Allen Roy <allen@infomagic.com
I am sorry for the delay in this response, I have been away in the field
with students and life has
been quite busy in this part of the world, trying to catch up with the
usual backlog that accumulates
when I am away. Anyway, thank you for your post, from it it would seem
that we appear to have
some common ground, based on what you wrote in the first part of your
email.
You then went on to write in response to one of my comments:
> The whole raison detre for the tablet idea was that it allowed the
text of
> Genesis 1 to be harmonized with an old earth. If you do not believe
that the
> seven days to be anything other than consecutive 144 hours and/or
reject
> concordism (as I understand you do), then the reason for having the
tablet
> theory simply evaporates.
I had never heard this before. I first read Wiseman many years ago
and thought it would harmonize
with the 7 rotation days concept quite well. Since then, groups like
ICR (Henry Morris), AIG (Ken
Ham) and others, have begun promoting the tablet theory. The theory
seems to successfully counter
the JEPD theory with an assortment of redactors writing the Torah and
the writings etc..
On further thought, I may have inadvertently led myself (an others?
astray here). Partly because I
had not read Wiseman for some time and my copy is no longer to hand
(lent out and not returned,
alas). As I recall there were two components to Wiseman's thesis.
The first was that Genesis consists of a series of sequential
narratives, each introduced by the
phrase "These are the generations of...." These narratives he referred
to as "tablets", a reference to
the Mesopotamian clay tablets which he believed of of these was written
on.
The second component was his understanding of the days of Genesis 1 as
being days of revelation,
where in six days God revealed to, or rather told, the writer the
creative acts which God had
performed over geological ages.
Anyway, on re-reading your posts, I believe I have been understanding
you as referring to the
second part of Wiseman's scheme, when in fact you may have been
referring to the first. If this is
the case, I apologise for the confusion this may have caused. If in
fact you also follow the second
half of Wiseman's scheme, as well as the first, I would be intrigued as
to your reasons.
God Bless
Jonathan