Your hopeless eisegete here.
You wrote:
>>Very excellent point. He could have (actually, to my surprize, the term
'sphere' is not in the Young's Concordance; so we could probably
substitute with 'round'), and the Holy Spirit could have
guided him to. But why didn't he/He? It is because the earth is FLAT
according to the intellectual milieu of the writer--thus supporting a
standard
hermeneutical principle tersely stated by G.E. Ladd, "The Bible is the
Word of God in the words of men." The Holy Spirit certainly could have
"usurped" the writer's intellectual horizon and introduced the notion
of a spherical earth, BUT HE DIDN'T--and this is an example of what I
term the "phenonmenon of the Bible". We should let examples like
this guide our notion of how God inspired the Scripture. The Holy
Spirit "respected" the intellectual furniture of the writer leaving
it operational in the revelatory process. <<
But Denis, you should have anticipated what I would say to this. Flat is not
formless either! It is flat. That is a form. :-)
You write:
>>In sum, in asking this question, you are bringing INTO (Greek: eis) the
ancient text your 20th century cosmology. A spherical earth is a late
notion, not one of the ANE writer.<<
As I mentioned above, a flat earth is also a form. It doesn't matter whether
the guy thought the earth was flat, square of spherical, none of these are
formless. I am merely noting that the word chosen doesn't fit your ANE
cosmology.
You wrote:
>>It's a poem Glenn--tell me you can see its structure.<<
I agree that the structure is there. But as Jim and I in one of our rare
moments, agree that poetry can convey historical information.
You wrote:
>>What in the world are you "accusing" me of with: "You are willing to pay
a scientific cost to have the Bible be hermeneutically sound"? Have
you forgotten this is your evolutionary colleague you are talking to?
What do you mean by this? Glenn, our goal is to be BOTH hermeneutically
sound and scientifically sound. Our God is the God of truth in BOTH
theology and science . . . and it behooves us to be
hermeneutically sound in both endeavours. <<
No, I know you are scientifically sound. It is the logical end of your
theological position here that I am not willing to go along with. I
apologize if you took offense; none was intended.
Let me put it this way. I used to work for a company which was in good
financial shape. In fact, they were in such good shape that they decided
that they needed to look a little worse on the financial sheets in order to
avoid being gobbled in a hostile taken over . So, the management came to us
poor dumb employees and told us that they were going to buy back about 4
billion dollars of stock. This would make the company look like it had a
high debt. They said that if they didn't do that someone would buy us and
then fire a whole lot of employees and sell off a lot of properties to pay
for the purchase. (the old management scare tactic). So, after they bought
the stock, the price of oil fell, and the stock was now worth much less. Our
own management, in order to keep their jobs fired 70% of the geologists and
geophysicists in the company and sold 80% of the properties. That was the
second worst layoff I have been through.
The moral of this story is that in order to avoid somebody destroying the
company, our management destroyed the company. This is like seeing some guy
coming towards you in a dark alley and then in order to avoid having him stab
you with a knife, you take your own knife and stab yourself.
What does all this have to do with the Bible? The atheist rejects our Bible
because he believes that it is historically wrong and scientifically wrong.
Thus in order to avoid this problem, we agree with the atheist that there is
no historical content in the early part of the scriptures and conclude that
the Bible should guide our lives.
It makes no sense to me to pay that type of price. If we want people to
believe that the scripture should have some type of claim on their lives, we
have to convince them that it is relevant. If in order to convince them that
it is relevant, we teach them that it is not real, it seems
counter-productive.
You wrote:
>> Don't decide what will be apologetically
feasible, and then workout a hermeneutical/exegetical program
afterward--AND FROM WHAT YOU HAVE JUST SAID THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE
DOING.<<
If I am to be honest, I must agree with you here. That is exactly what I am
doing. I feel that it is more important that the content be correct. If I
must agree that the Bible is scientifically and historically inaccurate in
large parts of it, then I wonder where the logical end of this is. There is
no manna from heaven? Did Moses staff turn into a snake? Did the Nile turn
to Blood? These also are problematical texts and texts which modern science
would deny.
But if God could miraculously cause a staff to turn into a snake, then what
is the problem with God allowing a snake to talk?
You wrote:
>>Finally, you have not dealt with the WORDS of this passage in
question--the WORD of God is called such because WORDS (like grammar as Jim
and Bill have recently challenged you) are important.<<
I fear that the approach that you would take leave the WORDS contentless.
They mean nothing more than the Jabberwocky
(Jim puts some history into them although it is not clear how much. I
thought Bill did also but I may be wrong)
You wrote:
>>As a fellow
scientist, let me encourage you to deal with the data (the words) first,
and then do the theory building (the exegesis/hermeneutics and
apologetics) second--not vice versa.<<
But you have admitted that the meaning the author would have conveyed was the
YEC view.That is what the words mean. Thus, neither of us is dealing with
the data as it was intended by the ANE writer. You choose to remove the
historical relevancy of the text, and thus the problem. I choose to try to
save the historicity in some fashion.
glenn
glenn