At 12:03 AM 11/06/02 +0100, Vernon Jenkins wrote:
>Robert,
>
>Thanks for your detailed account of ancient Hebrew thinking. However, you
>appear to have overlooked the fact that it is the Lord Himself who speaks
>His intentions in verses 7, 13 and 17 of Genesis 6. Are you suggesting
>that He was to be constrained by Noah's understanding of what was
>proposed? I believe you present us with a 'red herring'. God certainly
>knew more about the earth than we know today.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Vernon
God is not constrained at all, but we are in our thinking. All of us
are. I find it striking that, despite my remarks in the past, several
people on this forum still want to read OT scriptures using ultra-modern
ways of reading and talking. The Bible was written thousands of years ago,
inspired by God, in a language and using concepts known to people living
thousands of years ago. Even if God would have used modern English he
would not have used concepts unknown to people at that time. Of course,
God would talk to Noah in a way Noah would understand, and to Jacob in a
way Jacob would understand ,and to Israel in a way Israel would
understand. We have gone over this before, and the subject has never been
satisfactorily discussed, since we have apparently different backgrounds
biblically and philosophically. I don't intend to go over this time and
again, but I would suggest, that we take each other seriously when we state
something. Nobody here thinks that Noah knew as much about biology and
geology as we do, so nobody should suggest that God talked to Noah in a
language he would not understand.
This is not the first time we go through this discussion. Ever since I
joined the asa list many years ago it comes up again and again, but do not
expect that we, long time participants, keep on discussing this all the
time, repeating ourselves, without ever getting satisfactory replies. The
same now, no thorough discussions, but just generalities, without
discussing the arguments the other side brings forward.
Jan de K.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Jun 10 2002 - 21:03:43 EDT