Re: [asa] Rudwick does it again (back to Adam)

I think it's presumptuous to think we can get into the mind of Moses with
such certainty. And of course, it's highly unlikely that Moses was the
original author or final redactor of the references to the firmament, so we
might well ask what difference it makes exactly what Moses had in his mind.
The very question of authorial intent is question begging.

Let's try this another way. Gen. 1 refers to the notion of a three-tiered
universe which has parallels in other ANE sources. Let's imagine the Moses
is the author of Gen. 1, and that he was indeed, as the text later suggests,
raised as an Egyptian prince before taking on leadership of the Hebrews. He
is schooled in the Egyptian cosmology and probably knows something of the
Mesopotamian creation myths.

The Egyptian and Mesopotamian cosmology is inseparable from the religions
that spawned it. There is no separation between "science" and "theology"
here. We'll set aside for a moment the impossible question of which of the
various Egyptian theologies Moses would have been schooled in (there were at
least four or five major competing Egyptian theologies with different
creation myths and varying cosmologies). Let's say Moses was schooled in
the Heliopolis Theology.

So, resonating with Gen. 1, under the Heliopolis Theology, Moses is schooled
in the notion that there is a primordial chaotic nothingness before the
world is created ("formless and void"). But there is a problem: the
primary God, Atum, does not himself exist before the chaos until, depending
on which version Moses accepts, Atum either projects himself into existence
or masturbates to produce the twins Shu and Tefnut, who become Atum's own
parents.

Now, if Moses' reference to the primordial chaos of the tohu and bohu in
Gen. 1 is the "science of the day," which Moses simply accepts, why should
we insist that his notion of God gets severed off from that "science" to
become something other than the masturbating Atum? Why not acknowledge that
Moses' notion of "god" also reflects the "science of the day," particularly,
say, in the use of the plural to reflect the "divine council?" In fact,
some people argue that the Biblical notion of God all the way through Christ
is just an appropriation of surrounding myths (e.g.:
http://www.kheper.net/topics/Egypt/Heliopolis.html)

This is one reason why "science of the day" is an inappropriate
anachronism. It wasn't "science," it was theology. The Hebrews didn't just
adopt those myths, they reworked them theologically to present a very
different God. The text is not concerned with, and does not "teach," an
ancient "science." It adopts the familiar language of an ancient theology
and transforms it to present a new and unique theology. Perhaps Moses
personally believed the universe had three physical tiers, or perhaps not,
but that is irrelevant to the nature of the Biblical text -- IMHO.

On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 11:51 AM, Dehler, Bernie <bernie.dehler@intel.com>wrote:

