RBerman on TE

[KingsGambit]

I'm no YEC but I have no problem with stating that scripture is the origin of the YEC arguments, because it admittedly is what most anybody would come up with having no background knowledge or sources of knowledge other than the Bible. What this discussion is about is whether that is a clincher in its favor.

[KBertsche]

I'm no YEC but I have no problem with stating that scripture is the origin of the YEC arguments, because it admittedly is what most anybody would come up with having no background knowledge or sources of knowledge other than the Bible. What this discussion is about is whether that is a clincher in its favor.

For a modern reader, unconsciously importing his modern worldview on the text, I agree with you.

But would the original audience in Moses' day have come up with YEC? That's the more pertinent question. And I suspect the answer is "no". I don't think they cared about the date of creation; rather, I think their focus was on the agent of creation and His superiority over the pagan gods.

[KingsGambit]

For a modern reader, unconsciously importing his modern worldview on the text, I agree with you.

But would the original audience in Moses' day have come up with YEC? That's the more pertinent question. And I suspect the answer is "no". I don't think they cared about the date of creation; rather, I think their focus was on the agent of creation and His superiority over the pagan gods.

I do suspect they would not have attempted specific date setting a la Ussher, because of specific aspects of the genealogies and possible numerical symbolism (Carol Hill had an interesting article about this I read a few weeks ago), but I agree with the broader thrust of what you're saying - that the most important thing was that God alone was to be worshipped; not pagan idols nor the sun or moon.

[Kristian Joense]

For a modern reader, unconsciously importing his modern worldview on the text, I agree with you.

But would the original audience in Moses' day have come up with YEC? That's the more pertinent question. And I suspect the answer is "no". I don't think they cared about the date of creation; rather, I think their focus was on the agent of creation and His superiority over the pagan gods.

That is exactly the correct question but it can just as well be formulated as would the original audience in Moses' day have come up with OEC or TE? I suspect the same answer to that variant of the question as you do to the YEC formulation.

[KBertsche]

That is exactly the correct question but it can just as well be formulated as would the original audience in Moses' day have come up with OEC or TE? I suspect the same answer to that variant of the question as you do to the YEC formulation.

Agreed. I doubt that Moses or his readers were concerned with YEC, OEC, or TE. These are modern concerns. I doubt that Moses was trying to address any of this.

[oxmixmudd]

Agreed. I doubt that Moses or his readers were concerned with YEC, OEC, or TE. These are modern concerns. I doubt that Moses was trying to address any of this.

We do however know that many the ECF's (I don't know the percentage, but many of the well known ones), using the idea of day == 1000 years, typically believed and taught that the world was <6000 years old. They didn't derive it the same way current YEC's try to, but the 6000 number is fairly ancient. As a matter of fact if one tracks the attempts to figure out when the world started, there is an interesting tendency to say about 6000 years prior to the fellow doing the calculating, with a bit of a buffer (a few hundred years or so in most cases IIRC) of 'future time'. This seems independent of how the 'calculation' was done, thought Ussher's attempt seems to be one the last under the 6000 year banner and we've exhausted his buffer.

As for the Jewish reckoning, this is year 5772 in their calender.

From wikipedia:

hebrew calender

Since about the 3rd century CE, the Jewish calendar has used the Anno Mundi epoch (Latin for “in the year of the world,” abbreviated AM or A.M.; Hebrew לבריאת העולם), sometimes referred to as the “Hebrew era.” According to Rabbinic reckoning, the beginning of "year 1" is not Creation, but about one year before Creation, with the new moon of its first month (Tishrei) to be called molad tohu (the mean new moon of chaos or nothing).

© source where applicable

Their epoch start time is around 3761 BCE, and is about 1 year before the actual creation (again wikipedia).

This wiki page has a lot of information on what the various creation date estimates have been over time, including those by Christian and Jewish scholars. When one sees how all over the map it has been, the idea one can get a solid data from scripture dims significantly.


