be rational to him. The supernatural is kept to a minimum (the Spirit and the signs). At the latest, it would be Adam's recollection at his death. Noah was alive before he died.

You are assuming the ages in Genesis are to be taken at face value.

 

[Sereni-tea]

The objection about the text's use of the term Day is too subjective for me. There needed to be a start to the evening, the first part of each day. What is available in the picture to do mark that? It would be the first or evening star. This is why everyone should draw their own storyboard images for each action that happens; as though you were preparing to create a film of it.

Too subjective for you? The idea that the light of a single distant star is insufficient to be called 'daylight' is too subjective for you? OK...
You don't think that perhaps the absence of daylight could have been a marker for night?

I think you mean starlight is not daylight; but that is not the point of the verse. The point is to express a marker for the start of evening, the first part of Day 2. The verse is not saying Day 1 was a day like Day 4 for some unusual reason. It is saying Day 1 was organized and had an endpoint--the star that marked the start of Day 2, as was continued going forward. This would not have been 'shama' but one of the 'kavov.'

No, it's not the point of the verse, because it isn't talking about starlight at all - you are the one that has inserted that into the text.
It is talking about Day and Night. That is what it says. You have had to make up starlight to get it to make sense in your head. But if you understood it in the context I have been explaining, you would need to make up anything.

I quoted Kline because it shows he knew there was no daylight. But it was organized. I did not know that he has altered that level of the material. (sighs)

Kline said nothing of the sort. Again you are reading into yet another text what you wanted to see. Kline said as you quoted: "... was introduced not to eliminate earth's darkness but to alternate with it in the good order of Day and Night."
He is saying there isn't just day (i.e. darkness has been eliminated altogether), but there is alternating day and night.

 

[Sereni-tea]

Here are two further thoughts on Day 1 light:


Two Further Thoughts On Day 1 Light

For lack of better expression, there are two cases of a feature of creation not being that feature. One is that the light of Day 1 is not light as we know it just 3 days later. The YLCWJ’s view is that this is distant starlight arriving.

The YLCWJ's view is wrong and has nothing in Scripture, or science, to support it.

The 2nd example is the waters. It is used in the ordinary sense when Gen 1 begins, but on Day 3 there is separation of those above from below, and we would say the above are clouds until we realize the term is ‘shama--raqia’—that term which runs a continuum from sky with birds in it (Day 5) to our local system, to a few further moving objects. It is the furthest reach of these waters which Dr. D. Faulkner has proposed are truly the edge of the universe bouncing back CMB.

The raqia is the expanse that the ancients believe held back the waters above from the waters below and on which the sun, moon, stars, etc moved.

But from Adam’s POV, ‘shama raqia’ would not have reached as far as modern measurement. He simply was marking 3 things:

his location here on earth

the firmament between earth and the static distant worlds

the distant stars or kavov.



Ouranos

The Greek term ‘ouranos’ should be noted about Day 1 light. This term is used for heavens by the LXX as they wanted to convey to the 1st century Greek-writing world about the Hebrew term shama.

We can hardly fail to notice the connection to Orion, the constellation we see as a prominent cluster-shape (at least from earth’s POV).

But this is not the point here. The point here is that likelihood that Day 1 light was Orion as a marker of Day 1’s evening, the start of each of the days going forward. There would be some light here, but the light of Day 1 was not daylight as we would find 3 days later. Instead the marking--organizing function was the emphasis.

Sorry, what connection to Orion?

So now you have moved from the Centauri constellation to Orion? The closest star in the Orion constellation is around 250 light years away. The furtherst is nearly 1,500 light years away.

But would He call Day 1 light the same as Day 4?

On Day 1 the light is called 'Day'. On Day 4 the sun is called the 'greater light' and the moon the 'lesser light'. They are not named as a dig at the neighbours who worshipped them. If you understand the text in the ancient near east context, this isn't a problem. If you are trying to fit this into a modern day context, this is a problem.

 

[EarlyActs]

It is an answer but not necessary the answer. And again, even if correct, it doesn't mean the author of Genesis wrote it down word for word. The structure of Genesis is too precise to think it is just random stories handed down from generation to generation. The material - however it was provided - has been carefully edited together.

The people mentioned by Heb 11 from this period are as much believers as later ones. They had to have had a shared faith. It is propositional. What use to them is something written up to 2500 years later?

 

[Sereni-tea]

The people mentioned by Heb 11 from this period are as much believers as later ones. They had to have had a shared faith. It is propositional. What use to them is something written up to 2500 years later?

