My notion is that God inspired the writer(s) of the Noah story to make God a character in the story, as a way by which the original hearers/readers would learn the theological truths that lie imbedded in the story. It is a naive way to read the story to assume that the words of the character God are the actual words of God, or that God dictated the story to the writer(s). As Jan pointed out, it makes no sense to assume that the writer(s) had our knowledge of biology and geology, of, e.g., the spherical earth. As I often told my students, the purpose of the Bible is to teach us salvation, not science. No red herrings here.
Bob
----- Original Message -----
From: Jan de Koning
To: asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Monday, June 10, 2002 9:06 PM
Subject: Re: Evolutionists' dilemma/WAS: My Daughter is a YEC
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.
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