Jim

Jim

[oxmixmudd]

Uh-oh. I actually agree with RBerman on this!

interesting, though you already said something about there not being much difference between the literal scriptural writing and what the Greek cosmology was, I'd like to know your reasoning on this. That is, my take on this is twofold.

A) The ECF's rejected Greek thought (were it deviated from scripture) specifically as regards the age of the earth. Indeed, there seems to have been no real reluctance to distance themselves with pagan thought if they perceived it as breaking with what scripture plainly taught.

B) The difference in Greek thought on cosmology was not actually very different from what the straight forward literal reading of the text would produce.

That is, claiming the early jews were influenced by the Greeks to adopt an 'unscriptural' view in this area when in fact there is little difference between the conceptualizations of the two cultures seems gratuitous to me. What evidence could one have that would settle the issue? Why would a culture that thought the sun,moon, and stars where in a firmament (raqia) and went across the sky and chased back from west to east for the morning repeat have any reason to reject the Hipparchian concepts of the lunar and solar orbits, or later the Ptolemaic system?

Another thing to keep in mind is that while there were advances in astronomy, the majority of astronomical work prior to ptolemy tended to focus more on the precise observation and prediction of events in the heavens for purposes more along the lines of astrology (which ALSO tended to be accepted per the 'for signs and seasons' of Genesis 1) than what we would call astronomy today.

Berman is saying that the scriptures do not, of their own, lead or lend themselves to a geocentric view of the cosmos. He is implying that the only or primary reason the early church and contemporary Jews adopted such a system was 'compromise' with the world. I just don't see that at all. All the language in scripture that even hints at the issue is consistent with the idea of the Earth being 'orbited' by the sun, moon, and stars once per day.

Indeed, the YEC acceptance of the heliocentric solar system and rejection of the firmament as a barrier between waters above and land/seas below shows far more 'cultural' influence DRIVING scriptural interpretation than could possibly be claimed for the ECF's accepting a Ptolemaic system.

Jim

[RBerman]

Uh-oh. I actually agree with RBerman on this!

Uh-oh indeed! That ought to cause you to rethink your position!

In your dreams! (Or more accurately, in the dreams of cult leader Ellen G White, who saw YEC and "flood geology" in a vision, and enlisted the help of a high-school science teacher to help develop the "flood geology" which would be adopted by Whitcomb and Morris, would be whitewashed of its SDA roots, and would infect Evangelicalism.)

As I've chronicled earlier in the thread, YEC was the belief of the puritans centuries before Ellen G White and Henry Morris were twinkles in their respective parents' eyes.

EXACTLY! I agree that we need to be very careful about importing modern worldviews and cultural perspectives into our reading of Genesis. Like reading "earth" as "a round ball orbiting the sun" instead of as simply "land", as Moses would have understood. Like reading raqia' as figurative (since we know there is no literal hard dome up there), instead of figuring out how a prince in Pharaoh's court would have been taught about it.

Indeed. The Bible's historical accounts are usually phenomenological rather than scientific.

[oxmixmudd]

Indeed. The Bible's historical accounts are usually phenomenological rather than scientific.

And you know this by* ... ?

And you know Genesis 1 is historical because** ... ?



*ANSWER: Scientific investigation of the world which shows us that a non-phenomenological reading is incorrect - leads to flawed conclusions about the state of the natural world

**ANSWER: ignoring any and all clues it is not historical.



Jim

[Kristian Joense]

We do however know that many the ECF's (I don't know the percentage, but many of the well known ones), using the idea of day == 1000 years, typically believed and taught that the world was <6000 years old. They didn't derive it the same way current YEC's try to, but the 6000 number is fairly ancient. As a matter of fact if one tracks the attempts to figure out when the world started, there is an interesting tendency to say about 6000 years prior to the fellow doing the calculating, with a bit of a buffer (a few hundred years or so in most cases IIRC) of 'future time'. This seems independent of how the 'calculation' was done, thought Ussher's attempt seems to be one the last under the 6000 year banner and we've exhausted his buffer.