That has no bearing on anything we are talking about. They believed/trusted God - obviously. But that doesn't really address the issues I have raised.

 

[EarlyActs]

Too subjective for you? The idea that the light of a single distant star is insufficient to be called 'daylight' is too subjective for you? OK...
You don't think that perhaps the absence of daylight could have been a marker for night?



No, it's not the point of the verse, because it isn't talking about starlight at all - you are the one that has inserted that into the text.
It is talking about Day and Night. That is what it says. You have had to make up starlight to get it to make sense in your head. But if you understood it in the context I have been explaining, you would need to make up anything.



Kline said nothing of the sort. Again you are reading into yet another text what you wanted to see. Kline said as you quoted: "... was introduced not to eliminate earth's darkness but to alternate with it in the good order of Day and Night."
He is saying there isn't just day (i.e. darkness has been eliminated altogether), but there is alternating day and night.

Re context
I think you made up a context.

Have you made a storyboard of each moment in Gen 1? A storyboard is an illustration of each action in it.

 

[EarlyActs]

Too subjective for you? The idea that the light of a single distant star is insufficient to be called 'daylight' is too subjective for you? OK...
You don't think that perhaps the absence of daylight could have been a marker for night?



No, it's not the point of the verse, because it isn't talking about starlight at all - you are the one that has inserted that into the text.
It is talking about Day and Night. That is what it says. You have had to make up starlight to get it to make sense in your head. But if you understood it in the context I have been explaining, you would need to make up anything.



Kline said nothing of the sort. Again you are reading into yet another text what you wanted to see. Kline said as you quoted: "... was introduced not to eliminate earth's darkness but to alternate with it in the good order of Day and Night."
He is saying there isn't just day (i.e. darkness has been eliminated altogether), but there is alternating day and night.

You can’t have what we know as daylight on Day 1 which is why it is only referring to the time period. A light source of some kind marked that as it says, and a star is a good source for that since Shama is only about our system.

Rather than make up ideas, I am integrating the few that are there. It’s like that scene in Apollo 13 where they have to solve the space craft’s problem using very few materials available.

 

[EarlyActs]

Too subjective for you? The idea that the light of a single distant star is insufficient to be called 'daylight' is too subjective for you? OK...
You don't think that perhaps the absence of daylight could have been a marker for night?



No, it's not the point of the verse, because it isn't talking about starlight at all - you are the one that has inserted that into the text.
It is talking about Day and Night. That is what it says. You have had to make up starlight to get it to make sense in your head. But if you understood it in the context I have been explaining, you would need to make up anything.



Kline said nothing of the sort. Again you are reading into yet another text what you wanted to see. Kline said as you quoted: "... was introduced not to eliminate earth's darkness but to alternate with it in the good order of Day and Night."
He is saying there isn't just day (i.e. darkness has been eliminated altogether), but there is alternating day and night.

MK says it is not eliminated, which correct for 2 more days. That’s why the only thing that happens is organization of time, and the only material that would do that is some starlight from the distant kavov arriving from the ‘spreading out.’

You could actually say nothing is finished until Day 6. They are all partial steps.

I don’t make things up; I integrate what is there.

 

[EarlyActs]

It’s really odd to hear that the one record from the time about Adam is not a record from the time about Adam. Would you have more confidence if the claim was that it was their next child’s verbal record since the first sons are gone?

 

[EarlyActs]

One large fact remains clear from the LXX which is only half as far removed as we are: they chose the Greek term ouranos for shama. Ouranos is a clear connection to Orion. So on a clear night at their latitude, it is the most noticeable thing seen, and I believe they were tying in to Day 1's light with that. As long as creation tectonics had not shifted things even further.

 

[Sereni-tea]

Re context
I think you made up a context.

Have you made a storyboard of each moment in Gen 1? A storyboard is an illustration of each action in it.

My storyboard will fit an ancient near eastern worldview. It won't change how I interpret the passage.

You can’t have what we know as daylight on Day 1 which is why it is only referring to the time period. A light source of some kind marked that as it says, and a star is a good source for that since Shama is only about our system.

Rather than make up ideas, I am integrating the few that are there. It’s like that scene in Apollo 13 where they have to solve the space craft’s problem using very few materials available.

We have been over this numerous times.

MK says it is not eliminated, which correct for 2 more days. That’s why the only thing that happens is organization of time, and the only material that would do that is some starlight from the distant kavov arriving from the ‘spreading out.’

