From: RFaussette@aol.com
Date: Fri Feb 21 2003 - 08:21:41 EST
In a message dated 2/21/03 3:37:57 AM Eastern Standard Time,
dfwinterstein@msn.com writes:
> World made in six days.
Yes, of course, let me explain my seeming ignorance of such a fact.
I accept the Bible as a mixture of Babylonian agricultural and earlier
pastoralist influences, but if you look at the preferences in the Bible,
Israelites do not embrace farming. They are strictly pastoralists and the
primary Biblical symbol in the Bible is the shepherd, not the farmer, so I
find that the correct frame of reference with which to study especially the
torah is a pastoral one, not an agricultural one which is reflected by a
focus on beginnings and cycles of seasons. The cosmology/cosmogony included
in genesis is not central to genesis, but the story of adam and eve and the
story of abraham and the story of jacob is central. Note even in Cain and
Abel, it is the shepherd's gifts that are pleasing to god, not the farmer's.
This is baldly stated and should not be ignored.
I strongly suggest that if you focus on pastoral concerns in the torah, you
are embracing the correct BIblical perspective and frame of reference, which
has to do with breeding and purity of family lines. Since breeding is a
method of harnessing natural selection, and the laws of natural selection and
breeding do not change they are scientific laws, a focus on pastoral concerns
gives you the only appropriate frame of reference, a frame of reference as
viable today as it was then, as Moses and Ezra and Nehemiah understood
themselves.
Think of Abraham as guaranteeing quantity births (your offspring will be as
numerous...) and Jacob guaranteeing quality births (thus the stronger came to
be Jacob's and the weaker Laban's) and you share their ancient perspective.
rich
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