As for the Jewish reckoning, this is year 5772 in their calender.

From wikipedia:

hebrew calender

Since about the 3rd century CE, the Jewish calendar has used the Anno Mundi epoch (Latin for “in the year of the world,” abbreviated AM or A.M.; Hebrew לבריאת העולם), sometimes referred to as the “Hebrew era.” According to Rabbinic reckoning, the beginning of "year 1" is not Creation, but about one year before Creation, with the new moon of its first month (Tishrei) to be called molad tohu (the mean new moon of chaos or nothing).

© source where applicable

Their epoch start time is around 3761 BCE, and is about 1 year before the actual creation (again wikipedia).

This wiki page has a lot of information on what the various creation date estimates have been over time, including those by Christian and Jewish scholars. When one sees how all over the map it has been, the idea one can get a solid data from scripture dims significantly.


Jim

Jim

Not really at all. Just because people have had mistaken views on something doesn't mean that the truth is hard to arrive at. The existence of other interpretations of a passage(s) does not mean that a correct one does not exist or that it is impossible(or even hard) to arrive at it.

You have to deal with the specifics. "Ussher's chronology is wrong because of X, Y and Z" is an potentially valid argument but "Ussher's chronology is wrong because others have disagreed with him" is not.

That is no different than saying that Einstein was wrong about relativity since others have disagreed with him.

[robrecht]

Not really at all. Just because people have had mistaken views on something doesn't mean that the truth is hard to arrive at. The existence of other interpretations of a passage(s) does not mean that a correct one does not exist or that it is impossible(or even hard) to arrive at it.

You have to deal with the specifics. "Ussher's chronology is wrong because of X, Y and Z" is an potentially valid argument but "Ussher's chronology is wrong because others have disagreed with him" is not.

That is no different than saying that Einstein was wrong about relativity since others have disagreed with him.

But Jim did not say that Ussher was wrong because others disagree with him. He did question the clarity of the data because so many different people have interpreted it differently, but in order to understand Jim's reasoning you will need to read more of the thread.

[robrecht]

RBerman, are you not going to answer this question?

The contradiction, or rather the inconsistency, is accepting the culture's views uncritically on some issues but not others.

What makes you think that acceptance of scientific evidence is uncritical? I think most scientists, whether they are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, atheist, etc, practice a very critical and exacting methodology. Just because you claim that TEs are uncritical does not make it so.

Thanks, Robrecht

[oxmixmudd]

Not really at all. Just because people have had mistaken views on something doesn't mean that the truth is hard to arrive at. The existence of other interpretations of a passage(s) does not mean that a correct one does not exist or that it is impossible(or even hard) to arrive at it.

You have to deal with the specifics. "Ussher's chronology is wrong because of X, Y and Z" is an potentially valid argument but "Ussher's chronology is wrong because others have disagreed with him" is not.

That is no different than saying that Einstein was wrong about relativity since others have disagreed with him.

You are absolutely correct. That would be a very silly thing to say. However, that is not even close to what I said or was trying to say.

All I was doing in the post you quoted as responding to was to show that the concept the Earth is around 6000 years old is historically common to readers of the Jewish Bible, Christian and Jewish, at least prior to the modern discoveries that show the Earth to be much older than that.

Perhaps you meant this:

"When one sees how all over the map it has been, the idea one can get a solid data from scripture dims significantly."

I should have said "... data [concerning a creation date for the Earth] from scripture ..."

And by that I was not proposing any kind of declaration of one chronology or the other wrong or right, but what I was saying was that with the relatively inconsistent results, and the tendency to place the times relative to certain subjective expectations, one can have reason to suspect that deriving a date from the creation accounts is at best difficult. And it may well be chasing windmills.


Jim

[MooseOnTheLoose]

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[KingsGambit]

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