As I said Kline uses a framework view in which the days are thematically viewed, not chronological. So your understanding is incorrect.

You could actually say nothing is finished until Day 6. They are all partial steps.

I don’t make things up; I integrate what is there.

You ignore the literary and cultural context of the passage and try to make sense of it in semi-modern days terms.

It’s really odd to hear that the one record from the time about Adam is not a record from the time about Adam. Would you have more confidence if the claim was that it was their next child’s verbal record since the first sons are gone?

I don't care where the material has come from, but nor am I going to speculate where there is no evidence. I am interested in the material as written by the author of Genesis.

 

[Sereni-tea]

One large fact remains clear from the LXX which is only half as far removed as we are: they chose the Greek term ouranos for shama. Ouranos is a clear connection to Orion. So on a clear night at their latitude, it is the most noticeable thing seen, and I believe they were tying in to Day 1's light with that. As long as creation tectonics had not shifted things even further.

Do you know what Ouranos was in Greek mythology?
OURANOS (Uranus) was the primordial god (protogenos) of the sky. The Greeks imagined the sky as a solid dome of brass, decorated with stars, whose edges descended to rest upon the outermost limits of the flat earth. Ouranos was the literal sky, just as his consort Gaia (Gaea) was the earth.

URANUS (Ouranos)- Greek Primordial God of the Sky (Roman Caelum)

Uranus was the primordial god of the sky. The Greeks imagined the sky as a solid dome of brass, decorated with stars, whose edges rested upon the outermost limits of the flat earth. Uranus was the literal sky, just as his consort Gaea was the earth. The couple had twelve sons and six daughters...

www.theoi.com

This is similar to the raqia in Hebrew. I am not seeing the connection with Orion.

 

[EarlyActs]

I hope you’ll go to the late parts of P James-Griffith’s ‘Tracing Genesis Through History’ about which account is a degeneration of which. A couple curators from the British Museum are mentioned, quoted. YouTube.

From your last posts, Genesis 1 is a later mystical poetry, as I remarked early on.

“Don’t care where the material has come from” ???

 

[EarlyActs]

Do you know what Ouranos was in Greek mythology?
OURANOS (Uranus) was the primordial god (protogenos) of the sky. The Greeks imagined the sky as a solid dome of brass, decorated with stars, whose edges descended to rest upon the outermost limits of the flat earth. Ouranos was the literal sky, just as his consort Gaia (Gaea) was the earth.

URANUS (Ouranos)- Greek Primordial God of the Sky (Roman Caelum)

Uranus was the primordial god of the sky. The Greeks imagined the sky as a solid dome of brass, decorated with stars, whose edges rested upon the outermost limits of the flat earth. Uranus was the literal sky, just as his consort Gaea was the earth. The couple had twelve sons and six daughters...

www.theoi.com

This is similar to the raqia in Hebrew. I am not seeing the connection with Orion.

You are assuming that source for the LXX, and for the specific term. In the NW Semitic burst of alphabets @2000 BC, vocabulary was usually a 3-sound creation, usually consonants. What is needed is the moment when O/U-R-N was only about one planet, rather than the visually-dominant group now known as Orion. Obviously it is connected to both as a 3 letter formation.

The visual-dominance would explain the earliest references. I assume the LXX rabbis meant to refer to that. Thus Ouranoi in 2 P 3:5 would not be 'many Uranuses' (that would break the Greek myth anyway) but the distant stars, etc.

 

[EarlyActs]

Dr. M. Ross on the cosmology continuum

 

[EarlyActs]

Great updates on datings and methods of earth.

 

[Sereni-tea]

You are assuming that source for the LXX, and for the specific term. In the NW Semitic burst of alphabets @2000 BC, vocabulary was usually a 3-sound creation, usually consonants. What is needed is the moment when O/U-R-N was only about one planet, rather than the visually-dominant group now known as Orion. Obviously it is connected to both as a 3 letter formation.

The visual-dominance would explain the earliest references. I assume the LXX rabbis meant to refer to that. Thus Ouranoi in 2 P 3:5 would not be 'many Uranuses' (that would break the Greek myth anyway) but the distant stars, etc.

I am finding your posts very confusing. You seem to be mixing up a lot of unrelated ideas.

