EarlyActs
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Literary Fallacies When Handling Genesis 1
There are logical fallacies that can happen when handling Genesis that can be cleared up by sorting out literary questions. Some fallacies at the end of the day are not that. Here are three examples.
Among literary questions are those which deal with tone, style, word-choice, word-play, metaphor and simile, etc.
Backstory
The narratives Genesis have backstory so frequently that the scholar Cassuto used this feature to demonstrate the integrity of the entire book. The backstory is the 2nd element in these recited narratives.
If we look at the story of Rebekkah, for example, we find three features: relatives, beauty and virginity. Each of these existed for some time. These are all cited in the story before there is new action, Cassuto’s term for the 3rd element.
In the cataclysm account, the backstory is most of chapter 6, fairly sizeable.
So when handling Genesis 1, we find the title and backstory placed together in a common relation: ‘when God began creating the heavens and the earth,…’ This is often found in Genesis.
The elements that complete that sentence are themselves indicators of duration. The earth, for example, is unformed and unfilled. Unless a person is devoid of curiosity, they are probably wondering what caused that. But not everyone is curios.
The Word Choice or ‘Flavor’ of the Language
When describing the Spirit in the work of creation, the term used is that of a hen on her nest. This can be up to 3 weeks. This is considerable relative to an instant birth or to the moment the chick hatches.
But the point here is that where we might have expected the most ordinary word-choice, something clinical, there is color. There is meant to be a kind of story, and there is duration to the story.
It is a huge mistake to take this element and go entirely logical and say that God consulted with chickens about how to handle the water-covered planet. Anyone who does that has no literary background and is probably complaining that to see anything else in this phrase but a direct, instant birth is committing a ‘logical fallacy.
The Intended Limitations of Words or Narratives
Dr. Schaeffer described Genesis as an ‘efficient writing’ that covers its interest very closely, but only gives scant reference otherwise. Usually this is the redemptive event or person.
In the table of nations in ch 10, we find a sizable list of descendants and the only interest is the name of the first born and when he had his first born. The remark about the others is just that; he had others.
This is common in Genesis. The cataclysm gives plenty of details on the event, but happens to mention giants and the Nephilim. Many of us wish more time had been given to those. We are out of luck.
In the opening poetic narrative, there is a sufficient focus on the ‘shami’ (the stem) translated heavens. In English, we have an immediate problem when we see this that is not there in Hebrew. In English we would think of the stars. If we went singular, we would mean God’s location. The fact that it is plural has led people to decide how many it was referring to, and they came up with three, usually:
*The visible sky and local objects including weather
*The distant objects
*God’s location beyond view
In reading the Bible, this is the first thing a person must do, to decide what the text could possibly mean by ‘heaven’ when there are immediately 3 options.
The first two are close to Genesis 1 because ‘shami’ is said in v8 to also be the firmament or ‘laraqi’. The pair keep getting mentioned together over and over. This is not in a possessive prepositional phrase form. They are to be known as pair. It ranges from the atmosphere up to the moving, signaling stars beyond our system, but they have to be moving. The ancient world did not treat the static ones the same way. Those simply marked boundaries, usually of nations.
And so we are reading along through Genesis 1 and somehow after so many references to the ‘shami laraqi,’ it suddenly mentions the ‘kavov.’ They are mentioned as just being there, as though it would be unthinkable not to at least mention them, but they are not markers and signs. We find that 2000 years later in Abraham’s time, they have a story, but it is not the kind that the ‘shami’ would carry by moving up, down, or retrograding, and by the zone of the sky, which stood for a nation. They simply show a huge immeasurable number. The Seed of Abraham would be that many. That is what to be read of them, and this matters to Galatians 3 when God explained the Gospel to the tribe before the Law came.
To fail to know the literary forms of Genesis is to commit a literary fallacy and this will lead to trite logical fallacies when handling it.
There are logical fallacies that can happen when handling Genesis that can be cleared up by sorting out literary questions. Some fallacies at the end of the day are not that. Here are three examples.
Among literary questions are those which deal with tone, style, word-choice, word-play, metaphor and simile, etc.
Backstory
The narratives Genesis have backstory so frequently that the scholar Cassuto used this feature to demonstrate the integrity of the entire book. The backstory is the 2nd element in these recited narratives.
If we look at the story of Rebekkah, for example, we find three features: relatives, beauty and virginity. Each of these existed for some time. These are all cited in the story before there is new action, Cassuto’s term for the 3rd element.
In the cataclysm account, the backstory is most of chapter 6, fairly sizeable.
So when handling Genesis 1, we find the title and backstory placed together in a common relation: ‘when God began creating the heavens and the earth,…’ This is often found in Genesis.
The elements that complete that sentence are themselves indicators of duration. The earth, for example, is unformed and unfilled. Unless a person is devoid of curiosity, they are probably wondering what caused that. But not everyone is curios.
The Word Choice or ‘Flavor’ of the Language
When describing the Spirit in the work of creation, the term used is that of a hen on her nest. This can be up to 3 weeks. This is considerable relative to an instant birth or to the moment the chick hatches.
But the point here is that where we might have expected the most ordinary word-choice, something clinical, there is color. There is meant to be a kind of story, and there is duration to the story.
It is a huge mistake to take this element and go entirely logical and say that God consulted with chickens about how to handle the water-covered planet. Anyone who does that has no literary background and is probably complaining that to see anything else in this phrase but a direct, instant birth is committing a ‘logical fallacy.
The Intended Limitations of Words or Narratives
Dr. Schaeffer described Genesis as an ‘efficient writing’ that covers its interest very closely, but only gives scant reference otherwise. Usually this is the redemptive event or person.
In the table of nations in ch 10, we find a sizable list of descendants and the only interest is the name of the first born and when he had his first born. The remark about the others is just that; he had others.
This is common in Genesis. The cataclysm gives plenty of details on the event, but happens to mention giants and the Nephilim. Many of us wish more time had been given to those. We are out of luck.
In the opening poetic narrative, there is a sufficient focus on the ‘shami’ (the stem) translated heavens. In English, we have an immediate problem when we see this that is not there in Hebrew. In English we would think of the stars. If we went singular, we would mean God’s location. The fact that it is plural has led people to decide how many it was referring to, and they came up with three, usually:
*The visible sky and local objects including weather
*The distant objects
*God’s location beyond view
In reading the Bible, this is the first thing a person must do, to decide what the text could possibly mean by ‘heaven’ when there are immediately 3 options.
The first two are close to Genesis 1 because ‘shami’ is said in v8 to also be the firmament or ‘laraqi’. The pair keep getting mentioned together over and over. This is not in a possessive prepositional phrase form. They are to be known as pair. It ranges from the atmosphere up to the moving, signaling stars beyond our system, but they have to be moving. The ancient world did not treat the static ones the same way. Those simply marked boundaries, usually of nations.
And so we are reading along through Genesis 1 and somehow after so many references to the ‘shami laraqi,’ it suddenly mentions the ‘kavov.’ They are mentioned as just being there, as though it would be unthinkable not to at least mention them, but they are not markers and signs. We find that 2000 years later in Abraham’s time, they have a story, but it is not the kind that the ‘shami’ would carry by moving up, down, or retrograding, and by the zone of the sky, which stood for a nation. They simply show a huge immeasurable number. The Seed of Abraham would be that many. That is what to be read of them, and this matters to Galatians 3 when God explained the Gospel to the tribe before the Law came.
To fail to know the literary forms of Genesis is to commit a literary fallacy and this will lead to trite logical fallacies when handling it.