> I think it is obvious from reading the text that Moses and the ancients
> believed in a thing called a "firmament." I think it is clear what they
> meant by that- a solid dome which separated the waters from above, and the
> stars were hung in the firmament. This is all connected to a flat Earth. I
> think we both know the ANE references for that. If you want to dispute
> that, then better people to argue with would be those who propose it, like
> Seely and Lamoureux. I'm going with those two guys because it seems
> reasonable to me.
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> *From:* asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] *On
> Behalf Of *David Opderbeck
> *Sent:* Tuesday, August 19, 2008 8:14 AM
> *To:* Dehler, Bernie
> *Cc:* asa@calvin.edu
>
> *Subject:* Re: [asa] Rudwick does it again (back to Adam)
>
>
>
> Bernie, Michael's point -- and Michael is no concordist, so far as I know!
> -- is simply that "the ancient Jews mostly took it literal, because it was
> the 'science of the day'" is way, way, way too broad a statement without
> some detailed support. For example:
>
> -- what contemporaneous Hebrew documents support the claim that Gen. 1-11
> was the "science of the day?" Appealing only to the Biblical text here is
> question-begging, because the literary genre of the Biblical text is the
> issue.
>
> -- related to the first point, what do the source documents of Gen. 1-11
> suggest about its literary genre? Were they records of detailed and precise
> empirical observations, or collections of folk tales and poetry, or any
> variety of other things?
>
> -- related to the first two points, in what contexts were the source
> documents of Gen. 1-11 and the text itself used? Were there training
> academies for professions similar to the modern sciences in which trainees
> used these texts as primary sources?
>
> -- related to all these points, what "day" are you talking about? The
> "day" in which the (presumably) oral traditions were first being formed?
> The day in which the (presumably) oral traditions were first written down?
> The day in which the underlying writings were compiled into the several
> (Yahwist, etc.) separate strands that probably make up the canonical text?
> The day in which the Yahwist and other strands were redacted by later
> editors and knitted into the canonical text? Already we have probably
> spanned many hundreds, if not thousands, of years of writing and redaction
> by many different writers and editors in various cultural settings: early
> nomadic, captive in Egypt, loosely organized and wandering, infiltrating
> Canaan, under various prophets, Judges, and Kings, and captive in Babylon.
> Would you suggest that a nomadic shepherd in Joseph's time would necessarily
> have understood Gen. 1-11 exactly the same as someone in the scribal class
> during the Babylonian captivity?
>
> An extraordinary amount of scholarship would be required to support any
> firm conclusion on any of these points. Our knowledge of the ancient
> Hebrews is significant, but in many ways limited and highly contested (many,
> probably most, mainstream archeologists are "minimalists" and don't really
> think of the "ancient Hebrews" as significant at all -- most would likely
> almost entirely dismiss the Biblical stories of the Kings and Judges). In
> fact, we don't have any of the source documents that underlie Gen. 1-11.
> They are apparently lost to history.
>
> So Michael's point is very well taken, I think -- who can say with any
> final certainty how the earliest hearers of these texts understood them?
>
> What we can do is think by analogy to surrounding Mesopotamian cultures.
> As I've said before, I think "science of the day" is an anachronistic
> misnomer for something like the Enuma Elish in that context. Read John
> Walton's book on the ANE understanding for some really interesting context.
> Yes, they understood the Enuma Elish and other such stories to be "real" --
> but "real" for them did not carry the same common-sense physical meaning
> that it carries for us -- they had a much more functional, rather than
> physical, view of the cosmos.
>
> On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 6:24 PM, Dehler, Bernie <bernie.dehler@intel.com>
> wrote:
>
> Hi Michael-
>
> Are you suggesting that it was possible for reasonable people at the time
> of Moses to think that the Earth was shaped as a ball (not flat)? Why would
> they think such a thing, as it goes against common sense? We know better
> because of technology.
>
> ...Bernie
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Roberts [mailto:michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk]
> Sent: Monday, August 18, 2008 3:12 PM
> To: Dehler, Bernie; asa@calvin.edu
> Subject: Re: [asa] Rudwick does it again (back to Adam)
>
> I dont think we really know what people at the time of Moses thought. If
> David Fouts is right (OT prof at Bryan) as he argued in an article in the
> Journal of the Evangelical Theolo Society in about 1999 on exaggeration of
> numbers in the OT, both of ages and census. He claimed this was common
> practice and why the OT writers did this. It is accommodation worthy of
> Seely! (and me!) The logic of his position is of course to do the same to
> the 6 days.....
>
> My impression is that people of OT times were more open than we might
> think,
> but there is no research
>
> Michael
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Dehler, Bernie" <bernie.dehler@intel.com>
> To: <asa@calvin.edu>
>
> Sent: Monday, August 18, 2008 9:46 PM
> Subject: RE: [asa] Rudwick does it again (back to Adam)
>
>
> The point is that the church fathers already started down a path of not
> taking the Bible literally, unlike those at the time of Moses. Science was
> awakening.
>
> YEC's don't accept a flat earth- but surprisingly, some still go for a
> firmament. They think there's a canopy of frozen water out there in space
> beyond the planets and stars that we see.
>
> ...Bernie
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
> Behalf Of gordon brown
> Sent: Monday, August 18, 2008 1:24 PM
> To: asa@calvin.edu
> Subject: RE: [asa] Rudwick does it again (back to Adam)
>
> Bernie,
>
> When I try to think of ways in which the science of the early church
> fathers differed from that of the writers of the Old Testament, the shape
> of the earth is the first thing that comes to my mind. The church fathers
> should have known that it was spherical, and we assume that the OT writers
> accepted a flat earth, which is consistent with their phraseology. However
> that was not a factor in the questions that some fathers raised concerning
> solar days in Genesis 1 and the Flood being global. Do you know of any YEC
> teachings that are due to taking flat earth phraseology literally?
>
> Gordon Brown (ASA member)
>
>
> On Mon, 18 Aug 2008, Dehler, Bernie wrote:
>
> > The church fathers had a degree of science. For example, they probably
> > knew the Earth wasn't flat, unlike the person who wrote Genesis and the
> > original audience for Genesis?
> >
> > ...Bernie
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
> > Behalf Of gordon brown
> > Sent: Friday, August 15, 2008 6:23 PM
> > To: asa@calvin.edu
> > Subject: RE: [asa] Rudwick does it again (back to Adam)
> >
> > On Fri, 15 Aug 2008, Dehler, Bernie wrote:
> >
> >> What do the church fathers have to do with it? My point is that Genesis
> >> was written by an ancient Jew, and the ancient Jews mostly took it
> >> literal because it was the "science of the day." Most modern thinkers
> >> don't take it literally now. Obviously there's a grey zone of
> transition
> >> between the ancients and the modern. The church fathers are in a
> >> transition point, I think.
> >>
> >> ...Bernie
> >>
> >
> > Bernie,
> >
> > The point is that the church fathers were not influenced by modern
> > science. When they asked how there could be a solar day with no sun or
> > noted that wind does not lower sea level, the science they were using was
> > exactly the same as was known to the author of Genesis.
> >
> > When YECs claim that interpretations contrary to theirs occurred only
> > after the rise of modern science, they are simply making assumptions
> > without doing the research. That also applies to others who don't
> question
> > this YEC claim.
> >
> > Gordon Brown (ASA member)
> >
> >
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> >
> >
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>
> --
> David W. Opderbeck
> Associate Professor of Law
> Seton Hall University Law School
> Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology
>

-- 
David W. Opderbeck
Associate Professor of Law
Seton Hall University Law School
Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology
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