The word "Ouranos" is a greek word which is translated in our Bibles as heavens. It is not a Hebrew word and does not follow the same Hebrew grammatical formations. It refers to the solid dome above the earth on which many in the ancient world believed that the stars moved on. The Greeks believed this was the sky god. It is not in any way referring to the planet Uranus but it is the Greek god that the planet was named after. It has nothing to do with Orion.

The Greeks, like the rest of the ancient world had no ideas the stars were light years away from the earth.

 

[Sereni-tea]

I hope you’ll go to the late parts of P James-Griffith’s ‘Tracing Genesis Through History’ about which account is a degeneration of which. A couple curators from the British Museum are mentioned, quoted. YouTube.

Thanks for posting the videos but I really don't have enough time (or patience) to listent to a young earth creationist for that long. I have been down that road and am never going back.

Also, FYI, you are not supposed to post videos here. There is a particular forum you are supposed to put them in and then add the link here - check out the forum rules.

From your last posts, Genesis 1 is a later mystical poetry, as I remarked early on.

Some refer to Genesis 1 as poetry but it does not follow the usual Hebrew poetic form. It does contain a lot of poetic elements but I think in the end it is classified as prose.

Again, I really don't know why you keep using the term 'mystic'.

“Don’t care where the material has come from” ???

Let me elaborate. I believe the Bible is the Word of God. The authors (and any editors, if there were any) were inspired by God as 2 Peter 1:21 and 2 Timothy 3:16 declare. It doesn't matter to me whether the author of Genesis took material that was handed down or wrote from the culture of the time or some mix of the two. The message is from God.

What I do believe is that any material was edited by the author of Genesis to convey the message the Holy Spirit inspired him to convey. But when God inspires a Biblical author, He does not bypass them or their culture, and so the material is written within the context of the author and his audience - this is the cultural context I have been talking about.

 

[Mr GLee]

Some refer to Genesis 1 as poetry but it does not follow the usual Hebrew poetic form. It does contain a lot of poetic elements but I think in the end it is classified as prose.

Again, I really don't know why you keep using the term 'mystic'.

Mystic having to do with parables .

Without mysteries (parables )Christ spoke not. Hiding the poetic signified language from the lost .

Parables using the temporal historical mixed with the unseen eternal according to the presciptipion below needed to rightly divide giving us the spiritual unseen eternal understanding . The literalist must make to no effect .

2 Corinthian 4:18 While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.

The eternal things not seen (let there be) and behold it is seen . The law of faith

 

[EarlyActs]

I am finding your posts very confusing. You seem to be mixing up a lot of unrelated ideas.

The word "Ouranos" is a greek word which is translated in our Bibles as heavens. It is not a Hebrew word and does not follow the same Hebrew grammatical formations. It refers to the solid dome above the earth on which many in the ancient world believed that the stars moved on. The Greeks believed this was the sky god. It is not in any way referring to the planet Uranus but it is the Greek god that the planet was named after. It has nothing to do with Orion.

The Greeks, like the rest of the ancient world had no ideas the stars were light years away from the earth.

I know its Greek. I don't think you know the significance of the LXX yet. It was the chosen term by the LXX rabbis for 'shama.' The most prominent thing beyond our planets is the Orion constellation, and I will try to check the BDB lexicon soon to see if Orion is utterly dismissed in relation to 'ouranos.'

Btw, when 'ouranos' is used in 2P3, it means the outer universe, and 2, it is plural, in the same collective sense of our English 'heavens.' Why do that?

You are still assuming Genesis 1 is confined to 'ancient world beliefs.' Those came later, after the ordinary description of creation week, when the Adamic tribe knew that 'kavov' were not 'shama.' Or are you still of the mindset that if Gen 1-11 says someone said something, then it is obviously not what they said?

Using the text's own inter-related commentary, the next thing they knew about the purpose of stars was the massive tally which would represent Abraham's seed through Christ, Gen 15. The 'shama' were already a sign of some kind about this; it is not that clear, yet as soon as another child is born, after her sons are gone, Eve believes she has given birth to the redemptive Seed. And a period when 'men called upon the name of the Lord' before the utter evil of Gen 6.

Those pieces of information have much more to do with the purpose of the 'shama' than a dome that was believed in later.

The Greeks knew of great distances. Lewis cites Ptolemy in Almagest I, 5, saying he knew we were in a very remote nook of a huge universe, just barely a mathematical point. You can find this in 'Science and Religion' in GOD IN THE DOCK. The last segment of the 'conversation' with a fellow professor is exactly what you are saying. I have manually copied the 'coin-drawer' illustration, and will see if I can paste it here.